The Margins

This past week, I had the chance to read Scot McKnight’s newest book, A Community Called Atonement. It is an excellent book, and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in grappling with what it means to be “saved” according to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The book is a theological discussion, but as he is gifted to do, Scot makes the material engaging and accessible (one of his central metaphors is golf clubs, if that gives you a sense for what I mean).

Scot is a college professor, and in the beginning of the book, he makes this claim: “This generation of students doesn’t think the ‘I’m not perfect, just forgiven’ bumper sticker is either funny or something to be proud of. They believe atonement ought to make a difference in the here and now. Christians, they say, aren’t perfect but they ought to be different—at least they ought to be if the atonement works.”

He then goes on to tell a story of a Christian woman who worked part-time as a nurse in a Chicagoland ER as an example of what he means. He describes her encounter with a “lockdown” patient, someone violent or with psychiatric disturbances, that was brought in off the streets one night. His feet were wrapped in plastic bags, barely disguising mold-covered, puss-oozing feet. She was instructed to take him to the hazmet shower, and though the man desperately needed his feet treated and tended to with a betadine scrub and antibiotic treatment, the charge nurse pleaded with this woman to simply get him into the shower as a bare minimum.

At some point, this nurse was given a deep compassion for this man and she thought to herself: “This poor shell of a man has no one to love him…No one in the ER that day really looked at him and no one wanted to touch him. They wanted to ignore him and his broken life. But as much as I tried…I could not.”

And with this conviction, she laid out all of the tools and supplies to treat his feet, prepared warm towels and a chair, and when he was finished with the shower, she led him to the chair and she knelt down to tend his broken feet: “The room was quiet as the once-mocking security guards started to help by handing me towels. As I patted the last foot dry, I looked up and for the first time N.’s eyes looked into mine. For that moment he was alert, aware and weeping as he quietly said, ‘Thank you’. In that moment, I was the one seeing Jesus. He was there all along, right where he said he would be…”

This story has stayed with me all week, and I am finding myself regularly asking the question: are we people who believe that the atonement works? Does our head knowledge of something cosmic that took place on a cross translate to lives marked by a new spirit within that causes us to see people differently; to say yes to more than the bare minimum in coming to another’s aid; to kneel and touch what is broken and offensive, and to weep over what we see?

Last weekend, a very dear friend of ours flew down to L.A. to serve our family. Such generosity and kindness consistently characterize this friend’s life, and it is not surprising, then, that it is her copy of Scot’s book that I have sat with this week It is also not surprising that one of her acts of service to me was to soak and wash and massage my feet and to give me a lovely pedicure. Anyone who has been nine months pregnant before can attest to the difficulty of merely seeing one’s toenails, let alone cutting them well, and the concept of painting them is just simply out of the question at this stage. I really can’t even describe how magnificent it felt to be treated like such a queen! And every time I catch a glimpse of my glamorous toenails (the only thing glamorous about me right now, for sure!), I smile and am warmed by her thoughtfulness and love.

And while I am nothing close to the condition of the man described in Scot’s book, I can attest to the power of having someone kneel down before you and care for this most indelicate part of the body. It is very, very humbling. It is very tender. It made me want to cry.

My friend’s offering of a pedicure is an excellent picture of the sacrificial love shown by so many to me and to our family these past weeks. As I near the finish line of bed-rest, I am so struck by how radically we have been cared for and loved, and what a testimony that is to how a bunch of people’s lives have been changed and redirected, away from self and comfort and toward sacrifice and the needs of others. In our culture today, the way we have been cared for in our community here is honestly unthinkable. Not even family members will make such sacrifices oftentimes. Yet here, in a little pocket of South Central, L.A., we have experienced deeply the life of atonement: together.

It works. Thanks be to God.

“It’s easier to get people to give money than to give blood.”

This was the quotation that caught my attention in Sunday’s L.A. Times. There was a large article about the significant blood shortage in L.A., and concern over the fact that it was a holiday weekend with an increased chance of traumas and injuries that could require blood services in local medical centers. The article stated that typically, there is a three-day supply of “emergency” blood, that is the kind of blood that can be given to anyone (I can’t remember the type now, but I think Doug is one such donor) without risking rejection, but currently there was only a three-hour supply going into the long weekend.

The article was interesting on a number of fronts, noting the many changes that have made blood collection more challenging, more expensive, and ultimately much more safe. The series of safeguards that are now in place for protecting the blood supply are quite reassuring, and I don’t think I had ever considered the ways those safeguards would negatively impact the amount of blood collected. The article also spent a little bit of time discussing cultural differences that made giving blood highly unlikely among certain ethnic groups. Again, something I had never thought about.

So why am I worrying about blood? Because I am one of those people whose life was saved by blood transfusions. I took in more than half of my body’s blood volume in blood that was not my own. And after two days, though extremely weak and functioning with still-low levels, I was able to hold my baby girl again.

To this day, I get choked up by the Red Cross billboards that I see around town. Pictures of children, pleading for a chance to live, in need of a healthy blood supply so that they can. Or pictures of parents, playing with their kids, who say “thank you” for the blood that kept them alive to watch their children grow up. I am one of those parents, and there is such a deep gratitude that I feel for those people who took the time to stop by their corporate blood drive, or volunteered to give on their college campus, or even took the initiative themselves to drop by a donation center and make a regular gift. My husband has always been one of those people: faithful and consistent in making sure he was donating blood regularly. According to the L.A. Times article, people like Doug are now simply too few and far between.

I was thinking about this issue as a Christian, and I realized, wow, what a perfect act of service, what a perfect expression of our gospel it is to give blood. It is anonymous: okay, maybe you get a special little sticker to wear after you do it, but for the most part it is certainly not about any glory or recognition! It is good stewardship: it is a sharing of your resources; a new way to live simply, even, by not hoarding more than you need! It is most likely a cross-cultural act: lines of race and ethnicity, gender and economics are crossed! And ultimately, it is an act of mercy, compassion, and generosity that allows for us to enter into an individual’s pain and suffering, and provide care and healing and relief. It is quite simply a way for us to choose the path of the Good Samaritan rather than the avoid/evade option of the Priest and the Levite.

So, here is my challenge: wherever you live, please consider taking the time to make a donation of blood, or better yet, consider how you can help mobilize others to do so as well. Churches should be the first place that people are active in giving this gift, should they not? As I prepare to give birth again in a matter of weeks, the issue remains quite present for me in my mind. So please, go and give blood and think of me and my sweet little girl who still has a mommy around, and the many others whose lives are saved by this “missional” act.

It was at some point on Sunday when I saw that the temperature in our bedroom (where Aaron takes his naps) was ninety-eight degrees that we realized that it was not a possibility for us to remain in our apartment for the afternoon. In desperation, I made a few phone calls to friends from church trying to locate an air-conditioned room for our kids to rest in for a few hours. My second phone call proved quite successful, and within minutes we were all settled in beds (or on couches) resting happily in an air-conditioned house. In spite of Mercy’s misadventure with a pen in Kevin’s office, and Aaron’s total fascination with all of Richard’s sporting equipment and photos on the walls, both kids eventually slept well, and Doug and I enjoyed Kevin’s company, some televised sports, the L.A. Times and some freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies (well, mostly I enjoyed the cookies!).

After the kids woke up, we went out to the back yard with Jen and Kevin’s little boy and we played until dinner. Jen cooked a fabulous meal of yet another freshly-caught Alaskan salmon courtesy of their house-mate, Richard (Mercy’s first official crush–she refers to him as “MY friend, Richard”, or as “the handsomest boy”) and we relaxed as guests at their table.

I have left the house twice in five weeks–to go to doctor’s appointments–and it was so refreshing to not only escape our unbearable second-floor apartment, but to also have a few hours where I kind of felt like a normal person again. It was also such a blessing to be so served and loved by our friends.

The heat was even worse today, so we packed up the van and just drove. Both kids slept for a bit, we enjoyed lots of Labor Day beach traffic, and once again, it just felt so good for me to be out of my house. Life has been pressing down pretty hard on us this past week: I suppose the heat wave has made for extra measures of grumpiness, discomfort, sleeplessness, etc. in all of us, as well as simply the duration of this awkward time. I keep reminding myself that this will all be over very soon…