Christmas in Honduras.

In ten days I am going with 13 other students from my college to spend Christmas and New Year at Orphanage Emmanuel in Guaymaca, Honduras. We'll be cooking, cleaning, relieving the full-time staff (which is quite small for the hundreds of kids at the orphanage), as well as playing with the kids, leading worship, and most importantly sharing with them the meaning of Christmas and the gospel it brought. Our itinerary is quite "flexible," however, as short-term missions tend to be, so please be in prayer that our team will have our minds and hearts set on being useful, diligent servants who use our time and resources wisely and fruitfully. I know that none of us want this to turn into simply a holiday abroad.

With finals looming and thousands of words I need to type and print before I'm set free for the semester, it's been a challenge to really focus on the ministry I'm about to embark upon. Why did I choose this particular trip in the first place? I've never been involved in a social-justice ministry before. It's been a long time since I went on a Mexico trip in high school, and since then I've only been on trips to first-world countries (not that ministry in highly secular countries isn't significant; it is). I guess I wanted to keep cultivating this heart that God is growing in me for the weak and poor, compassion for people who inherently have needs that can't be assuaged by a shopping trip but who rely solely on generosity just to live day to day.

"And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good? Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the LORD set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing."
_Deuteronomy 10:12-18 (I love Deuteronomy. All of it. A lot.)

Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation.
_Psalm 68:5

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
_James 1:27

So that's what this Christmas is going to be all about, Charlie Brown. At least for me. Pray for us please! We still need lots of money... and there's a lot more, besides finances, that we are depending on God to provide us with. :]

Another thought-provocation.

I guess I'm quoting a lot lately, but that's because other people are smarter than I am and say things that I never thought of before. I'm more than okay with that.

Today's quotation:

There is vast difference between telling an unsaved person that, "God loves you the way you are," (which is the message they perhaps need to hear), and leaving them the impression that God loves the way they are. If a person comes to a true faith in Jesus Christ, of course, God will not long leave them "the way they are."
(from a comment by John K. at Challies.com)

Good to remember if you're a Christian. Important to know if you're not.

That's all for today. :]

Unqualified kindness.

Don't you love those times when you're minding your own business (the oddest things occur when we mind our own business) and haplessly read a sentence, subconsciously pass judgment, and out of nowhere feel the sharp pang of conscience's elbow in your side before you know what happened?

I asked if you love it, but I'm going to go ahead and say that I don't on a basic level. Like my mother giving me a kick under the dining room table or a pinch during a long sermon. Highly unappreciated. While I could try to feign innocence with my mom, a "What was that for?" doesn't get me very far with God; he never misinterprets me. (As Ananias and Sapphira can attest, pretending really doesn't go down with the Holy Spirit.) So basically, I dread conviction because he's always right. And I don't like seeing ugly things in myself, especially if I didn't know they were there.

Which brings me to my Conviction Story of the Day. I was browsing Facebook and minding my own business (I really should stop that), and for whatever reason I looked at a group called "For Every 1,000 that join this group I will donate $1 for Darfur." It's pretty much what it sounds like, the "I" referring to the creator of the group. Anyway, I happened to look down at the discussion board, and without knowing anything about the context I read this comment:

"... you should still help support aid to them. Suffering people should always be helped."

Conviction came mere seconds after my initial reaction, which was something like, "Hm, probably not always. What if they brought the suffering on themselves?... Oww [supernatural elbow to the proverbial ribs]!" Then, "Oh. I am being a selfish jerk."

I hated seeing that in myself, but I'm super thankful the conviction came so quickly this time. I got to see clearly that, to my shame, these weren't the words of Christ-in-me. Christ-in-me would have said something like this:
"But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil." That's become one of my favorite verses from the Gospels. Sounds hypocritical, I know, but it's precisely because of the conviction it carries every time I read it. It's good for me and my tendency to "over-discern" - code for "be judgmental."

So,
(1) this sort of conviction, however unpleasant, is yet another of God's great mercies. Conviction is unkindness to the ungrateful and evil. Good grief, that's irony, but I learn well from irony. I am the ungrateful and evil! Which brings me to...

(2) what the Spirit taught me about compassion and my own prejudice, namely, that the student who made the comment displayed the correct attitude about helping suffering people, and I did not. As I noted, I can't say I know exactly what he meant. But his second statement that I hastily dismissed is much closer to the truth than what many of us would be comfortable admitting. Like me, a lot of people would rush to qualify it by specifying what kinds of people we should help, how bad their suffering should be, what "help" really is, etc.

What Jesus says, though, is to expect nothing in return. Pure unqualified nothing. And he gives as an example our compassionate Father in heaven, who is kind not to "seekers," not to the innocent, but to the ungrateful and the evil.

You can be a victim of a lot of things in this fallen world, but nobody is accidentally ungrateful, and though we're born with sin nature we're no less culpable for the selfish acts we commit daily. No person truly "deserves" help; but every person is a reflection of the divine image and precious to God. And alleviating suffering is part of what the Kingdom is all about.

As it has become something of a recurring theme in my life, and since God shows no sign of letting up soon........ more on social justice to come in the future.