breathing

I've been in Dublin now for 5 days. It's been mainly rainy but today it let up so I was able to go out and check out some cathedrals, including St. Patrick's. The first church/cathedral I went to I happened to be there when they served the Eucharist. It was a beautiful thing, really, the words were very impactful as I hadn't memorized them and had them lose their meaning. We prayed for, among many other things, the sick, the bereaved, the oppressed and the homeless. I used to be critical of this type of prayer the first time I heard it but I wasn't today. The thought I had when I first heard this prayer in a Catholic church was, "Yeah, but what are you DOING about it?" Now I realize that while actions are definitely needed, nothing is more powerful than prayer and that is a wonderful spot to start. I would suggest that if you want to cultivate a heart for a particular ministry or social justice issue that you both pray about it and put money towards it. Where your treasure is there will your heart be also. Plus if you pray about it you're more likely to meditate on it and think of how God is involved in that area and how He wants you to become involved with it. We are called His body for a reason, right? We are His movements in the world, He works through us to draw all things to Himself. Jesus died on a cross to reconcile all things to Himself, and we get to take part in that reconciliation. During the Eucharist we also prayed for the world and churches in the world. I prayed especially for my home church, the church in Haiti and the church in Pakistan. Haiti and Pakistan have seen such devastation with their natural disasters this past year and they will need the church to step up and take the lead to start the long road to recovery and development. A lot of people in development don't see a need for the church but if you aren't serving people's spiritual needs alongside their physical needs than you're missing a vital part of the development process. Not to mention we need to see ourselves as people who are broken as well, just in different areas. There's a book titled "When Helping Hurts" that explains that a lot better than what I just did here if you want a good resource for a deeper, more thorough explanation.

I finished a book last month by Tony Campolo titled, "Everybody Wants to Change the World" subtitled 'Practical Ideas for Social Justice.' In it he talks about the need for evangelism. He poses the idea that the reason it feels so unnatural to hand someone, almost always a complete stranger, a track is because sharing the gospel shouldn't be like giving a mini-sales presentation. Evangelism, he goes on to argue, should be as natural as breathing. I thought about this quite a bit and really do like the idea of it, we just need to remember to breathe. A couple of nights ago I was reminded of this as I shared my faith with someone in the hostel. It was a 6 bed dorm room but he and I were the only ones in there. I got in about midnight and he was still up so we struck up a conversation. He was from London and a couple years ago had left his job to take a round the world trip, gee, sounds likes someone else I know. The difference was he didn't have a job to come back to like I gratefully do. Somehow we start a deep theological discussion and I realize that I'm doing it, I'm breathing. He had some questions that are not easily answered and if I would have tried to answer them completely would have made them seem trite when they weren't at all. We talked about the devastation in Haiti and about all the evil in the world. We talked about how the Church had such a stained history with the Crusades and the child abuse that had been in the news the past few years among many other hypocrisies. I told him that I shared a lot of the same questions but came to realize I can no longer use other people's hypocrisy to excuse my lack of belief in Jesus. If I claim to follow Jesus, than I need to measure my belief against what He came to do and how He lived his life. We can't afford to put our hope in others, even strong followers of Christ, because ultimately they will let us down. Ever since the first tempation and consequent sin we have been tempted and fall into sin. That's what is so beautiful about Christ though. He died for all people's sins. He covered them with His blood shed on the cross. He resurrected after 3 days in the tomb to give us eternal life with Him. That is where my belief is, not just in people because ultimately people fail you. If you lean too heavily on someone else's faith you will eventually be let down. I still remember a lady who wrote me a card when I was hospitalized as a sophomore in high school that said I needed to let go of the coattails of my parents' faith and develop my own. That has stuck with me to this day. We cannot rely on other people's faith to bring us to Jesus. He alone draws us to Him and we alone can choose Him as a response to His leading. Other people may be His instruments that He uses to draw others towards Him, but they are not the end in it of themselves. He is the prize, He is what we 'get' as a result of a belief in Him. We are not promised an easy life as a result of a belief in Him nor are we promised health and wealth. If anything we are promised more persecutions and hardships as a result of following Him. As far as the health and wealth gospel goes, have they looked at the life of Christ while He was here on the earth? He could've come in luxury and all the riches of the world had he chosen to but He chose instead to come from humble beginnings. How does that jive with 'name it and claim it' types of messages? There are places where He said He was homeless. Now, there's nothing wrong with riches, except that it makes it harder to enter the kingdom of heaven. I think we're too quick to skim over that passage and get to the part where it says with God all things are possible. Of course with God all things are possible, but riches can easily get in the way of what God wants to do in our lives. I had this thought a while back after coming home from Kenya in 2006 that if I loved my neighbor as myself, shouldn't I be giving my neighbor as much as myself? So at that time I gave 50% of my income to missions. Now, it was 50% of my net but it was still a fairly sizeable amount. I've since come down from that by quite a bit but I'd ultimately like to get back to that someday. It will take discipline, to be sure, but how can I claim to love others as much as myself if I'm not either spending as much money on them as I do myself or at the very least willing to share all my possessions with my neighbors? I realize this is a radical viewpoint and not many people share it, but it's just something I've come to see I need to do in my life. It will take a while to get back to that point, but I can't wait until I reach that point again. The only reason God blesses His people is so we can turn around and bless others. If we get a raise, what's our first response? Is it to spend it on ourselves? This can be a good thing if it means helping us get out of debt. But if it just means raising our standard of living than I think we've missed the heart of God. He is the ultimate Giver, and we need to look to Him as an example. If we don't have money to give, then we need to give of our other resources, whether that is our time or talents or both. Are we really willing to sacrifice all our lives for Christ? Are we willing to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters?