Dubai: Now That's a Sacrifice

Dubai. A year ago you’d probably never heard of it. If you were like me, even 6 months ago you couldn’t point to it on the globe. Recently, though, it has been in the news. Dubai is quickly gaining steam as a strategically important city – for a lot of reasons. More than likely, you’ve seen its opulence in the news. A good friend and I recently went there on a short term mission trip. I’ll be posting several entries…as I process what we saw and did.

It’s hard to put into words what Dubai is like. It is visually assaulting. Imagine Phoenix’s temperature with Houston’s humidity. Imagine the most ridiculously wealthy city you can think of – now double it. Imagine all of Manhattan’s skyscrapers going up at exactly the same time. Imagine construction sites littered with hundreds of men from foreign countries working 10-16 hours a day for nearly nothing. The richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor. Imagine a mosque within walking distance of every person’s home (sort of like Starbucks is trying to accomplish here). Imagine walking through the mall seeing Muslim women with their entire bodies covered (including their faces) while the women walking directly in front of them have on halter-tops. It is visually assaulting.

There are a number of things I want to write about but today I’ll focus on one: sacrifice. The purpose for our trip was to serve as one of several “storying” teams. First some details and then my point - As mentioned above, there are laborers throughout Dubai working on the construction sites. The volume of construction can only been accomplished through cheap labor on a giant scale. These laborers are from all over that side of the world, especially India. Many of them come to Dubai, work their first year for nothing (to pay for their trip to Dubai), and then work several more years without going home to see their families. They work 6 days a week in the harsh elements, well over a normal 8 hour shift, and then they sleep in tiny bunk houses (called “labor camps”) littered around town. The largest camp is called Sonapour Labor Camp. It is 8 sq miles. 200,000 men call this “home”. In this labor camp there are dozens of nationalities and even more language groups. Within this awful place, a church has sprung up among one of the Indian dialects. This group is studying through the Bible in a year using a “storying” method. Basically they are being discipled through learning the 72 major groups of stories in the Bible. Our role was to teach a few of those stories.

Alright, enough details and now the good stuff: I’ll never forget seeing these men walk in to worship and hear the Bible. They were literally covered in sweat: probably 60-70 men, many drenched from the incredibly high heat and humidity. I am not exaggerating – drenched. They had traveled by bus to sing, pray, and hear some white guys tell stories – on their only day off. Wow! Since they make this kind of journey every day to go to work, they knew what was coming when they got on the bus, but they came anyway -- they made a real sacrifice to worship. They could have stayed home. They didn’t have to come. A break was understandable, even deserved. These poor men looked exhausted. The physical demands, pressures, and stress they face daily are beyond what I can imagine. But they got in the bus and came anyway. Would you have come? Let me take it closer to home: would I have come?

To take it a step deeper – would we have been so irritated with God for giving us “hard lives” that we wouldn’t even consider going to church? I better leave that one alone for another day.

God tells us not to forsake getting together for worship. These former Hindus, these dear laborers challenged my level of sacrifice for worship like no one else on the globe. They make less money in a year than most of us make in a month, but they can teach all of us a thing or two about sacrifice. They were grateful for the opportunity to worship with God’s folks, regardless of how hard it was to get there. Let’s all learn from them. I know I can.