Filters

After an intial panic, we found coffee filters at a grocery store.  In a pinch, we have used paper towels and I guess you could use an old sock, but for a good cup of joe, you need a decent filter.  Part of our preparation to move to Angola was a two day cultural awareness course.  During the course we learned about filters, mental filters.  These are the filters we use when we surf the internet or read a newspaper.  We develop deft skills at filtering out multi media stuff.  But, when you first arrive to a new place, a new culture, you don't have your filter system in place and you get broadsided, everything jumps out at you.  We experienced this driving last Sunday.  It was Vicki's first trip in to the Luanda city and the scenes of the people living in such poverty, carrying water on homemade wagons and on their heads, living in such small, primitive housing made a remarkable impression.  Vicki felt depressed.  I thought back to my first trip to Luanda and I also remember thinking, man, what can I do to improve this situation, where do I even start?  But over time, after several visits, my filters developed and now I tend to turn my eye from the pitiful to look instead for strong, dignified people and children playing and clean laundry drying on the line.   In Mark 6, verse 52, it tells how the disciples did not understand about the miracle Jesus had performed with the loaves of bread.  Maybe their filters made it difficult to see and understand who and what Jesus had done.  Filters are useful things, but we have to strive to not filter our hearts.