"Jesus said, 'I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them." (John 13:15, 17)

The dirty hands of partnership

The sun was beating down in rural India - perhaps 110 degrees. But the joyful occasion was a service of blessing before construction started on a bio-gas digester, a simple 14-foot wide brick sphere buried into the ground that would turn human waste into clean methane gas. The gas would provide free energy to cook daily meals for an entire children's school of the Rural Presbyterian Church of India, a PCUSA partner church.

Sixty school children ringed the heaping pile of red bricks from which the digester would be built. Three of us PCUSA representatives looked on, as did pastors of the RPC and a crew of hired day-workers. With the prayers said, the bricks needed to be moved. The workers launched into their job, quickly working up a sweat in the heat. It was as it always had been in India: The privileged watching the menial laborers do their work.

But breaking form, the top leader of the RPC, an honored dignatory at the service, stepped over to the pile of bricks and hefted two of them to his own chest, carrying them to the new pile. The laborers were alone in their work no longer! Within moments, all of us - schoolchildren, pastors, leaders, laborers - had bricks in hand, joined in common task together. The pile was swiftly moved.

To be effective workers, partners with fellow believers around the world in spreading the gospel, we all benefit by asking the Lord of the Workers to create in us hearts willing to serve as Jesus did, who served us even to the point of dying on the cross.

-- Dave Hackett

Link:

https://www.pcusa.org/cgi-bin/donate?ident=20-E040026&project=Dalits/Untouchables+(India),+Frontier+Mission

This article was first written for the PCUSA Worldwide Ministry Division's "Presbyterians Do Mission In Partnership Lenten Devotional," April 2002