Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 194
September 6, 2015
Why Now is The Church’s Moment & It Will Take All of Us Not to Miss It #WeWelcomeRefugees
Daniel Etter/The New York Times
Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters
AFP/Getty ImagesThis is a moment in history.
The world is facing the worst refugee crisis since WWII.
You woke up this morning and you heard the news that Francis is asking every single community across Europe to open their doors to one fleeing refugee family — “to express the concreteness of the Gospel and welcome a family of refugees...”
You’ve looked into the wide-eyes terror of those families in this river of refugees streaming out our worst nightmare, you’ve heard that more than 11 million Syrian refugees alone are fleeing their homelands, motivated not by economic improvement for their families — but motivated by trying to save their very lives — to dodge any bullets because of war & the incomprehensible destruction that is ISIS.
You’ve seen the heart-stopping photographs. And you know that the Love of God, for such a time as now, will not be stopped.
You read the love letter to Aylan, the little drowned boy, and you know it in the haunted marrow of your bones that you witnessed the agony of those photos for a reason.
The little boy who drowned, his broken-hearted father, he told us the reason:
“I just hope that this photo of my son changes everything.
We want the whole world to see this — so that they can prevent the same from happening to others.”
That’s why you saw Aylan’s photo — so you could be part of it never happening again.
God’s called you and your people, your community to be a bread carrier in a redemptive story.
You’re profoundly moved by this historic crisis — and you are moved to Kingdom action.
You and your people want to do something. Like with your hands. You have folded them in prayer — and now you want to become an answer to that prayer.
We gave you 5 Ways for You to Stand up & be the Church in the World’s Worst Refugee Crisis since WWII — you overwhelmingly responded — and said you wanted to do more.
You wanted to do something with all your people, your community, your church — you wanted to gather together and Welcome Refugees — because “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for Me.“
So we’ve partnered with The Justice Conference and World Relief to help connect you and a lot of dots around the world —
And we’ve made a place for you and all your collective voices:
WeWelcomeRefugees.com
1. Your people, your church, wants to partner with a church in Europe who is receiving refugees?
Go to WeWelcomeRefugees.com & Say Yes
2. Your people, your church, wants to sponsor a refugee family? Say Yes
3. Want to use your voices to ask governments to welcome fleeing families? Say Yes
4. Want to welcome a refugee family & help them get settled in a community? Say Yes
5. Want to help with rescue efforts or send packages or support communities where refugees are coming ashore? Say Yes
6. Want to be prayer shields, and be updated on how to most effectively pray for the unfolding crisis?
Gather Your Community & Go Say Yes at WeWelcomeRefugees.com
Then, make your welcome known:
Join the global #WeWelcomeRefugees Movement
Share a picture of you and your people, your family, your church, with your welcome sign on Instagram or Twitter, hashtag it #WeWelcomeRefugees — use your voice to invite all your people to wewelcomerefugees.com — and actually get to live it.
Now, NOW, is the time for the Church to be the Church. We cannot, cannot, afford to miss this opportunity — and miss Him.
In the past, the Church may have been defined by what the Church is against, but, in this defining moment in history, may the Church be clearly defined by what it is for.
And the Church has always been for the stranger, the sojourner, and for being like the welcoming arms of the Savior.
How can we not move heaven and earth to let the broken in —
when heaven moved and came to earth to let us in?
In our time, in this moment of history, you can get to be the hands of Jesus and have a part in the redemptive story that He wants to write through you and your people, your church, for such a time as now.
So we can turn to our grandkids — and say:
“It was unfolding on our watch — and God Himself moved… through our willing yes.”
He will turn & say: “I was a stranger and you welcomed Me in.”
and we will nod & say: “Yes, yes we did — we welcomed the refugees in.”
WeWelcomeRefugees.com
Have any questions? Or you’re currently very involved in refugee ministry and you want to connect and be a partner with WeWelcomeRefugees.com?
Contact us right here: welcome@wewelcomerefugees.com
Related Posts:
5 Ways for the Church to Stand Up & Be The Church in the World’s Worst Refugee Crisis Since WWII
Dear Aylan … dear world with a refugee crisis, dear all of us who have needed to be welcomed in
September 5, 2015
Links for 2015-09-04 [del.icio.us]
@MacLeans "There are 60 million refugees globally right now. This is a number not seen since the end of the Second World War. It’s a crisis by any measure."
At a Berlin church, Muslim refugees converting in droves
@YahooNews... ""I am inviting them to join us because I know that whoever comes here will not be left unchanged."
Desperate Crossing
@ The New York Times ... an absolutely exquisite presentation of a haunting unfolding
Syrian Refugee Crisis Highlights Political Failure of the West
@NYTimes...
September 4, 2015
5 Ways To Stand Up & Be The Church in The World’s Worst Refugee Crisis Since World War II
1. Be Moved
AFP/Getty ImagesQuick Facts to Understand the Crisis:
–> One Stop to Understand it All
The world is in the worst refugee crisis since World War II.
And Syria’s civil war and the rising of ISIS is the worst humanitarian disaster of our time.
The number of innocent civilians suffering: more than 11 million people are displaced.
Half of those 11 million refugees are under the age of 18. There is no such thing as other people’s children. They are all of our children.
Why are they coming?
–> You Must Read this.
They are risking everything, — because these families consider themselves dead already..
Right now Syrians consider themselves dead.
Maybe not physically, but psychologically and socially [a Syrian] is a destroyed human being, he’s reached the point of death.”
–> Experience the risk of desperate journey for yourself
–> Tweet a photo of yourself holding a sign saying “Refugees Welcome” and tag your government and or your government representative #refugeecrisis; #refugeeswelcomehere
2. Each One … Do Just One Thing:
Daniel Etter/The New York Times
Mauricio Lima/The New York TimesCHOOSE ONE OF THESE ORGANIZATIONS:
DO FOR ONE WHAT YOU WANT TO DO FOR ALL
–> Mennonite Central Relief
–> World Relief (donate to provide backpacks for resettled children here)
–> World Vision
–> Doctors Without Borders: Has three rescue ships in the Mediterranean, on Tuesday alone they rescued 1,658 people
–> UNICEF
–> Hand in Hand for Syria: Working within Syrian borders to provide aid. Donations are made via British currency but these are easily converted from US donations during the transaction.
3. SUPPORT GRASSROOTS EFFORTS
–> Migrant Offshore Aid Station:
Watch how One Family Is Saving the Lives of Thousands of Migrants — Help them?
–> International Rescue Committee
–> Lending a Hand in Hungary for refugees (volunteers bring food, clothing, and emotional support to refugees)
–>Refugees Welcome (for UK and Europe)
3. PURCHASE SPECIFIC NEEDED ITEMS
Bernadett Szabo/ReutersAlkis Konstantinidis/ReutersIf you’d like to help Syrian refugees stranded on the Greek Island of Lesvos, see the list below, and mail to:
Hellenic Postal Office of Mythymna
℅ The Captain’s Table
Molyvos 81108, Lesvos, Greece
ITEMS TO SEND for SYRIAN REFUGEES on GREEK ISLAND OF LESVOS:
Sneakers, gym shoes for men, women and children (all sizes) are a HIGH PRIORITY
Sweatpants of all sizes.
Briefs/underwear for men, women and children (all sizes)
Men’s trousers (small, medium and large) and shoes
Baby powder milk
Any non-perishables like nut butters or other long-lasting foods.
Diapers
Feminine products
Sleeping bags
Plastic to cover the floor/for shade
Tents/tarpaulin
Mats (camping or yoga mats)
Hats and caps for sunshade (adults and children/light colours because of the sun)
Electric Plug for multiple devices (european voltage)
4. SIGN A PETITION CALLING FOR ACTION
Vassil Donev/EPA
Valdrin Xhemaj/EPA)Sign the Petition to the White House to Help
Petition Canadian government to welcome the refugees
Petition to the UK to welcome asylum seekers
Petition for Australia to create asylum seeker policies
5. SPONSOR A REFUGEE
picture alliance / dpa
Petros Giannakouris/Associated Press
Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images–> Americans, sign home to a Christian refugee family fleeing from ISIS
–> Canadians, sponsor a Syrian refugee family to come to Canada through Missionary Christian Alliance
Canadians, sponsor a Syrian refugee family to come to Canada through MCC
–> Americans, Use this US map to find an agency near you and offer to support a newly arrived refugee family. There are 9 Voluntary Agencies in the US that sponsor refugees to come the the United States and build their own local networks to resettle refugees — where is one close to you?
–>Help someone in Germany cover costs in opening up their homes to more than 800,000 refugees
–> Americans, help RefugeeOne meet needs of refugees already settled who may have seasonal needs, etc.
6. AND TO THE BOY THAT WOKE THE WORLD TO THE WORST REFUGEE CRISIS SINCE WWII
Dear Aylan,
Dear little refugee boy who drowned in the sea —
You just wanted the dirt I call home, to be your home.
That’s what they said: When they scooped up your little Syrian body on the shores of Turkey, they said you just wanted to get to Canada.
You could have stayed with us, Aylan. Your whole family could have stayed with us.
Shalom has a new bunny — she calls him Jesse or Jojo, and Malakai calls him Peter Rabbit, and I call him Edward Toulane, and you could have come and played with that floppy eared fur ball, here on the back lawn and just called here home.
AFP/Getty Images
You could have jumped on our couch, Little Aylan, and we would have made you an extra tall stack of steaming pancakes this morning— and did you know that one of my favourite things in the whole wide world is to stand out in the kitchen garden in the rising fog of the dawn and eat a few cherry tomatoes?
We could have done that barefoot together, Aylan. You could have kneeled and looked for the juiciest, ripest ones. I can see it now, how the juice would have dripped off your chin and you would have grinned from ear to ear. You could have all come. There’s enough room in our hearts.
There’s enough room for all of you in our imagination of the future, Aylan.
There’s enough room in this land, in our embarrassment of riches, for us to imagine you growing up and opening up books and bringing creative ideas and forging a fresh way and our land needed the hope of you, Aylan. We couldn’t afford to lose you, Aylan.
We couldn’t afford to lose the music only you would make, the ideas only you would have, the world that only could ever be, because you were here with us. There was enough space in our schools, in our streets, in our dreams for you.
Your were born for this land’s dreams, Aylan — not a haunting of all our collective nightmares.
I woke this morning with you haunting all my thoughts, Aylan, and our national motto echoing in my head: “A mari usque ad mare.” It means “From sea to sea.”
I thought of that, when I saw that photo of you lying on that beach in Turkey, the waves lapping against your little lifeless head.
You only wanted to get from your bloody sea to our blessed sea, for crying out loud. We’re the ones literally crying out loud now. You only wanted there to be a way across the waves — the endless waves of terror, of gnawing hunger, of bloody battles, of suffocating hopelessness. From sea to sea — for yours to ours— the whole world between us is filling right now with a sea of tears.
We’re a weeping broken mess over the war that you were born into, ISIS bombs exploding all around you, smoke filling the air over Kobani when you first inhaled this warring world into your lungs.
We’re shattered that for all of your three short years in this huge home that we call the earth, you didn’t know the sun rising over the Rockies or prairie fields of hope or countries of people all with open, beckoning doors —- you only ever knew fear, Aylan. You only knew the death and destruction that is ISIS, you only knew fleeing and running and everywhere, closed doors. We could have done better, Aylan. You’re begging us all to do better now.
Once I sat at our breakfast table in the thin early light, Aylan, and saw a fawn run right up to our house, right up to our window and press his head right up against the glass because there were guns firing everywhere in the woods. I looked right into the deer’s begging wild-eyed fear, Aylan. I wanted to let it in.
Why — why in the name of Almighty God — why did we not let you in, Aylan?
There may be seemingly impossible seas between the rich and the poor, but how in God’s name can there be distance in the family of God?
They say your Canadian aunt who lives there right at the sea, she begged them to let you in, even went directly to her Canadian member of parliament, who hand delivered a letter to Canada’s Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander — but the request to let you in, Aylan, was met with a rejecting, slamming door. Hadn’t anybody bothered to looked directly into your begging, wild-eyed fear? But thanks to a strangling mess of bloodied red tape, we all instead get to look into your glassy, wild-eyed death on some Love-forsaken shore. We’re sorry. We’re all sick with this sorry sorrow.
It may be nauseatingly hard for us all to look at that last photo of your limp body, Aylan —- but you’re seared into all of our collective conscience, Aylan, because the undeniable truth of it is: We can turn a blind eye to the poor all we want, but it could have turned out that we were the poor.
That’s why all of us, from sea to sea, across the sea, we’re not looking away from you, Aylan. The whole world murmurs their repentant beckoning, Aylan: Come to our shores.
Come to our tables, come to our hearths, come fill our playgrounds with your laughter and come fill our land with your dreams.
There’s always enough room at our tables for those in need, because our imagination and our nation and our transformation have always fed off the truth of abundance and refuse to be poisoned by the myth of scarcity.
There’s always enough abundance and grace to welcome those in need, because it’s only by abundant grace that any of us are here — and if there’s abundant grace for us, by God, there’s abundant grace for all of us.
There’s always enough hope because dreams always last longer than the dark.
Possibility is always more potent than past history.
Love always trumps death.
Love always trumps death, Aylan.
It’s Love for all you were meant to be for all this world, Aylan, that drives us to our pens to ask lawmakers to listen, that causes us to all link arms in brave ways like the regular folk in Iceland and Germany who are banding together to say we will open our homes so the fleeing can find safety.
It’s Love that drives us to not let the fleeing be pushed off this earth and into the sea, but to come up with ways to say: Come. Come and we will hold on to you because we all belong to each other. There are dreams enough for you, there are tomatoes in the garden for you, and a rising sun and hope coming even now for you, and there is no bureaucracy or excuse or reason that can render us impotent, that can paralyze us in helping the immigrant or wild-eyed or the littlest because we know a Love that is infinite.
When our woods exploded in gunfire, and that deer pressed its own wild-eyed fear up to our glass window, I looked into its eyes, Aylan:
How can we not move heaven and earth to let the broken in —- when heaven moved and came to earth to let us in?
How you would have loved this morning, Aylan, if we’d let you make it to land, if you had got here…
How you would have sat out on the back lawn in the heavy mist and buried your head into the thick abundance of that rabbit. How you could have heard, right above you, the mourning doves up there somewhere in the filmy spruce trees, cooing this quieting peace…
How your eyes might have danced…
You would have seen it too —
How, about mid-morning, the shroud of fog lifted —-
and you could see a whole new world.
Each One — Do Just One Thing
Related: 1. When You Really Need A Fresh Way Forward: The Emmaus Option
2. when it feels like the whole world is in crisis [or how a river runs through the current of things]
Links for 2015-09-03 [del.icio.us]
@NYTimes... the world is listening to this man's cries...
Alyan's Dreams: Welcoming the Strangers & Refugees | Facebook
Join our Facebook community where we're crowdsourcing how to welcome the stranger and refugees in the world's worst refugee crisis since WWII
September 3, 2015
Dear Aylan … dear world with a refugee crisis, dear all of us who have needed to be welcomed in
Dear Aylan,
Dear little refugee boy who drowned in the sea —
You just wanted the dirt I call home, to be your home.
That’s what they said: When they scooped up your little Syrian body on the shores of Turkey, they said you just wanted to get to Canada.
You could have stayed with us, Aylan. Your whole family could have stayed with us.
Shalom has a new bunny — she calls him Jesse or Jojo, and Malakai calls him Peter Rabbit, and I call him Edward Toulane, and you could have come and played with that floppy eared fur ball, here on the back lawn and just called here home.
You could have jumped on our couch, Little Aylan, and we would have made you an extra tall stack of steaming pancakes this morning— and did you know that one of my favourite things in the whole wide world is to stand out in the kitchen garden in the rising fog of the dawn and eat a few cherry tomatoes?
We could have done that barefoot together, Aylan. You could have kneeled and looked for the juiciest, ripest ones. I can see it now, how the juice would have dripped off your chin and you would have grinned from ear to ear. You could have all come. There’s enough room in our hearts.
There’s enough room for all of you in our imagination of the future, Aylan. There’s enough room in this land, in our embarrassment of riches, for us to imagine you growing up and opening up books and bringing creative ideas and forging a fresh way and our land needed the hope of you, Aylan. We couldn’t afford to lose you, Alyan.
We couldn’t afford to lose the music only you would make, the ideas only you would have, the world that only could ever be, because you were here with us. There was enough space in our schools, in our streets, in our dreams for you. Your were born for this land’s dreams, Alyan — not a haunting of all our collective nightmares.
I woke this morning with you haunting all my thoughts, Aylan, and our national motto echoing in my head: “A mari usque ad mare.” It means “From sea to sea.”
I thought of that, when I saw that photo of you lying on that beach in Turkey, the waves lapping against your little lifeless head.
You only wanted to get from your bloody sea to our blessed sea, for crying out loud. We’re the ones literally crying out loud now. You only wanted there to be a way across the waves — the endless waves of terror, of gnawing hunger, of bloody battles, of suffocating hopelessness. From sea to sea — for yours to ours— the whole world between us is filling right now with a sea of tears.
We’re a weeping broken mess over the war that you were born into, ISIS bombs exploding all around you, smoke filling the air over Kobani when you first inhaled this warring world into your lungs.
We’re shattered that for all of your three short years in this huge home that we call the earth, you didn’t know the sun rising over the Rockies or prairie fields of hope or countries of people all with open, beckoning doors —- you only ever knew fear, Aylan. You only knew the death and destruction that is ISIS, you only knew fleeing and running and everywhere, closed doors. We could have done better, Aylan. You’re begging us all to do better now.
Once I sat at our breakfast table in the thin early light, Aylan, and saw a fawn run right up to our house, right up to our window and press his head right up against the glass because there were guns firing everywhere in the woods. I looked right into the deer’s begging wild-eyed fear, Aylan. I wanted to let it in.
Why — why in the name of Almighty God — why did we not let you in, Aylan?
There may be seemingly impossible seas between the rich and the poor, but how in God’s name can there be distance in the family of God?
They say your Canadian aunt who lives there right at the sea, she begged them to let you in, even went directly to her Canadian member of parliament, who hand delivered a letter to Canada’s Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander — but the request to let you in, Aylan, was met with a rejecting, slamming door. Hadn’t anybody bothered to looked directly into your begging, wild-eyed fear? But thanks to a strangling mess of bloodied red tape, we all instead get to look into your glassy, wild-eyed death on some Love-forsaken shore. We’re sorry. We’re all sick with this sorry sorrow.
It may be nauseatingly hard for us all to look at that last photo of your limp body, Aylan —- but you’re seared into all of our collective conscience, Aylan, because the undeniable truth of it is: We can turn a blind eye to the poor all we want, but it could have turned out that we were the poor.
That’s why all of us, from sea to sea, across the sea, we’re not looking away from you, Alyan. The whole world murmurs their repentant beckoning, Aylan: Come to our shores.
Come to our tables, come to our hearths, come fill our playgrounds with your laughter and come fill our land with your dreams.
There’s always enough room at our tables for those in need, because our imagination and our nation and our transformation have always fed off the truth of abundance and refuse to be poisoned by the myth of scarcity.
There’s always enough abundance and grace to welcome those in need, because it’s only by abundant grace that any of us are here — and if there’s abundant grace for us, by God, there’s abundant grace for all of us.
There’s always enough hope because dreams always last longer than the dark.
Possibility is always more potent than past history.
Love always trumps death.
Love always trumps death, Aylan.
It’s Love for all you were meant to be for all this world, Aylan, that drives us to our pens to ask lawmakers to listen, that causes us to all link arms in brave ways like the regular folk in Iceland and Germany who are banding together to say we will open our homes so the fleeing can find safety.
It’s Love that drives us to not let the fleeing be pushed off this earth and into the sea, but to come up with ways to say: Come. Come and we will hold on to you because we all belong to each other. There are dreams enough for you, there are tomatoes in the garden for you, and a rising sun and hope coming even now for you, and there is no bureaucracy or excuse or reason that can render us impotent, that can paralyze us in helping the immigrant or wild-eyed or the littlest because we know a Love that is infinite.
When our woods exploded in gunfire, and that deer pressed its own wild-eyed fear up to our glass window, I looked into its eyes, Aylan:
How can we not move heaven and earth to let the broken in —- when heaven moved and came to earth to let us in?
How you would have loved this morning, Aylan, if we’d let you make it to land, if you had got here…
How you would have sat out on the back lawn in the heavy mist and buried your head into the thick abundance of that rabbit. How you could have heard, right above you, the mourning doves up there somewhere in the filmy spruce trees, cooing this quieting peace…
How your eyes might have danced…
You would have seen it too —
How, about mid-morning, the shroud of fog lifted —-
and you could see a whole new world.
How To Be One of the Ones Who Is Counted For Opening Your Doors
Updated: Please read Alyan’s father’s own story at the NYTimes of how he tried to save Aylan…
and see if it doesn’t grab your heart… see if you too will want to be one who does just one thing:
1. Wildly inspired by people of Iceland and Germany, [go ahead and read it and see how regular folk can do something] we could “use digital means, to gather and take practical steps to offer desperate men, woman and children a place to stay in our own homes, or raise our voices to ask our own governments to let us be sanctuary to more of those in need.” To that end, we’ve created a Facebook page, Aylan’s Dreams: Welcoming the Strangers and Refugees to brainstorm and crowdsource about how we can practically help refugees fleeing right now… and ask our governments to help open the doors. Join us? Together each one of us can do just one thing — in Aylan’s honour and in Jesus’s name.
2. Following the lead of people in Britian, if you feel led, tweet a picture of yourself holding a sign saying ‘refugees welcome’ under the hashtag #refugeeswelcome — and tag your government and or your government representative.
3. To be one of the ones reaching to help pull refugees to safety , partner with World Relief, give backpacks to a refugee child, or lean in with RefugeeOne to help refugees face this winter
4. Donate here if American to help the Syrian Refugees and here if Canadian
5. If we all wrote our letters to Alyan? If we all raised our voices — could we build a bridge across the sea?
. This is what keeps rocking me in tender places: “how to find a way through when the world feels like it’s in crisis.’ We can all do something, each one of us can do just one thing — in Aylan’s honour and in Jesus’s name.
Links for 2015-09-02 [del.icio.us]
"While a diet focussed on natural foods is far from a bad thing, it is when this becomes so obsessive that it can be damaging to health..."
Habits That Work: Worship Break
@KrisCamealy: "What are the habits in your life that serve to bring you closer to God?"
September 2, 2015
how to find a way through when the world feels like it’s in crisis [Or: how a river runs through the current of things]
The girl up at the river, she stood in that ribbon of water up to her ankles and said we’d all lost our ever lovin’ minds.
I’d known Lauriel since her grade school days, a long, willowy thing with hair flowing straight down her back and horn-rimmed glasses slipping off her nose.
When she’d hit the rapids of her teens, she’d taken a pair of scissors and chopped off her hair herself, stopped coming to the BBQs held out at the reflective edge of Gilley’s Pit, (which had the humble beginnings of being a gravel pit that eventually filled with clearing water for a host of hot summer nights and a posse of tired country kids.)
By the time Lauriel had headed off to college, she’d unfurled herself into an uncommon thinker, a sharp reader, a philosopher with a ready tongue and a sharper eye. She was a bit of a runnel looking to make some waves.
That afternoon we went up to the faithful Maitland River to dip our feet in the way summer had come and gone and was flowing on out to the Great Lakes before the trees started to turn, Lauriel was standing right out there in the middle of the river road and I would have known her anywhere after all these years.
She asked how we’d landed and if all these half dozen kids running the river were ours. Yeah, those four boys and those two girls. And I asked her about college and where grace found her and where was it moving her now, how it was moving in her now, and where she hung her hat.
Lauriel talked like a woman looking for a way across a river, for a way across this coursing current of war and race and politics and economics and culture that is shaping and wearing away at now.
She saw this Cross I had penned on my wrist.
“Is that who you are now?” She nodded toward the Cross.
And before I could answer, she turned to me and she said it straight out of the blue —- and it jarred me awake, like she’d plunged baptized all the slumbering in ice cold water:
“Tell me that you care about immigrants who are simply desperate for a safe place to exist or I’m not listening to your Jesus who you’re claiming exists in you.”
I looked her in the eye. I’d been reading the headlines, and the whole world was howling with her. How can you not, after seeing the pictures? I mean, all our collective hearts are breaking over this refugee crisis, over so much grief this summer — and I got it, I could hear what she was saying. Everything that she was saying and not saying and meaning in this heart howl at the end of a hurting summer:
‘Tell me that you care about what is right so passionately that you faithfully go live it, instead of just telling the rest of us how we are living wrong.
Tell me that you care about the mom who’s raising 3 kids on minimum wage in subsidized housing and the son who drowned his pain in a bottle till he lost his house,
that you care about listening to the woman who’s lived a different life than you, who tells you about systemic racism, and very real class systems, and a desperate educational system, and you don’t chalk her up to just being a drain on the system.
Tell me that you’re pro-life, that you’re all pro-humans in utero — and that you care as much about humans in crisis, that you care about babies before they are born — and that you care as much about them after they are born, that you don’t ever dismiss them as welfare weight or ugly thugs or the kind of people that shouldn’t live in your neighbourhood or go to your schools — or I’m not listening to what your Jesus teaches.’
‘And please tell me that you like your leaders to quietly live like a light, more than they like jockeying for the limelight, leaders who listen longer and better than they talk loudly and relentlessly, who aren’t afraid of time away from the crowds to retreat to the quiet because they know that it’s the backside of the wilderness that makes leaders who can forge a new way.
Show me how you love your welfare-dependant, substance-addicted, God-rejecting neighbours as yourself — and maybe I’ll listen to your God.
Just— just tell me that you love people different than you, more than you dismiss them — or I’m indifferent to listening to this Jesus who you say you love.’
Lauriel’s standing there looking at me. I’m standing out in the middle of a river. The noise of everything stops coursing loud in my veins and I’m hearing.
I’m listening. I’m hurting with a hurting world and listening…
The river’s real around Lauriel and I standing here, around this next generation diving in, and my heart rate slows and I’m listening and you can hear the current of things:
Protesting can never be confused with the harder work of compassionate action.
Having serious objections that you post to the world wide web can never be confused with the harder work of having a genuine affection for the whole wide world Christ died for.
Being defined by what you’re against can never be confused with the harder work of being for the Kingdom of God.
“Anger was washed away in the river…” is what Earnest Hemingway said.
The river eddies and I tell Lauriel — I tell her that the people of the Cross commit that wherever pain and people intersect, we will be mindful to hear those who feel powerless.
I tell her that the people of the Cross commit that wherever differences and opinions intersect: Those who take the grace of Christ must take the way of Christ and be known for choosing kindness even more than choosing rightness.
I tell her that people of the Cross commit that wherever brokenness and need intersect we will be offensive in lavish grace because grace never seems right until you’ve done something wrong and are in dire need of it.
I tell her that people of the Cross commit to making our lives intersect with very different lives, because Jesus spent His whole life paying attention to people who most of us have spent our whole lives trying to never pay a moment’s notice to.
The river feels like a road moving us standing there and Love is an action.
Love is an active decision, an active force, and it flows into, through, and out of all the willing like a river, and if you try to stop it or dam it —
Love will rise even stronger and will seek another heart to run through all of its broken places and, love, it will run on and on —-
love will run on.
And we could be like a river of that living water.
We could widen and deepen, we could course our way through hard things and plow fresh new ways.
And our perspective could reflect a Kingdom, our lives could be a refuge and our choices could be a courage that goes against the current.
You can feel it in the air these days:
Something beautiful is rising.
Related: 1. To be one of the ones reaching to help pull refugees to safety, partner with World Relief, give backpacks to a refugee child, or lean in with RefugeeOne to help refugees face this winter (Or any other contacts to help refugees landing in Europe? Share in our community)
2. Consider signing a petition to ask the US administration to watch the Planned Parenthood videos… and if you sign, please choose one Crisis Pregnancy Center from this to donate to also?
3. . when you’re looking for a fresh way forward: The Emmaus Option
when you’d love for others to know Jesus… [Or: how a river runs through the current of things]
The girl up at the river, she stood in that ribbon of water up to her ankles and said we’d all lost our ever lovin’ minds.
I’d known Lauriel since her grade school days, a long, willowy thing with hair flowing straight down her back and horn-rimmed glasses slipping off her nose.
When she’d hit the rapids of her teens, she’d taken a pair of scissors and chopped off her hair herself, stopped coming to the BBQs held out at the reflective edge of Gilley’s Pit, (which had the humble beginnings of being a gravel pit that eventually filled with clearing water for a host of hot summer nights and a posse of tired country kids.)
By the time Lauriel had headed off to college, she’d unfurled herself into an uncommon thinker, a sharp reader, a philosopher with a ready tongue and a sharper eye. She was a bit of a runnel looking to make some waves.
That afternoon we went up to the faithful Maitland River to dip our feet in the way summer had come and gone and was flowing on out to the Great Lakes before the trees started to turn, Lauriel was standing right out there in the middle of the river road and I would have known her anywhere after all these years.
She asked how we’d landed and if all these half dozen kids running the river were ours. Yeah, those four boys and those two girls. And I asked her about college and where grace found her and where was it moving her now, how it was moving in her now, and where she hung her hat.
Lauriel talked like a woman looking for a way across a river, for a way across this coursing current of war and race and politics and economics and culture that is shaping and wearing away at now.
She saw this Cross I had penned on my wrist.
“Is that who you are now?” She nodded toward the Cross.
And before I could answer, she turned to me and she said it straight out of the blue —- and it jarred me awake, like she’d plunged baptized all the slumbering in ice cold water:
“Tell me that you care about immigrants who are simply desperate for a safe place to exist or I’m not listening to your Jesus who you’re claiming exists in you.”
I looked her in the eye. I’d been reading the headlines. I got it, I could hear what she was saying. Everything that she was saying:
‘Tell me that you care about what is right so passionately that you faithfully go live it instead of just telling the rest of us how we are living wrong.
Tell me that you care about the mom who’s raising 3 kids on minimum wage in subsidized housing and the son who drowned his pain in a bottle till he lost his house,
that you care about listening to the woman who’s lived a different life than you, who tells you about systemic racism, and very real class systems, and a desperate educational system, and you don’t chalk her up to just being a drain on the system.
Tell me that you’re pro-life, that you’re all pro-humans in utero — and that you care as much about humans in crisis, that you care about babies before they are born — and that you care as much about them after they are born, that you don’t ever dismiss them as welfare weight or ugly thugs or the kind of people that shouldn’t live in your neighbourhood or go to your schools — or I’m not listening to what your Jesus teaches.’
‘And please tell me that you like your leaders to quietly live like a light, more than they like jockeying for the limelight, leaders who listen longer and better than they talk loudly and relentlessly, who aren’t afraid of time away from the crowds to retreat to the quiet because they know that it’s the backside of the wilderness that makes leaders who can forge a new way.
Show me how you love your welfare-dependant, substance-addicted, God-rejecting neighbours as yourself — and maybe I’ll listen to your God.
Just— just tell me that you love people different than you, more than you dismiss them — or I’m indifferent to listening to this Jesus who you love.’
Lauriel’s standing there looking at me. I’m standing out in the middle of a river. The noise of everything stops coursing loud in my veins and I’m hearing.
I’m listening.
The river’s real around Lauriel and I standing here, around the next generation diving in, and my heart rate slows and I’m listening and you can hear the current of things:
Protesting can never be confused with the harder work of compassionate action.
Having serious objections that you post to the world wide web can never be confused with the harder work of having a genuine affection for the whole wide world Christ died for.
Being defined by what you’re against can never be confused with the harder work of being for the Kingdom of God.
“Anger was washed away in the river…” is what Earnest Hemingway said.
The river eddies and I tell Lauriel — I tell her that the people of the Cross commit that wherever pain and people intersect, we will be mindful to hear those who feel powerless.
I tell her that the people of the Cross commit that wherever differences and opinions intersect: Those who take the grace of Christ must take the way of Christ and be known for choosing kindness even more than choosing rightness.
I tell her that people of the Cross commit that wherever brokenness and need intersect we will be offensive in lavish grace because grace never seems right until you’ve done something wrong and you need more than a little of it.
I tell her that people of the Cross commit to making our lives intersect with very different lives, because Jesus spent His whole life paying attention to people who most of us have spent our whole lives trying to never pay a moment’s notice to.
The river feels like a road moving us standing there and Love is an action.
Love is an active decision, an active force, and it flows into, through, and out of all the willing like a river, and if you try to stop it or dam it —
Love will rise even stronger and will seek another heart to run through all of its broken places and, love, it will run on and on —-
love will run on.
And we could be like a river of that living water.
We could widen and deepen, we could course our way through hard things and plow fresh new ways.
And our perspective could reflect a Kingdom, our lives could be a refuge and our choices could be a courage that goes against the current.
You can feel it in the air these days:
Something beautiful is rising.
Related: when you’re looking for a fresh way forward: The Emmaus Option
September 1, 2015
when you feel a bit invisible
This woman, Jennifer Rothschild, is one of my favourite people on the planet – one of the most empathetic, wisest, most down-to-earth humble women. At the young age of fifteen, Jennifer was diagnosed with a rare, degenerative eye disease that would eventually steal her sight. In the midst of living blind — literally living in an invisible world — Jennifer has taken her message of encouragement, across the country speaking at national and regional gatherings and is the author of 10 books, including her newest book, Invisible: How You Feel is Not Who You Are. It’s humble privilege for this farm girl to be joining Jennifer at a Fresh Grounded Faith event in November in Evansville, IN (could Jennifer and I personally encourage you there?) … Jennifer has a very sensitive, tender word today… for you or someone you desperately love who’s in a real hard place:
guest post by Jennifer Rothschild
“I needed God to rescue me. I couldn’t rescue myself.” Hannah S.
Hannah was stuck.
What started as a choice had become a chain. Fear enslaved her.
She was broken — emotionally manipulated and verbally abused by the man she loved.
For three years, he told her she wasn’t good enough. She wasn’t smart enough. She wasn’t thin enough.
She wasn’t enough.
She became more isolated.
He didn’t like her friends or family. He eventually forbid her to have contact with them. He became the only voice she heard.
Constant disapproval and outbursts followed by silence was her daily fare. She fought hard against her growing feelings of insignificance and insecurity. She admitted, “I just felt invisible.”
She loved him though.
At least she loved the idea of him.
At first, she didn’t want to leave and later, she just couldn’t leave. His manipulation and abuse had formed an invisible barbed wire fence around her life.
Every time she sensed that her normal was not normal, emotional confusion paralyzed her. Maybe she was who he said she was?
Hannah often turned to the Bible for comfort. However, Scripture stung her; it hurt. The man she loved had used the Bible as one of his weapons — the stealthiest weapon imaginable — to beat her down.
He was quick to point out her sin. He would quote Scripture to explain why she was a failure and disappointment to God. He created rules and regulations that he claimed were biblical to dictate what she wore, where she went, and how she talked.
Her spirit was crumbling, but deep down there was a vapor of strength.
It stirred beneath the rubble of her broken spirit. Though she was chained up with fear and enslaved by insecurity, she sensed a stubborn strength yanking on those chains.
Something in her knew the God she trusted wasn’t the twisted taskmaster her lover claimed.
Something in her knew that how she felt was not who she was.
One night, Hannah took the Bible into her shaky hands and instead of it being a baseball bat that beat her up, it became the blanket that warmed and comforted her. It became the key that unlocked her heart.
Through tears, Hannah read the words in Isaiah, about how Jerusalem had “relied on oppression and depended on deceit” (Isaiah 30:12).
God used His Word to help her see that even though she hated the oppression she was under, she had trusted it—she was dependent on it.
God used His beautiful Word to gently show her that she was like Judah — trying to draw identity and acceptance from oppression. And, like Judah, she too was deceived. So she cried to God, “Rescue me, I cannot rescue myself.”
And He did. God rescued her.
But, His rescue was — and is — painful.
God’s rescue came in the form of another woman. Her man — the man who demanded her faithfulness—the man whose love she longed for, callously showed up at the café where Hannah worked with a woman—another woman.
Without explanation, Hannah was out. Rejected.
Again, she felt totally invisible.
But, rejection was her rescue.
“God knew that I wouldn’t leave — I couldn’t leave — without such a radical rejection.”
Now she is free from that man and his lies and oppression. Yet, she grieves for her lost years. She is still detangling the web of lies she has believed. She struggles with feelings of guilt and shame.
But how she feels is not who she is!
God rescued her to restore her.
He didn’t just rescue her from the situation; He rescued her to Himself.
God rescued her into His love — His love gives; it doesn’t take.
His love frees; it does not enslave.
His love gives her identity; it doesn’t take it from her.
You may be Hannah or feel like Hannah. Or you may love a Hannah. Maybe the words you are reading right now are your rescue?
God rescues you to restore you.
He frees you to cover you with grace — not control you with guilt.
You may have trusted in oppression and be stuck in lies and feel beaten down and incapable of rescuing yourself.
God can and will rescue you. Cry out to Him. Embrace His rescue even if He pulls it off in a way you don’t expect — even if the rescue is painful.
Trust more in Him than you trust in the oppression that has crushed and controlled you.
Oh my friend, He sees Hannah and He sees you.
You are not invisible to God.
Using the love story of Hosea and Gomer as the guide, Jennifer Rothschild delves into the roots of our identity. In Invisible, you’ll see the “me” in Gomer – a woman deeply loved, chosen and prone to wander. You can find out more about the book and get a Free Audio Book for a limited time at www.theInvisibleBook.org.
The truths found in this new release: Invisible: How You Feel is Not Who You Are? Is a life-giving, powerful hope for every woman.
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