Tonight (for class) I read and reflected for an hour on a chapter from Don Postema’s book
Space for God. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the book, not that it’s not good, it’s just that there are so many others out there that I’d recommend
first! But this chapter was my favorite, and it was on the Justice & Compassion side of prayer. His connection comes from
Matthew 5:23-24:
So when you are offering your gift on the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.
Postema rightly concludes that if we truly followed this, we’d never get back to the altar at all! For who is completely free from others having something against them. Even if total justice and compassion has been shown to their family, what about the poor, the suffering, those who our religion and country have oppressed? Who can stand and say no one has anything against them? None of us. So they are linked. Prayer leads to an understanding, a hearing, if you will, the cry of the oppressed. Prayer the leads us to “leave it” (in a sense) to take the cause of those who suffer, and in this we are continuing in prayer.
Consider this version of Isaiah 58:6-11
Is not this what I require of you as a fast: to loose the fetters of injustice, to untie the knots of the yoke, to stop every yoke and set free thsoe who have been crushed? Is it not sharing your food with the hungry, taking the homeless poor into your house, clothing the natked when you meet them and never evading a duty to your kinsfolk? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn and soon you will grow healthy like a wound newly healed; your own righteousness shall be your vanguard and the glory of the Lord your rearguard. Then, if you call, the Lord will answer; if you cry to him, the answer will be: “Here I am.” If you cease to pervert justice, to point the accusing finger and lay false charges, if you feed the hungry from your own plenty and satisfy the needs of the wretched, then your light will rise like dawn out of darkness and your dusk be like noonday; the Lord will be your guide continually and will satisfy your needs in the shimmering heat; he will give you strength of limb; you will bel ike a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.
Something in me just springs to life when I read this. Yes! That is it. And I think what I’m sensing is that, miracle of all miracles, God is beginning to birth in my heart a genuine (albeit very small) love for people. For those of you who read my New Year’s Resolutions (click there to see), my banner goal was simply to love people. I am so stinking low on love. How can I call myself a Christian if I don’t have love, real genuine love for people?
I heard about the most convicting thing yesterday it made me want to throw up. A question was asked of a pastor who speaks nationally about creating missional churches–churches whose goal and focus is truly to build the kingdom of God. He was asked how to instigate change in churches that just don’t have this kingdom mindset, who don’t teach the Word, who don’t stimulate true growth, who don’t spread the gospel. Well, first he answered, you need to ask yourself this question–Why am I here, at this church? Am I here because it’s a career step–a place to get my foot in the door until I can do real stuff, “bigger and better” stuff? Pow. Then he said to ask yourself, “Do you love the people? Really. Do you love the people?” Double pow. Then he concluded: “If you’re there because you genuinely love the people, and you want to see genuine life change and a church set on fire to be on mission with God … then what it takes is time. Lots and lots and lots and lots of time.”
So, all of this fits together. First, I am challenged to let my prayer life ignite in me a conviction that a Christian life that is not moving in this world as the hands and feet of Jesus is not a real Christian life. Secondly, I am challenged as I realize that I might be all excited to go and talk to Jesse, the homeless guy in Portland, about the gospel and give him food and clothes, but am I willing to get on the same level as the people in my small town, to lay aside the perceived gaps and learn to speak their language? Do I love them? I think …. I think … that I’m starting to. The little flicker of genuine love for people that is in my heart is pretty small, but I can feel it, flickering, struggling, lighting up the darkness of selfish ambition and vain conceit in my heart.
Lord, give me love for people. Turn my prayer to action. Make me sick with compassion and uncomfortable with conviction, so that I’ll turn outward and love people for Your sake. In Jesus’ name and for His sake. AMen.
Nothing deep here … I just wanted to reflect on the joy of mommyhood. Yesterday Dutch got a new toy–a green John Deere truck from my dear friend Crystal. Dutch flipped! He loved it. Usually snack time is the most exciting part of the day and when I pull out the special Dutch muffin and start breaking off pieces and putting them on his high chair tray, he just about goes crazy. He loves muffins. But yesterday, he totally ignored the muffin as soon as he saw the tractor! Then later, the boy who hardly ever plays on his own, took his tractor over to the stairs and played for 30 minutes, all by himself, making the engine sounds and loading and unloading special imaginary bucket-fulls of dirt on the stairs.
Dutch’s other favorite thing right now is to sneak into our bedroom and go through Jeff’s nighstand drawer. He usually goes for the “No More Fungus” bottle (yeah, gross) and hides things in our bed. So last night, about 2am, I woke up and couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t comfortable, the realized something hard was under my back. I reached back and there was a deck of playing cards … from our special little boy. Too tired to get up, I tossed them down to my feet and fell asleep smiling. What a little boy.
Today at church, I was the proudest mommy ever because Dutch ran to Pastor Dale and jumped into his arms. Then I said, “Dutch can you give Pastor Dale a kiss?” ANd he leaned up and planted a huge kiss right on our pastor’s cheek. Yeah, it was pretty sweet. Of course he might be a terror at home for me, but at least he’s sweet at church. 
That’s all. Just savoring mommyhood.
“If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body.”
Matthew 6:25 The Message
Well, I figure we might as well start with gusto. So, after talking to Jeff (I do know my Old Testament you know, and when a woman makes a vow, her husband can counter it if he thinks it was too rash ) I’m taking the plunge. No buying clothes for myself for … gulp … yes ….breathe, Kari … a year. Yes, a year. Here are the stipulations because I want to really count the cost and make this clear.
1. I’ll start April 1st (that way if I think of anything that I truly need for the coming year I can get it this weekend–no it’s not like Mardi Gras, I’m not going to go on a shopping spree, I’m talking about if there’s something I actually need, which I can’t think of right now but just in case.)
2. I can receive gifts; but if I get gift cards then I’ll wait to use them until after the year is over. (And no I won’t make up holidays and insist that my husband buy me clothing gifts to celebrate every weekend!)
3. Goodwill is still allowable in a rare event, like if I get pregnant or something to cover my belly!
4. I’ll “audit” our finances and find out exactly what I spent on clothing in the past year, and then donate that amount on April 1, 2009 to a charity or missions organization.
Here’s where you come in: If any woman out there will join me in this challenge, I’ll donate that money to a charity of YOUR choice (provided it’s a good one!). OR, if any of you men want to show your support of this challenge, I ask that you match me dollar for dollar, and if I succeed and complete the year, you match my donation to that charity. This could be so awesome! Let’s just say we spent $500 on clothes in a year. If I did this and 5 guys supported me, that’s $3,000. If five of you girls did it as well and had just one guy support each of you, that’s $8,000 total! That’s enough for 1600 chickens for needy families in Asia! And I guarantee not one person will notice if I wear the same dress to every wedding this summer. Guaranteed.
So, if you’re in, post a comment, or if you’re shy–click “Contact” and send me an email. I’m off now to check the tread on my shoes …
The buzz has mostly died down now, but there for awhile everyone sported their rubber wrist-bands. LiveStrong was the most popular one, in bright yellow support of Lance Armstrong’s battle against cancer. Our church in Corvallis had white ones with LivePure as a stand for sexual purity.
So this morning I was lying in bed listening to Dutch cry, as he was not happy about being put down for his nap. I lay on my bed, staring at my open closet. My full open closet. A year or so ago I read Blue Like Jazz. I remember really liking it, but can’t remember a ton about it now. Except for one thing. I remember Donald Miller had a friend at Reed College who decided to go a whole year without buying clothes. And she did it. Isn’t that funny? That’s the only thing that was burned into my mind from the book. Why? Because I remember thinking, Wow, I couldn’t do that. But I was totally challenged and encouraged by her–what a radical thing to do. She decided that rather than just give her leftover money to God, she would actually go without something, so that her giving to the church and to the poor actually cost her something. David said this is 2 Samuel 24:24 (for those of you who want to make sure this is biblical!), he insisted that he pay for the threshing floor and the oxen for 50 shekels of silver because he said “nor will I offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God with that which costs me nothing.” So what does that mean for us?. I guess what I’m challenged by is that we have so much. Even those of us who aren’t rich (raising my hand here), we still have so much, and we could give so much more.
I thought back to this week. Jeff brought home a box of food from church this week because somebody had dropped it off for the resource center, but the resource center has recently closed, so they sent it home with Jeff. I looked at the box of food. Two deeply dented cans of Chef Boyardee forkable food-like substance and four cans of some kind of beef stew stuff and a random box of pumpkin seeds. What? I admit the thought flashed through my mind, Who gives stuff like this? But it’s not that I wasn’t grateful for the gift, but that box of obviously unwanted leftover givaway food was like holding a mirror up in front of my face. I give like that. I give my leftover, dented cans of gross Chef Boyardee, so to speak. I don’t give my favorite Brianna’s all-natural salad dressing or my Go Lean cereal which is like precious gold, but don’t you think that hungry people in need probably like those kind of delicious things just as much as I do? I’ll never forget a story one of my teachers in school of ministry shared. He said that he wanted to give some clothes to charity and so he went into his closet to pick out a few sweaters. Which ones did he pick? Of course, his oldest ones, the ones he didn’t really like, the ones he never wore, right? Right. But as he reached for those, he heard God say, Why not that one, Jason? He looked up at his favorite sweater–the J. Crew one on the top; the new one that he loved. Why not that one, Jason? He looked at it again. Reluctantly but obediently, he pulled it from the top shelf, resolving in his heart “nor will I offer to the Lord my God that which costs me nothing.” That was seven years ago, and I still remember that story. Hm. Which sweater am I holding back from God?
Now living sacrificially isn’t even just about giving more. It isn’t about money. It’s about a change of perspective. Again, I refer to the passage from The Hawk and the Dove about holy poverty. Remember the passage? (from Amazing Grace (my chains are gone –click there to read) Here it is again:
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His friend says, “Moderation! You ask too much! Your self-imposed penury is not holy poverty. It is like the poverty of the world. It is …”
“Too must like the real thing, you mean?” Abbot Peregrine interjects wryly.
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When we actually go without we are choosing to experience a teeny taste of what Christ experienced, what others experience. We choose to let our fat flesh starve for one moment so that we can hear the voice of God. I’m not talking about asceticism, I’m not talking about becoming obsessed with self-denial. I love pleasure. I love the things God gave us for pleasure. Marriage, cookies, flowers, sunshine, running, fresh air–ahh! Drink deep of these pleasures, but we settle for too little. We are up to our eyeballs in luxury which has sated our spiritual hunger and left us lethargic and ready for a nap spiritually. I’m saying this to myself. Even though this year has been a struggle not having our own home, and I do believe God has a home in store for us, in fact I even believe that part of our ministry will be having a large home where we can have people stay and extend hospitality, but that’s another story and I’ve gotten off track here. Even though this year has been a struggle, it’s been a wake-up call to a realization on how little we can really live on.
So as I lay on my bed, I thought about a fabulous quote by Benjamin Franklin from my friend Caila’s website. It says, “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” Do something worth writing. What are we doing? Is there anything interesting going on in my life? That’s when the words LiveDifferent came into my mind. LiveDifferent. What if, once a week, we joined together to do something that challenged our American life of luxury mindset? What if a group of us girls (I say girls because for guys this wouldn’t be a sacrifice of any kind) did decide to not buy clothes for a year? What if, just for a week, we didn’t buy any groceries and just tried to live off what we have in our pantries (I know, not much of a challenge–we have to start somewhere!)? What if we took every Monday and instead of eating our lunch we fasted and gave our sack lunch to Jesse, the homeless guy on the I-205 off ramp? What if we went one whole month without eating out, and gave the money we save to Compassion International so that a kid in Rwanda could have shoes? What if we only rented movies from the library instead of Blockbuster and used that money to buy two chickens from Gospel for Asia for a family in need? What if we lived with our parents for a year? (ha ha, only threw that one in there to see if you were paying attention — no one should really do that!) So, every Friday, I’ll post a LiveDifferent challenge. Now this is being really vulnerable because you guys will see what a serious American sissy I am–because my LiveDifferent challenges probably won’t be that revolutionary to you. But, we have to start somewhere right? Now again, I’m not condemning people (myself included) who buy clothes, eat out, drive SUVs, or have cable tv. I’m just drawing a circle around myself and praying, God start a revolution here. Change my heart so that I’m willing to alter my lifestyle every so slightly for the sake of the gospel. Help me not to just do things for the sake of doing them, but to gain a different perspective, to ruffle my feathers enough that I look up and take notice of the suffering world around me. Please lead these LiveDifferent challenges so that they’re not just my own little ideas, but they’re YOUR ideas. And keep us always ever from pride, thinking we are in any way better than others who live different from us. Changes us, God. Give us creativity to LiveDifferent. Amen.
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For my communication class we have a “Fun Assignment” tossed in because our professor is a fan of movies. The assignment is simply to watch a movie (from a list given in class) and reflect on the “Big Idea” or main message of the movie … so, as always, I share it with you.
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Tonight I watched (yes, for the first time) Dead Poet’s Society. Somehow I had the movie all wrong and must have gotten it mixed up with another movie because I somehow thought it was about a bunch of black students from the inner city learning to appreciate poetry. I’m thinking I had it mixed up with Take the Lead or Glory Road or something. At any rate, I was glad to finally see this movie.
The Big Idea was easy to spot—Carpe Diem: Seize the Day! Professor Keaner gives us the key early on in the film and the rest of the movie develops how he uses creative teaching methods to help his students understand this crucial theme and how truly living this way can be costly.
The movie challenges me because of the ways that it parallels the call to live for Christ. On the first day of class Professor Keaner takes the boys out of the classroom and has them look, really look, at the photos of all the classes that came before them at Walton School, the pictures of the young men, just like them, who lived and had dreams, aspirations, vision. And who died. All of them died. And their whisper was, according to Keaner, carpe diem!
So as we read Scripture, as we read biographies of the men and women who have devoted themselves to the cause of Christ, what do they whisper? What do we hear? Do we hear them saying, “Just relax. Hang out. Don’t stress. Have fun.” No! Carpe Diem doesn’t mean seize the day by blowing it. Carpe Diem means seize the day by making something of it! And because our cause is Christ, carpe diem means seize the day by using every second of it for the Kingdom of God.
But what does that look like? Ah, this is now getting at the heart of what makes my heart beat faster, of what makes gives me drive for life and passion to do more and live better—the sacredness of the mundane. The Sacredness of the Mundane is my passion. Therefore, Carpe Diem means seize the sacred! Seize all that you can in this day, today, right where you are at, surrounded by laundry and dinner and a toddler whining for his sippy cup with a poopy diaper and a runny nose. Seize the sacred!
So how? How do we live this way? Brother Lawrence got it (Read Practicing the Presence of God), AW Tozer got it (Read The Pursuit of God), how can we get it? Well this movie would say by not conforming to what everyone else thinks you should do but to be an independent, or “free” thinker. Ok, that makes sense. So what does Scripture say? “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” In a sense, this movie is echoing Scripture, but we have a deeper understanding. We don’t just want the mind of ourselves, we want the mind of Christ. We don’t want to think like everyone else, unless they think like Christ. He is our measuring rod. He is our standard. And when I’m seeking and striving to think like He thinks and love like He loves, I won’t put Him in a little box and try to tuck Him away neatly under my own control.
The final thrust of the movie is this—living this way is costly. For Neil, it cost him his life. For Keaner, it cost him his job. Would they both say it was worth it? You bet. What did it cost Christ? Everything. What does it cost us? Nothing less.
