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.

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).

The Hole in Our Gospel: Don't Give Up

I was reading through The Hole in Our Gospel for this mythical review that I am doing and was struck by a particular story.

In this story, a man is walking down a beach that is  covered with starfish that had been washed ashore during a recent storm. Unable to get back into the water, these thousands of starfish would all, inevitably, die. As the man ponders the tragedy of the death of the starfish, he sees another man walking down the same beach picking up starfish, one by one, and throwing them back into the water.

"What are you doing?" I yelled.
"Saving the starfish," he replied.
"But don't you see, man, that there are tens of thousands of them?" I asked, incredulous. "Nothing you can do will make a difference."
He did not answer me but instead bent down, picked up another starfish, and cast it back into the water. Then he smiled, looked me in the eye, and said, "It made a difference to that one!"

This story is mean to illustrate a common problem we face when dealing with the poverty or any other social issue. We are so overwhelmed by the size of the problem that we are too discouraged to take even the smallest steps.

This is an idea that you have probably heard before, it has been said in one way or another by many wise people:

"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do."
Helen Keller

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."Leo Tolstoy

"I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water creating many ripples"Mother Theresa

"The best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time" 
African proverb

Inspirational quotes are candy to me, I feed on this stuff. But, even after hearing quotes such as these, though we (I) may begin do do the "small things," we (I) still quickly become discouraged.

See, even though we know we're only doing a small thing, we still expect to see big change. While taking the small steps does matter, it is simply not going to have a visible effect on the bigger issue. What we don't realize is that, when we set out to save the world, it is not necessarily going to cooperate.

This is why we cannot (personally) set out to change worldwide problems.

What? What kind of defeatist attitude is that?

Well though I have the heart of an idealist, I have the body of a pragmatist. It's a marvelous inspirational goal to envision world change, but when it comes down to actually do the work to change the world, you have to be a realist, otherwise you will be too discouraged to do the work.

We may know in some corner of our idealist heart that the little thing we are doing can, when taken collectively, change the world, but to find the drive to keep going while we're actually doing the little thing, we have to keep our eyes on something closer, something real.

Tuck that ideal away in your heart. Write it down. Frame it and put it on your wall. But keep something real, something attainable always in front of your eyes.

This is one of the major reasons that I advocate child sponsorship, it is one of the realest "little" things you can do to change the world.

By sponsoring a child, you are, quite literally, saving a life. You can see the effects of it immediately and it gives you the drive to keep doing it. Instead of investing time, money, heart, and effort into an impossible problem: ending world hunger, you are ending the hunger of one person. One child.

That's very real. And, yes, it changes the world.

TOMS: A Day Without Shoes

My feet are famous!

It is one thing to post something online or to say that something is a good idea, but it's something quite different to do it. I'm embarrassed by how hard this was! All it cost was a bit of my pride and warm feet, how easy is that?

Apparently, for me, not very.

I'm Not a Snob...Really.

I am, however, a thoroughgoing geek in many, many ways.

I'm also one of those irritating people who latch on to a subculture and try to worm their way into it with the aid of wikipedia and You Tube videos, so I will confess on the outset that I'm an outsider here.

But I love coffee.

Okay, so what? We all love coffee. Well I love the social institution of coffee, I love what it represents and how it transcends culture. You want to talk about a global village? It is a crowd of very different people, with different values, wearing different clothing, talking about different things in different languages... all drinking coffee.

We love our coffee. In fact, most of us really don't pay a whole lot of attention to what it is we're drinking. But, as with any industry, there is a vast world which exists prior to us scooping it off the shelf or placing our order. This world, I believe, is of particular significance because it is not happening in an R&D lab or a boardroom in some sky rise. It does not exists in a factory in China or a mine in Chicago. It is on a farm in Ethiopia or Costa Rica. And farming means people.

Granted, when we talk about farming today, we're not talking about Almanzo Wilder planting corn with Pa, we're talking about state of the art hybrid-fuel combine's with GPS navigation.

However, coffee is a little different, for two reasons. First of all, coffee is one of the primary exports in many developing nations and the truth is that most coffee farmers in the world simply don't have access to this kind of technology. Human labor is much cheaper and is also abundantly available. Secondly, coffee is a finicky little fruit. Quality arabica coffee doesn't fare well in the jaws of a mechanical harvester, quality coffee is harvested by hand.

I want to talk to you about the hands picking those coffee cherries.




If you've ever spent a summer picking fruit, you know it's not a very glamorous job and it doesn't pay very well. There's also not a lot of upward mobility for farm laborers. The most they can hope for is to own their own small farm someday and even that is out of reach for most.

Quite a jump to the guy listening to his ipod, drinking a cappuccino in the cafe down the street. But, through the magic of international news and information and passionate advocacy groups, that world is getting much closer to us. Thus there's a lot of buzz these days about "fair trade" coffee.

Fair Trade is a great idea. It is important that we are aware, as we sip our steaming cup of Sumatra, that there is a coffee farmer in Indonesia who will work very hard today to earn even half of what we paid for that one cup of coffee. It's important that organizations like the International Coffee Organization work passionately to advocate for coffee farmers.

Because they are people.



Marketers for coffee roasters love to write about the volcanic mountains from which their beans were "hand-picked." They love talking about Costa Rican culture, the history the coffee industry in Kenya or the Ethiopian royalty who used to drink it. You can't help but smile as they paint pictures of the sun rising over misty orchards while elephants and giraffes lumber exotically by.

The trouble is that rarely are farmers getting credit for the marketing hype printed on that bag of coffee. That $12 one-pound bag of coffee very likely sold for less than $1. Even "Fair Trade" coffee.

Now, I can't pretend to understand the coffee market or all of the elements that affect the farmer-roaster-distributor relationship, I'm just a girl who loves coffee and knows how to google. But I can tell you that these things do matter.

Because they are people



 They matter because it is not okay for me to enjoy luxury that barely sustains the life of another human. Just because we are a world away (both literally and figuratively) does not mean we are not responsible for how our consuming habits affect these farmers. Forgive me for the comparison, but just because we don't own a plantation doesn't mean we're not benefiting from glorified slave labor.

However, I would not advocate just going out and buying a bag of Fair Trade coffee and feeling better about yourself because, like I said, Fair Trade is a relative term.

I am advocating caring.

I mean caring enough to really look at where your coffee is coming from, to ask questions and do research. I am advocating supporting organizations that demonstrate a real love for the people growing coffee. Two organizations that I avidly recommend are Land of 1000 Hills Coffee and the One Cup Project. These are two small, Christian, on-the-ground organizations that I believe really put their money where their mouth is.

Land of 1000 Hills supports two farming cooperatives in Rwanda and are in the process of starting one up in Haiti (!!!). For $27 a month you can get two 12-oz bags of fresh roasted Rwandan coffees of your choice in your mailbox (I recommend the Rwandan Medium Roast).

The One Cup Project is an affiliate of Silver Cup Coffee. For every $11 12-oz bag of coffee you buy, One Cup donates $2 to World Vision and, through fund-matching grands from USAID, Care and Land O'Lakes, $11 is generated to fund several projects in Zambia.

These are just two of many options for you. From small socially-conscious coffee shops to specialty blends from major coffee roasters, there are many people out there dedicated to truly giving a fair trade to the people growing the coffee that we enjoy. I urge you to look into what is available to you. Ask the owner of your coffee shop where their coffee comes from, call the roaster but, most of all, follow the money!

If you happen to be in the area, stop by and I'll make you a cup of the yummiest, socially-conscious, Rwandan french-press you've ever had.

--Sarah Elizabeth

Why We Hate the Poor

"The poor man is hated even by his neighbor but the rich man has many friends."
Proverbs 14:20

"What do you mean, we 'hate the poor?' We don't hate the poor; we're Christians, we wrote the book on this stuff!" It is true that Christians, more than many, have an intense awareness of poverty and feel a greater social obligation to help the poor, Ghandi notwithstanding. But there is a big difference between helping the poor and loving the poor.

In fact, part of the reason that giving to charity feels so good is that it reaffirms our distance from poverty. We prove that we are not poor by giving to them out of our wealth. The last thing we want to do is jump into the squalor and live with them. The last thing we want to do is identify with the poor man.

Now, hate is a very strong word, one we like to put on par with words like "murder," and rightfully so:

 "Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." 1 John 3:4.

But, consider for a moment the way we view poverty. This issue is not quite so simple as giving to charity or feeling bad for the dying children in Uganda. It is not so simple as voting a particular way. This hate is much more insidious, its roots go deep into our humanity and is closely tied to what we believe to be true about God's role in pain and suffering.

When we see an individual living in squalor, we are intensely uncomfortable; our instinct is to run away. We try desperately to find a reason for their situation: they didn't work hard enough, they picked a bad industry, they made bad decisions, they aren't willing to work beneath themselves, they like getting unemployment or welfare. Or we explain what we would do differently in that situation. Or we simply try to think about it as little as possible, anything to distance their existence from our own. To prove to ourselves that we could never be in that same position.

There's a story we love to forget in John 9 when Jesus and his disciples encounter a man who had been blind his entire life. The disciples asked Jesus whether it was for his own sins or the sins of his parents that he had been so cursed with this disability. Jesus rocked their world with his response: 

"It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." John 9:3-5

We see the same thing in the story of Job. Job's friends saw his death-defying plunge from a place of wealth, blessing, and honor to sitting in the dust scraping his sores with a shard of broken pottery. They could not bear the idea that God would do this to a good man, so they turned on Job and tormented him with their ignorant piety. They turned him into a bad man so they could deal with the pain, poverty, and suffering in his life.

But Jesus doesn't let them off the hook, "Not so fast!" He says, "This guy isn't blind because he's a sinner, He's blind because I chose to make him blind." He then explains that there is something greater than this man's plight at work here. He pulls the focus off of the blind man and says, "This here? This is about ME." 

By making suffering His own action rather than a reaction to something we've done, he takes control away from us and puts us all on the same level. And that's a scary thing. But until we can freely acknowledge that God has absolute control in our lives and in the lives of those around us, we cannot experience Him fully. We are trapped by our own fear in a static, legalistic existence and can never truly experience His grace.

We elevate to sainthood those who have chosen to suffer and die for the sake of the Gospel. Foxe's Book of Martyrs is just a tiny fraction of the more famous martyrs and those stories alone are overwhelming. But what about those who, like this man, never made that choice? We may be able to shake off a bit of the discomfort by saying that he, no doubt, was a sinner and was able to understand the amazing miracle that had taken place in his life.

But what about the children born into poverty who are never given the knowledge or the resources to overcome their circumstances?  What about the babies dying of AIDS? What about the millions of broken men and women who have been afflicted with poverty, pain, and disease who, instead of experiencing healing and rejoicing in the glory of God manifested in their life, turn their backs on Him?

These are the kinds of questions that make us squirm when non-Christians ask them. These are the questions we don't particularly like to ask when we are Christians. We like to respond with affirmations of God's goodness and omniscience, but it is not good enough to shrug off the discomfort and move on, God doesn't let us off the hook so easily. God is not satisfied with that, He wants use to jump headlong into that frightening place where things simply do not make sense...

...and to stay there.

So what happens when, instead of blaming the poor for their poverty, ignoring the problem, instead of making our monthly donation we hang out with them in their poverty? What happens when we take that burden of suffering, doubt, confusion, and frustration upon ourselves?

It changes us.

Don't think so? Ask Richard Stearns about what hanging out in that place did to him. Ask my friend Dan Merchant. Ask that guy who just got back from two weeks in Haiti. "Helping the poor" doesn't change their world so much as it changes ours.

Like the first week (or month) of Calculus when you want to quit because nothing makes sense, like the 10 minutes (or 30 minutes) of a 5k, this is not a fun time. It does not make it easier that you don't suddenly wake up one day understanding everything. But painful experience by painful experience, choice by choice, you come to a better understanding of the character of God. It never makes complete sense, but as you spend time with people in their difficulty, as you see the grace of God pushing impossibly through the pain, disease, and poverty, you slowly come to a place you've never seen before; a place where God's grace and love and justice is entirely fresh and new. Its a tedious, painful, messy, beautiful path and but there is no other path to that place.

God lays the suffering at our door and says, "Look! This is the reality and, yes, I could have prevented it. Now what are you doing to do about it? Are you going to try to explain away the reality of suffering? Are you doing to close your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears? Maybe throw some money or condolences at it while you slam the door? OR will you get down into the dust and help this guy scrape his sores? Will you let him ooze all over your couch? Will you acknowledge that you and he are the same in my eyes?"

"Will you let me teach you something new about my grace?"

Don't hate the poor because you are afraid. Don't sit in your affluence (or sufficiency!) and pray desperately that God will preserve it. Don't just write your check and try to forget. Open your eyes and your arms and let God teach you something new.

For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, 'You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.' Deut 15:11

Gift a gift that lasts this Christmas from Compassion International or World Vision but don't stop there. Start a tedious, painful, messy, beautiful journey into God's grace.

A Better Use for Used Textbooks

Hey College Students!

If you are like me, you dread the quarterly trip to the bookstore to sell back your textbooks about as much as your A&P final (Ha! Joke's on you, I never took A&P!). Nothing is quite like the queasy, burning feeling you get in your stomach when the clerk hands you $50 for a $300 textbook that will probably be resold for 3 times the buy-back price (and which will likely be "outdated" within a year or two). I get so angry about this systematic ripping-off of starving college students and the cumulative waste of it all, that I actually have about 5 textbooks collecting dust in my basement because I didn't want to be part of their scam. But don't get me started on the overly cozy relationship between our great halls of collegiate education and the textbook publishing houses.

( ^I paid $280 bucks for this baby and they released a new edition the next year!)

"HaHA, take THAT Big Bend! You can take your $20 and stuff it! I'm going to KEEP my utterly useless textbook!" 

In any case, the good news is you now have what is, in my opinion, a FAR more rewarding option.  Books For Africa is a registered 501(3)(c) non profit organization that will take your used text books and ship them to students in Africa (surprise, surprise). They recieved a four star rating (the highest possible) from Charity Navigator and all of their financial information is available online.

The bad news is that this organization is based out of Minnesota so, unless you happen to live near St. Paul, you're going to have to pay to mail your book donations which can get a little spendy. Before you say, "Forget that! Remember the part where I'm a college student?" hear me out.

You've already invested $100-$300 on one or more textbooks that are fairly useless to you now. That $300? That's a wash, a "sunk cost" if I remember ECON 101 correctly. You may be able to get back $50 (which is pathetic but, hey its better than nothing, right?) which cuts your loss down to $250. Now, if you donate those books to a student in Africa, you are back down to your original losses and may even have to invest more of your precious resources (say 15 packs of top ramen or 133 prints at the library). BUT, they are worth FAR more than $20, $50 or even $300 to the many African students who will be able to use that textbook, for more than one year, I might add (What is it they say about scarcity and choice? Economics students, help me out here).

Okay now that I've exposed my dismally poor grasp on economics, let me try another tack. It feels good to do good. It feels good to make something precious out of something useless. It's Christmas (I suppose that was three other tacks...). It doesn't cost much and it is a good thing.

If this doesn't appeal to you, there are many other options out there. Check out the International Book Bank or Better World Books; a whole list of options is available here. See if your university bookstore already partners with any book banks and, if not, if they are willing to do so. These are incredibly easy ways to make a big impact with your "useless" textbooks and get more out of them than the $50 you can get by just selling them back.

Then you can feel good about joining me in sticking it to the Man.