Sunday 11 October 2009

Week 3 (part 4) - True change takes time

As part of our assignments for this week we had to do something (poem, powerpoint, song, drama etc) about an aspect of what we had learnt over the week concerning the poor, specifically those who are the poor within the developing world.  I have to admit it took me a long time to do this as I had so many different things going around in my head and hadn't had time to process all my thoughts.  Having not written anything creative in years (I have worked with numbers and formal reports in the last four years and haven't really taken the time to be creative in a written way) I did find it quite refreshing, once I got past the writers block!  Anyway I wrote something which resembles a poem, and thought I would share it.


True change

True change, doesn’t start to disintegrate 2 hrs after the ‘missionaries’ have left.  It doesn’t fall apart at the first signs of difficulty or crumble when something doesn’t go to plan.  It’s change that develops as the community learns and can be applied to new situations.  It has the capacity to permanently improve lives, and to bring lasting growth and development. 

But bringing about true change is difficult and requires constant reliance and guidance from God.  It can’t be rushed, or forced on people.  It can’t be rote learnt like multiplication tables, or the alphabet.  It requires a complete change of world view.  But it’s hard to see where to begin for such a big change.

True change starts with love and understanding.  Loving people as created beings and meeting them where they’re at.  Initially the prospect of true change can seem impossible, as the results don’t appear straight away.  In fact, results don’t always appear even if you’ve been working with people for years on end.

But true change is not impossible.  God is bigger than any change.  He is sovereign and works in people in His time not mine.  So I choose to trust God and accept that true change just takes time.

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