To begin with, Northern Ireland is a beautiful country with a rich and complicated history. Its people are generous and warm. In its relatively short past, Northern Ireland has lived many years beyond the less than one hundred years of its existence.
So as not to "reinvent the wheel" in outlining the events of our week there, I am grateful to Elizabeth Bush who has succinctly described the mood and atmosphere as well as the logistics of our venture. With her permission, I have included a link to her blog. It's a good read!
In her blog, Elizabeth described a group of kids who had been asked to leave the nightly teen meeting because they were being defiantly disruptive. She writes, "The N(orthern) Ireland teens had many different names for them. We heard one girl refer to them as chaffs. That comment hit me hard because I felt that it reflects a belief that those kids had been given up on. They were looked at as unreachable as though they had already been separated from the wheat and now ready for judgment."
In reading that description my thoughts went back to a pre-teen boy sitting in a meeting at church camp. He felt isolated, as if he didn't belong. He was oblivious to the teacher speaking to the packed room of kids at the winter camp at the Forest Home retreat center in the San Bernadino Mountains of Southern California. In fact, this young kid had his back turned, not hearing a word that was said. He had been invited by his aunt to attend a weekend getaway to learn about God. To this day, though he was at that time apparently untouched by the content of any messages delivered, remembers only wanting to fit in. His lack of familiarity with the church and with God kept him on the fringe of all but rebellion and the outward appearance of a lack of interest.
That child was me. Even at that camp all those years ago I remember being drawn to the sense of family that I experienced, yet felt, as an outsider looking in, that I wasn't good enough. It would be years later that I would come to the understanding that I was, in fact, not good enough. I had learned that I was brought into this world estranged from a Holy God. And the only person who satisfied God's righteous requirement was Jesus who lived a perfect life, died and rose again to pay the price for my life of rebellion.
So that night in Northern Ireland I was surrounded by my wife and 2 children who early in their lives had come to understand the gift of forgiveness found in Christ and were working with their teammates in that meeting trying to figure out how to reach out to the 'chaffs' in the room. And there, while wrestling with frustration and anger at this small but vocal group disrupting the event, it occurred to me that I, as a teenager, was the one who had stirred up strife in the few church meetings I had attended.
I still don't understand why it would be more than a decade before I found forgiveness in God through Christ. Yet I knew at that moment in the meeting at Lisnabreen Church in Bangor, County Down, that the same hope exists for my rebellious friends that existed for me when my back was turned all those years ago. There is acceptance and belonging that cannot be earned but comes as a gift. So, like me, though some may face years of seaching and wandering, there is a purpose and plan in Christ for the 'chaffs' of this world.
