I know there has been a lot of Haiti talk around here and elsewhere, but I just had to share this one. Tim Pearson is a guy that I served with for a few days last summer when Com Church sent us to Port au Prince. We connected pretty well. He's a funny guy and a true servant, so of course everybody loved him.
He was there for several reasons, but one of them -- or rather, two of them -- were Sammy and Gino, the two little boys he and his wife were, at the time, in the process of adopting. It was heart-wrenching and beautiful to watch him interact with those boys. Tim was really impressive and inspiring to me because, among other things, he really modeled the Kingdom to me as a father, as an adoptive parent, and as (at the time) a servant for Jesus in Haiti. There would be times when Tim's boys were 30 feet away from him and he had to focus on other work that he was there to do (he was integral in helping orchestrate the rooftop garden that was one of our primary jobs while there). I knew it must've been really hard for him to keep his sanity in those moments, but he was always joyful, hilarious, and encouraging.
OK, so the point of the post is to share this with you. Go read the story of Sammy and Gino's homecoming. Go ahead and cry. It's good for you.
Showing posts with label important stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label important stuff. Show all posts
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
Perspective
I know people on twitter and facebook are probably tired of me talking about this, so I figured I'd come over here and talk about it. Go read this blog and get some persective. And if you haven' given any money to some sort of Haitian relief effort, please consider doing so.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Pray for Haiti
Some of you will remember that I spent some time with orphans and saints in Haiti this past summer. There was a pretty massive earthquake there today. The people (and kids) that we worked with there are all ok, but I know they would appreciate your prayers. Haiti is the second poorest country in the world, so an earthquake is like adding insult to injury. Go read about how my friends at Heartline are doing.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
To each as they have need. No, really.
Tonight at the Sunday gathering of Community Church, something really beautiful happened. It was actually kind of a weird night. If you’ve ever been to Community Church, you know that we have a lot of meetings that, if you’ve grown up in a highly traditional or formal church environment, could easily be labeled as “weird nights.” It’s not something that we try to do or anything. It’s just sort of the way things happen around there.
Anyway, tonight was especially weird for a few reasons. One, we were kind of down because the college semester has come to a close, and over half of our regular attendees are in college. Two, we had an unusual “service” because it was “member meeting night.” We needed to talk about the 2009 budget, so we just had a music/singing/worship time, and then said, “anybody who wants to stay can stay, but now we’re having a member meeting to talk about money.” That always runs a few people off. And three, it was a weird night because there were just a tremendous amount of prayer/mission needs/requests that came up.
I won’t go into all the details. There are some funny and interesting things that I could share about the way that Community Church handles things like budgets and budget meetings, but most of it would just sound like I’m bragging or trying to sound odd or something. Suffice it to say that we do things in a way that is absolutely our own and, hopefully, very biblical and beautiful. Com Church hates “business,” but we know that all organizations of any kind (and the church is, at some level, an organization, whether we hippies like it or not) must deal with various kinds of structure and administration. And we just think that, if we’re going to have to do those things, we ought to make them fun, communal, worshipful, and joyous. Have you ever heard those four words used when describing a business meeting at a church?
I didn’t think so.
Well, at the end of the meeting, after everybody looked up on the screen and saw how much money me and Scot and Thad all make, we had a short time of sharing and such. Several different people talked about needs that they had or were aware of, and people committed to help one another with their time, their money, etc.
There was one particular need that was rather close to my heart. I’ll give the brief back story.
A young woman in our church – we’ll call her Molly – has joint custody of three boys who she got to know a few years ago when she lived in their neighborhood. Molly is white and the boys are black. That shouldn’t matter for the sake of the story, but this is America, so it probably does. Staci and I have spent a significant amount of time with these people. Our kids and Molly's kids all play together a lot, and there's just a good bit of hanging out in one another's homes. We're all really close.
Molly shared some difficulties she’s been having in trying to live life as a single mother (she has a birth-daughter as well) and some of it was pretty heart-wrenching. None of it was a surprise to me or to Staci, but it's always hard to have to share things publicly. So I helped Molly articulate some of what is going on. Again, lots of folks in the church prayed for her – and her “family” – and offered ideas and help, etc.
But one really cool thing happened. This is the point of the story, in case you're in a hurry.
After the meeting concluded, everybody was just kind of milling around and chatting, etc, and Molly came up to me and we talked a little about how the meeting went and about how her week was looking as she continues to love and house these boys. While we’re talking, she just sort of casually says, “and I just realized today that I don’t really have the money to buy them Christmas presents.” Now, you have to understand that these boys have spent their entire lives in poverty, abuse, neglect, and utter despair. I can’t over-sell the drama and trauma that they’ve seen in their short lives (they are 11, 14, and 16 years old). So Molly really wanted to bless them with gifts.
Well, right as she’s saying this, another one of our members walks by. We’ll call him Jeff. Jeff is a good friend of mine and God has blessed him with lots of money. Jeff and his wife are extremely generous and hospitable. So I just grabbed Jeff as he was walking by and said to Molly, “tell him what you just told me.” It was just like that. No warning. I honestly didn’t even think it thru, you know?
So Molly tells Jeff what she told me, and he says,
“Oh nonsense. You have money. It’s just not in your wallet yet.”
He takes out his wallet right then and empties it into Molly’s hand. I couldn’t see how much money it was, but I saw some twenties and I saw some ones. It was at least $70-80, at most $200-300. Really, I have no idea. But it was just that fast and that simple.
Hey man. You have money. She doesn’t. Whaddaya say?
Bam. Cha-ching. Boo-yah. Whatever.
We don’t always have a “teaching time” at Community Church. But there’s always a sermon if you know how to listen for it.
Anyway, tonight was especially weird for a few reasons. One, we were kind of down because the college semester has come to a close, and over half of our regular attendees are in college. Two, we had an unusual “service” because it was “member meeting night.” We needed to talk about the 2009 budget, so we just had a music/singing/worship time, and then said, “anybody who wants to stay can stay, but now we’re having a member meeting to talk about money.” That always runs a few people off. And three, it was a weird night because there were just a tremendous amount of prayer/mission needs/requests that came up.
I won’t go into all the details. There are some funny and interesting things that I could share about the way that Community Church handles things like budgets and budget meetings, but most of it would just sound like I’m bragging or trying to sound odd or something. Suffice it to say that we do things in a way that is absolutely our own and, hopefully, very biblical and beautiful. Com Church hates “business,” but we know that all organizations of any kind (and the church is, at some level, an organization, whether we hippies like it or not) must deal with various kinds of structure and administration. And we just think that, if we’re going to have to do those things, we ought to make them fun, communal, worshipful, and joyous. Have you ever heard those four words used when describing a business meeting at a church?
I didn’t think so.
Well, at the end of the meeting, after everybody looked up on the screen and saw how much money me and Scot and Thad all make, we had a short time of sharing and such. Several different people talked about needs that they had or were aware of, and people committed to help one another with their time, their money, etc.
There was one particular need that was rather close to my heart. I’ll give the brief back story.
A young woman in our church – we’ll call her Molly – has joint custody of three boys who she got to know a few years ago when she lived in their neighborhood. Molly is white and the boys are black. That shouldn’t matter for the sake of the story, but this is America, so it probably does. Staci and I have spent a significant amount of time with these people. Our kids and Molly's kids all play together a lot, and there's just a good bit of hanging out in one another's homes. We're all really close.
Molly shared some difficulties she’s been having in trying to live life as a single mother (she has a birth-daughter as well) and some of it was pretty heart-wrenching. None of it was a surprise to me or to Staci, but it's always hard to have to share things publicly. So I helped Molly articulate some of what is going on. Again, lots of folks in the church prayed for her – and her “family” – and offered ideas and help, etc.
But one really cool thing happened. This is the point of the story, in case you're in a hurry.
After the meeting concluded, everybody was just kind of milling around and chatting, etc, and Molly came up to me and we talked a little about how the meeting went and about how her week was looking as she continues to love and house these boys. While we’re talking, she just sort of casually says, “and I just realized today that I don’t really have the money to buy them Christmas presents.” Now, you have to understand that these boys have spent their entire lives in poverty, abuse, neglect, and utter despair. I can’t over-sell the drama and trauma that they’ve seen in their short lives (they are 11, 14, and 16 years old). So Molly really wanted to bless them with gifts.
Well, right as she’s saying this, another one of our members walks by. We’ll call him Jeff. Jeff is a good friend of mine and God has blessed him with lots of money. Jeff and his wife are extremely generous and hospitable. So I just grabbed Jeff as he was walking by and said to Molly, “tell him what you just told me.” It was just like that. No warning. I honestly didn’t even think it thru, you know?
So Molly tells Jeff what she told me, and he says,
“Oh nonsense. You have money. It’s just not in your wallet yet.”
He takes out his wallet right then and empties it into Molly’s hand. I couldn’t see how much money it was, but I saw some twenties and I saw some ones. It was at least $70-80, at most $200-300. Really, I have no idea. But it was just that fast and that simple.
Hey man. You have money. She doesn’t. Whaddaya say?
Bam. Cha-ching. Boo-yah. Whatever.
We don’t always have a “teaching time” at Community Church. But there’s always a sermon if you know how to listen for it.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
And on the other side of the world...
... in more ways than one, there's this. Don't click unless you're at a place where you can cry like a baby and maybe lift your hands like a crazy person.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Thursday, May 22, 2008
A rare moment of joke-free honesty
Staci and I have been doing something for, I don’t know, the last year or so, that has changed our lives and our marriage. There’s a good chance that it’s changed more than that, but I really don’t know for sure.
Here’s what we’ve been doing. Any time that we’re together (and often when we’re not, but I’ll explain that later), if one of us says “we really need to be praying for/about…” we just pray right then. If we’re at home, we just sit down right where we are (if the kids are around we drag them into it) and pray for a few minutes. If we’re in public, we find some way to do it with minimum obviousness and “show.”
I know this isn’t any huge thing. Lots of you probably live your lives like this, but it’s new for us. We’ve always prayed together. Every couple handles this kind of thing differently, I know. But we’ve never had excessive feelings of weirdness or discomfort with it. I pray pretty much the same way I talk, and so does Staci (only Staci sometimes prays with a kind of intuition and intensity that’s a little bit mystical), so it’s all pretty much the same as having a conversation, only The King of The Universe is in on it.
The new part is that we have a “let’s do this right now” kind of thing going. And, for some reason, it’s just made our prayers feel more real and more connected to who we are and who God is.
I’m not saying it’s easy to explain. I’m not about to give you a method to a better life or anything. I’m just telling you that we’ve changed the way we’ve been praying, and it’s been significant for us. It is what it is.
But it has changed us. It’s pretty much obliterated that whole “I’ll be praying for you” problem, which I assume you’re familiar with. You know, where you don’t really end up praying for the people who are counting on your prayers.
That’s over. Sometimes the whole thing is comical, because someone will tell me something that they want me to pray for, and I’ll say, “let’s just pray now.” I don’t do it to be “edgy” or shock-jock or odd-for-God or whatever (at least not most of the time). It just makes the most sense to me to take care of it right then. But of course you can imagine that some people are a little thrown off by it.
Hey, I’m a little thrown off by it. Sometimes the “let’s pray right now” line just flies out of my mouth before I really process it. Sometimes I am feeling a little full of my spiritual self – thinking how blessed this person is to be getting advice from a smart guy like me –and I realize that I’ve just invited someone to pray with me (for them) and I don’t even know what to pray for.
There’s a little bit of reckless idiot still hiding out in my corners and cracks.
Anyway…
As far as I can tell in searching my own heart, I don’t think I’m bringing this up to say how super-awesome my/our prayer life is. Even if I was trying to say that, it wouldn’t be the truth. We pray for stuff when we think of it, but sometimes we’re too busy or too selfish or too cynical to think of it. Sometimes we only think of stuff that is helpful or life-giving for us, completely forgetting about the needs of others. Usually Staci isn’t guilty of any of those things, but even she’s a human. A super-hot human with really good hair, but a human no less.
No, I’m writing this for a couple of other reasons. First, I’ve run into a lot of people lately who feel like they just don’t know how to pray.
I know this feeling. I've had it many times. Like maybe somebody showed it to me at some point, but I forgot to write it down, and now when I have to do it without the help of an experienced pray-expert, I just freeze up and clam up and stumble along until I finally say “oh forget it, God you know what I want.”
Or -- for better or for worse -- I just turn my praying into a fill-in-the-blanks test, inserting every cliché I can think of until my prayer sounds like the half-hearted, prepared statement of a high school football coach speaking to the reporter of the local rag after a game that everybody knew they were going to win anyway.
Lots of people pray like that. I pray like that. For many of us, this is prayer-as-usual. If we even pray at all, we pray without passion. We apply more purpose and sweat and effort to blogging or voting for American Idol or trying to figure out Lost than we do to praying.
Lord, have mercy.
Hey, this is me, too. I’m the chief of sinners.
So that’s the first reason I’m writing this: to remind us that praying is just something you have to practice and repeat if you want to “master” it; that praying is something you have to make yourself do so that you’ll actually be doing something eternal and right amidst all that is temporal and silly (and that's a lot).
Second, I’m writing this because I want to tell you about a few things that I’ve been praying about today.
Here’s a big one. Lots of you have already heard about this, so I won’t try to act like it’s my exclusive scoop. The more I think about it, I’m pretty sure this is the worst family scenario I can reasonably imagine. Aside from all the obvious stuff that everybody knows about the patriarch of this family, here’s something else you should know: these people are on a mission to save orphans, and they use their own actual, personal money to make it happen. Moreover, they started an organization that helps others do it too. They gave my family $2000 when we adopted Jude. We didn’t have the money to adopt Jude. Then we did. Because of them (and some other generous folks who would rather not be linked to). So pray for it. Right now. They need it.
The other one is nothing new. My brother is in a miserable state right now. You can read more about it all here. You can even look at pictures that show you the awful rash that covers most of his body. The rash is exacerbated by heat, so he can’t really go outside much at all, because it’s summer in Birmingham. Also, he’s nauseous and weak and lonely. And he signs off every one of his blogs with “God is good.” I’m telling you, this guy is a hero. And so is his wife, who is limping around on bad feet (long story) to keep everything together in their life. Pray for them. Right now. They need it.
Oh, and in case that’s not enough to get you on your knees or whatever, you can go global with your praying. Myanmar is facing a tragedy of unimaginable proportions. And Rwanda is totally screwed up. I could continue, but then it might sound like I don’t have any faith.
Sometimes I don’t. But that’s why I pray. I don’t just pray because I have faith. I pray because I need faith.
And in those times, the Lord reminds me that He does stuff like keeping this kid alive when no one said it was possible (lots of folks prayed for this one, and I have to believe that it mattered). He reminds me that He brought us these little guys even though we can’t make babies the normal way (though not for a lack of blessed procreative activity). He reminds me that I have more friends than people should be allowed to have; that I have a career and a house and a wife that really loves me.
I wish my faith wasn’t so tied to results, but there you go. I’m a mess.
If I sound preachy, forgive me. This is the stuff that’s all over me today, and the only way to get it off is to throw it on you.
Here’s what we’ve been doing. Any time that we’re together (and often when we’re not, but I’ll explain that later), if one of us says “we really need to be praying for/about…” we just pray right then. If we’re at home, we just sit down right where we are (if the kids are around we drag them into it) and pray for a few minutes. If we’re in public, we find some way to do it with minimum obviousness and “show.”
I know this isn’t any huge thing. Lots of you probably live your lives like this, but it’s new for us. We’ve always prayed together. Every couple handles this kind of thing differently, I know. But we’ve never had excessive feelings of weirdness or discomfort with it. I pray pretty much the same way I talk, and so does Staci (only Staci sometimes prays with a kind of intuition and intensity that’s a little bit mystical), so it’s all pretty much the same as having a conversation, only The King of The Universe is in on it.
The new part is that we have a “let’s do this right now” kind of thing going. And, for some reason, it’s just made our prayers feel more real and more connected to who we are and who God is.
I’m not saying it’s easy to explain. I’m not about to give you a method to a better life or anything. I’m just telling you that we’ve changed the way we’ve been praying, and it’s been significant for us. It is what it is.
But it has changed us. It’s pretty much obliterated that whole “I’ll be praying for you” problem, which I assume you’re familiar with. You know, where you don’t really end up praying for the people who are counting on your prayers.
That’s over. Sometimes the whole thing is comical, because someone will tell me something that they want me to pray for, and I’ll say, “let’s just pray now.” I don’t do it to be “edgy” or shock-jock or odd-for-God or whatever (at least not most of the time). It just makes the most sense to me to take care of it right then. But of course you can imagine that some people are a little thrown off by it.
Hey, I’m a little thrown off by it. Sometimes the “let’s pray right now” line just flies out of my mouth before I really process it. Sometimes I am feeling a little full of my spiritual self – thinking how blessed this person is to be getting advice from a smart guy like me –and I realize that I’ve just invited someone to pray with me (for them) and I don’t even know what to pray for.
There’s a little bit of reckless idiot still hiding out in my corners and cracks.
Anyway…
As far as I can tell in searching my own heart, I don’t think I’m bringing this up to say how super-awesome my/our prayer life is. Even if I was trying to say that, it wouldn’t be the truth. We pray for stuff when we think of it, but sometimes we’re too busy or too selfish or too cynical to think of it. Sometimes we only think of stuff that is helpful or life-giving for us, completely forgetting about the needs of others. Usually Staci isn’t guilty of any of those things, but even she’s a human. A super-hot human with really good hair, but a human no less.
No, I’m writing this for a couple of other reasons. First, I’ve run into a lot of people lately who feel like they just don’t know how to pray.
I know this feeling. I've had it many times. Like maybe somebody showed it to me at some point, but I forgot to write it down, and now when I have to do it without the help of an experienced pray-expert, I just freeze up and clam up and stumble along until I finally say “oh forget it, God you know what I want.”
Or -- for better or for worse -- I just turn my praying into a fill-in-the-blanks test, inserting every cliché I can think of until my prayer sounds like the half-hearted, prepared statement of a high school football coach speaking to the reporter of the local rag after a game that everybody knew they were going to win anyway.
Lots of people pray like that. I pray like that. For many of us, this is prayer-as-usual. If we even pray at all, we pray without passion. We apply more purpose and sweat and effort to blogging or voting for American Idol or trying to figure out Lost than we do to praying.
Lord, have mercy.
Hey, this is me, too. I’m the chief of sinners.
So that’s the first reason I’m writing this: to remind us that praying is just something you have to practice and repeat if you want to “master” it; that praying is something you have to make yourself do so that you’ll actually be doing something eternal and right amidst all that is temporal and silly (and that's a lot).
Second, I’m writing this because I want to tell you about a few things that I’ve been praying about today.
Here’s a big one. Lots of you have already heard about this, so I won’t try to act like it’s my exclusive scoop. The more I think about it, I’m pretty sure this is the worst family scenario I can reasonably imagine. Aside from all the obvious stuff that everybody knows about the patriarch of this family, here’s something else you should know: these people are on a mission to save orphans, and they use their own actual, personal money to make it happen. Moreover, they started an organization that helps others do it too. They gave my family $2000 when we adopted Jude. We didn’t have the money to adopt Jude. Then we did. Because of them (and some other generous folks who would rather not be linked to). So pray for it. Right now. They need it.
The other one is nothing new. My brother is in a miserable state right now. You can read more about it all here. You can even look at pictures that show you the awful rash that covers most of his body. The rash is exacerbated by heat, so he can’t really go outside much at all, because it’s summer in Birmingham. Also, he’s nauseous and weak and lonely. And he signs off every one of his blogs with “God is good.” I’m telling you, this guy is a hero. And so is his wife, who is limping around on bad feet (long story) to keep everything together in their life. Pray for them. Right now. They need it.
Oh, and in case that’s not enough to get you on your knees or whatever, you can go global with your praying. Myanmar is facing a tragedy of unimaginable proportions. And Rwanda is totally screwed up. I could continue, but then it might sound like I don’t have any faith.
Sometimes I don’t. But that’s why I pray. I don’t just pray because I have faith. I pray because I need faith.
And in those times, the Lord reminds me that He does stuff like keeping this kid alive when no one said it was possible (lots of folks prayed for this one, and I have to believe that it mattered). He reminds me that He brought us these little guys even though we can’t make babies the normal way (though not for a lack of blessed procreative activity). He reminds me that I have more friends than people should be allowed to have; that I have a career and a house and a wife that really loves me.
I wish my faith wasn’t so tied to results, but there you go. I’m a mess.
If I sound preachy, forgive me. This is the stuff that’s all over me today, and the only way to get it off is to throw it on you.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
The Love of God
John Sherrill is one of my best friends in the whole world. Besides that, if you own any of my CD's, you've probably heard his writing and/or his singing and/or his piano-playing and/or his producing. Go here and find out how you can help him, as he and his family fight for the life of their baby. At the very least, take some time right this second to pray for baby Kyle.
If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 1 John 3:17
If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 1 John 3:17
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