Issue link: http://denverseminary.uberflip.com/i/278977
ENGAGE 17 SO OFTEN, WE TEND TO SHY AWAY FROM THOSE WHOSE SUFFERING IS MORE THAN MOMENTARY. OR, WORSE YET, OFFER PLATITUDES TO TRAUMATIZED AND BROKEN SPIRITS WHEN THE REAL ANSWER IS SO SIMPLE. Gigi Townsend Mooi, a 2009 MDiv graduate of Denver Seminary, contends that there isn't enough room for sorrow in the modern church. There is, however, great value in suffering and the Lord has been teaching it to Gigi for years. Early on in seminary, Gigi had everything going for her. She had a scholarship, was the student body president, and an activist shaping her community. Then, as a result of personal losses, she experienced a period of deep pain. "I walked through the greatest crisis of my life while at Denver Seminary," said Gigi, "and the way Drs. Craig Blomberg, Danny Carroll, and Doug Groothuis supported, listened, counseled, and prayed with me helped create the community I needed." In a state of total weakness, Gigi experienced the Lord's great power through intimacy with Scripture and the communicated love of His servants. During that time, Groothuis preached a sermon on the biblical practice of lamenting, one that she'll never forget. Vividly, Gigi recounted the lesson learned: "It seems if you are deeply hurting, deeply sorrowful, then the unspoken understanding in the Church is that something is wrong with you—because if you have Jesus, then you should have joy all the time, right? But, then I think, 'I'm pretty sure Jesus wept!'" So there is a biblical precedent of great men and women weeping and wailing out of the depth of their faith, and not the lack of it. Having that community of professors, coupled with a biblical perspective of suffering, prepared her for ministry beyond seminary—a ministry of suffering that she couldn't yet imagine. IN THEIR EYES "Growing up in the inner city of Oakland, California as a half-Brazilian, half-Amish (white) girl, conversations among people of color always included me. I viewed life, and its issues, through the lens of a person of color. Then, in 2009, I moved to South Africa and I lost that part of my identity overnight. "In the eyes of those in South Africa, I am white and had moved to the largest all-black residential area in a country still hemorrhaging from its long legacy of racial distrust, hatred, and anger." "In the eyes of those in South Africa, I am white and had moved to the largest all- black residential area in a country still hemorrhaging from its long legacy of racial distrust, hatred, and anger." Gigi said, with pain in her voice, that this change in her perceived identity meant that she "was now identified in the same category as those who had violently oppressed the very community in which [she] was living and serving." "The fact that I married a black South African man also made us one of the very few interracial couples in this country. We instantly became a threat to the very fabric of a society built on racial hierarchy and separation, even post-Apartheid. Wherever we went, we felt the piercing stares of the masses." WAVES OF SUFFERING Suspicion, distrust, anger, and cruelty were reoccurring arrows targeted at Gigi from every direction. She and her husband had to move five times in two and a half years because of tensions with neighbors or violence visited against them in all forms—from being held at gunpoint by seven police officers for no reason to Gigi's cat being killed in the front yard. TAKE IT FROM HERE Vencavolrab/Photos.com