At the Center of What Matters

I write as our drive divides in half the southern major island of the Philippine archipelago, Mindanao. We wend our way on an eight-hour, snakelike, cliff-side, southern-ward drive.

Cars must negotiate the corn spread out on the road by harvesters who actually prepare for milling by drying out their yellow produce in one of the lanes of this two-lane road.

The highway is carpeted with corn because that’s the only way poor farmers can make useful their source of livelihood. I wish I knew more about agricultural production, but I’m elated that we work with partners who do.

Today’s drive, in fact, has my mind in overdrive considering a contradiction. I’ve been seeing a place so lush, nearly paradisiacal, but it’s a place where human flourishing is so stunted. Every kind of green thing grows here, yet something is awry in this garden.

The majority of the population is banished from enjoying the fruits of their hands, the growth that God gives to the land. Whatever the reason, whatever “serpent” is to blame, whatever tricks or politics have entrapped the two indigenous communities we’ve visited, that’s not what matters most.

What matters is that access to health services and prenatal care for mothers is painfully unavailable. What matters is that children must work in fields rather than do the schoolwork which would work in the best interests of their future. What matters is that a military struggle that won’t go away has diverted the attention of farmers. One transformed man who has laid down his weapons and taken up farming tools in a new way of life took the time to tell me that he didn’t even understand why he was fighting, but that every family in his community was forced to give up one son to enlist in a local military group.


What matters to me is that I’m part of an organization working for peace at the epicenter of what matters. Lutheran World Relief is right here at the center of what matters. Faith is alive and put into action in the form of new farm machinery and appropriate farm technology. Gloria’s father can now make a viable living so that Gloria is the first in her family to go college. I hope that her degree in political science goes a long way in helping design new structures of peace in the Philippines.

God gave up his Son in the ultimate human struggle. He is our Advent hope. Jesus Christ’s birth, death and resurrection reverses the curse of Eden in ways that matter today, in ways my own eyes are seeing enacted 2000 years after Bethlehem. Hope lives here in the Philippines even amidst ugly despair.

Today we drive north and east toward Davao City. Thanks for praying for us and with us as we go.