Reckless FaithExemplo

I am a long way from Sunday Lane. I stifle a laugh. On my childhood street, I learned how to climb trees, make cookies, and drive. Riding down that street on my bicycle, I had a hunch not everyone lived like my family did, but I never could have imagined a street like this highway in Albania.

I see a little boy lying face down on the cobblestone, but before I can lift him, a soldier points a machine gun at me and orders me to back up.

My fiancé, Todd, says “Beth . . . listen to him. I’m going to get the translator.” It’s 1994, and we are serving with Campus Crusade for Christ over our college spring break.

The officer seemed relieved when the translator arrived. “The boy is property of the gypsies,” the translator explains. “They keep him awake all night so he’ll sleep in the streets all day. People throw money at him, which the gypsies collect when they come to get him at dusk.”

Why do the authorities allow this? I wonder. Does the officer know the boy’s caretaker? Perhaps he shares in the spoils?

“It’s too dangerous for him to be just left here. What stops me—or anybody—from picking him up and walking away with him?”

The officer answers my question: “If you took the child away, his caretaker would probably just place another child here. Plus, it’s the only life he knows. What else would he do?” He turns around, dismissing me.

Todd and I watch the boy sleep for an hour. What else would he do? keeps rolling around in my mind. I pray for the child, his mother, my questions and the anger I feel. I pray for his country and the other children like him, lying on their own street corners. And then I pray I might have a hand in helping children like him.

Todd and I talk about what we can do. And something shifts inside us. I don’t want a “refined faith.” Refined can mean “purified” but that is not the definition I am talking about. Refined can also be defined as “cultivated” and “fastidious.” It’s predictable and resistant to change. It pretends to know what God will do a hundred Sundays from now. It’s more comfortable with rules, consequences, and baby steps. It likes control and people who agree. It fears what it can’t see. A truly reckless faith expects change and uncertainty and, as a result, it is eager to risk more and fear less! It knows there is more to the story. It believes when there is no evidence, and hopes in what is promised.