Dancing in the Margins

Anyone who has had any management or life coaching will tell you the importance of “building margin” into your life – down time, times of rest and reflection. Like a page filled to the edges with no margin, a life with no margin is illegible. But what if the page is all gone and you are forced to write ONLY in the margins? 

In April, most of my colleagues and I were “strategically withdrawn” from our country of service due to unrest. The immediate effects of this were described in several blog posts entitled “thoughts from the pressure cooker”.

In the meantime, I have become a nomad and it looks like that is unlikely to change before year-end, by which time I will have made 14 border crossings going back and forth between 6 different countries, averaging just 3 weeks per country. 

Our group has adapted to having at least half of our people working remotely. In fact, I can’t think of anyone who is not separated from at least some of his “direct reports.”

The logistics of managing money and houses and cars and salaries at a distance is quite complicated.  The extra travel and rent were not budgeted. Some of us have taken up new assignments in other countries or their home countries, which leaves serious personnel holes.

In addition to ongoing uncertainty about the security situation and the very real possibility of war, the local economy has made things difficult for most of general population. 

Whereas it is fairly normal in our work to have  crises arrive that take energy and time, we normally seem to be able to come up with a work around. However, so many thing have come to a head since the crisis that it seems we do nothing but shuffle things around with no room to maneuver. 

The other day I was in a meeting and something came up and I said offhandedly, “It’s like we are always dancing in the margins”. 

This image really seemed to resonate and I mulled it over for a few days and worked it into my main director’s report to our group. 

Life is a Dance

Life is a dance, that we do for the glory of God. We all dance, according to our gifts, background and culture, each one bringing something different to the mix. Our dancing should attract others to the dance, so that there is someone from each tongue and tribe and nation dancing with us in the “Great Dance” described so nicely by CS Lewis in Perelandra.

  

 Sometimes life will send an obstacle our way, opening up a hole in the dance floor.  But if you know it’s there, you can dance around it.  Even if there are TWO holes, you can keep dancing, with some modifications.

But occasionally, your world turns upside down and a sinkhole opens up in your living room, relegating you to dancing in the margins.

So what is our response to being forced into the margin?

Can we ignore the sinkhole and just imagine it does not exist? Not really, without some serious psychological consequences down the road. 

Can we continue to dance? Do we have to, or can we just give up? This is a valid question and the answer depends a lot on your individual and family needs, and your calling. In our context, it is obvious that our group needs to keep working as long as it is day, “Because night is coming, when no one can work." (John 9:4-5) 

  

Okay, so if you we decide that we are called to continue to work “in the margins”, how do we go about that? 

• Meet Jesus in the Margins.  He who so frequently sought out the marginal meets us there, too. As I mulled over this, I imagined our Good Shepherd preparing us a table right there in the margins, next to our gaping sinkhole. If he can do it in the presences of our enemies, why not? And he provides not just sustenance but a joyful banquet.
• Don’t just soldier on in your own human strength. Realize, like God does, that we are "but dust". HE is the one who rescues us from the pit, renews my strength like the Eagle’s and fills my life with good things! (Psalm 103)
• Share in the death of Jesus so that HIS life is shared with us!  

2 Corinthians 4-8-10 We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.”

I am not sure how this works. I can certainly relate to the “pressed on every side, perplexed, knocked down. . .” but it seems that these painful things are accompanied with this promise of Jesus sharing his life with us, through us. 

• Do what you can to change the internal factors, realizing you cannot do anything about the external factors. You may not be able to fill in the sinkhole, but you can clear out the furniture that is blocking the rest of the floor.P
• Pray for God to bring justice and cause rivers to flow in the desert. Isaiah 35.

 Keep Dancing with Jesus in the margins!