I peeked ever so gently over the edge of the hammock, not
wanting to disturb the little bundles inside.
As I gazed down at these two little black-headed sleeping
beauties all of the sudden I was overwhelmed. I felt like I was on holy ground.
Like I should take my shoes off because in front of me were two miracles of
life that God Himself had knit together in the womb of this young Matis Indian woman.
When He did so, He knew that twins were taboo. That to gift
this family with two babies birthed at the same time from one womb was to
offend their culture and test their conscience. He knew that because He made their culture.
And the story is not simple.
Not long before I had the privilege just to look upon these
two boys, Marcos Mayoruna sat on the floor with the father, Ian.
“If you don’t want to keep these babies, I have a place. You
say the word and we will give them a home (referring to the home in Manaus that Richard recently visited that was established for this very purpose). But I need you to know that these
are from God. He created these little humans and they are not evil. The time to
decide is now,” Marcos, an infanticide survivor in his own tribe, spoke boldly. And those words must have been heavy for this
man, a leader in his tribe. He knows his people, his culture, and the weight of
this decision should he decide to keep what has for so many generations been
considered a curse to his people.
“I will keep them,” he responded.
But the story goes deeper.
For years, Marcos has been building up a relationship with
Ian, a witchdoctor. In fact, when we first met Marcos back in 2010, we met Ian
and his wife as well. One of Ian’s sons, Tumi, was discipled through Marcos’
program and has become a strong believer and dedicated follower of Christ. They
have faithfully lived out the Gospel in front of them and shown that there is another
way.
There is still more to this story, though.
Ian agreed to allow his sons to live because of one,
sovereign circumstance in his life. You see, he has two wives and for many
years his second wife has not been able to conceive. He decided that the birth
mother would raise one of the sons and the other wife would raise the other.
For the first time in the history of this tribe, twins would
live.
Oh, please don’t let your rejoicing with us cease. So many
missionaries and believers would mourn this as a loss. ‘What a tragedy,’ they would
say, ‘that these children will grow up in this environment!’
But, no, we should rejoice all the more!! Not because of the
practice of polygamy but because of God’s redemption of it. Were it not for
this unbiblical practice, two little lives, knit together by God’s own hands
would have been snuffed out.
Buried alive.
God in His sovereignty has allowed a pagan practice to save
the lives of two boys that may one day be the voice of the Gospel to their
people.
Praise His Name!
As they shared this story with me, I stood there humbled at
what a God we serve. We “white people” are gifted in the art of “divide and
conquer”. We often make it our responsibility to save the lost, to change their
culture. To make them look like us, live like us, act like us.
We see it all. the. time. down here.
And all the while we unintentionally and even perhaps
unknowingly take God completely out of the equation. We forget that this is His
party and He invited us.
So we do things like go in villages and preach that a man
must only have one wife, forgetting that God told us to do nothing more than to
preach the Gospel and make disciples. The Spirit will do the work. (Oh, how we love to preach the law!!)
In our ignorance and pride, we forget that these women are dependent on their
husband and to tell him to pick one is to leave the others helpless, hopeless,
homeless. Widowed women and orphaned children.
We long so badly for raised hands and numbers to report and
stories to tell that these natives become nothing more than a people group for
us to conquer and add to our evangelical lists of “reached”.
God help us.
We ignore the requests of the very people we say we want to
reach, disrespecting their intelligence and culture, entering their land
without permission or invitation. Meanwhile, solid, faithful Indigenous
Believers who know the culture, know the language, know the Gospel and know how
to present it in a relevant way to their own people are left in the wake of our
rush to “reach the unreached” trying to mend broken relationship and retell the
Gospel truth as it applies to their people.
Forgive our selfish ambitions, Lord.
As I listened more to this story, Marcos’ wife, Josi, said
something that struck a cord in my heart.
“Several missionaries tried to take these twins. They
thought if they could just take them and raise them that it would be another
problem solved,” she shared with me, clearly disheartened by these attempts.
“But it was an indigenous believer, Ian’s own son (who was discipled by Marcos)
who said to his father, ‘No, you must keep them. They are yours. It is time to
stop this practice of killing the innocent.’”
She continued, “If we don’t teach them, they will never
know. We can’t intervene every time and expect change.”
Immediately my mind went back to the time several months ago
when Marcos told us something else that I will never forget.
Sitting in the floor of his home, listening to his wisdom,
he said, “We are not in a hurry. Foreigner Believers want to come in here and
make things happen. They want to see people converted and whole tribes
transformed. The reality is, we may never see that in our lifetime. And we don’t
have to.
We are working on
God’s timeline, not our own.”
God, help us to stop trying to save the world and just be
faithful disciplers as you have called us. Help us to lose sight of the
timelines and numbers that cloud our view from the miracles that are happening
all around us. Lord, may we stop
preaching law and start preaching grace, knowing you are bigger than our sin.
So big, in fact, that you can use it for your glory.
God, help us to put down the Jim Elliot biographies and pick
up your Word, genuinely seeking Your will and our role in Your story, not an
fantasized version of the glory days.
Help us to make You
the Savior. Not us.
