Easter, Zambia, and the Upside Down Kingdom

I’ve been thinking and processing lots in the midst of an always frantic and event filled Spring in our family and the CU campus…and in the midst of that I think I am ready to offer a raw and open and authentic reflection as I approach THE day on the Christian calendar and THE trip that once again promises to change my life…so here goes:

As we approach Easter tomorrow I am always overwhelmed at the massive impact the resurrection of Jesus has had and continues to have on both a personal and corporate scale…

In just a couple weeks I head back to Zambia again for trip #7 to a place that is so very far away but has become a place I visit more often than spots just a car trip away from Grand Rapids…

Over the last decade of trips to Zambia I’ve watched communities and the lives of so many dear Zambian friends literally be transformed and changed through the power of a Savior who renews and restores and gives life and hope to that which seemed to be broken and without the possibility of a different future…

I’ve seen heaven come to earth in the most unexpected dirty and dusty roads and fields and thatch huts and soccer pitches and school classrooms and medical clinics and clean water well sites and wooden church benches…and the power of the Gospel of Jesus who is no longer in the grave has before my eyes conquered death and brought resurrection in both body and spirit to places in Africa where dreams have become real and true for people with remarkable faith and perseverance…

This transformation has taken place perhaps even more surprisingly in the hearts and minds and lives of people like me who have had the privilege of traveling to a different culture and world that literally has flipped our lives upside down…and allowed the reality of Easter to do what it was intended to do all along in our lives—to turn us into people who love freely, choose good over evil, experience joy in serving another instead of fixating on our own wants and needs, and free us from a life of materialism, arrogance, and fear because of what Jesus has done on our behalf…

The death and resurrection of my Savior and Lord has become more that just an event to be recognized and a reality I offer intellectual assent…it has become a yearly and sometimes daily reminder of the preposterous idea that everything is now different and all things are indeed being made new because I’ve seen HIM alive and on the move and doing miracles in African communities and American student lives over and over and over again…

And in 2014, I once again find myself a different person with dreams and ambitions and in reality the ability to accept and revel in a very different life experience and path than the one I can imagine if Jesus hadn’t stepped into life on earth and connected me with people on the other side of the world where together we experience the joy and hope of Easter despite our differences…

Let me explain what this has looked like for me over the last several years, even the last week in more concrete detail:

A week ago I spent Saturday morning on our Cornerstone campus running in and helping along with some students to host a 5K run for clean water in partnership with Living Water Intl, an organization I deeply believe in and former partner in seeking to help funds new wells in global communities with desperate need for the water that brings life and health and the ability to do much more in life…

At the same time some of my friends were running in another 5K race on the other side of Lake Michigan back at our former church home Willow Creek to help make education available for kids in Zambia, which seems like about the best idea in the world in my opinion given that much of my life has been invested in the pursuit over the last dozen years…I loved getting tweets and texts with their pictures even as I posted several from our CU run at the same time…I am a gigantic fan of Willow's amazing Celebration of Hope campaigns...

Now you should know that the comparison of these two runs caused me to actually experience some serious internal tension and struggle…mostly because of how very different they looked and were in the results and outcomes…

Our little run struggled to get 40 students out of bed early on a Saturday morning despite on campus publicity efforts and raised about $1000 towards the construction of a new well in Africa…while Willow Creek’s run featured almost 4000 runners and most like raised about 100 times what our race did in terms of funds for the education of Zambian kids…

To me, it looked like the classic case of one of the largest and most influential churches in the world compared to a small Christian university’s student justice group trying to pull off the same kind of event…and the results were probably what most people expected them to be…

But if I am honest, the very visible differences in these two events didn’t settle as easily for me…and strangely enough brought up all kinds of feelings of disappointment, discouragement, and doubt on a warm spring Saturday in the Midwest…

Several years ago I actually interviewed to help give leadership to Willow’s global efforts and I couldn’t help but do the comparisons in my mind where I would have been the one running the 4000 person event instead of allowing a group of students to try with limited success to draw our own small crowd of runners to a race course marked out in chalk on our campus sidewalks…

And once again I started fighting the inevitable self-doubt and fears that can easily attack me as I enter the second half of my fifth decade in this world:

Have I “failed” and not “maximized” my gifts and potential because I am part of a run with 40 rather than 4000? Did I not have what it takes to truly become the kind of “leader” who is one of those known and followed and published and podcasted and asked to speak at Q and Catalyst and the Global Leadership Summit when I once just assumed that I would be on of those figures now “IN” as part of the evangelical subculture? And why would I have chosen to come to and so deeply invest in a workplace that doesn’t have national pull or recognition when measured against other schools, churches, and organizations that I’ve hung around for a good chunk of my life?

It is this tendency to compare, this bent toward measuring up, this deep desire to have a platform of influence and impact as a leader that often brings these kinds of questions and doubts and feelings of failure to my otherwise optimistic and positive and hopeful outlook on life…

I can easily make things become all about the bottom line, all about the economics, all about the size of numbers, and all about the public praise and notice received…and this tendency can turn my moments of reflection into ones filled with more angst than is healthy and more worry than is necessary for one like me who is ridiculously blessed and remarkably cared for by family, friends, and our God…

And then these moments like last Saturday of insecurity and discontent run into Easter…into the reality that as a friend who works alongside me often reminds me the Kingdom that Jesus brought via His incarnation and established forever through His resurrection carried with it a new and different economy…a Jesus economy that I first truly saw and experienced in a forgotten village in Zambia where I found joy and laughter and sport and mercy and grace and life among the poor, a people who love Jesus and His people and world in an upside down way…

Easter for me this year marks the reality that soon I will again be in sub-Saharan Africa helping to stop malaria’s impact and reveling in the way that the community there embraces us like family…and together we will affirm and celebrate what Jesus has done and will continue to do as the Risen Redeemer of all people and all things…

I know that even though it may not look to those who are watching from afar or even to myself some days that I have become and am doing things that are good enough and big enough in my life and work, I am able to experience the peace of Christ and enjoy that I still get to be part of Jesus’ work in student lives, have brilliant and compassionate friends awaiting my arrival in Zambia, and know in my very soul that what God has called me to do in the place He’s clearly led me does matter to Him and to His Kingdom…whether 40 or 4000 run in a race to help change the world…whether I self publish or make the NY Times bestseller list…whether I work at a university with the highest of ACT scores or a bunch of first generation college students…whether I’m invited to speak at national conferences or teach a first year experience class cohort…and whether my global initiative saves millions of lives or gives individual families a bed net that they’ve been praying for…

The resurrection flipped the world and all of our lives upside down…and the upside down Kingdom life is indeed the best for me this Easter…

JAMES 2:5…Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?