Living In the Margins

Living In the Margins

By

Leeann Wilhelmi

I heard a phrase yesterday describing a group of people by saying they are “living life in the margins”. We’ve all heard of the “marginalized” and “fringe people”. The dictionary defines marginalized as “(of a person, group, or concept) treated as insignificant or peripheral.”

Fringe people are referred to as “a group of people whose beliefs or opinions are considered unusual, unconventional, or extreme, and who are therefore on the outside of the mainstream.” 

When I heard this phrase, it was about a group of people most would lump into descriptors that would include violent, angry or fractured when in fact the opposite is true. Because of the confidentiality of the conversation, I can’t go into any details, but the person with whom I spoke said that the truth is that these people are some of the most gentle souls who from an early age looked for “normal” places to belong and didn’t find inclusion in any of them.

The number of marginalized people we see in our ministry is growing. These are beautiful people who have no idea where they really fit. Rejection is largely the issue behind their futility in finding a life in which to feel included in society. Abuse of one kind or another causes isolation and guilt which further ostracizes these. These are some of the places where Satan finds a foothold, a place from which to convince someone of their oddities, their differences and where he convinces them that they will NEVER fit in, where they will never be enough or have enough to enjoy what life has to offer or find a place of unconditional acceptance.

In the world of Christendom, consider Lonnie  Frisbee. Tormented by a childhood of abuse and rejection, he went on to become a leader in the Jesus hippie movement of the 70’s, but later tragedy separated him from his calling and he contracted and subsequently died from AIDS. God certainly uses flawed people with tragic pasts to become inspirational leaders in the Faith.

So what’s the “call to arms” here? What do we do with the information concerning the people all around us who are living life in the margins? How often do we see people who “slip through the cracks”?  The days of Christians stepping over those bodies has got to end. Christians above all should not be looking to the government to help these people. These who are marginalized are not just the poor, but the fatherless, widows, the brokenhearted, the fearful, the anxious,  the rejected and the lonely. Scripture mentions all of these people and more.

While I despise the weaponization of race in today’s politics, I read an interesting autobiographical story about an Orthodox Jewish woman from the Middle East living in the United States. She and her family wear traditional dress (therefore, identifiable) and her community has been the target of many attacks. In fact, in the United States of America, hers is the most attacked racial group per capita. Even though their desire is just to live in peace, the most lethal attacks on this group have been within the last five years.  The stories spread about this people group through generations have many times been horrific lies.

So, what’s our role with the marginalized? To love. Show mercy. Have compassion.

Luke 10:25-37 tells the story of the good Samaritan, surely the best story ever told regarding loving outside of boundaries and differences. Having been asked by “an expert in religious law” how to inherit eternal life, Jesus replied, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind. And you must love your neighbor as yourself.” As if that wasn’t plain enough, the man responded with, “Who is my neighbor?”

In the current state of our world, we have been told who we should hate, who we should shun, who we should avoid at all costs. Narratives from political sectors, racial divides and religious schisms have sold many in our population on the idea that we should step in as judge and jury for those we differ with or the marginalized.

In the story of the good Samaritan, the Samaritan was considered an enemy of the Jews. They were outcasts by anybody’s definition. But in this instance, it was the Samaritan (not the priest or the Levite) who saw a need: a man stripped, beat up and left for dead, and he was moved with compassion. He didn’t call the authorities to come pick the man up. He, as neighbor, treated his wounds, put him on his donkey and took him to an inn to be cared for, going as far as to pay the innkeeper and agree to pay any additional if the bill was higher. 

Despite what others would tell us, we KNOW as Christians how to be a good neighbor, how to be compassionate . We KNOW how to go the extra mile and how to care for others. We KNOW that we are to love God with our whole being and LOVE our neighbor as ourselves. God, let us always feel a deep drive to heed this call!

Room of Disappointment

by Leeann Wilhelmi

For years people have been telling me I was going to write a book(s). I accepted it at first because I really do love to write. This love runs in the family. Father. Brother. Me. Son. So I began. I completed probably half of a novel before being convicted that it would not be pleasing to the Lord, so I burned that manuscript in an old, scratched up metal pail in the driveway with my kids watching. It was a few years of life and conviction before I would approach writing for what I hoped would be potential publication.

I’ve had some (what I thought were) good ideas that fizzled out after three, four, even five chapters and I’ve been reasonably discouraged over the process. Last night the Lord gave me a vision of a room. Through the window in the door, I could see that it was a type of library and I really wanted to get into it. I noticed a glass wall plate with a handle next to the door, so I pulled it open and saw a lever with a two-inch ring attached to it. I pulled on the ring – first with one hand and then with two – until it released the lock on the door.

As I entered the room I could see books lining the walls from floor to ceiling and on each wall was one of those rolling ladders for access to even the highest books. I chose a nearby book and began flipping through the pages. Odd. Only about half the book was printed. The remainder of the pages were empty. I repeated this and found books everywhere I looked in various stages of completion, but none fully concluded. Knowing now that I was in a library of incomplete books, I raced to the W’s and found my name on the spine of a few books. Knowing fully what I would see, I began flipping through my own authored books. I could feel the frustration flying off the pages, and I returned them to their shelf in this room of disappointment.

I’ve been thinking about this vision, determined to get to the bottom of it, and have come to the conclusion that for me, I have to approach writing as I do most things in life now. I will follow where I sense the Lord leads me, and at least for now, I sense him speaking to me in isolated thoughts. I’m sure at one point, He will show me how they all weave together.

But for now, I’m going to write the isolated thoughts down. I don’t have to know how they all fit together just yet and I’m going to quit getting in my own way. “You want to speak to me about incomplete books, Lord? Okay. Lets go.” We often give people the mental picture of a tapestry. So, so messy on the backside. Strings everywhere without a rhyme or reason, but turn it over and it’s a masterpiece. God is weaving a masterpiece if we let him. We don’t have to know what it looks like right now, but we do have to be still and know.

Dove's Eyes

By

Leeann Wilhelmi

I have so much affection for my heavenly Father. His Word is illuminating what His stance is on His children . . . on me . . . and it is undoing me in all the best possible ways.

Yesterday I was reading about dove’s eyes. Song of Solomon 1:15, 5:12 say that the bridegroom proclaims “How very beautiful! Your eyes are like doves.” The King has spoken. He sees He has the worship of His bride and He delights in her. In her eyes He picks up on her deep affection, and perhaps in that He perceives her faithfulness to Him, her sincerity, her tenderness.

This past week I noticed for the first time a dove nesting on top of an electric box mounted to the side of the house. I was noisily uncoiling the garden hose from its holder and my eyes were drawn up, no doubt by the Lord Himself, to see this lovely, innocent avian watching me. Surely if she thought I might harm her or her babies, she would have flown away. Instead, she just watched and waited while I quieted my efforts and calmed my movements.

As if this weren’t enough to get my mind going, I came inside and heard Tasha Cobbs Leonard’s song DOVE’S EYES. Okay. Now God had my full attention. I began at that moment to see what I would find on the internet about doves. I learned that doves’ eyes can only look forward, have no peripheral vision and secondly, that they have one mate for life.  I came to the conclusion that they are not easily distracted due to this focus and that their thoughts are for each other and their delight is in each other.

It's beyond understanding that this was true of God first – we love because He loved us first! As I write this I feel the call to BEHOLD! Breaking this down further, when I see the face of my Father, I have no choice (if I have truly seen Him) but to look. I have no choice but to be still. I have no choice but to wait. I have no choice but to reach out. I must touch Him. I must listen for His voice. I must withdraw with Him and give Him my full attention.

Psalm 32:8 says, “You will guide me with Your eye.” The prerequisite here is that my eyes are on Him – undistracted, devoted.

Psalm 27:4 says, “One thing I have desired of the Lord, that I will seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.”

Let me draw the curtains closed. Find me feasting on His goodness, my ear on His chest, my hands intertwined with His, my ear inclined to His voice. I am awed. 

Who's Branding You

By

Leeann Wilhelmi

Recently I read a story about a young policeman in New York City’s Time Square who encountered an older homeless man without shoes on a cold night. He spoke with the man and found out his shoe size and went immediately to buy the man a warm pair of boots. He spent his own money and knelt to help the man put his boots on and lace them up, caring not one bit that he was being inconvenienced and out some significant pocket money to help someone he didn’t even know. What a selfless act. 

The selfish nature is blinding. It overlooks the needs and desires of others to fulfill its own. It can take any conversation and derail it to bring it back to self. It cares nothing about understanding others or serving others, much less how their actions affect others. 

In the world right now, the enemy is on a rampage to convince Christians of their righteousness, of their importance and it has unfortunately resulted in many being seduced into selfish behavior. This selfishness has strained the seams of friendship, of marriage, of relationships in general and has detrimentally affected physical and mental health.

Through many years of observation, we’ve noticed one trait about selfless people and that is their sense of gratitude, as well as their genuine concern for others. It has been eye opening to see these very aware souls choose to promote rather than tear down those that others would perceive to be troublemakers.  Because of this act alone, we’ve seen a dramatic change of behavior manifest in the lives of those “troublemakers”. We’ve seen people come to know the Lord through this act of lifting up rather than tearing down. These servant-minded disciples are the best leadership has to offer.

Recently one of our favorite restaurants went through a big change. The excellent management staff was not chosen to take the location forward, (motivated by cutting costs through hiring new workers for much less money), and those who weren’t demoted quit in favor of going to work at businesses where they were appreciated. Consequently, everything from the service to the quality of food has suffered. Greed, a byproduct of selfishness, crippled a business. 

So, what is the answer to this pervasive attitude? What’s to be done with these feelings that cause us to cave to what serves us? Philippians 2:3-4 tells us that we are to “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others.” In short, selfishness is sin. And sin separates us from God.  

The thing is, selfishness can start out quite innocently. James 1:14-15 says that it can start out as simply as having a desire, but that desire can conceive and give birth to sin. What does that even mean? I recently saw a vision of wealth parading in front of a young man. She was enticing, misrepresenting her true identity and full of tricks to lure him away from his first love. You don’t have to look far to see that wealth makes promises it cannot keep. Happiness and ease are two such promises. This could be what 1 John 2:16 means by lust. We see what someone else has. Then we want it. In the case of money, we ”see” that someone we know has an easier life and make an assumption that there is no struggle involved because they have “enough” money. We assume that they are happy because they purchase what they want without checking their account balance first. 

So how do we die to self? It might be helpful to examine some of the self words that have crept into our vocabulary. Self-confident. Self-satisfied. Self-centered. Self-absorbed. Self-righteous. Self-important. Self-sufficient. Self-promotion. It is a mindset that we don’t need others, and the principle “other” is God. It’s alarming to see how self-promotion has taken such a prominent position in the Church and is widely accepted. The reasoning used is that the flood of advertisements on social media, the vlogs and blogs and so on is that it helps reach more people for the cause of Christ. It’s amazing that the Church multiplied at all in the first century without social media! I digress. We die to self by not trying to impress others, by adopting humility, by being obedient to God, by serving others and considering others more important than ourselves.

A big buzzword in today’s world is “branding”. This branding speaks of a person’s public image, of their reputation or identity that markets them to the world. Who’s branding you? 

The Battle for your Mind

The battle for our minds is real. If you have any doubts about this, all you have to do is turn on the television, read the news or scroll through the social media of your choice. It’s all there.

As children of God, we have a responsibility to steward our minds, the property between our ears. We have to renew our minds daily, uprooting the lies planted by the one who only wants to steal, kill and destroy. Our minds are prime property that must be fenced into the kingdom realm, because if there’s one thing we know, there’s a lot of real estate fraud going on there. So how are we to keep our “property” locked, guarded, fortified and well kept? The Bible provides the answer to this question.

Habbakuk 2:1 says “I will climb up to my watchtower and stand at my guardpost. There I will wait to see what the Lord says and how he will answer.”

Nehemiah 4:9 says “But we prayed to our God. . .and guarded the city day and night to protect ourselves..”

Luke 21:36 says “Keep alert at all times. And pray that you might be strong enough to escape these coming horrors and stand before the Son of Man.”

Proverbs 4:23 says “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.”

Isaiah 52:2 says in part “Remove the chains of slavery from your neck. . .”

That last verse in Isaiah 52 is profound to me because it tells us clearly that we have a step to take. What is it that is enslaving us? Keeping us captive? What we’ve seen personally is that when provoked by fear, people often respond by trying to take control. What this looks like to everyone around them is bossiness, superiority, self-righteousness and selfishness. What it really is amounts to being a slave to sin. How many times are we told in the Bible not to fear? Can we reasonably say that God has told us NOT TO FEAR so when we do we’re being disobedient?

I read an article recently about a man in Philadelphia who, in addition to his house, owned an apartment building as part of a real-estate investment.  One weekend he went to this apartment to retrieve something he had stored there and found himself locked out. The building had been vacant for 16 months for remodeling, but he found the building padlocked. His investigation into what was behind this was that someone had filed false documents to transfer ownership of the building to someone he had never even heard of.

And this is not the only scam of its kind. How do criminals do this?  First, they prey on property that has been unoccupied for some time but is still in fairly good condition. They start the process by getting a physical description of the property from city hall and check to see if there are any overdue real estate taxes (evidence that the owner may have died or moved away). If everything looks favorable, they fill out a blank deed from an office supply store and forge one document after another until they are finally able to file a new deed and have the house transferred to their name. Those who are most vulnerable to this scam are the elderly who moved in with family or into nursing homes, as well as investors who aren’t paying attention to their property.

Are you paying attention to your “property”? If not, what scam is the enemy running against you? Is it obvious to anybody that you are a Christian, or have you decided to blend in with everybody else? Would it be easy for the enemy to claim you for his side?

Are you keeping your property occupied with the things of God? Does it look like His spirit is abiding in you? Are you carrying and maintaining your weapons and clothed in your armor?

Moral and Ethical Values Drive How You Act

Blog 19-1:  MORAL AND ETHICAL VALUES DRIVE HOW YOU ACT

(Leeann Wilhelmi)

Friends,

If I were your enemy ----

I would watch your values carefully; not the ones you say you ascribe to, but the ones you live by. I dare say some of the enemy’s greatest successes lie in his ability to gain entrance to your life here, for this is where you expose your weaknesses and your vulnerabilities. This is where the gaps are.

Maybe he sees that you value being successful as a parent and/or spouse, in your career, socially, etc.  What could possibly be wrong for valuing success in these important areas? But, if we’re not vigilant, all these areas provide significant opportunities for the enemy as we worry excessively about them, even creating false idols by focusing on them more than on God.   This puts our relationship with Him in second place at best.

What about that last argument you and your spouse had? Did you listen to them, really listen, to understand their heart or did you listen only to respond? What about the last dig you typed out to the one you so vehemently disagreed with on social media? Who was honored? Who felt loved?  Did it do anything to reflect that you are meek? Does it really help to hunger and thirst for righteousness when the object of your disdain feels nothing but your hatred?

Using the current state of the union, what moral and ethical values are driving us as a nation? Is it the law of love? Is it unity, solidarity? Is it sanctity of life? Is there anything that seems to be divinely inspired, God ordained?

If I were your enemy, I would begin to gather people into factions. I would manipulate facts to distort the truth.  I would paint pictures of an “us” versus “them” narrative and monopolize division, handily making them forget “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness”.  This easily bleeds into marriage, work, politics, social media. I would create diversions to keep people living in fear and make them forget about “Blessed are the peacemakers”.

Lets think for just a minute about the nature of moral and ethical values that are dictated by The Word, which says that we are to be salt and light. Have we lost our saltiness in the world, because if so, the Bible says we’re no longer good for anything? And we’re also called to be the light of the world, at the top of the city for all to see, glorifying God the Father. I was reading just this week about a young woman, Sophie Scholl, who was a German student and anti-Nazi activist. She was part of a small group who distributed tracts (both Biblical and philosophical in nature) that encouraged Germans to passively resist the Nazi government.  She was tried and convicted of high treason (along with two others) and was executed by guillotine. These were her last words: “How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action.”

What an enigma to the world that the Christian wars not by fighting, but by standing. Ephesians 6: 13-18 says “Therefore, put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm. Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of God’s righteousness. For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News so that you will be fully prepared. In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil.” Even if we’re assaulted, our directive in Matthew 5:39 is to “turn to them the other cheek also,” and as if that isn’t pacifist enough, verse 44 says, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

So how are we acting? As Christians our motivations and drivers, if not taken from the Word of God, can lead us to places we weren’t meant to go. Our motivations cannot come from a people group, a political party, being accepted or rejected, nor a desire to fit in.

An exchange between Alice and the Cheshire Cat of Alice in Wonderland has been paraphrased to read “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”  Another by Robert Frost in “The Road Not Taken” reads “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Even the Bible says in Matthew 7:13-14 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Take your stand.