Worth Remembering

The meaning of Christmas took on an entirely new meaning for me two decades ago. It was in the very last row of a church where I raised my hand with all eyes closed and heads bowed. Years later, at the same church, I shared a story by Ruth Seamands (a missionary to India) for a special Christmas message. Perhaps you will agree that it is worth remembering.

It was Christmas Eve in Korea. An expectant mother walked through the snow to the home of a missionary friend where she knew she could find help. A short way down the road from the mission house was a deep gully spanned by a bridge. As the young woman stumbled forward, birth pains overcame her. She realized she could go no farther. She crawled under the bridge. There alone between the trestles she gave birth to a baby boy. She had nothing with her except the heavy padded clothes she was wearing. One by one she removed the pieces of her clothing and wrapped them around her tiny son around and around, like a cumbersome cocoon. Then, finding a discarded piece of burlap, she pulled it over herself, and lay exhausted beside her baby.

The next morning the missionary drove across the bridge in her Jeep to take a Christmas basket to a Korean family. On the way back, as she neared the bridge, the Jeep sputtered and ran out of gas. Getting out of the Jeep she started to walk across the bridge, and heard a faint cry beneath her. She crawled under the bridge to investigate. There she found the tiny baby, warm but hungry, and the young mother frozen to death. The missionary took the baby home and cared for him. As the boy grew, he often asked his adopted mother to tell him the story of how she had found him. On Christmas Day, on his 12^th birthday, he asked the missionary to take him to his mother's grave.

Once there he asked her to wait a distance away while he went to pray. The boy stood beside the grave with a bowed head, weeping. Then he began to disrobe. As the astonished missionary watched, the boy took off his warm clothing, piece by piece, and laid it on his mother's grave. Surely he won't take off all his clothing, the missionary thought. He'll freeze! But the boy stripped himself of everything, putting all his warm clothing on the grave. He knelt naked and shivering in the snow. As the missionary went to him to help him dress again, she heard him cry out to the mother he never knew:  "Were you colder than this for me, my mother?" And he wept bitterly.

When Christ came, he stripped himself of every royal garment and entered into our world of cold indifference. He clothed each of us with forgiveness, mercy and hope. And then He died of a broken heart. What broke His heart? Surely, it was the long history of men making slaves of other men. It was centuries of cruelty, hurt and suffering.  It was the cry of millions of orphans and the sight of starving children that He could hear and see in the years to come. He knew that we would forget Him. Not His name, or His message. Rather, we would forget that we are called to be different. Different like Him. 

Different like Him is giving, going and grieving for the least of these. To be honest, the way that we spend our time, talents and treasures looks like depraved indifference sometimes. Watch the video below. Then ask yourself  "what have I done to help the least of these?". The question is worth remembering as Christmas approaches. 

This video can be seen in a larger format on A Child's Hope Int'l .

Justice in the Morning

There are many things that I do not understand. I struggle to understand why bad things happen to good people. Or why good things happen to bad people.  Or equally perplexing, why so many Christians appear disconnected from biblical truth and action.

For most of us, we live in adequate if not very comfortable homes. We have ample food, clean water, clothing and “toys” of all kinds. We seldom think about where our next meal will come from or how we will get a cool glass of water. Being born in the right latitude and longitude has a lot to do with it. Yet for more than 40% of the world who were born in the “wrong” latitude and longitude, they do worry about food or even a drop of clean water.

Vulnerable children suffer the most when hungry and thirsty. It often leads to a slow and painful death.  And it is one of those perverse evil things that I cannot explain away with an easy answer.

Injustice will force some of these children to be sold into slavery, to beg and grovel on the streets, to dig into dumps looking for maggot laced scraps, to give away their sacred bodies for something to drink. Hunger, thirst , sexual trafficking, child slavery and child abandonment are all examples of injustice. And all for just being born at the wrong time or in the wrong latitude and longitude.

There is an Old Testament passage that is a stark reminder of the responsibility we (the Church) have to help correct injustice. Not once a year at Thanksgiving when the pangs of compassion stab us in the heart. Or when our church leaders happen to mention the needs of orphans and widows. From this verse it looks pretty clear that it is to be a daily event.

Administer justice every morning; rescue from the hand of his oppressor the one who has been robbed...     Jeremiah 21:12

Orphans are robbed daily of a family that loves and protects them. Children in foster care are robbed daily of a stable, secure, risk free permanent home. Thirsty children are robbed daily of clean, life saving water. Hungry children are robbed daily of nutritious food that will help their small bodies grow. Young children are robbed daily of their innocence. HIV children are robbed daily of their health by a lack of medicine.

As a result, millions of children are robbed every day all over the world.  

We are called to administer justice. To help correct what is wrong. It should happen before our day gets filled up with other priorities. In case you are asking, I am guilty as charged.

Even so, have you heard a message at your church lately on administering justice on behalf of these children? As a deacon, elder, teacher, preacher, pastor have you ever led by example what your church is called to do?

A small minority of you have.

If the majority of us were brutally honest, we would say that we haven’t.

Each of us can change the life of an enslaved, trafficked, fatherless, orphan, hungry or thirsty child. For some of us, it will require a change in attitude. For others, a change in our spending habits. How many flat screen TVs do we really “need” in our homes? Or jeweled bracelets, rings or necklaces? Or shiny Escalades? We don't need those things, we want them. Vulnerable children need water, they need food. There is a difference.
Justice in the morning is not something that we think about that often. Should be though. The rest of the verse is pretty clear what will happen.

Do You Have H1N1?

The suffering in Haiti has taken on a new and tragic dimension with the earthquake today. The devastation may end the dream of an idyllic tourist spot for Americans.

A few years ago, tour guides were waiting with bony, undersized horses to carry investors to one of Haiti's most historic sites, the Citadel. They hoped that American money would recreate Haiti into the Caribbean's next vacation hotspot.

However, soaring food costs in April 2008 led to violent street protests that killed many and injured hundreds. U.S. State Department travel warnings grew more serious. Tourism in Haiti seems like an odd dream in a place where 1 child in 5 will die from hunger, disease and the effects of severe malnutrition.

Haiti wants the tourism success of their island neighbor, the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic shares the same rocky island in the Atlantic and they bring in more than $3.5 billion in revenues and millions of visitors to sprawling resorts and designer golf courses every year. Do these tourists know (or care) that countless children on this island must eat parasite laced mud cookies to stop the pain of hunger?

Thousands of American Christians go to the Dominican Republic and splurge on food, drink and jewelry for themselves while children starve all over the island. Help me understand how that is possible?

How can we justify that level of indifference, and perhaps even greed? How can we spend so lavishly on ourselves so close to extreme human suffering?

Perhaps the problem is that we have been infected by an increasingly more complex strain of the H1N1 virus. As a result, our ability to see the world as Christ sees the world has been impaired. It is a vision problem that also affects our head, our heart and our hands.

The virus affects our ability to discern truth from fiction . We do not consider ourselves wealthy or rich and therefore excuse ourselves from having any responsibility to help others. The truth is this: American Christians are rich beyond measure compared to the world. Filthy rich. All we have to do is stop and think about what we do have and not what we do not have.

H1N1 is serious (H1N1 stands for Here and Now for Number 1). Rather than wait for our eternal reward, we want it here and now. Rather than use our head, heart and hands to help those with far less, we justify (this is why the disease is so diabolical) spending more on ourselves. We are trading our future inheritance on trinkets and cheap souvenirs of the better life.

But you rich people are in for trouble. You have already had an easy life! (Luke 6:24)

H1N1 not only inhibits Christians from living like Christ but it spreads and hurts others. It hurts the poor as we pass them by. And it infects the world as they learn that Christians are really not much that different than they are. So why should they become like us?

I want to be clear on this. Christians should go to the Dominican Republic. They should go to Haiti. They should go to Africa. They should go throughout the world. They should spend money to help local mission groups. They should invest in micro business enterprises that help the poor get a leg up. They should buy merchandise from a single mother there who is learning to sew. And they should stoop down and feed a child from their abundance.

Taking a cruise to the Dominican Republic? Going to Bermuda? Cancun or anyplace else? Before you go, get inoculated against H1N1. How?

Read the Gospels. Then swallow what the Book says and let the Truth come out the pores of your skin.

Want to know if the inoculation worked? Here is a simple test. See if you can walk by the large screen flat panel TVs at Costco and not stop or twitch with rationalizing that purchase. How long is the key.