Thanks for taking this journey with me.

Yesterday I received word that the greenhouse special offering at our church exceeded my goal reaching $12,400.00! I am simply blown away by the way our church family embraced this audacious challenge!

 

Thinking back over the last four weeks I see so many ways the Lord worked in my life. The two books, The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Sterns President/CEO of World Vision and Too Small to Ignore by Dr. Wess Stafford, President/CEO of Compassion International were exceptionally challenging. The Hole in Our Gospel pressed into me the need to embrace God’s call to care and help the poor, needy and bypassed of the world. Stern’s quote still rings in my ears, There is no “whole gospel” without compassion and justice shown to the poor. It’s that simple. And Too Small to Ignore elevated the needs of children at home and abroad. All I can say is that I hope the impact of these books upon me will not dissipate like a New Year’s resolution.

 

Reading these books provided a much larger focus for my rice and beans week. The week became more than just an exercise in self-denial, it became a small way I could enter the lives of 800 million under-nourished people in my world. What I experienced for 6-days is theirs 365 days a year. Experiencing a measure of their pain was eye opening for me.

 

Then there was the aspect of doing it with my church family. Countless conversations throughout the month touched on our common experience of rice and beans. Hopefully, God has begun to change us from the inside out. Add to that the offering… What none of us could do alone, we did together. We built one complete greenhouse and provided 77% of a second greenhouse. Rich Sterns was absolutely correct, Our greatest power to change the world is released when we come together in collective action to organize and focus the resources of the whole body of Christ.

 

It is with a measure of sadness that I bring the audacious challenge to a end. My hope is that I have changed, that my church has been changed and that maybe even those of you who have followed me in this journey have been changed as well.

 

Thanks for taking this journey with me.

 

I end this blog with a challenge from Wess Stafford: What are you thinking just now? What is happening inside your heart? Every human being needs a cause in life, a passion. If you don’t have something in your life that can make your heart pound, that can move you to either tears of joy or tears of sorrow in about thirty seconds, then my friend, you are not fully alive. Life is too precious to go on in such a half-awake condition You can do better. You deserve better.

 

 

We experience joy… God receives the glory

Earlier this week I was speaking with an elder who made a comment I found profound. Talking about our need to celebrate our rice and beans offering outcome this Sunday (today), he said, "We experience joy, as we give God the glory." Yes I thought that's it. We experience joy, as we give God the glory.

 

This morning during worship we concluded our rice and beans challenge receiving a final special offering to build a greenhouse in Jos, Nigeria. And what an offering our church gave; adding today to last week we crossed the $12,000 mark exceeding our goal by over $2,000. I was speechless.

 

A couple minutes after sharing our total with the church family, we placed a call to Peter Fretheim, our missionary in Jos, and pipe the conversation into the PA-system so everyone could listen in. What a joy it was to tell Peter that our offering will cover almost two complete greenhouses! To hear Peter's excitement brought smiles and joy to everyone in worship.

 

Our rice and beans challenge concluded as we prayed for Peter the ministry in Jos and then Peter for us… we both prayed that God would receive glory as children are rescued, lives changed, and heaven is populated as people in Nigeria and CT give their lives to Jesus.

 

Yes we experienced joy and God, I believe, received the glory.

 

The beauty and value of children…

Yesterday was a lost day, whatever I have in the way of sickness just zapped me of any energy. I didn't even have enough energy to put thoughts into a blog. Basically I was a lump all day. No fun when your family is home for only a couple of days?!? I wondered how do people wracked in poverty do it? I mean if you can't scavenge for food then there is nothing to eat, so when they are sick and not up to it what do they do? Not eat and get weaker? Push themselves to work and get weaker? It seems to me it is a loss either way???

 

I said I would return to thoughts on the book "Too Small to Ignore." I am finding it more difficult to highlight than anticipated. Earlier in this blog I offered my reaction to the Part 1 of the book. I remember writing I wish I had read it before becoming a dad; I might have made some changes. In part 2 Wess trumpets a call to make children a priority. Not only international children in need, but children everywhere… children in our homes, families and extended families, in our churches, schools and throughout the world. Wess helped me see the innate beauty and value of children as they are, not merely as potential adults.

 

His view continues to shake my very core. And the wonderful thing for me is that Wess did this without playing the guilt card. I don't recall one "you should have" in the entire book. Like an artistic master, Wess brushes and layers stories and thoughts of varying hues and textures creating an exquisite portrait valuing children. His portrait is inspiring me.

A Thanksgiving to remember, I hope…

I am up early today -Thanksgiving Day- still not feeling well, but thankfully no flu. First thing I put the turkey giblets on the stove to boil; I want to fill the house with the aroma of cooking.

 

A thought streaks through my mind, so many celebrations and special moments of life involve food. I never wondered this next thought before… Does hunger rob the poor of celebration too?

 

Later today I will sit around a grand table with family, friends and a new couple in town and we will laugh, tell stories, eat and enjoy life. Rice and beans week seems so long ago. And yet there is in me a continuing appreciation for what I have been given (amazing isn't it, what a little sacrifice can do in one's soul)… family, health, education, riches, employment, faith, the list seems endless. I have a feeling that this will translate into a different feel for me at the table today. I pray it translates into a deeper thanksgiving… to God for His undeserved graciousness to me.

 

Words and thoughts continue to spill from my heart; I hope and pray too that with this deepened appreciation and thanksgiving is accompanied by a deeper understanding of the responsibility that comes with all these graces. "To whom much has been given," spoke Jesus, "much is required" (paraphrase of Luke 12:48).

 

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

What do you do if when you are sick?

Yesterday, Tuesday, I received a text yesterday that our church administrator wouldn't be in; she had a 103 temp and was heading to the doctor. Turns out she has H1N1 flu and is out for the week and worse contagious for the Thanksgiving holiday… some holiday! Truth is she will be fine in a few days.

 

Today, my head feels like it will explode, I can barely talk, have a cough and… (you don't need the particulars). I'll head to the doctors as soon as they open. I doubt I have the flu more likely a sinus infection. If I am correct, I'll get a prescription and be feeling better by Friday, a nuisance the day before Thanksgiving but insignificant on the road of life.

 

I wondered what it would have been like for ether of us to have developed these illnesses last week? Would I have stayed the course eating only rice and beans? Or would I have abandoned that subsistence diet for a healthier one to help fight off the infection? Two guesses where my thoughts went next… (you should only need one).

 

I wondered what it would be like to come down with either of these sicknesses when my body was already in a compromised health state from lack of nutrition and when I had no choice but to eat a meager serving of rice and beans. I wondered what it must be like to have your head pounding or a 103 temp and no doctor to see, no pharmacy with antibiotics, not even Advil or Tylenol in a medicine closet. It is no surprise that someone dies of poverty related causes every 5 seconds.

 

My concern is that until my rice and beans week, until I read "The Hole in Our Gospel" and "Too Small to Ignore" I never really thought about these things…

 

Literally as I was typing the last word above, my wife said, "Have you seen this?"

 

"Seen what?" And she began to play a YouTube video she just found on a friend's Facebook… I watched. It made me think some more about what I had just written about… I love God's timing. Check it out if you have 2 minutes and 39 seconds. It's called the Advent Conspiracy.

 

Who I am deep within…

I have been thinking about those two nights of angry dreams I had last week. Those were ugly nights. I said things to people I would never consciously say. I hit. I lost control. One time I woke, not in a sweat, but my heart was racing and I needed to calm myself down before I could fall back asleep. It was UGLY. I felt slimy.

 

I have been thinking about what those dreams were all about. I have only experienced dreams like that a few other times in my life and the two times I remember were when I was on multi-day fasts.

 

What was going on, I wondered. As I pondered this, it was as if a Polaroid picture developed before my eyes and my understanding grew clearer and clearer.

 

My sense is that those dreams gave me a glimpse of who I am at my very core. I hate to admit this but I believe the dreams show that I am extremely selfish deep down inside. When I am comfortable and well fed, I have the ability to control my deep selfishnesses –probably through personal discipline and will power since I have been able to do this all of my life even before I trusted in Jesus.

 

During my rice and beans fast and other fasts this inner self leaked out past my well developed defenses during my dreams. Is this making sense for you??? I often think of myself as a relatively good person, these dreams showed me I am not nearly as 'good' as I like to tell myself I am. Those dreams showed me who I am deep inside. And they reminded me why I so desperately need a savior, Jesus.

 

Even though I don't like admitting all of this, it has increased my love for and my dependence upon Jesus. He knows who I am on the surface and deep inside and he still loves me and is delighted to live in relationship with me…

 

I never expected any deep introspection like this from my week of rice and beans…

A wonderful day…

Sunday was a wonderful day, I broke my rice & beans fast with a cup of yogurt and cottage cheese mix… 200 calories, which was almost 40% of what I had been eating daily for a week. Worship was wonderful. It felt right to break the fast on the Lord’s day…

I took a cue from church history. Let me explain. The church season of Lent is a 40-day period from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday (the day before Easter). But if you were to count the days from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday it would equal 46? No I didn’t count incorrectly. The church said that Sunday’s shouldn’t count since every Sunday is a celebration of Jesus’ resurrection, Christ’s followers should not fast but celebrate. Anyway, it was because of this tradition that I thought we, as a church, should break our fast on Sunday. And at least for me, it turned out to be a wonderful decision.

I loved hearing other peoples stories as we shared experiences during and after worship.

The week of rice and beans had two aspects. There was the personal sacrifice, which I wrote about all week. And then there was a special offering. I asked people to eat rice and beans and to donate in a special offering what they would have spent on food to help build a sustainable greenhouse in Jos, Nigeria. I can’t wait to see how much we raised. Each greenhouse costs $7,000, I hope to raise $10,000 to build one greenhouse and the supply other needs for the care centers in Jos. The special offering is open through Sunday Nov. 29, so I’ll report the offering after that date… pray with me that we can build at least one greenhouse.

These greenhouses are incredible… if you have 5-minutes check out the YouTube on the gonigeria website, click here, you will be inspired.