Compassion Sunday 2011: His Vision

Back in January, when I decided that I wanted to interview some Compassion sponsors within my congregation for Compassion Sunday 2011, I thought the process would be fairly simple: record videos, cut together with astoundingly professional prowess, print.

Even as the process became increasingly complex, I kept thinking to myself, "This really isn't a big deal, I can handle this," until, after about 10 hours of frustration with some video editing software, I quite literally threw myself upon my bed in despair.

"I can't do it God, it's not possible. I don't even want to try anymore."

As he often does, God interrupted my thoughts with the glaringly obvious truth:

This isn't your vision. It's mine.

This video, my vision for communicating the reality of poverty and beauty of sponsorship to my congregation, Compassion Sunday, the ministry of Compassion, all those children and even poverty itself; they are all His, not mine.

If I'm honest, I failed at my attempt to create my idea of a moving and powerful 5:54 video. But God didn't. He created a video that, somehow, spoke to people in a real way.

And my little congregation rescued 11 children on Sunday.

God did that, in part, through my imperfect, amateur video. He did it without my consent and without my complete surrender.

And He did it better...

...we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

A big thanks to Darla Grubb and my friend Rachel Dowd (and Molly Dowd!) for volunteering to be part of this project. This is a just  a tiny fraction of the amazing things they shared with me about sponsorship. I will post the audio of the entire interview as soon as it is edited. In the mean time, check out Rachel's blog at Keep it Simple, she is absolutely bursting with wisdom about being a woman of God, financial freedom, mommyhood, and simple homemaking.