Bubbles and Questions and Divisions

I was reading a guys blog who was talking about the "bubble" we often get stuck in in life, and the balance of living outside that bubble but keeping from going off in the wrong direction. Then I've been reading ch.10 of Pursuit of God by Tozer over and over just soaking it all in. It got me started thinking about some things I'd been meaning to write for a bit and I'm finally going to write it down like I've been meaning to.

Have you ever seen the commercial on TV where the people jump from one bubble to another, each bubble playing a different song? I think that's been me a lot. There have been separate bubbles for the way I talk, another for my actions, one for being with my friends, another for my parents, and so on. I've been thinking about my faith, about my Savior. I don't ever want to be ashamed or too distracted to live Christ' ways or to speak his name. I've been thinking about how so often the things in my heart, word, and deed are so different. Tozer calls this the 'sacred-secular antithesis.' We so often divide our lives into different areas, some we consider 'sacred' good things like church or singing a certain hymn, and others we consider 'secular' and are frustrated yet very drawn too like eating or movies etc. It's a difficult balance, I find myself constantly in situations where I wonder what I'm suposed to do and be. It's hard to know when to preach with words or deeds. It's difficult to feel as if you're a Christian when you often end up in places that contrast church or a religious place. Sometimes it's easy to feel as if you have to either be this wet blanket depressing 'christian' or else the wild little sinner. And both leave you dissapointed.

This has been on my heart and mind for a while. And after questions and pondering I've come to a realization, but I'd rather just share those questions and thoughts right now. I hope you'll find what I did.



What if my words were the same as my actions, and my actions reflected by my words?

What if my heart compelled every action I do and word that I spoke?

What if nothing in my life were separated by bubbles, if there were no separation between my actions, my words, my thoughts, my heart?

What if it's not even about my words, deeds, or heart?

What if my self were gone, and only the image of Love remained?

What if everything I am were surrendered and captivated in Love?



I don't want to live this life in a bunch of different bubbles or even just one bubble, asking a bunch of questions, but never having the guts to break out of those bubbles and live the answers out.

God is God wherever we are, when ever etc. And His Spirit is alive in us.

....let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith... Hebrews 12:1-2

Injustice

Today I was checking out some pictures from International Justice Mission that just totally broke my heart, made me rather angry/sad, and caused my soul to cry out. I saw pictures of beautiful young girls, who had been rescued from trafficking and were now in a safe house. That's great, I'm so glad to see justice and hope being brought into their lives. But the thing that made me so upset was that they even needed to be rescued. The most basic things of life, having a home and someone, like a parent, to love and surround you as you grow up in safety and love, that was taken away from them. It's ridiculous to me that in an age where we walk on the moon, drive one of our several cars down paved roads, that such disgusting injustice lives on the same earth that I do. Those girls in the pictures should never have had to be rescued in the first place, there never should have been such a twisted 'business' to be caught in.



You know what else is totally crazy to me? That I can sit and look at a computer screen and my heart so totally go out to girls I've never seen before. I love that God so breaks my heart for them and that He shows me that there are better ways and that this trafficking thing that got those girls is not right. But that's not all, it's totally crazy to me that I would want to love and help those girls I've never met, because their condition of need is so visible and tangible to me, and yet that I would hesitate or refuse to reach out and love a neighbor because their problems are only of the invisible, non physical need of a soul for Christ' love. In an age where the gospel is so easy to come by and share here in my community, I'm afraid or 'too busy' to share what I know.

For me to love someone here is to step out against the normal ways of this society and truly care not just about how someone looks or what they do or don't have, but to care about what they'll have in the next life, weather or not they have any true hope for this life and after. If I'm going to love someone here it's not going to be easy, because there are so many other things that the world I live in offers me here and it rarely points me to anyone but myself. I don't pretend the world is not tempting and that very very often I'm not lulled by this race for the American Dream that I've grown up around, but the more I press into God, the more I'm awakened to the injustice right here. To the Father my neighbor is just as important and valued as the girls I saw who were rescued from trafficking, they were created just as uniquely and with beautiful plans and purpose for their lives in the hope of Christ.

Injustice. It's not fair that those precious girls from Cambodia have gone through so much that they had to be rescued and taken to a safe house where their faces have to be blurred from pictures for their protection, and it's not fair that my neighbor is often just a familiar face in the little brown house, that an encounter with them is often thought of as annoying or an interruption to my day. I am saved from my own sins and their eternal consequences only by the sacrifice of Christ for all, so I'm meant to be sharing what I've been given and to be a part of the body of Christ who is alive and working still. To every soul there is a value and an urgency that we can never see until we are willing to choose to set aside what pleases our eyes and self, and allow Love to open our hearts to what his heart sees.

Hunger Touches All of US

So I was checking out i-heart.org today, ( the I heart Revolution site) and followed the link to freerice.com. Just through playing the games, you can help feed hungry people. For every answer you get right they donate ten grains of rice, after five minutes or so it really adds up!



A few facts on hunger:

963 million people do not have enough to eat, more than the populations of USA, Canada, and the European Union

Every six seconds a child dies because they are hungry

25,000 people (adults and children) die every day from hunger and related causes.

Lack of vitamin A kills a million infants each year.

For more stats check out http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats.



Pretty crazy, that we live in this 'other world' where this doesn't really touch us. Or does it?

I remember so many times that I fell to my knees in the comfort of my church, "Jesus I want to know you, you seem so far away. Draw me closer I want to know you more." He already answered that cry over two thousand years ago, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." Quite simply, to serve others is to serve Jesus, to lay down your life for another is to be like Jesus. Think about how much you can learn about someone by visiting them in the hospital, or by cleaning their house, or by just taking time to talk with them unexpectedly. Think about how much better you understand another person's perspective when you pause your own thoughts long enough to think of theirs. That's the point I think Jesus was trying to get across, when you humble your self enough (think about how humble that the Son of God came to earth as a mere man) and put your self aside, you're becoming like Christ and the veil between you and him is torn, self is on longer in the way.

So yes, hunger touched me (and quite honestly still does) in the form of hungering more for myself, and in that way hunger gripped the starving all the more through my selfishness.

Hunger touches all of us. When we blatantly ignore the cries of the hungry, we are touched by hunger not in the form of starvation, but of gluttony. Hunger and starvation bring yet another under their power. When we ignore or turn away from those who are hungry, not only do we not avoid it, but we become a valuable ally and slave to it. But when we choose to touch back, to touch the starving, we erase a bit more of the darkness that is hunger. When we choose to stop our lives for a moment to reach into another life with love, we push back the injustice reigning over lives. Let's take a stand against all hunger with the one thing that every soul needs, Love.

Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 1 John 3:18