This past Monday I joined a group of high school students as they traveled to Atlanta to spend a week at Safehouse to serve the homeless in our city.
The trip was only forty miles from start to finish but several members of the team have only been to Atlanta a few times. Several have never walked around the city and just about all have never spoken to a homeless person, let alone spent time with one.
It’s amazing how perspectives can be shifted by spending time in a location/culture/environment that is completely foreign to your own, even if it is only forty miles away.
Without a doubt hearts and minds have been affected and perspectives radically changed because of this week and the amazing people we have had the privilege to meet.
I don’t know much about the history of Haiti, I will admit that right away. But what I do know is that the country of Haiti was extremely poor and living conditions were below acceptable long before the earthquake which struck in January 2010. Now that the a tragedy has struck the country, eyes all around the world have turned to Haiti and providing aid to Haiti has become a priority, as it should.
But shame on us for waiting until hundreds of thousands of people died, the number of orphans exponentially increased and hundreds of thousands of people became homeless. Millions of dollars have been donated to various agencies which are part of the relief efforts in Haiti. Obviously we had the money to give, so why didn’t we feel the burden to help Haiti before the earthquake? They were already an impoverished nation with orphans and homeless.
It makes me wonder how many other countries need our attention TODAY? Will it take a tragedy in each country before we turn our attention and our checkbooks to address their needs?
This past fall I was working at a local Starbucks, minding my own business and actually rather consumed by my task at hand when a woman stopped by my table and made a small comment. She said:
“I just wanted you to know you gave my daughter courage to take her hat off” and she gestured towards the front of the room. I looked up to see a young woman sitting up there with her shaved head. I got a huge lump in my throat and tears in my eyes and could barely finish the conversation with the mom but I asked if she was in chemo. The mom said yes and that she had just finished her last treatment that day.
There are many days when I really wonder WHY I have lost my hair. Most days there are no answers but some days there are. Moments like these, when I can see my lose being used to encourage or inspire someone else then I don’t need an answer. Seeing that I have been used for a greater purpose is all I need.
My small group is starting a new study this fall, one we actually chose several months ago. Its funny how God’s timing works because this book, Calm My Anxious Heart, is perfect for me right now. That was very clear tonight as I read the first chapter. When we chose this book, six months ago, I had no way of knowing that it would be the right book for me.
As I read through the chapter this list was given for the ‘prescription to contentment’ jumped out at me. If we lived by these five guidelines how different would our lives be?
1. Never allow yourself to complain about anything – not even the weather.
2. Never picture yourself in any other circumstances or someplace else.
3. Never compare your lot to another’s.
4. Never allow yourself to wish this or that had been otherwise.
5. Never dwell on tomorrow – remember that [tomorrow] is God’s, not ours.
It definitely challenged me. One thing I always wrestle with is the line between contentment and hope – how do you hope for something but not be moved out of a place of contentment. That is definitely a polarity to manage and I continue to seek understanding in this matter.
I just finished The Hole in Our Gospel and cannot tell you how strongly I want to recommend that you read this book. Richard Stearns, president of World Vision does an excellent job of painting a very clear and real picture of the condition of our world. While the facts and statistics he provides are very disturbing, he provides excellent documentation for his data. The picture he clearly paints for the reader is disturbing, yet he inspires you to become active an make a change in our world, whether in your own neighborhood or around the world.
This book challenges the individual and the church as a whole to examine ourselves to see if we are truly living out the gospel God has called us to. As he says – are we living out a revolutionary gospel that is good news for the broken world? That is what God has called us to, and if our lives are not a demonstration of that we are living out a gospel that has a hole in it.
living it out 