the world's children

Lately I've really been hit hard about the horrible conditions children are living in all over the world. Maybe it's because i'm a dad now, i dunno.

Just today I came across another incidence of this. Maybe you've never heard that in several countries children are used a soldiers, often they're pre-teens or teenagers, sometimes they are as young as 7. They are exploited physically, emotionally, and sometimes even sexually. Drugs are given to them to make them dependent and vulnerable. It's very tragic, but i just found out that some of these countries who practice this atrocity receive military support from the US government.

An organization called World Vision has a website http://www.seekjustice.org/ where you can help take legislative action against this practice. Of course legislation is tricky stuff, so go over there and take a look at all the ins and outs (i'm sure there is some junk attached to the legislation) and respond if you feel led.

But I keep wondering if we shouldn't be doing more to help. I don't know what that is, but i know it at LEAST starts with praying for kids of the world. Peace.

Youth Gathering

Late this week I'm heading off to Orlando FL (nothing like Florida in JULY!) for our denomination's National Youth Gathering. I'm serving as a Bible Study presenter for a segment of the nearly 25,000 youth who will be present down there.

I've definitely got a burden for the youth of our nation and my national church-body. So please be in prayer for the youth and those who help lead them. There is a great opportunity to make the love of Jesus Christ very REAL through this gathering, resulting in thousands of kids who stand ready to face all, even death, to follow Jesus wherever He leads.

But that kind of thing can only happen by God's Spirit, not by might, not by power... so join me in praying for God's Spirit to work in big ways through this gathering, and through saps like me :) Peace.

prosperity and responsibility

CAUTION: This blog is 100% my still-being-formed opinion. It bears no true authority, and yet I'm wondering if there is something to it.

In our household as of late, we've been contemplating the necessity of a move in the distant future. For some this may be a no-brainer, a family of four in a two-bedroom condo with no basement or storage other than a one-car garage is madness. Yet Joc and I have been struggling to know whether we should really entertain a move or whether we should dig in for the indefinite future.

* * *

Yesterday I was listening to a podcast where in passing, the speaker mentioned some of the horrible material and moral condidtions in the rest of the world that include things like sexual exploitation, hunger, awful-yet-preventable diseases. I began to meditate on the incredible disparity between what my family with our moderate means enjoys compared to the rest of the world.

"Perhaps God has blessed us because we're His people" that's an explanation I hear sometimes. It implies that God rewards those who are faithful to him with wealth. Maybe I'm ignorant but as I think back over the history of the world, there seems to be a grain of truth to this, that some followers of Jesus Christ were gifted with a level of prosperity superior to many other people (admittedly this wealth was acquired through questionable and immoral methods to be sure which calls into question the original assumption, have we really, EVER been faithful?)
Still though, in my mind, at least, there is this connection. But if such a connection is real, our rationale for its reality is totally corrupted.
I don't think God desires to make the "faithful" rich. I look around this country in which we live and I see how wealth has drawn us away from God and not brought us closer.
One thing I DO know is that throughout the Bible God blesses people with various blessings not as a reward for good behavior but because he has an expectaion, even a hope that we'll be faithful with it.

If God has blessed his western followers with wealth, he surely has done so in the hopes that we would be trustworthy with it. And I'm almost certain that we've failed him in this arena. Rather than letting his blessings flow through us, administering them with his wisdom, mercy, and justice, we've consumed them all ourselves and in our self-indulgence we've borrowed even more. We've become more self-centered and less G0d-centered and other-centered. We've turned God's blessing into an asphixiating curse because we've taken for ourselves what we were meant to manage and distribute for God's glory.

And here's where I probably sound like a total wack-job... perhaps globilization and the woes it brings to our prosperity is God removing his blessing from people who were unfaithful with it. I know it's foolishness to try to describe with certainty the movement of God in the world on matters which he has not himself spoken about clearly, so i say this with great uncertainty... but perhaps God is on the move in the world, in search of those who can be faithful with his blessing in the ways that we haven't?

It's a sobering thought, especially for my family who is thinking about taking more of what God has entrusted to us to spend on ourselves (the house issue). Frankly, I'm not sure where the balance is on this one, I'm not sure that God has a problem with us moving, but I know it calls for slow, prayerful action...

People all over the world live in squallor, my family is more than comfortable. Children every bit as intrincially-valuable as mine are made to suffer with abuse and devestating want.

In the end will God praise me for being faithful with what he entrusted to me? That's a question I hope we'll all have the guts to ask.