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.

Knowledge and Love

I had a bit of a painful wake-up call recently. I was talking to someone (someone who loves me) and they said in an off-handed kind of way, “I know you hate stupid people.”

Ouch.

Do I really hate stupid people? Perhaps I do, and that’s bad enough itself, but of greater concern to me is the implication behind this sentence:  I make people feel stupid.

I don’t want to make people feel stupid, that’s not my heart.

Let me explain. See, I’m a universal sort of geek. It doesn’t really matter what the topic is: coffee or quantum physics; movies or economics, I would love to know everything about it. It has been incredibly difficult to accept that I actually cannot know everything about everything. It sounds like a joke, but it's true. I really would know everything if I could. I am perhaps not as interested in the Korean War or hydraulic engineering as I am in some other things but, if I had the time, I’d learn about them too. 

My preoccupation with knowledge has been no end of frustration to me. While I do believe that knowledge is a very good thing, what about those times when my drive to know and learn shakes my faith? What about those times when my pursuit of knowledge knocks people over?

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:1-2

As I considered the possibility that I “hate stupid people,” I recalled jokes and comments about me: how much I like to talk, how I like to argue, how I like to pick up bits of trivia, and I realized that, when describing me, rather than saying, “Sarah really loves people,” people are more likely to say, “Sarah likes to be right.”


I vividly remember a conversation I had with a friend of mine when he asked me what I wanted my legacy to be, how I wanted to be remembered. I thought about it and I said, “I want people to know that I loved, that I loved them and I loved others.

I can’t tell you how much this saddens me because I really do have a deep love for people in my heart. But the trouble is, if the people in my life do not know how much I love them, if I do not show that in my actions then it really doesn’t mean a whole lot.

“Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” 1 John 3:18

"...knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." 1 Corinthians 8:1

“In the multitude of words sin is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is wise.” Proverbs 10:19

I’ve always referred to these verses in a joking kind of way, I even called Proverbs 10:19, my “life verse” for a while. But, in truth, I kind of hate them. God has given me an inquisitive sort of mind and I have no doubt there is a reason for that, but this is all useless, completely pointless if I do not truly, (madly) deeply love people or build them up.


I like knowledge, I like talking; these are the things I’m good at, my gifts. I can't just turn them off. Meekness and humility are as foreign to me as eating grass or flying; it seems that I’d have to be reborn as a cow or a bird to possess them.


But the secret part of my heart longs for these things because I know they are the better part. I know there is no higher calling than to lift other people up. Maybe the reason I know this is I can see how knowledge can be used to hurt and to tear down.

Have you noticed how often God uses the wrong person for the job?

He used a stuttering murderer to save the Jews from Pharaoh and a Pharisee to preach freedom from the law, why not lift up the down-trodden with an insecure, self-centered girl with an addiction to being right? It fits.

As I’m down here in my little puddle of self-disappointment may I ask you, what do you want your legacy to be? Do you feel like you are living it today? What obstacles are in your way?

I’d love to pray for you as you pray for me. Let’s learn to love together, yes?

To Write Love on Her Arms: Fears vs Dreams

To Write Love on Her Arms is one of those organize that never fails to inspire me, today I hope they inspire you too.

I was talking to one of my friends recently about the idea of using videos to share stories. The goal of this being to show both variety and unity in our stories: we're all utterly unique in our stories yet, paradoxically, have a profound unity. I suspect that divisions and misunderstandings are at the heart of hate, pain, fear, apathy, malice, envy, etc. and that these feelings unravel when you understand someone; it's easier to hate a stranger than a friend.

Beyond just being a nice idea, I think there is something vital buried in this knowledge, not just an acknowledgement but a real experiential knowledge. The rare kind that comes after you've taken off your protective gloves, after you take the time to really understand someone, after you've earned their trust enough for them to reveal the deepest parts of their spirit. This is so much more than tolerance, it's not about festivals and parades. It's a person in your life who deserves your love and understanding.

Even as I shared this with my friend, I had trouble explaining it, I still do, and it sank to the back of my mind amid other projects until I saw this video by TWLOHA as part of their Fear vs Dreams campaign. And it all clicked: "Oh, that's what I was trying to say."

He himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation

Ephesians 2:14

Fears vs Dreams Road Trip. from To Write Love on Her Arms. on Vimeo.

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

Loving with gloves on

Every Christian knows that you are not called to hate sinners but to hate sin. We will even claim that we actually do not actually hate sinners but love them and want them to be free from their sin.

And every sinner in the world thinks that this is a joke.

Do you want to know why? Because we don't love them.

We don't care about their life, we don't care about their story or their pain. We only care about what it will take to get them onto our team. Once they are a Christian, we think, then we can care about them. Caring about them now will just encourage them to stay in their sin.

Isn't that what we've learned? Isn't that what we've feared? If we accept someone in the middle of their sins, they will not have a reason to change; we can't validate a sinful lifestyle.

Friends, this is a lie.

"For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:6-8 ESV

That death was not conditional, God didn't wait for us to come over to his side before He adopted us. He chose "the right time," and then He just did it. Moreover, He got impossibly intimate with our sin by putting on our own skin.

If I would love another person like Jesus, that means extending my love to them, without condition, and then holding it there until they take it. It also means no longer being afraid to love people.

As Christians, we can find ourselves in a perfect storm of fear. We are offended by sin, we are outraged by it, but, most of all, we are afraid we're going to be caught doing it. At the same time we are often afraid to actually tell people that they are sinners. These combine to create this wall of fear, denial, and hypocrisy that effectively separates us from the people we are supposed to love.

Essentially, we try to find a way to love people without having anything to do with them. Our love becomes political rhetoric, meaningless platitudes that sound inspired but fall flat. It's safe love, the kind of love that covers both our Christian obligations and our righteous backsides.

The kind of love that isn't really love at all.

In effect, we try to love people without getting their sin all over us and without making them mad. I picture a man gingerly handling a poisonous snake or an anthrax filled pipe bomb.

We are loving with gloves on.

Camp Showers and What I Learned in the Woods

This weekend I was looking for a Walden experience, to clear out the chaos and "front only the essential facts of life." For a technology/social addict like myself, that necessarily meant unplugging, going into zero-bar territory, and looking at some trees.

So, early Saturday morning, I loaded my kindle with The Practice of the Presence of God the Best Rule of a Holy Life by Brother Lawrence and The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine by A.W. Tozer; packed my Sentra with my little Coleman 4-man, a sleeping bag, a notebook, my EasyMac and 4 gallons of water; and headed up to a free campsite that I found on Boondocking.org.

View Larger Map

Nothing special. I wasn't looking for a "camping experience" I was just looking for a cheap place to sit for a few days and spend some time reading and praying. The campsite above was perfect because it was free and, because it is a "primitive" or undeveloped site, it wasn't very crowded. "Primitive" means that the facilities aren't really maintained which actually means there are no toilets. The lack of a potty was unsettling, but I figured I could make it work.

I'm a fairly hardy girl, so I like to think, I'm not afraid to go out into the woods by myself for a few days, I even climb rocks on occasion. In the past, I've written off my many complaints with camping or other outdoor sports as an acceptable amount for the average civilized human. But I finally had to admit this weekend that I'm really not much for roughing it. I don't like sleeping on the ground, I don't like being cold, I don't think it's magical to wake up at 4 a.m. I don't like smelling like campfire smoke, I don't like being dirty and I love indoor plumbing.

This may throw a wrench into my van-gypsy plans.

But, the good news is that, of the things I learned this weekend, my tenderfootedness doesn't even make the top ten. I learned so many things that I need another weekend to sort through them all, preferably one including a cot and a flush toilet.

I learned that God is love, no really He actually is love, and love is God.
I learned that, even though we cannot please God without faith, without love, faith means nothing.
I learned that God loves people, and he makes a way for them to come to him.
I learned that God's glory shows up in surprising places, like sinners.
I learned that people are not black and white and, sometimes, God doesn't make sense. And that's good.
I learned that, when we see God, it changes us irrevocably.
I learned that we were made in His image and, if you really look, you can see His mark on everyone. Yes, everyone.
I learned that we cannot evaluate life through snapshots, because the moment we freeze it, it has changed.

And many more, not the least of which is that God actually likes me. He likes all 5 feet 7 inches of tenderfooted, prideful, chaotic, broken, conflicted, desperate Me.

And because He loves me, I'm not even going to feel bad that I snuck into a state park without a permit to use the coin-operated shower.

Storytellers

It's been quiet around here but not because nothing is happening. I'm so excited for the next few months, there are so many things stirring up that I'm very excited to share. But, by way of a prologue, I want to send some love to some people I think are very cool.

I love stories, so much I forget that I'm not in them. In many ways, fiction is my narcotic. It elevates my existence to something beyond my own life, and makes me feel like I'm part of something amazing. But, to be honest, real-life stories have often scared me. Real-life stories are uncensored and cannot be closed up like a book. Real-life stories have a nasty habit of leaking their contents onto your hands as you read them.

But I've realized that the beautiful thing about real-life stories is that you can be part of them. They elevate you beyond your own existence and, even better, they don't end. It's a frightening, frustrating, and exhausting experience but it's real and undeniably beautiful.

I've since fallen in love with real-life stories and those who tell them.

A few years ago, one of my good friends shared a group with me called To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA). I'll let them tell you about themselves because they can do a better job than I can but I'll share just a tiny bit here:

To Write Love on Her Arms was, appropriately the title of a real person's story. Her name is Renee and she was on her way to being a tragedy when some friends stepped in the middle of her scary story filled with addiction, depression, self-mutilation and suicide and didn't run away. Instead they decided to write a different story with her. Then they shared her story with the world.

The movement is ridiculously simple and heartbreakingly impossible: to walk into someone's story and to tell them they are not alone and that they matter, to not be afraid of the mess, the pain, and the darkness, to stay with them and to write love on their arms.

Denny Kolsch's is one more of the many stories TWLOHA has told since then.

"All of those broken pieces of my past [are] connected to this bigger story. It's not this black and white: "I was to be an addict and now I'm clean." Everyday it's a struggle at some level. But I'm able to do it because of the people around me. Because of my community, all of the people around me that I love and that love me, I'm able to live."

You Can't Always Get What you Want

"...but if you try, sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need."

I recently had a conversation with a wonderful woman that took an unexpected turn.


I love women. I love the fellowship of sisters in Christ; It's one of the most beautiful things about the church. This woman is someone I've known and admired since I was 12 years old. Even so we've never really been personal friends. 

So honestly, when I discovered she was involved in a program through her church with Compassion International that I wanted to know more about, I was secretly excited to have an excuse to just hang out with her.

I met her at the church after months of email-tag. We sat on a couch in the foyer and she asked, "So, what did you want to know?"

I had hastily pulled together some relevant questions about the church partnership and her involvement, but, without my permission, the conversation quickly turned personal. I found myself pouring out the tale of my confusing meandering journey to find my place in God's kingdom. My emotional and spiritual struggles. She  the story of being the answer to the prayers of a woman in El Salvador. Of experiencing death, illness, fear and God's amazing faithfulness. She encouraged me in my study of the bible with an enthusiasm that sparkled with genuine delight in God's word.


I tried a few times to pull the conversation back to the ministry I had been curious about, but I realized as the conversation kept turning back to my personal struggles and desires in my own relationship, that God doesn't allow us to step into a vacuum when we put on our ministry hat.


I admit am uncomfortable with that. I would rather put on my ministry persona and take it off when I go home. I would rather not have ministry bleed into "my" time, draw on my emotions, or highlight my personal weaknesses. But that's not the way it works. 

God exists in relationships, not in projects, and relationships require personal contact. Ministry is as personal as your own body; you touch people with your own skin and occasionally catch their diseases. People see parts of you that you want to hide and their pain becomes your pain. It is a costly thing to serve others as Jesus did because things get personal.

But the beautiful thing is that, difficult as they are, relationships are God's workspace. Despite losing control of the conversation, I was wonderfully blessed that day; I grew in my relationship with my friend, I was able to be loving to her, and she encouraged me so much more than I could have hoped.



I walked away from that conversation knowing that it was not what I wanted but it was exactly what I needed.

Bearing with one another

I'm revisiting an older post today...it's a little on the long side

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Pain is always hard, even (or perhaps especially) when its not our own. There are no easy answers, and there are no quick solutions. This is a hard truth to accept and even harder to communicate. The best words to say are not always clear but perhaps the worst thing we can do is give a glib or pat answer to a person who is suffering through a pain we are not experiencing. This is complicated still further when the words that we believe to be so full of comfort fail to actually bring comfort.

The trouble is that the truths that give us so much assurance and comfort during times of peace are clogged and clouded by the emotional pain and confusion that comes during an actual trial. You may read a scripture and see that God promises beauty for ashes and joy with the morning. While this promise is true, you have to remember that hope is so much harder to see when you’re actually in the ashes. The tear-filled night is the longest when you’re desperately wishing for the morning.

So what do we do after we’ve read the bible truths and the fire is still raging? Do we just say them all over again? Paul gives us some insight:

“I…beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love,” Ephesians 4:2

Listen to the characteristics he uses here: lowliness, gentleness, longsuffering, and, above all, bearing with one another in love. If we are to be worthy of the calling of Christ, we absolutely must demonstrate humility, gentleness, and patience to one another in all situations. This concept is mentioned again:

“bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” Galatians 6:1 

Now we exhort you, brethren, warn those who are unruly, comfort the fainthearted, uphold the weak, be patient with all. 1 Thess 5:4

How often do we barge into the midst of a trial that is not ours, the weight of which we have not borne, expecting to offer a miracle cure for the pain it brings? We confidently extend the promises of God like a lifeline and are puzzled when the pain continues. Sadly, that horrible impotent feeling we experience as bystanders can lead us to vent our frustrations on the one we were just trying to comfort. “Fine then!” we throw up our hands in defeat, “You refuse to be comforted, so you just sit there and whine about it!”

It is so much easier to rattle off a scripture than it is to bear with your brother or sister in the midst of their pain. I believe the truth is not that they refuse be comforted but that we cannot bear the pain so we abandon them. But “love suffers long and is kind…” (1 Corinthians 13:4).

Tossing out scriptures, as if they possess a magical power to dissolve the pain of a difficult situation, is immature and, in truth, lazy. Words don't help the pain, that comfort comes directly from the Spirit of God and we can't control Him and we can't make promises that He'll behave a certain way.

Do speak truth. Do seek the scriptures for hope and promises and extend that hope to the suffering. But we are not given permission to stop there, don't throw out the promises and leave your brother alone in his ashes. Sit with him, weep with him, and watch for the morning together.

One Verse I Don't Like

Occasionally (frequently) I crash into passages of the bible that drive me crazy; the kind of verses that make me think that God was really confused when He wrote the bible. They just don't settle or make sense in my mind and I really am not very good at letting go in those situations. I'm revisiting one of those instances this morning.

This is an excerpt from Perfect Love, posted October, 2010.

Last night our young adult group discussed 1 John 4, marvelous. I did get a bit "hung up," as it were, on verse 7, of all verses: 

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God." 

Why this verse? Well, our discussion of the chapter led us to question what it means that "everyone who loves" is born of God and knows Him. What does it mean to love? Does that mean that every time someone experiences love, they experience God in some way? Does it mean they take part in God without even accepting Him? What does it mean to be born of God and know Him, for that matter? 

I admit, I had a pretty strong reaction to the idea that you could truly love without the power of the Holy Spirit. Fortunately I was having this discussion with a bunch of mothers, so they shut that down pretty quickly, "Silly little well-rested and unfettered girl, you know nothing of love!" 

Okay, of course I'm joking. I doubt any of my friends even thought that, or if they did, I'm sure they felt bad for it. But in any case, it does illustrate a good point: people can seem to demonstrate and recognize love even before they accept the work of God's Spirit in their lives. Surely a man can recognize the evidence of God's love even if he doesn't know God. 

Still the struggle remained for me; I knew that nothing good can come of the flesh. The only good we do comes by the power of God (Gal 2:20). I still rejected the idea that we can, in our weakness, even come close to showing the love of God without His intervention. 

The argument was then made that perhaps we love as a reflection of God's love but we can't experience, know, or express the love of God on our own. We can experience feelings of a type if love and express loving things. 

While this made sense, I was uncomfortable with an undefined concept of love. My chaotic brain, like a 3 year old, requires structure and defined boundaries. I was especially uncomfortable that we were taking about a concept of love without defining it biblically. The only love defined here was the love that God exemplifies and that HE perfects in us (read verses 9-19, wow!). What is this "other" love of which you speak? 

This is an ongoing argument going on between the left side of my brain and the right. I'd love to add your voice to the chaos!

Elbow Deep Relationships

"Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some but encouraging one another," Hebrews 1-:24-25

I've been part of an amazing small group over this past year, but as relationships deepen and God continues to work on this area of Trust in my life I'm realizing that the concept of fellowship has been cheapened a bit, at least in my experience, to just mean any social event. Really, fellowship is a deeper interaction, an "elbow-deep" relationship. That kind of relationship involves incredibly trust, faithfulness, vulnerability and real selfless love and it has been a difficult challenge for me. 

Believe me, it is well worth it.

This post originally appeared in September, 2010 as Fellowship: Beyond Potlucks

"You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence." Psalm 90:8

"But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin." 1 John 1:7

"Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed." James 5:16

There is no place in the body of Christ (the collection of His followers) for sin. To be sure, it exists abundantly because we're all sinners, but wherever sin exists in our fellowship, His Spirit is blocked.

This is where a lot of confusion exists in regard to sin and grace. Obviously Christians are still sinners. It is so obvious, in fact, that those who are not Christians become absolutely incensed when they believe a Christian or group of Christians denies this fact.

Forgiveness allows us to become Christians while we are yet sinners, but grace compels us to not remain in our sin. But forgiveness and grace are only effective on sin when it is exposed or "in His light." This requires the most dreaded of words to Christians and nonchristians alike: "confession."

We Protestant Christians get a little touchy when it comes to confession, "why go through a priest when you can go directly to God? I don't need no priest to tell me I'm absolved!" Well maybe, but without the physical act of confession to another human, will you go to God? Will you be able to hear his voice when you're filled with pride or shame? Are we not to bear each others burdens?

There are no secrets with God (take the book back to Barnes & Noble and ask for your money back). A secret is simply something that remains in darkness and, as we read in 1 John, there is no darkness in Christ. This aversion, this fear of confessing our sins to one another blocks much of the healing that God promises for sin. We may be forgiven in truth but will we truly be able to receive that healing when our sin is still a secret?

Beyond healing, 1 John 1:7 also says that fellowship happens when we walk in the light, His light. I don't see how this is possible without confessing our sins to one another as it says in James 5.

If there is one thing that truly threatens the existence of Christ's church, I believe it is not secular humanism, it is not the theory of evolution, it is not gay marriage, neither is it even sin, it is an inability or outright refusal to confess our sins to one another. Hypocrisy and secret sin are the cancer of His church, a mass of darkness growing secretly deep within the body destroying it from the inside out.

It is not enough that we hang out together on sundays, that we have cookouts, that we have bible studies, thats we pray for our sicknesses, we must walk together in His light, confessing our sins to one another and praying for each other, bearing one another's burdens in Christ. Without this our fellowship is shallow, counterfeit even, and we create a fertile place for hypocrisy.

BUT, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our suns and cleanse us from all unrighteousness!

I lost my Green Card

This from a very long post that I wrote back in 2009 called and i'm proud to be an...american? It was just after President Obama made his infamous "America is not a Christian nation" comment.

The outcry from the Christian community over this comment really unsettled me. The "Christ" by whom we call ourselves "christians" made himself a servant to all men, who healed socially and religiously unclean people, rescued whores from death, shared a table with dishonest and greedy businessmen, and despised the pomp of the prevailing "church" of the day. These are truths we claim but really don't want to demonstrate. When we do, we tend to put ourselves in the position of the holy "God-made-man" rather than the co-sinner that we are. The "God-made-man" persona can cry out against moral decay and wave a sword majestically at the advancing Enemy of secular philosophy.

It does not sit well with me because the people we are swinging the sword at are at are either those who we are called to love in a Christ-model or our own brothers and sisters.

(This was also back when I thought that typing all in lower case made me extra pious.)

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God's church grew from the ground up and this is how it continues to operate. by extension, we do not establish a christian nation by declaring it to be christian but rather by filling it with christians. the christian church grew to an unprecedented and, to date, unrepeated degree under a pagan roman rule and while experiencing intense persecution.


Jesus himself brought his message to people He encountered every day rather than powerful or influential men. He did not further his agenda by obtaining a position of power, but by becoming a servant of all men. Jesus explained this unique approach to the disciples during the last supper,

The kings of the gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority over them are called 'benefactors.' But no so among you; on the contrary, he who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he who governs as he who serves. For who is greater, he who sits at the table, or he who serves? Is it not he who sits at the table? Yet I am among you as the One who serves." luke 22:25-28

even when paul gave testimony to king agrippa in acts 26 he had no political agenda though he did desire that the king himself would know the truth and be converted (vs 29). the bottom line is that we are interested in people, not politics. 

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The good news is that many people are recognizing the distinction between nationalism or even philosophy and faith.

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Phil 3:20

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
Eph 6:12

If our citizenship is in heaven and the battle is in heaven, why is it that the people on earth are the ones bleeding? The freedom we have in Christ comes from an act of self-sacrifice wherein we deny our flesh with its desires, imperfections, and "human rights" and put on perfection by the grace of God. Living after a manner of self-sacrifice puts the good of all people before your own rights. this is what Christ meant when He called Himself a servant. He denied His rights and privileges as God by humbling Himself and allowing Himself to be punished for crimes He did not commit.

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Micah 6:8

And he answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself."
Luke 10:27

I learned that at Vacation Bible School.

If you can stomach my 2,000 word ramblings, check out the original post.

Also, I highly recommend reading Love, Acceptance and Forgiveness: Being Christian in a Non-Christian World by Jerry Cook. It's a wonderful book that addresses these issues and many others much better than I can. You can read my review of it here.

Why God loves Dave, the Emo King

I originally posted this back in December as A Man After God's Own Heart. I've edited it down a bit for you.

Above his fame as The Original Worship Leader, his dramatic ascension to the throne from humble beginnings, and even the painful incident with Bathsheba, David was known as a man after God's own heart (Acts 13:22).


The mystery is, why? What was it about David that made him not only a chosen servant of God but also a man after God’s heart?


Abraham, the Patriarch, was not called a man after God's heart nor was Moses, the giver of the law and perhaps the humblest man in history. The apostle Paul, to whom Jesus himself made a special appearance, who authored even more books of the bible than Moses, who suffered more than any other apostle, was not called a man after God's own heart.


So, why David?


Why, more than any other man, do we associate David with the Messiah? Why was David given so many prophetic words through his music so that it seemed that he felt a foreshadowing of the very pain of our Savior? Why was Jesus called "son of David?"


It certainly was not because he was such a great King. He was the weakest son of a shepherd, a skinny emo poet. He was not particularly dignified (1 Sam 6). It took years for the people to accept David as their leader once he was chosen and even after that he was driven from the throne by his own son (2 Samuel 15). It was not because he was a moral success, his affair with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband, an honorable and courageous soldier, is evidence of his weakness to his own passions. So, again, why would God call him a man after His own heart?


I’ve mused on the meaning that phrase, “a man after God’s own heart,” for a while now. My thoughtless assumption is that David was more like God, than any other and that is why he earned such a title. How could such an inconsistent and moral failure of a man really be described as “like God?”


After much wrestling, I still don’t have a complete understanding of what God meant when he said that, but I think it may be that, simply, David was in pursuit of God’s heart. He was, literally, chasing after God’s heart. Not withholding even his fears and frustrations, David threw his heart and soul upon the Lord. He confesses his love, desires, fears, pain, frustrations, and even his anger to the Lord in a rare display of honesty...and then he published it.

I am weary with my groaning; all night I make my bed swim; I drench my couch with my tears (Ps 6:6)
I am weary with my crying; my throat is dry; my eyes fail while I wait for my God (Ps 69:3)
I spread out my hands to You; my soul longs for You like a thirsty land (Ps 143:6)

David wasn’t a perfect man, he wasn’t even, by our standards, a good man, but he was desperate for God. And this is, I think, the key. He was broken by his sin and couldn’t bear to be separated from God’s heart. His love for God welled up him, making him shameless. He was an unapologetic mess of emotions and passions, but oh how he truly loved his God!


I cannot explain the reasons for pain and brokenness in a way that really makes sense. I can't fathom the reason that God chooses to let us continue in these pots of clay and why He allows his children to dishonor him with our mistakes.


But, for some irrational reason, God loves messy people, he loves the poor in spirit. He loves using foolish people. He loves healing, even the wounds we inflict on ourselves. He loves our honesty. He loves our passion.


And this, my dear messy friends, is a very good thing.

Sarah Elizabeth

Painful grace: As We Forgive the movie

Over the past few days/months/years have been struggling with the idea of God's radical and irrational love and grace for us. That may sound silly, how can grace or love ever be the cause for strife?

Forgiveness involves sin, failure, pride, humility, and selflessness. These are not easy things.
Giving as well as receiving grace can be an intensely difficult, even painful thing and people respond to forgiveness in unpredictable ways. There are times when you will be ridiculed or even chastised for extending love and forgiveness to the undeserving. There will also be times when you will be the one chastising others for forgiving.

Love, grace, forgiveness, and justice. These are not simple matters. But we must believe that love covers a multitude of sins and that our God truly is the father of mercies.

Film is one of my favorite artistic mediums. So I was incredibly excited when I heard about As We Forgive, an independent documentary film by Laura Waters Hinson which portrays this kind of radical messy forgiveness through the lives of those effected by the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Could you forgive a person who murdered your family? This is the question faced by the subjects of As We Forgive, a documentary about Rosaria and Chantal—two Rwandan women coming face-to-face with the men who slaughtered their families during the 1994 genocide. The subjects of As We Forgive speak for a nation still wracked by the grief of a genocide that killed one in eight Rwandans in 1994. Overwhelmed by an enormous backlog of court cases, the government has returned over 50,000 genocide perpetrators back to the very communities they helped to destroy. Without the hope of full justice, Rwanda has turned to a new solution: Reconciliation.  

But can it be done? Can survivors truly forgive the killers who destroyed their families? Can the government expect this from its people? And can the church, which failed at moral leadership during the genocide, fit into the process of reconciliation today? In As We Forgive, director Laura Waters Hinson and narrator Mia Farrow explore these topics through the lives of four neighbors once caught in opposite tides of a genocidal bloodbath, and their extraordinary journey from death to life through forgiveness.

-- Synopsis from www.asweforgivemovie.com 

I haven't yet seen this film yet but I am very excited to do so. You can purchase DVDs for $15 here. I believe asweforgivemove.com is still offering exhibition screening opportunities if you would like a more theatrical experience.

If you have seen the film already I would love to hear your thoughts! Even if you haven't seen it, I would still love to hear your thoughts about forgiveness.

Compassion Sunday 2011: Prologue

Sunday, April 10th is Compassion Sunday 2011. I'm really excited for this year

Distracted by Jesus

There are, broadly, two different ways to deal with our mortality: we can either deny it or we can fight it.

Denial itself can either be the hope that we may escape death or our eyes-shut-tight refusal to acknowledge it. Practically speaking, I think we most often fall into this category. I say practically because, though we may profess differently, we generally live our lives as if we believe that we are not going to die.

We live fully in the moment, absorbed in our immediate surroundings.

Distracted.

These distractions can include seemingly trivial hobbies but they could also be a career, family, or philanthropy. It could be art or self-expression. Sometimes the pursuit of meaning or understanding itself is our distraction; or maybe it is love, both giving and receiving it. These are often the most powerful, we may even build an entire life upon them.

If we are not refusing to acknowledge our mortality, then we are likely fighting against it. For some people, this does mean trying to live forever physically (isn't Walt Disney still frozen?). For more people, however, it means leaving an eternal legacy or a "mark." The desire to leave a part of "you" behind after your are gone is simultaneously noble and fundamental. It gives us comfort to know that, after we are gone, a piece of us will continue; it doesn't so much matter if that piece is a scholarship foundation or a child.

From a practical perspective, these two responses both still end in eventual death and decay. The best we can hope for is to prolong our life, be it 100 or 1,000,000 years. The only thing that can transform our fate, rather than distract us from it or delay it, is Jesus Christ.

This is the heart and flesh of the "Good News."

Hope.

The trouble is that such transformation does not necesarily guarantee a happy, satisfying, or pain-free life. After all, there are plenty of people who do not follow Christ living fulfilling lives out there. By the same token, there are plenty of followers of Jesus Christ leading unfulfilling, empty lives. Devoid of hope.

I realized this as I was listening to a lovely song about grace, that there are so many hurting people out there that are hiding their pain. As I thought about this, I realized that there are likely as many wounded and desperate Christians out there as there are wounded and desperate non-Christians.

How can this be? How can we all be experiencing the same levels of fear, doubt, and loss when some of us claim to have exclusive access to grace, peace and hope?

Make no mistake, dubious Christian, we are, all of us, lost and hurting. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I praise God on your behalf. But I can think of 15 people in my personal life who deeply love Jesus, love His word, and follow Him who experience fear, doubt, pain, and some deep darkness in their present, one of them being me.

Just like we wrongly assume anorexics are skinny, we wrongly assume that hurting people are sad. We're not, not all the time anyway. Sometimes we laugh and make jokes. Sometimes we feel good and even experience joy.

Joy doesn't preclude hurt.

Why then? Why do we have hope and yet not feel hopeful? There is no simple answer for this Problem of Pain lies at the core of who we are as humans, yet I think I might understand a small piece of it.
Sometimes, we make the mistake of making a hobby out of Jesus.

Sometimes, we turn Him into an activity, something we do on the weekends, an activity to promote our spiritual health, like Yoga. But it doesn't change the substance of our lives. Like many of our other distractions it buoys up our spirits temporarily and fills some of those late-night hours that would otherwise be spent in pondering the meaning of our lives.

We believe in God. Still, we live fully in the moment, absorbed in our immediate surroundings. Serving. Doing. Loving. Praying.

Distracted by Jesus.

A good friend of mine said recently, I don't want 'to be' a pastor, it's not my job or even my calling, it's me. I can't stop it, I would lose myself.

I am not a Christian because I adopt a philosophy or subscribe to a pattern of living. I am Christian because it is me. If I limit my faith to what I do or what I believe, there is a painful emptiness in the center of my being. I lose myself.

This is a bear of a distinction to make because so much of what we do and believe does, indeed define us. I cannot make a better explanation than Acts 17:28

"...in Him we live and move and have our being...'"

Like blood in veins, air lungs. He breathes through us: living, moving, being.

How can you tell if you've made a hobby of Jesus?


Props to Coffee Shop Dharma for the photo!

 

"You Are More" by Tenth Avenue North



Broken Expectations (A Love Story)

I want to share with you something that rocked me.

This is a quote from God-sized dreams, a post written by a lovely lady named Holley Gerth. I'm falling in love with her words. Especially these ones:

"It’s a story of broken expectations, of little being much, of nothing working out the way anyone planned."

Now I'm a sucker for a tragedy. I love some good drama, but I wasn't prepared for this story. Because she's talking about Christmas.

Christmas with all the hope and joy? Christmas with the celebration of friends, family, and food? Christmas with the lights and music?

But it's true.

I know it's true because I cried on Christmas Eve. I know it's true because I was mad at Christmas this year. I was mad because I was disappointed and tired when I should have been full of joy and hope. I was mad because God was not meeting my expectations.

He does that doesn't he?

But He doesn't leave it at that. Here are some more words that I'm going to borrow.

“I know, my son, I know. I know, my daughter, I know. That thing you wanted is not going to happen. Not the way you’ve always dreamed. I know this hurts. I know this stings. I know you feel like I am distant or not aware of where you are and who hurt you and what you think life was supposed to be like. I know in moments like this you doubt that I can count the hairs on your head or have your best in mind. But please, I am not done. I have barely started to reveal your life to you. I am the God who satisfies your desires with good things. That is me! And when it comes to your hopes and your fears and your dreams, I know, my son, I know.”
--Jon Acuff, Stuff Christians Like: "The soft X"

Today is Valentine's Day, another holiday intended to be a celebration of love that, amidst saccharin-sweet marketing messages and cheap paper hearts, usually falls short of our expectations.

Expectations are a killer. If we are disappointed often enough, we learn that it is safer not to have them at all. But let me offer you a bit of hope: when God breaks down our expectations, he doesn't leave us alone amidst the rubble. But that doesn't mean that it is any easier; the aftermath of disappointment is always painful and rarely short-lived. Whether we are the ones disappointed or the ones offering comfort, it is important to recognize this.

But here's another thought: The birth of Christ couldn't have fulfilled expectations.

Messiah was a first in history, something that had never occurred before and will never be repeated. Prophets had been sent, kings had been anointed, deliverers had overcome oppression; but there had never been a Messiah before.
If you are a living a life that never disappoints and always meets your expectations, you are living a life without novelty. Unless you are disappointed, this is as good as it is going to get. Maybe your love-life isn't meeting expecations because you weren't designed for a paper-heart romance.

Let your Valentine's day be filled with the freshness of a new kind of love, something unfamiliar and, yes, maybe even painful or frightening. Let Christ break down that house of banality you've built, let Him show you something new.

Can we learn to be disappointed together?

--Sarah Elizabeth

Love Hurts

Love hurts, love scars,

love wounds and marks

any heart not tough

or strong enough

to take a lot of pain.

 

I remember hearing someone talking about a “confrontation” they had initiated. After hearing a recap of the point by point dressing-down they had given to a friend regarding a certain sin-issue, I said, “Ouch!”

“Well, sometimes love hurts,” was their reply.

Love hurts. Somehow, I’m not sure that’s the correct interpretation of the phrase.

Would you think with me to your lowest point, to that horrible moment when someone found out that you had lied, cheated, stolen, gossiped, drank, smoked, laughed at a dirty joke, kicked a dog, said a curse word, lost your virginity, or looked longingly at a pretty woman who wasn't your wife. When your pride kicked your feet out from under you, and condemnation stole your breath, what pulled you out? What brought you back?

Was it a hard line? Was it the absolute holiness of God represented by the "discernment" of your brothers and sisters?

Let me take a time-out here to talk directly to the scholars: don't hide your actions behind Greek semantics, I took that class too. The difference between judgment and discernment is internal; I'm talking about perceptible actions.

OR, was it the grace of God represented by the agape love your received?

Love hurts? Doesn’t love cover our sins? (Prov 10:7)

This is not to say that sin does not require repentance, but, whenever the phrase "He/She needs to repent of his/her sin" is on our lips, we absolutely MUST remember that it is the kindness of God that BRINGS that repentance (Rom 2:1-4) not the dictate that repentance is necessary. 

Even those who have never read a bible know that sin requires repentance. It is not only the best publicized truth of Christian faith, but it is also one of the most universal social truths; there is rarely a need to say it. Yes you read that correctly, I’m saying that when someone’s sin is exposed, they do not need you to point out their sin and tell them to repent.

I already hear the reply: "But what if they are ignorant?" I’m going to be bold here and say, in 99 out of 100 cases, they aren’t. Most often, if someone denies their sin, they are not ignorant of it; rather their pride or pain has built up a rigid defensive wall against condemnation.

If you're hoping to help someone find repentence, there are two ways to get rid of this wall. You could get a sledge hammer or a wrecking ball to tear it down. However you will most definitely injure the soul hiding behind the wall. The other option is to coax the soul to open the gate to you, walk inside, and help them to deconstruct the wall, brick by brick.

Obviously, demolition is quicker and easier (and funner!) than deconstruction, but I’ve done a little demolition, so let me point something else out: you don’t demo something that you want to keep.

Love hurts. Does that mean love hurts the one receiving the love?

Regardless of the state of our hearts during our time wandering in the desert, regardless of whether we humbled ourselves and confessed or were humbled when we were caught, while we are sin, there is a place in our hearts crying out to God and to the people around us:

“Please! Know my sin and love me anyway!  I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know what to do so, please, let me walk into the light covered in dirt and love me anyway! Please don’t leave me!”

Oh, but how can we? How can we love you without touching your dirt? It’s embarrassing to talk about it. For that matter, how can we know your sin and not gossip about it? How can we listen to your difficult questions when we don’t have the answers? How can we listen to the screams of your flesh when you’re going through your sin-detox? What about the times when you’re mean to us? What about when your broken pride makes you lash out and accuse us? How can we pick you up when you keep falling down?

Love hurts. Isn’t it more accurate to say love hurts the one extending the love?

Don’t be fooled, friends. Grace isn't weak, it isn't soft. Extending love, acceptance, and forgiveness to a person who doesn't deserve it will be the single most difficult thing you will EVER do, if you don't think so, I have a Jewish carpenter with some wicked-looking scars who I'd like you to meet.

Yes, sometimes love hurts.


--Sarah Elizabeth

Bearing with one another...

If you haven’t noticed, I’m in a bit of a series dealing with suffering. This wasn’t intentional; it just happens that this subject has been coming up a lot in my thoughts, life, and personal devotions. Not to worry, compassionate friends, I am just fine :o) God has just chosen this “season” (if you will forgive my adding to the overuse of that word) to teach me a little bit about dealing with pain.

One of the most difficult tasks before us is dealing with the pain of others. Nothing brings a person to the door of the church so quickly as suffering and the first questions asked of us, as ambassadors or grace and image bearers of God, is “Why?”

Pain is always hard, even (or perhaps especially) when its not our own. There are no easy answers, and there are no quick solutions. This is a hard truth to accept and even harder to communicate. The best words to say are not always clear but perhaps the worst thing we can do is give a glib or pat answer to a person who is suffering through a pain we are not experiencing. This is complicated still further when the words that we believe to be so full of comfort fail to actually bring comfort.

The trouble is that the scripture truths that give us so much assurance and comfort during times of peace are clogged and clouded by the emotional pain and confusion that comes during an actual trial. You may read a scripture and see that God promises beauty for ashes and joy with the morning. While this promise is true, you have to remember that hope is so much harder to see when you’re actually in the ashes. The tear-filled night is the longest when you’re desperately wishing for the morning.

So what do we do after we’ve read the bible truths and the fire is still raging? Do we just say them all over again? Paul gives us some insight:

“I…beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love,” Ephesians 4:2

Listen to the characteristics he uses here: lowliness, gentleness, longsuffering, and, above all, bearing with one another in love. If we are to be worthy of the calling of Christ, we absolutely must demonstrate humility, gentleness, and patience to one another in all situations. This concept is mentioned again:

“bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” Galatians 6:1
Now we exhort you, brethren, warn those who are unruly, comfort the fainthearted, uphold the weak, be patient with all. 1 Thess 5:4

How often do we barge into the midst of a trial that is not ours, the weight of which we have not borne, expecting to offer a miracle cure for the pain it brings? We confidently extend the promises of God like a lifeline and are puzzled when the pain continues. Sadly, that horrible impotent feeling we experience as bystanders can lead us to vent our frustrations on the one we were just trying to comfort. “Fine then!” we throw up our hands in defeat, “You refuse to be comforted, so you just sit there and whine about it!”

Oh shame on us for failing to demonstrate lowliness and gentleness! As one who struggles to tame her tongue, I understand how difficult this can be when you know (or think you know) what the bible answer is. But it is so much easier to rattle off a scripture than it is to bear with your brother or sister in the midst of their pain as they experience the truth of that scripture. I believe the truth is not that they refuse be comforted but that we cannot bear the pain so we abandon the situation.

If we are to bear with our brother in love we must also remember that “Love suffers long and is kind…” 1 Corinthians 13:4

We have to remember that we see dimly now, we cannot fully understand the purposes and plans of God in and through suffering. Tossing out scriptures, as if they possess a magical power to dissolve the pain of a difficult situation, is immature and, in truth, lazy. Words don't help the pain, that comfort comes directly from the Spirit of God and we can't control Him and we can't make promises that He'll behave a certain way.

Do speak truth. Do seek the scriptures for hope and promises and extend that hope to the suffering. But we are not given permission to stop there, don't throw out the promises and leave your brother alone in his ashes. Sit with him, weep with him, and watch for the morning together.

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.