August 1, 2010
Barn Building
- Luke 12:13-13:21
- Dr. Teri Thomas
When we began our sabbatical last spring I found myself waking up every morning and thanking God and Eli Lilly for the opportunity to have this experience. After my prayers I would reflect on how lucky we are.
After a few days in Addis Ababa and seeing how people live I changed my prayers from feeling lucky to feeling truly blessed. We have houses with more than one room, roads, electricity, and clean water from a tap.
One day we saw a group of people walking along side the road carrying a stretcher. They were taking a sick child to the hospital and they would walk 15 kilometers (9 miles). Each morning I would spend more on coffee than our waitress was earning in a week. While we were in Lalibela our guide invited us to come to his home and meet his daughters. He was raising three daughters in a house smaller than our hotel room. I had more stuff in my carrying-on bags than they had in their closets. My prayer changed again. I am not blessed, I am really spoiled.
The morning we were leaving Lalibela our guide and driver came by the hotel to pick us up in the van. We then stopped at another hotel and picked up another couple and their guide. No one explained the arrangements but it was pretty clear that our guides had put their heads together, realized each couple was paying for a driver and vehicle so they put us in one van and pocketed the savings. I started to feel indignant but quickly realized I am not spoiled, I am selfish.
We flew to Axum that morning and after lunch our new guide and driver picked us up to go see the local sights. We still had not changed the money you had given us for the refugee camp so we asked them to stop at a bank along the way. When we walked into the bank I froze. There were at least five people in line at each teller and then there were four long rows of chairs with even more people waiting. At Africa speed this could take a week.
A bank employee came over and asked what business we wanted to conduct. We told him we wanted to exchange some money. He said “follow me” and led us through the crowd to the front of the line at window #10. The teller quickly put on a tie and asked us what money we wanted to exchange.
“We want to exchange American dollars for Ethiopian birr please.”
“How much?”
By now there are five or six people crowding around us watching this transaction.
I whispered, “We have 1500 dollars.” And I surreptitiously slipped the envelope through the window.
He took the money and ran it through his counting machine and then yelled to his supervisor across the room- “I need birr, I have 1500 dollars.”
By now we had a dozen people pushing around us watching as the teller began counting out 20,461 Ethiopian birr. As he counts, and counts, and counts, and counts, and counts…
I go from being embarrassed for crowding in front of the other folks and taking so long, to being ashamed of having more money than most of them will ever see, to being nervous.
Finally the teller wraps a rubber band around this pile of cash which is the size of a brick and hands it to me. I cram it in my bag, hold the bag tight against my body with both hands and practically run to the van. The rest of the afternoon that bag never left my shoulder. I carried it through tombs and ruins and the palace of the Queen of Sheba.
When our guide dropped us at the hotel that evening Jack and I began to talk about dinner plans. We usually went our exploring in the evenings and looking for fun neighborhood places to eat. But now I had 20,000 birr in my purse. Jack wasn’t comfortable wandering around carrying that much cash. I wasn’t comfortable leaving it in our somewhat sleazy hotel room. We were stuck. We couldn’t move. We were being held captive by this cash.
My prayer changed again. I am not lucky or blessed- or spoiled- or selfish
I am burdened having all this.
I finally felt free- I finally felt lucky- I finally felt blessed when I was able to give it all away.
Amen.