Crank’s Creek 2004: Out of the Dark Tunnel

“Don’t hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or – worse! – stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it’s safe from moth and rust and burglars. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.” – Matthew 6:19-21, The Message

“Looking at his disciples, Jesus said, ‘Do you have any idea how difficult it is for people who ‘have it all’ to enter God’s Kingdom?’ The disciples couldn’t believe what they were hearing, but Jesus kept on. ‘You can’t imagine how difficult. I’d say it’s easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for the rich to get into God’s Kingdom.” – Mark 10:23-25, The Message

“No worker can serve two bosses:
He’ll either hate the first and love the second
Or adore the first and despise the second.
You can’t serve both God and the Bank.”
- Luke 16:13, The Message

Harlan County, Kentucky. The second poorest county in all of America, the first being a Navajo Indian reservation. Pineview, Kentucky and Harlan make up the two largest towns in the area, though their dirty and musty downtowns are littered with falling walls and vacant windows. Smaller towns dot the rugged mountains, nestled in the grooves, hidden in the trees. Churches around every corner, most sagging and in a state of disrepair, yet crowded every Sunday morn and Sunday night. In the corner of Harlan County, a few miles from Pineview, the unofficial ‘Crank’s Creek’ sits a stone’s throw away from Virginia. Miners moved in dozens of years ago, digging coal out of the earth, ripping off the families and depriving them of rights, liberties and money. Coal can be found on the side of the road, in giant basins next to cardboard-box homes. Railways crisscross the county, stretches of train cars bristling with coal running out from the mines. The addition of a lumber company only helped stoop the citizens deeper into debt, deeper into a hole they cannot climb out of. A woman, with no food on her table and an anger in her gut against the coal companies, fought all the way to the Supreme Court to reserve the Appalachian peoples’ rights—and won. But the coal companies slid around the newfound regulations. The woman felt a calling from God, and created Crank’s Creek Missions, an organization made up of volunteers that goes out and gives assistance to the needy, the homeless, and the hungry.

   A group of friends and I pulled into the Crank’s Creek Survival Center camp, and the aroma of rotting potatoes hit our noses. The camp coordinator told us that fifty-five tons of potatoes had been dropped on the lawn, discarded to rot. We looked around, but couldn’t see any potatoes. The poor and oppressed peoples of the mountains had walked long distances, huddled for days picking up potatoes to put food on their plates. It was then that I realized this was for real—I then knew why I had come. I had come to bless. I had come because I had been blessed with the things of the world, and wanted to help bring a little bit of the world to them. I came to bless. My viewpoint changed as God told me how things really are.
   My eyes didn’t miss the terrible living conditions: walls of plywood and cardboard, insects literally scaling the walls; feces on the floor. Some of the children were running around half-naked, without clothes to cover themselves. I walked onto the first site—some other God-followers and I were building a new home for an elderly couple—and expected to see a sullen-faced, depressed, miserable couple, husband and wife, deprived of love and coughing up a living as they waited to rot and die. But when they came out of their listing trailer, I was shocked to see everything but what I had expected.
   Joy radiated off their faces, their smiles beaming, as if they were little children. We got to talking, and I tell you, I have never seen anyone so friendly, so loving, so open, so accepting. And believe it or not, I have never seen anyone so content. These people had nothing, and my mind clicked and whirred, trying to dig up just what was going on. Didn’t these people see how bad they had it? Didn’t they see how they had been taken-advantage of by gigantic corporations and left to fend off the land? Didn’t they see how hard it was to find clothes and food to survive another week? How were they so content? They had to be faking it, I figured. Let me tell you, though, I’ve seen people fake love. I’ve seen people fake openness and acceptance. This older couple were genuine. Authentic. Real. We ate lunch, and I leaned against their trailer, and wondered, Why are they so happy?
  

A man and woman who live together in a listing trailer with no air-conditioning and only fatty foods to live off of. A meager few pairs of clothes hang in a mildew-suffocating closet. The older man suffers black lung from working so long in the coal mines. They offer us food for lunch and beg to talk with us, enjoying our company, more than eager to spread God’s love.

A woman in a wheelchair, whose house has been left in terrible condition. Her brother comes down from the mountain to take care of her animals. The pots and pans are engraved with soot and burnt food and yet they don’t complain when they have to fix food in them, and offer us what little soda they own – “Drink as much as you want!”

A woman whose knee was shattered when a neighbor’s goat rammed her in the legs. Spiders, gnats and beetles cover her walls. She has no kitchen, no living room, but is proud of what she does own, and is extremely proud of her sister, cousin and niece who stick closer to her more than we can imagine.

Depraved of food and money, a woman who takes care of a crippled son, tending him so well that he never has had a bed sore in his entire life. She has done it for decades, and doesn’t regret any of it, and doesn’t mind. She loves her son so much, and her son loves visitors so much. They love everyone, and are not ashamed of what they don’t have. They have one another, and that works.

   The blessings of America have corrupted us. Sports cars. Plasma TVs. Olive Garden and Applebee’s, snacks flooding the kitchen pantry. We go to school, we go to work, we eat dinner, fall asleep in front of a TV with a bowl of ice cream. We complain about eight-hour shifts, cell phone bills, and giving 10% in the offering plate. We are convinced we have it so rough. All these blessings bestowed on us by God have corrupted us. Satan has weaseled himself in, snuck into our bed chambers, and deposited complacency on our pillows. We breathe it in at night, and cough it out during the day. The cycle goes over and over. We’ve been corrupted; in this bankrupt state of complacency, we’ve allowed corruption to eat us away, inside-out.
We have let materialism engulf us. In the chaos of three-piece-suits and snazzy PowerPoint presentations and six-point acronym sermons, we’ve slowly been crushed under the spiritual burden, the spiritual weariness, that Jesus came to relieve. We have lost sight of what really matters. Crank’s Creek opened my eyes back up to the light, and I crawled—and in ways, am still crawling—out of a dark tunnel.
   I went to Crank’s Creek to help, to bless—but I realized I was the one who needed help! We’ve all been blessed so much that it’s gotten the better of us. Don’t get me wrong! Praise God for the blessings! Praise God for freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and freedom of religion! Praise God for America and all the blessings that come with it! But Satan is clever, and I believe he has worked himself into our lives where we don’t expect him, where we don’t fight, and where we don’t set up guard: through the very blessings of God.
   In the scattered towns of Harlan, you find disgusting living conditions, scorching heat, and expect all to feel misery in this beautiful but down-trodden place. But the people! Have you ever met anyone friendlier? Have you ever met anyone more loving and open and accepting? Have you ever met anyone so joyful? Despite what we see as horrible and ugly and disgusting and vile, these people are content. Sure, they love and appreciate our help, but even so, without us, they are doing fine. Why?
   They have things figured out. Skin away the meat, the flesh, the skin, the juice of the body, and you have a skeleton. When all blessings, when all advantages, when all luxuries—including the wonderful yet horrible money—is stripped away—when all ‘commonplace’ blessings are torn off our plates—we are left with the bare essentials. We are left with that which really matters.

   Family.

   God.
   Maybe, just maybe, this is what Jesus warned when he said, “Don’t let the world corrupt you?” The area of Crank’s Creek is so poor, so destitute, yet a church building flourishes around every bend in the twisting mountain roads. These people know what truly matters. Spirituality is on an uphill swing. They don’t have the clutter and distractions to turn them away from what’s important: God first, and family in a far second.
   Look at those we came to help:
    Friendly…
        Loving…
            Open…
                Accepting…
        Joyful…
    Content…
   And ourselves?
    Cold…
        Angry…
                Hurtful…
                Rejecting…
            Unloving…
    [Sarcastically]: Oh, aren’t we rich and easy-living people so blessed? The people we came to help, they don’t really need the help. They are, ultimately, the blessed ones. Those missionaries sent to Crank’s Creek are not sent by God as the Bride of Christ not only to help, not only to learn, not only to build relationships with the Creator and others, but also to understand. To understand what really matters.
   Family.

   And most of all, God.
   What God revealed to me during my trip to Crank’s Creek is difficult to put into words. Part of me is still trying to figure it out. But I know this much: it is time we chop ourselves off from materialism. Time we forget all the ‘things’ we have, and remember not only ‘who’ we have, but also ‘whose’ we are. We have our family. We have our friends. We have those whom love us, and those whom we love. We belong to God the Father, the Creator; we are brothers and sisters to and of Jesus. We are God’s.
   Don’t take stock in material wealth. It will rot and fade away. It will burn. Instead, take stock in God’s Kingdom. Take stock in that which matters. Take stock in loving others, in sticking closer to a brother, and loving God with all your heart, mind and soul.
   I plead with you, when you step out into the world, into a haven of blessings, to not get distracted by the clutter and distractions those blessings are turned into, twisted by the gnarled hands of Satan. Take a moment. And think. Think about that which really matters. When all is stripped away, we are left with family, and a God who loves us so much, no matter what’s going on, and a God who will never abandon us. Those people that work hard to survive on the Appalachian slopes taught me something about blessings—they taught me what it meant to be really blessed. 
 

“Lust for money brings trouble and nothing but trouble. Going down that path, some loose their footing in the faith completely and live to regret it bitterly ever after.”
– 1 Timothy 6:10, The Message

“And a final word to you arrogant rich: Take some lessons in lament. You’ll need buckets for the tears when the crash comes upon you. Your money is corrupt and your fine clothes stink. Your greedy luxuries are a cancer in your gut, destroying your life from within. You thought you were piling up wealth. What you’ve piled up is judgment… You’ve looted the earth and lived it up. But all you’ll have to show for it is a fatter than usual corpse.” – James 1:1-5, The Message

“Woe to those who live in luxury
and expect everyone else to serve them!
Woe to those who live only for today,
Indifferent to the fate of others!
Woe to the playboys, the playgirls,
Who think life is a party held just for them!
Woe to those addicted to feeling good – life without pain!
Those obsessed with looking good – life without wrinkles!
They could not care less
About their country going to ruin.
But here’s what’s really coming:
A forced march into exile.
They’ll leave the country whining,
A rag-tag bunch of good-for-nothings.”
- Amos 6:4-7, The Message