Love Across Oceans
Learning to love is about more than knowing the stats
by Kristin Williams
Fabric by Alicia Thompson
“Love your neighbor as yourself” –God
I never had a sister growing up. So when I spent five months as an international student in France, I was excited to find out I would have an eighteen-year-old host sister. I didn’t expect a deep friendship with her, since we would only know each other for a short time. As it turned out, my sister Lucile impacted me more deeply than I could have imagined.
The first time I greeted Lucile with a kiss on the cheek (the traditional French way of saying hello), I came away with some of the drool from around her mouth. You see, Lucile was mentally and physically handicapped. Born in Peru, she had to have an operation on her brain when she was just two years old. No one in Peru could take care of her, so she lived in an orphanage. My French host mother met Lucile while volunteering in Peru and after seeing her, she couldn’t bear to leave her there. She decided to adopt her and bring her back to France. The life Lucile would live in France was much easier than the one she would have lived in Peru, but her handicaps still caused many struggles.
Lucile was shy around me at first, looking down and smiling when I asked her a question. But as we got to know one another, she would call out my name with anticipation in her voice—Kristin, what are you doing? Kristin, come to dinner! Kristin, do you want to play a game? As I shared daily life with my host family, I got to know Lucile through bits of interaction. She welcomed me home from school with a shout from the living room. She showed me her pet rabbit in the back yard. She asked me if we could play with her baby nephew together. In all these instances, Lucile showed me more of the generous, spirited person she was.
I soon learned that one of the ways Lucile interacted most was through touch. Our hands would brush as we played a game, or she would nearly sit on top of me as we watched a movie. Holding very still, she would even allow me to take barrettes out of her thick, tangled hair and place them in her cupped hand. And although I was thousands of miles from what I knew, in a country whose customs and language were sometimes strange to me, Lucile made me feel at home.
Before meeting her, I had imagined a sister to chat with, a friend to show me around town, a tutor to help me out with a new language and culture. Lucile could not do many of the things I had thought a host sister might do to help me. But she taught me more important things than how to small talk, where the best café in town was, or what French grammar to use. She taught me to look at her, to listen to her, and to understand her story. Through her deep brown eyes (sometimes bright with laughter, sometimes suddenly angry), I understood the injustice she felt at her limitations. Through her bent arm that had to be forced into a plastic brace every night, I understood the pain she went through every day without complaining. Through teaching her to count and helping her through an asthma attack and walking slowly at the seashore and eating chocolate together and a thousand other little things, I learned to love her.
In the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10), Jesus teaches what it means to "love your neighbor as yourself." When a man is attacked by robbers and left to die in the road, the religious leaders who pass by avoid him. Only a foreigner, someone who may not know the man's way of life, helps him to safety. Having a sister across the ocean has changed my idea of loving my neighbor. People in other places and other countries are no longer just foreigners to me, or vague concepts, or faces in a newspaper. I know they live and breathe and laugh and struggle every day just as you and I do. I think that’s part of what Jesus meant by the parable; anyone can be our neighbor. The Samaritan who helped the man in need did not know him, but cared for him anyway. He looked past the fact that they were strangers, the stastics that said he was only one person out of thousands, and saw that they were both people. Perhaps he recognized that, if circumstances were different, they could have been brothers.
Although I am thankful this experience has opened my eyes to people all over the world, the realizations also make my head spin—how am I to help all these neighbors of mine? Over 29,000 kids die every day around the world from hunger and hunger-related diseases. In 2001, 1.1 billion people were living on less than a dollar a day.[1] The statistics go on for the many people who don’t have a home, who are put in prison because of their faith, who are sick, injured, or disabled, and who have many other needs. But it’s not about statistics. Each of these people is someone’s sister, friend, or brother—and if circumstances were different, they could be my family members.
Check out what Jesus says in Matthew 25:
‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me... I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’
Looks like loving other people—and helping them when they are in need—equals loving God and serving Him. What a privilege! Bringing God back into the equation changes my whole perspective on helping my neighbors. Instead of feeling crushed by the unbearable weight of so much hurt in the world, I remember that God cares about this hurt, too—and He can care for it all, unlike me! So instead of trying to save the world from its sorrow (that sounds more like God’s job than mine, doesn’t it?), I can gladly serve the "neighbors" right in front of me as part of my service to God.
As the apostle John puts it, “we love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). God has given me so much: first love and salvation, then also a family, food, shelter, community, and resources like time and money. The love that God pours into me every day can also pour out to others. I can’t help everyone, but armed with an abundance of God's love, I can face sorrow in the world.
If you want to join me in caring for our neighbors around the world, here are three practical steps to follow.
- Get informed! If your grandmother is sick, you can’t do anything about it until you receive a letter or phone call saying she is ill. Likewise, it is hard to care for your neighbors on the other side of town or the other side of the globe until you know what is going on there. Read the newspaper, watch the news, or use the Internet to find out what life is like for people in another place. Also, books like Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ron Sider and Operation World by Patrick Johnstone can give you a different view of your place in the world.
- Pray! Thank God for His love and His care for you. Pray that you may start to see the world and its people more as He does. And pray that God will watch over your neighbors all over the world, sending people like you and me as ambassadors of His love and provision. Now, keep praying—tonight, tomorrow, and in the days to come! Prayer is the most powerful tool we have, for it is talking to the most powerful Being in the universe! God wants to hear our prayers, wants to give us more of His love, and wants more people to know this love and freedom.
- Give of yourself! Help out at a neighborhood food pantry. Sponsor a child. Volunteer to tutor disadvantaged kids. Talk to your friends about the world hunger problem. Find out what your church is doing to reach out to people, and join in! It can start with something simple like saving up change to give to your church’s hunger fund, but it can grow to impact your entire lifestyle and challenge your church and community. Each of us has special ways in which we can serve. I encourage each of us to do one thing today to serve God by showing His love to someone in need.
I once told Lucile that I loved her and that Jesus loved her, too. She responded, “not me!” I don’t know what she really thinks about God’s love, but I do know that my statement of love would mean a lot less to her if I hadn’t spent five months with her every day. Caring for her and loving her with my actions allowed me to say, “I love you” and mean it. And through her generosity and openness with me, I knew she loved me, too. It is the same thing when God asks us to love Him and love our neighbors: We can show we mean it by putting action with our words. After all, that’s what God did when He sent Jesus to earth to be with us, die for us, and live again—thanks be to God!
Published May 9, 2007. All rights reserved.