For a little over three years me and my family have been living on Maui, Hawaii, and it has been an amazing experience. But even though we live in Hawaii, we don’t really experience paradise every day, because we are not tourists on vacation.
One thing that is really interesting, coming from Brazil, is to understand the differences in the many cultures here in the Islands. This morning, listening to the radio we were laughing about the local jokes, but it only took three years for us to understand enough to get it and laugh!
This was and is a real experience to me since 1990 when Gary and Marilyn Hargrave went for the first time to Brazil—how they just loved the people and the culture of Brazil. In a very real sense, they taught me to love my own culture! I started to see things that I had never seen before, and because of that I started to become proud of my culture and history.
Back to Hawaii. There is such a diversity of cultures and amazing gifts and different expressions here in the Islands. It may sound silly but this is how I think: God is the Father and He gave gifts to men (Ephesians 4:8), and even though a Father may have many children, He loves the differences and peculiarities of each one individually, because they are all different. Each nation is like a child, and each nation has something that was received as a gift, and has something that the Father loves in the expression of that child.
When this happened to me, I had to see my own culture in a different way. It was like getting rid of years of a “religious” point of view that certain things are “bad”—like samba was labeled in Brazil, and different expressions like hula were labeled everywhere else. I grew up with a limited understanding of my own culture, so it took a spiritual mother and father, like Gary and Marilyn, to come with the love of Christ in their hearts, and show us that there were gifts from God that I was not open to see. I want to love and respect every culture, and find in each one the gifts and anointing from God in their peculiar way of expressing it.
I am blessed to live in Hawaii—in many different ways—but one way is in being exposed to the local culture and seeing the amazing gifts of love and family, the music and Hula and of course ALOHA!
For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot says, “Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. And if the ear says, “Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired. If they were all one member, where would the body be? But now there are many members, but one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; or again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary; (1 Corinthians 12:14–22, NAS)
Now think of each part of the body as one different nation and culture! What a great picture of the amazing things God has created!
Posted in Pastor's Blog