Small Gifts

Monday, March 23, 2009 -- Week of 4 Lent, Year One
Gregory the Illuminator, Bishop and Missionary of Armenia, c. 332

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 954)
Psalms 89:1-18 (morning) 89:19-52 (evening)
Jeremiah 16:10-21
Romans 7:1-12
John 6:1-15

There's a little detail in today's gospel that always catches my attention. While most of the disciples are fretting over the impossible numbers they faced at the prospect to trying to feed a huge crowd, Andrew naively brings forward a little boy who has five barley loves and two fish. This becomes the material that Jesus uses to feed the multitude.

By now many people have heard of the amazing work of Greg Mortensen whose story has become the best-seller "Three Cups of Tea." After being rescued during a mountain climbing accident in 1993 in a remote part of Pakistan, Mortensen decided to return to the remote, impoverished area to help build bridges, sewers, roads and especially schools, particularly schools for girls. While recovering he watched the village's 84 children sitting outdoors, scratching lessons in the dirt with sticks. The village was so poor that it could not afford the $1-a-day salary to hire a teacher. As he left the village, in thanksgiving for their kindness, he promised that he would return to build them a school.

He had no experience in fund raising, and his efforts made little headway. However, the big turnaround came when a group of elementary school children in River Falls, Wisconsin had a penny drive. The children collected 62,300 pennies and donated $623 to Mortenson's effort. The story had legs. The children's gift became a tipping point, catching the attention of adults, and Mortenson began to attract larger donations. Jean Horni, a Swiss physicist gave the first large gift of $1 million in 1996 to build a bridge and a school in the village where Mortenson had been cared for.

Patiently enduring the subterfuge of corrupt officials and hostility from locals whose leaders
had long memories of unfulfilled American promises of such help in exchange for their services during the war against Russia and Afghanistan, he persevered. Under the auspices of the Central Asia Institute he built 55 schools in twelve years; he created women's vocational centers, water stations and other infrastructure. He has been doing this in the same area that we read about in the newspaper as the heartland of radical Taliban terrorism and violence. He has survived fatwas issued by enraged mullahs, repeated death threats, and wrenching separations from his wife and two children to spend up to half of his year in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Mortenson has gained the trust of Islamic leaders, military commanders and tribal chiefs for his tireless effort to champion education, especially for girls. He is being called a one-man mission to counteract extremism and terrorism with books, not bombs, by replacing guns with pencils, rhetoric with reading. "We had no problem flying in bags of cash to pay the warlords to fight against the Taliban," he says. "I wondered why we couldn't to the same things to build roads and sewers and schools."

A little child with five barley loaves and two fish helped Jesus and his disciples feed the multitude; elementary school children collected pennies and helped Greg Mortenson begin to build schools in the Taliban heartland; one man with perseverance and heart educates tens of thousands, bringing hope to one of the world's most hopeless places. Often the Spirit's work is to leverage small gifts into great things. No one's gift is too small.

Lowell