One Small Box

It was one of those days. The days when your to-do list is miles long, and nothing seems to be getting crossed off. The one task that was absolutely not optional was picking up a package from the bus station. Theoretically, that meant walking down to the bus station 15 minutes away, signing for the package and walking back home. Grand total, even if I dawdled and bought vegetables on the way, should have been about 40 minutes.

Operative word being should. I’m not sure what possessed me to plan with that much optimism, but I did. However, what actually transpired was starting my walk, getting stopped by someone to chat, getting trapped by the torrential rain at her shop for upwards of 40 minutes, making it to the bus station some hour plus after leaving my house only to find the package was not there. Many apologies were made, several phone calls were placed by me and the staff, and I was informed that the package was on its way from the next town via motorbike.

The manager agreed to call me when the package arrived, and I went to wander through the market while waiting. After wandering for at least twice the amount of time it should have taken for the package to arrive, I simply went home. Of course, the call about the package’s arrival came after I had been home for all of ten minutes. Having gotten more cardio than I wanted already, I took a motorbike back to the station and retrieved the package, slightly mangled, but with contents intact. To top all of this off, the internet refused to load for hours while I tried to upload the receipts to my insurance provider.

This was one of those scenarios that simply would not occur in my passport country. Even the package itself was one I never would have had cause to order if it weren’t for living here. It contained the next couple of months of malaria prevention medication for myself and my roommate, and just the ordering process was outside of my realm of experience. To get the meds, we had already looked at local pharmacies, and tried to get some from the closest larger town with little success. So, they had to be ordered from the capital eight hours distant.

I connected with someone I have never met through one of my teammates, wired him a not insignificant amount of money, (in three separate chunks because the math was highly unclear to both of us and the pharmacy workers) and he purchased the meds. He then boxed them up and placed them on the bus that would take them to the nearest town to me.

If I were in my country of origin there would have been insurance, and the package would have been sent through the official mail. I would have had tracking numbers, and the package would have come directly to my door. In fact, if I had ordered these meds in the states, I would have needed a prescription and would have gotten them directly from the pharmacy, no mailing required. I also would have had a car to use to pick them up and wouldn’t have talked to anyone on the way. And the reality is that I don’t need malaria meds where I come from, so the package, the delays, the transportation modes, the cost, and the frustration would never have even existed.

It is extremely tempting to let the frustration and anxiety this caused to result in the generalized belief that my culture is better than this one simply because none of this is required where I am from. But the reality is that no one in this scenario was careless or unkind. In fact, everyone was helpful and patient. The lady who stopped me on the road gave me a dry place to sit out of the weather and I learned about her family and business. All of the bus company workers were apologetic and worked hard to make sure I did get the box the day I needed it.

Scenarios like this one happen pretty much any time I try to get something done, and the temptation to believe that “different is always bad” persists when I interact with my current culture of residence. A huge part of successfully living abroad is being able to acknowledge the negative emotions cultural difference engender without being consumed by them.

And I don’t always do that well.

In fact, cultural struggles and delays can made it very easy to begin questioning not just the intentions of the people around me, but also the intentions of God. I begin to wonder if God really does care about my health and safety, or if his goodness really does apply to me. In response I have begun spending an increasing amount of time in the poetic books of the Bible. Lamentations, Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Psalms make it clear that God has made room in the Christian life for hard and painful emotional responses to legitimate grievances. But those books also make it clear that the view from here under the sun is insufficient to address the range of human difficulty.

Whether the day’s pain is caused by something small and superficial like a delayed package or something as tragic and daunting as persistent wars or the collapse of a nation (as was the experience of many of the Old Testament writers as well as many modern people groups), there is space for those laments before the throne of grace.

And so today, in the week before an entire holiday about thankfulness, I am reminded and would like to remind others that the providence of God is expansive enough to encompass insurmountable tragedies while remaining detailed enough to care for sparrows (and slightly crumpled cardboard boxes).