Growing up (again)

Moving into a new culture, learning the language and new ways to do almost everything is a deeply humbling experience. New ways to buy food, cook, wash clothes, get around, go to the toilet. Upon arrival we were like infants. Dependant on our neighbours to learn to survive. With fumbling language, most of the time being unable to understand or be understood. We’ve been growing up from infancy, and in many ways this has been pretty challenging. We’ve felt ignorant, incompetent and at times ridiculed.

Having been here in South Asia for 9 months now (4 in a slum) we’re getting fairly used to a very different, simpler, day to day lifestyle. But there are still many more, deeper differences to absorb properly. Some to embrace and make more a part of who we are, some to leave alone, others to seek to redeem, but all to try to understand. Things like what our neighbours find their identity in, their perspective on time, efficiency vs. relationships, expectations in family and community, how they would dream of a better future, and their view of God, themselves and the world.

So as we have this opportunity to ‘grow up’ again in this place, maybe in some of the practical ways we’ve been able to spring up into teenagers. Yet in many other ways we’re just entering in, still more like children, toddlers or infants plunging head long into a new world. It can be daunting to consider how much there is to learn.

Yet I’m comforted when I think of the way Jesus came to be amongst us. He didn’t come to us as a grown man, fully Jewish in all his ways, fluent in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, with complete knowledge of the scriptures. He came as an embryo, a baby, toddler, young boy, teenager and then a man, growing in wisdom and stature as one of his people. Evidently God felt it important that before ‘getting down to business’ he first grow up among his people for a while, learning from and identifying with them, and growing into communion with his father from within his new found humanity and culture.

So as we have begun at infancy in crossing some pretty big cultural and language divides, I feel a peace knowing that we can lean on the one who is familiar with every hardship involved. He has been there, and far further. Because of him I know it is worth it to press on through the challenges. He is able to carry us through.