Through God’s Eyes

A sermon about God's thumb on our scale Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, for God will show you splendor everywhere. Arise, stand, look toward the rising sun, see your children gathered. They went out from you as captives, and now come back as kings.

These immortal words of hope were written six centuries before the birth of Christ, by a prominent Jerusalem official named Baruch. Despite the personal comforts and privileges he enjoyed at court, Baruch was cut to the quick by prophecies of God’s growing distress over how people were living. God held exceedingly high hopes for this world he had made, and for the people created in his image. Even when their faithlessness led them into disaster, Baruch remained confident that God’s faithfulness would prevail.

The mountains that would have to be moved to get people back on track? God would level them. The yawning crevasses that would have to be bridged? God would fill them. The desert sun that would drain them of will to go on? God would shade their path. No matter how daunting the prospects facing his people, Baruch kept looking at the world through God’s eyes, filled with splendor just about to break forth. Baruch showed us how to see a world preparing to receive Jesus.

This is a tremendous help when facing various disasters. While left to our own devices we would freeze like deer in the headlights, God never leaves us to our own devices. God has always arrived on the scene before we got here. No matter how bad the odds, God’s thumb is already edging toward the scale.

Two cases in point. In our own times, our own seemingly intractable problems: the health care crisis, and international terrorism. Who on earth could hope? Two Baruch-type guys: Dr. Gary R. Botstein of Atlanta Georgia, and Greg Mortenson of Bozeman Montana.

More than a decade ago Gary Botstein could already see the handwriting on the wall—every year more and more uninsured patients were showing up at his rheumatology clinic desperately needing care they couldn’t afford. He decided to do something about it. Botstein began talking to his comfortable and privileged colleagues about a bright idea. They could band together and open a Physicians Care Clinic, operating two evenings a week and offering $10 co-pay appointments to uninsured patients—lab fees, prescriptions, and follow-up with specialists included. All of the physicians, nurses, lab technicians, and pharmacists in the Atlanta area would be asked to either take a shift staffing the clinic on a rotating basis, or else to see referrals in their own offices for the same $10 fee. Those who believed they had no time to give could still give money to purchase equipment and drugs. All of these hands working together could certainly make light work.

Long story short, indomitable Gary Botstein got his clinic up and running. This is how it happened. He talked his own physician’s group into donating space. He wrote computer software to track individual patients through the labyrinth of rotating referrals. He lobbied the local nurse and pharmacist associations to recruit volunteer staff. He shook down his professional colleagues for personal donations, and his professional association to match them. Last year the Physicians Care clinic in Atlanta logged more than 1,500 patient visits, all because one comfortable and privileged doctor looked directly at the yawning health care crisis with hope.

About the same time that Gary Botstein was launching his clinic, a footloose and newly grieving young guy named Greg Mortenson set out from Bozeman Montana to climb the K2 peak in northern Pakistan. He never made it to the top, got disoriented on his way back down, and staggered into the tiny village of Korphe—where residents enfolded him in thick, handmade quilts, filled him with hot tea, and nursed him back to health. Stunned by their compassion and generosity to a total stranger, Mortenson vowed to give back by providing something the village desperately needed—a school for their illiterate children.

Returning to the states, be began working overtime by night, and by day hand typing some 500 futile grant requests, scrounging funds to fulfill his vow. Returning to Pakistan with just his own savings, Mortenson learned to negotiate for building supplies on the local market, and negotiate with tribal leaders for transportation and safe passage back to Korphe. The first year he worked with locals to lay the stone foundation. The next to raise the school’s walls and roof. The following year he was back bringing school supplies and training teachers. Slowly but surely the pall of illiteracy began lifting from this remote mountain village, and the children of Korphe stepped into an enlightened future their parents could never have imagined.

Each time Mortenson shuttled back to the states, he would speak to anyone who would listen about the Pakistan’s educational crisis. Word of mouth reached the ears of Jean Hoerni, Silicon Valley executive, and he offered to help Mortenson with fundraising: together they would found the Central Asia Institute, Mortenson in charge of program and Hoerni in charge of money. Overnight CAI took off, and Mortenson decided to broaden his prospects beyond Pakistan to the troubled mountain country of neighboring Afghanistan. Along the way he survived an eight day armed kidnapping, a firefight between opium warlords, and two fatwas issued against him by enraged clerics. But Mortenson, and his growing team of colleagues, just kept building and staffing schools. As of 2009 his Central Asia Institute had established 131 of them in the rural regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, providing education—and a future—for some 54,000 children.

Earlier this year Admiral Mike Mullen, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, read a provocative idea in Mortenson’s autobiography, entitled Three Cups of Tea. Wrote Mortenson, “If we try to resolve terrorism with military might and nothing else, then we will be no safer than we were before 9/11…This war will ultimately be won with books, and not with bombs.” After reading Mortenson’s bold claim, Admiral Mullen summoned him to the Pentagon to meet with himself and General David Petraeus, head of the US Central Command. Mortenson showed military leaders maps of sites where he had built schools—and built relationships—sites where US troops were experiencing nothing but fierce resistance. In July Mullen decided to see for himself. He attended the opening of Mortenson’s latest school, located in the remote Panjshir Valley of Afghanistan. There the Admiral watched with his own eyes as Mortenson took his place in a circle of tribal elders, started chatting away, and sipping those legendary three cups of tea.

Baruch urges us, Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, for God will show you splendor everywhere. Arise, stand, look toward the rising sun, see your children gathered. They went out from you as captives, and now come back as kings. The mountains? Leveled. The crevasses? Filled. The searing heat? Shaded. Stand up, look at the world through God’s eyes. Even now the Sun of Righteousness is appearing, and moving toward us as we begin our move toward him. Amen.

Listen to the Sermon: