Live58 Challenge

This video was made about 4 weeks ago, right after I got back from my Haiti trip with Compassion International. Compassion is involved with Live58, a coalition of nonprofit organizations dedicated to ending poverty by practicing a "True Fast." True fasting, as described in Isaiah 58, is characterized by loosing the bonds of wickedness, undoing heavy burdens, letting the oppressed go free, breaking every yoke, sharing your bread with the hungry, bringing the poor cast-out ones into your home and covering the naked. 

More than anything it is a call to love and have compassion on one another. This passage, the Live58 ministry, and my trip to Haiti raised some questions about how we respond to pain and poverty.

What I'm listening to: For the Honor

With Thanksgiving on Thursday and everyone sleeping in on Friday, I bumped up What I'm Listening To. Yay.

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I bent my "no itunes" rule to download Elevation Worship's album For the Honor. I did this for two very good reasons:

1. I suspected it was going to be a great album.
2. They donated all of the profits from the release day to support a Compassion Child Survival Program in Uganda.

That adds up to $25,000 for that project, enough to fund it for a whole year.

Compassion's CSP focuses on children from womb to 3 years old, which is a crucial period for children, especially in developing nations. Visit www.compassion.com/help-babies.htm to learn more and sign up to sponsor a CSP for $20 a month.

And, even though you missed the release day, I still recommend you download the album. Not only because I love what they've done with Compassion, but because I think there's some good stuff here.

If you've never watched or listened to Elevation Worship (or Elevation Church), they're definitely a younger crowd. I find it interesting that, because Elevation Church is so very young, trendy and exuberant it gets some hate for being shallow or "too relevant." I'll save my thoughts on that for another day and share my very early thoughts on the album.

The Deluxe Edition on itunes is $14.99. That comes with 6 videos and a digital booklet that includes the chord charts for the entire album. There's also a message from Stephen Furtick (the pastor of Elevation Church) that tags onto the end of one songs. The story behind how that happened is actually pretty cool, you can hear it in the video below.

On the critical side, For the Honor occasionally has the unpolished vocals that often come with a live worship album, occasionally tone or pitch are sacrificed for the sake of volume or energy. The other common issue with a live album is that some of the tags may feel a little long long if you're not in the mood, but it's great driving music. There's also not a ton of diversity on this album. All the tracks feel pretty similar, not only to each other but to a lot of live-worship albums by other bands. But hey, I dig it.

For your edification, I'm also presently digging All Things New, Our King Has Come and, of course, For the Honor.

I'm a lyrics girl so I could do with a bit more richness lyrically, but there are some pretty things here:

we've seen redemption
at the heartbeat of our church (We Rejoice)

relief swells like air in my lungs
and freedom releases my shame (Give My Life to You)

The whole album is very praisey and celebratory but gives you some meditative moments with For the Honor  and All Things New, and I love way the album ends:

He is alive and we are free
He is alive and we have found our peace
Our King has come (Our King has Come)

Beyond lyrics, there is a mountain of energy on this album, which you need on a live worship album. I love it when young people are passionate, empowered and really feel like they have a vision for their ministry. It makes me hopeful about my generation.

So, have you downloaded For the Honor yet? What do you think? If not, what are you listening to these days?

Voulez Vous Chante?

Mwen kontan fe konoses ou!
That's the Creole that I'm taking away from this trip, it means I am very happy to meet you!

I can't remember how many times I said it this week, but there is one that stands out.

I met Shaika at a Compassion project in Versette, an area hurting more than most in Haiti for jobs. I brought Shaika's child packet with me when we visited her project today. I picked it out for the same reason I picked Fabi 8 years ago: she loves to sing.

If you've had the privilege of listening to a Haitian or African choir, you know that American kids don't sing the way these kids sing. It's an amazing experience. But I wasn't sure if Shaika loved to sing the way I loved to sing when I was seven! Hey, my mother thought it was beautiful.

So when we say down together at the project, my translator asked her, "Voulez vous chante?" - Do you like to sing? She smiled and said, yes, she did, and she would like to sing me a song.

I went to Haiti looking for another child to sponsor and if I had any questions about whether it was going to be Shaika, I forgot them.

God has a way of speaking to us that seems silly, small or surprising at times. I should know by now that it delights God to set His spirit on seemingly unworthy or inappropriate places, like a little shepherd boy who'd rather sing than go to war, a vain weak-willed man with long hair, a persecutor of the church, or a shy little Haitian girl singing on a concrete floor in the middle of one of the poorest countries in the world.

It is so very right, because He used the weak or foolish things to shame the wise. And God used this quiet little girl with the priceless secret smile to bring praise to His name.

Mwen tre kontann fe konoses ou, Shaika.

To Haiti With Love: Itinerary

Well friends, I fly into Port au Prince tomorrow!

I met with the rest of the Compassion team tonight (including Bethany, my roommate), it still all seems a little surreal but I'm going to be in Haiti tomorrow, crazy!

I'm not sure what the specific itinerary is but we will be flying in tomorrow morning and flying out Friday, it's kind of a fast and furious trip. That is compounded by the fact that we are meeting with so many people.

If you are the praying type, we could definitely use prayer for safety and health (don't drink the water, don't drink the water...). I don't know if you heard, but they've got a cholera outbreak in Haiti (the first one in 100 years!) and that is one Haiti-immersion experience I would like to skip.

You can also pray for my poor little arms. I am checking two 50 lbs bags and one 25 lb carry-on bag of donations for the projects and people we meet. Thank the Jesus that my insurance covers chiropractic care!

As for me, I will be living out of a backpack for the next 6 days! I normally wouldn't mind but I'm planning on taking a lot of pictures and a few will probably have me in them. The fact that I am forgoing all but he most essential hygiene items raises some concern about the quality of those photos.

Yes, its a ridiculous concern but there you are, I'm a vain little girl at heart.

But above all please pray that the people we meet will be better for our visit. Pray that the people we talk to when we get home will be filled with love and compassion for the people of the tiny, downtrodden, resilient little country.

Pray for Haiti.

Honor+Compassion Initiative

Normally I don't like doing double posts in one day (as content is thin around here...*sheepish*) but this warranted a "FRICKING AWESOME!!!!" from me on twitter so I am dropping a double-post Friday!!


I'm a big fan of Elevation Church for many reasons, and today I added one more. Elevation Worship is releasing a new worship album on November 22nd called "For the Honor." As part of their ministry with this album, they have partnered with Compassion International and committed to funding a Child Survival Program in the Kamwokya slum outside of Kampala, Uganda for one year.


From their website:

On November 22, we release our new album “For The Honor.” And while we’re excited for you to hear these new songs from our first live record, we also wanted to capture the opportunity to be generous with this release. So, we’re partnering with Compassion’s Child Survival Program to help support the people in Kamwokya, one of the poorest slums in Uganda’s capital city. On the weekend we release “For The Honor” to our church, we’ll be giving away Elevation’s proceeds to the women and children of Kamwokya through Compassion International. In addition, on November 22, when the album releases nationwide, we’re giving away our proceeds from the digital release on iTunes to support them as well.

You can purchase the album on November 22nd on iTunes (sorry Amazon, I'm ditching you for one day only). As a bonus, I think it's going to be a really great album if this is any indication:

Do you feel it? I feel it!

Yesterday, I asked people in my office to help me "fill my suitcase" with gifts & supplies for the Compassion projects I'm going to be visiting.
They've already filled this box with many more promised.
Feeling the love!!

Oh, the Joys of Traveling...

I took the day off to get my (FIVE!!) vaccinations that I need for my Haiti trip. I wasn't super excited, obviously, especially when I found out that I left my checkbook at home, 30 minutes away.

Not happy.

Fortunately, I ran into my friend Chelsey at the Health Department, and her baby, Ellie, smiled at me. Babies make everything better.


Then, I found out my friend Shellie was going to be giving me my injections, which made the whole thing more fun, if getting five injections is ever fun...

I have so much more respect for infants now.

(forgive the wonky perspective!)

Labor Day Weekend: Compassion, Haiti, Coffee

This is so very overdue, it's embarassing! But I spend Labor Day weekend in Portland doing my favorite things, meeting new people, talking about Compassion & Haiti, and drinking stellar coffee and I really wanted to share it with you.

Saturday: Jill  & Coava

After anticipating visiting Coava (koh-vah) for 2 months, I admit I was a little intimidated when I walked in. See, Coava shares a building with a bamboo workshop (the smell of bamboo sawdust and fresh roasted coffee is intoxicating) so they have two counters and some of bamboo furniture on display that made the whole thing feel more like a workshop than a coffee shop.

Source

I wasn't sure exactly what to do, it wasn't a displeasing feel, like I said, it just threw me. And, let's be honest, I'm still new to the world of "third wave" coffee, and always feel a little bit like a putz asking about brew temps, extraction ratios and varietals.

Fortunately, my baristas, Jeremy and Justin, were incredibly kind and willing to hold my hand (figuratively, we had just met, after all) as they each brewed me a lovely cup of coffee, Guatamalen Xeucalvitz (shoo-kahl-veets) and a Honduran bean (the name of which escapes me at this moment) respectively. They were both really interesting (the coffees...though I'm sure the guys were very interesting themselves) but the forgotten Honduran was my favorite. Oh, and I got to see the Kone in action (it's on my Christmas list!).

But the best part was getting to meet Jill  (and her two adorable girls!) from Compassion Family in person. We drank coffee for over an hour, talking about family, Compassion, Too Small to Ignore, and the weird places God takes us. It was a huge blessing getting to talk to such a seasoned Compassion vet and getting to meet a "virtual friend" in real life :) And I got a free compassion cause-band, you're all jealous aren't you?

Jill, I forgot to take a picture!! :(

Sunday: Beaverton Foursquare and Java Nation

After a mind-blowing breakfast at Tin Shed with my cousins, I headed off to Beaverton Foursquare Church, or "B4" as it is known by the locals to talk to Mark, their missions pastor, about Haiti.

I loved Mark. His enthusiasm washed over me as we talked for nearly an hour about their vision for Haiti, Mark's job description, their team dynamics and the logistical processes and the challenges they face during their Haiti trips. Mark concluded the conversation by inviting me to join one of their teams, offering to help work out logistical challenges or train people at my church, and actually calling one of their team leaders (who was on vacation) and giving him my name.

I also loved B4 for many reasons but especially because they really, truly love Haiti.  There's is the kind of missions ministry that excites me, the kind fueled by partnerships rather than benevolence. They've made a three year commitment to supporting Foursquare Haiti in order to equip them for their own mission. They've erected buildings, provided medical care, taught vocational skills, dug wells, and sent missionaries. I talked to Jim, a retired irrigation engineer, one of those awesome hard-working guys who will never really "retire", who designed an entire plumbing system.

But, even more telling, every person I spoke to gave me an email address or phone number, they've got some good people over there at B4.

After spending far too long at the very disappointing Ava Roasteria, though I should say that the balsamic hummus and pretty patio almost made up for the less than enthusiastic barista and the glut of noisy students (bah humbug!), I remembered Java Nation, a stuffy little coffee shop tucked away in a strip mall off of Highway 217 in Beaverton. So, I whiled away the steamy afternoon drinking coffee from Kenya and learning about density and genetics. This was my second trip to Java Nation and I'll definitely be making a third...and fourth...

Monday: Stumptown and home.

I debated making a stop on Monday morning because I was in a hurry to get home but the siren call of Stumptown made me make the 2 mile detour to Belmont. See, I've never been to a Stumptown coffee shop, I've bought Stumptown beans but I've never drank it from the source. The busy little coffee shop was a bit chaotic, so I wasn't inclined to stay. I decided to go for the medicine-bottle/red stripe cold brew and a bag of Gajah Aceh (remember the Gajah Aceh from Broadway Coffee??) rather than rush my coffee experience. And, to be honest, I always feel a little guilty drinking good coffee from a paper cup.

The cold brew left me, well, cold. Sadly, so did Stumptown. I like my coffee shops really chill; I like my baristas friendly and slow. Maybe it is because I'm such a chaotic go-go-go person, but hectic coffee shops and super efficient baristas are a bit of a turnoff.

I realized too late that the real place I wanted to visit was the Annex next door :( So my first Stumptown coffee shop experience was a bit of a bust, but there will be more in the future and, in the mean time, I'm enjoying my beans!

Last but not least, be it ever so humble, there's no place like...

*sigh* I miss Portland.

Haiti Update!

Thanks so much for supporting and praying for me as I get ready to go to Haiti with Compassion International. It’s such a powerfully humbling feeling when someone believes in the call of God in your life, thank you!

August and September have been filled with alternating waves of excitement and stress as I pull together details for the trip. Occasionally I “forgot” that God has already opened the door for me on this trip and is not going to make me walk through it alone, though it's helpful to remember why I'm going...

(SO EXCITED!)

Nevertheless, I’ve really appreciated your prayers and encouragement.

So, here is the condensed version of the past few months:

Shortly after registering for the trip, I realized that, one, the trip was scheduled after a three day weekend (Veterans’ Day) and, two, there is a Foursquare church in Haiti, that my church supports and, three, that there is a team from my church going to visit Foursquare Haiti early next year (Haiti twice in one year? Yes, please!). I thought that it would be an incredibly opportunity for me to take the extra days to visit the people at the church and lay a foundation for the next trip.

Though this still sounds like a good idea to me, from the beginning, the details have been a nightmare. Haiti has not known for exceptional civil services like public transportation or safety even before the Earthquake. So, even after sending countless emails to Compassion and the coordinator at Foursquare Haiti and even visiting a church that sends teams to Haiti every month, things have still not come together. Worse, it is actually creating more work for the people I am supposed to be serving and I am not comfortable with that.

So, this time around, I’m not going to be visiting the church. I am disappointed but I still feel that this is a better decision, given the circumstances. The good news is that I will be able to really focus on Compassion projects I will be visiting. So, once again, thank you for your prayers, they have come in handy!

I am hoping you might help me once again. Don’t worry, I’m not asking for money! I am hoping that you will be willing to write a letter or card that I could share with a special child that I meet in Haiti. It doesn’t have to be anything spectacular, just a few short lines of love and encouragement, even a pretty card or a drawing would be a huge blessing to them. If you are able to do this, please contact me!

Also, if you are currently a sponsor or are interested in child sponsorship I'd love to hear from you. You can leave me a comment OR visit the For Sponsors section.

Thanks again!

-Sarah Elizabeth

The Children's Champion: A Righteous Rage

This is another post from the read through of Too Small to Ignore by Wess Stafford hosted by Jill Foley from Compassion Family.

I shared a few days ago some of the key messages that moved me about Chapter 8, The Silence of the Lambs, of Wess Stafford’s Too Small to Ignore. I was deeply impressed by the passion inspired by Wess’s personal experiences growing up as a missionary kid on the Ivory Coast. Many of these experiences were deeply tragic and painful, many were joyful and inspiring; but all of them demonstrate the power of personal experience.

I believe God uses our personal story, our experiences, to start a fire in our hearts for the work He has for us. In Wess’s case, this was a passion for being an advocate for children. However, Chapter 12, “The Children’s Champion: A Righteous Rage,” uses the words of Jesus himself to elevate the cause of “the least of these” beyond one man’s personal experience.

Read more.

The Silence of the Lambs

I'm participating in a read-through of Too Small to Ignore by Wess Stafford, president of Compassion International, hosted by Jill Foley at Compassion Family. I wanted to share my thoughts on Chapter 9, The Silence of the Lambs.

I admit, the first time I read Too Small to Ignore by Compassion International president Wess Stafford, I thought I knew exactly what to expect: a treatise on the desperation of children in poverty and the importance of having a benevolent heart. Good stuff, sure, but something we’ve all heard before. What I did not expect was a very human and intensely personal story.

What I quickly learned as I read and reread Too Small to Ignore was that, no matter how deeply you care about a particular cause, it will never be as real to you as it is to those who live it. This is the story that is revealed in these pages: personal experiences with poverty, injustice, and suffering that grew into a deep-rooted passion for the forgotten and voiceless, especially children.

Read more.

You can read the rest of the Too Small to Ignore read-through entries here.

The God who sees me

Then Sarai treated Hagar so harshly that she finally ran away. The angel of the LORD found Hagar beside a spring of water in the wilderness, along the road to Shur. The angel said to her, “Hagar, Sarai’s servant, where have you come from, and where are you going?”

“I’m running away from my mistress, Sarai,” she replied.

The angel of the LORD said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit to her authority.” Then he added, “I will give you more descendants than you can count.”

...thereafter, Hagar used another name to refer to the LORD, who had spoken to her. She said,

"You are the God who sees me."

...then Abraham prepared food and a container of water, and strapped them on Hagar’s shoulders. Then he sent her away with their son, and she wandered aimlessly in the wilderness of Beersheba. When the water was gone, she put the boy in the shade of a bush. Then she went and sat down by herself about a hundred yards away.

"I don’t want to watch the boy die," she said, as she burst into tears.

But God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, “Hagar, what’s wrong? Do not be afraid! God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Go to him and comfort him, for I will make a great nation from his descendants.”

Then God opened Hagar’s eyes, and she saw a well full of water. She quickly filled her water container and gave the boy a drink. And God was with the boy as he grew up in the wilderness. --Gen 21:14-20

God's faithfulness to Hagar, one who had been cast out and abandoned by God's own children, is, I think, one of the most beautiful examples of compassion and love in the bible. I was reminded of this kind of love when I read about Jesula, a homeless, pregnant woman in Haiti who had also lost hope.

"Forty-year-old Jesula was a homeless woman who slept each night at a church in Delmas, Haiti. She became pregnant by a man who abandoned her before her son’s birth, and she could not even afford to visit a doctor because she had no money.

Jesula felt desperate about her situation, but she could not find a way out. During the day, she wandered the streets of Delmas or visited old friends in the hope of getting something to eat. Usually she was disappointed in her search. In the evenings, she would head for the New Jerusalem Church where she slept using a pew as a bed and rags for blankets.

Having no one to turn to, Jesula grew more concerned for herself and her soon-to-be-born child. In her situation of hardship, she felt she was going to lose her mind..."

Read the rest of Jesula's story here: Homeless No More

Water of Life

I must say, the timing of this is pretty awesome. A few weeks ago I learned that Compassion had a new Water of Life program that helps provide water filtration systems for those without access to clean water and, if you read about my (squeak) upcoming trip to Haiti, you'll know that one of the major complicating factors in Haiti has been the cholera epidemic resulting from water contamination. If you think that clean water should not be a luxury, check out how you can help.

Have you ever watched a promotional or news video for an organization like Compassion International?

It can be a bizarre experience because you realize, as you are bombarded by images of poverty, that you are also looking into a world that is utterly separated from yours not only by distance but, it seems, by time as well. Can you imagine living in a world where it is normal for you to cook over a fire every day or get up in the predawn hours to haul water from a river? If you are like me, the thought actually conjures up happy memories of camping or old episodes of Little House on the Prairie.

This worries me, because this is not a weekend of roughing it or a cozy evening by the fire with Pa and Mary.

There are millions of people who will live their lives today on the edge of living and dying, people who have no choice, who can't go home early if it starts to rain. People who can't just drive in to town to get extra toilet paper or garbage bags.

People who are being attacked every day by enemies too small to see.

I sponsor a little girl from Haiti through Compassion. Several months after the earthquake, I was told that Haiti was experiencing the world's first cholera epidemic in century.




photo courtesy: http://www.guardian.co.uk/

 Cholera? Has anyone had cholera since corsets?

If you are alive and reading this you have probably never worried about cholera or The Plague. When you turn on the tap, you probably never worry about or whether or not your neighbor has dumped human waste or a dead rat in your drinking water. Videos, photographs, and articles have a necessary element of fantasy becasuse we have no point of reference.

That's why I love programs, like Compassion's Water of Life system, that bridge that gap between my reality and the reality of the millions of people in the developing world, human people who are warm and full of breath.

These are not actors, and this is not Little House on the Prairie. This is someone's life and it could have been mine.



Visit www.compassion.com/water-of-life to find out more about their safe water system and how $55.00 can provide a lifetime of clean water to a family.

To Haiti With Love

Back in January I talked about my One Word for 2011: Trust. It was and has been a rough journey but it's good! Each day is a new challengeopportunity for me to learn to trust God's promises and His faithfulness and, occasionally, trust actually wins over doubt.

One of the specific areas that blazed brighter than the rest was going back to Haiti. It was one of those impossible promises that has been seemed more and more impossible as each day went by. Still my heart longed for Haiti and for my little almost 11 year old hanging out in the mountains there.

God is as faithful as I pretended to believe He was, and, God willing, I am going to be going to Haiti with Compassion Internation in November. I wrote more about the trip here.

"Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!" Psalm 34:8

One of the things I learned in the woods was that it is not enough to know God is good; we have to sense it, like we would sense anything else in the world, taste it and see it. We have to touch Him--to feel the warmth of his body--and see his face. Because, when we see His face, we not only trust Him, but we are changed.

"...but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." 1 John 3:2

I have a theory. I believe that looking into the face of the needy, if you really see them and let their stories touch you, then it  changes you. I think that this is because God appears in His purest form in the lives of the hurting and the broken. So when you look at them, you are looking at God.

I know God is everywhere, I know you don't need to go to the third world to find God or even a hurting person. But for me, in this moment, this is it.

And I'm stoked.

I'm unbelievably excited to see how God is showing his glory in Haiti and to see the work of Compassion in action. I will be blogging updates about the journey to Haiti as well as the trip itself, but I would love to share this trip with you personally. If you'd like to hear more personal updates, send me an email.

If you would like to help support me financially you can send checks or money orders directly to me or online use Paypal.

Sending money with Paypal is actually really easy:

1. Go to Send Money at http://www.paypal.com/ or click here. Select "friends and family" under "My Payment is for" in the Send Money Now section and click next. 
2. Enter thesaraheffect@gmail.com in the "To:" box and your own email address in the "From:" section and 
3. Log in to your paypal account and finish the transaction.

Before you click "send money" make sure you put your name in the "message" section so I can say thank you!

If you do not have a paypal account, it only takes a few minutes to sign up for one and you can pay for items with a direct transfer from a bank account or a credit or debit card. If you use your bank account or paypal balance there is no charge, if you are using a credit or debit card, you can still send money this way just make sure that you specify that the recipient (me) is going to cover the 2.9% fee.

If possible, I prefer this method simply because July 27th is just around the corner! If you'd rather send a check or money order you can mail it to:

Sarah Brewer
305 3rd Ave SW
Ephrata, WA 98823

Mail

I got my first letter from Nayeling, my Compassion correspondence child, today!!

Compassion Sunday Epilogue

I was so blessed to get interview two wonderful Compassion Sponsors about the experience as sponsors for my Compassion Sunday 2011 presentation. Unfortunately, time constraints made it so I could only show a tine portion of the interview. This broke my heart because I was so blessed by the things they said.

Thankfully I now have the opportunity to share with you the long version of my interview with my good friend, Rachel Dowd, about her experience sponsoring Diego Jean Baptiste.

Rachel blogs at Keep it Simple about being a woman of God, being a godly mother and wife, thrifting, crafting and pretty much anything else you could possibly be interested in!

Thanks again, Rachel!

This is my original Compassion Sunday 2011 video 

(stock video provided by Compassion).

Hey! Hey! I know that guy!

I was zipping through my 300+ unread updates on Google Reader today and paused to read the Compassion Blog.

I don't pause enough...

Today's post was about churches going beyond the typical short-term mission model to partner with churches in developing nations long-term. Thirty seconds later I had a full-on Buddy the Elf moment...

"When U.S. pastor Joe Wittwer visted Iglesia Elim in Armenia, El Salvador--"

Wait, what?  Hey...hey! I know that guy!

They even had a picture...

Hi Joe!

Joe Witter pastors Life Center Foursquare Church in Spokane, a church that gets big love from this girl and not only because they partner with a Child Development Center in El Salvador.

The Church 2 Church program that Life Center has implemented encourages churches to go beyond what Compassion calls a "love them and leave them," relationship and commit to building a permanent bridge between two congregations. This embodies the heart of Ephesians 2:19 beautifully,

"So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God."

I'm excited to see what happens as more churches adopt this model.

Read the rest of the post on Compassion's blog here or you can read the original article at LeadershipJournal.net.

Best Tweet of the Day! (World Malaria Day)

"Team Coco Gets Behind World Malaria Day [VIDEO] - http://on.mash.to/fxBVEg"  (twitter.com/mashable)

I love those moments when reality is suspended and my life converges in this way. I love when people I want to love because they're funny make me love them because they have heart. Honestly, no matter where you're coming from, regardless of your personal beliefs, there are some things that nearly everyone on the planet can get behind.

Things like saving a child's life...for $10.00.

This is why I love philanthropy and humanitarianism, it breaks down the walls that we so faithfully put up though, in reality, there is nothing that should break down more walls than the good news that "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief "(1 Tim 1:15).

But until the day that we really believe that the ground is, indeed, level at the foot of the cross, days like today feel good.

Read more about Compassion International's (year-round) work to combat Malaria through their Bite Back campaign.

World Malaria Day 2011 - It's Okay to Get Angry (but do something!)

photo: Compassion Internationl

Newton's Third Law of Social Change: Reacting Forces

So over the past two days I've been talking about physics.

Yeah, it was a surprise to me too.

Actually I was talking about how Isaac Newton's First Law: Balanced Forces and Second Law: F=MA bizarrely applied to our approach toward social change, specifically how it is a bad idea to set out to change the world.

Please don't change the channel, I don't mean that change isn't possible, I just mean that oversimplifying complex world problems is one of the major reasons we get so discouraged so easily.

The First Law shows how, in order to combat such problems, we have to match the forces perpetuating them. The Second Law shows impossibly powerful those forces are. Now I want to talk about the Third Law...

Newton's Third Law: Reactive Forces

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

That means that, every time you exert force, that exertion will have a negative reaction somewhere else. You can't push on something unless you have something to push against, does that make sense? This means that if you are fighting to end world hunger, you might be bracing yourself against environmental responsibility. Every action has a cost, and equal opposite reaction.

If we can revisit the idea of apathy (remember apathy isn't neutral, it is a force against change), if you ask an individual to care about something, care enough to do something, then that has an equal, negative reaction somewhere else in that person's life.

You're not just asking them to care more about something, you asking them to care less about something else.

Did you ever do that team building exercise where everyone stands in a single file line forming a tight circle and then simultaneously sits down? The idea is that you are all sitting on the lap of the person behind you and, thus, everyone is supporting everyone else.

It's a picture of humanity perfectly balanced.

Well, if you've ever done that exercise, it requires full participation of every person, absolute trust, and the assumption that you don't think the person behind you is icky. When you start talking about this kind of worldwide cooperation, you move solidly into the world of idealistic impossibility.

Again, I don't say this to discourage taking action against social injustices, I say this to remind you and myself to focus. Remember that saying about how you eat an elephant (one bite at a time)? Well, when you take a bite, you don't think about how much you have to go, you think about chewing.

Focus on the achievable (...but it's okay to dream about the impossible).

If you're looking for an opportunity to do something immediate, achievable, yet incredibly powerful, consider rescuing a child from poverty through Compassion International. Yes, this is a shameless plug for Compassion, but  I wouldn't be talking about any of this if I didn't believe in what they do.

Newton's Second Law of Social Change: F=MA

On Friday, I suggested that we can't set out to solve world problems, that the problems are just too big.

Hopefully, if you read that post or what I posted yesterday, you realized that I don't mean trying to be a force for change. It just means the task is too great for you individually.

For some sick reason this began to make to sense to me through Newton's Laws of Motion.

Yesterday I posted Newton's First Law of Social Change: Balanced Forces, today I'd like to talk about the second law.

Newton's Second Law: F=MA

The Force of an object is the product of its Mass (weight/size) and Acceleration (speed over time)

Yesterday, I talked about the need to overcome the forces perpetuating problems like hunger and genocide, this second post is about the size of those forces.

To get a very simplified idea of strength of this force: if you could take the number of hungry people in the world (mass) and multiply it by all factors contributing to starvation and how quickly they are strengthening (acceleration), that would be the size of the force you needed to "end hunger."

That is an impossible task for you to do.

So what can you do? What can I do? 

First, don't take on an impossible, abstract task like ending poverty, you will only be discouraged and maybe even give up. Find something real that you can do and commit to doing it.

Second, find something real that you already believe in. 

• If you care about women's rights, stand up for the rights of a woman sold into prostitution. 
• If you believe that no one should go hungry, hold a food drive to benefit your food bank or help teach a man in poverty to farm. 
• If you love coffee, drink coffee and do good! 

Find something that speaks to your heart and listen to it.

Third, keep doing it. This ties directly back to the first thing. Find something you can do, not something you wish you could do, and keep doing it.

While sending money to an organization fighting for a cause is great, if you want to really be compassionate for the needy, invite them into your world. That may be reaching out not only to the desperate poor in Sierra Leone but also to the poor in your city or neighborhood. There is nothing more real than breathing the same air as forgotten person you have chosen to love.

Another way to "bring someone into your world" is by sponsoring a child in poverty through and organization like Compassion International. When you sponsor a child you not only send money to save their life, but you commit to being part of their life and letting them be part of yours.