Living for the Person Next to Me.

Intimate concert

Just finished a really intimate concert that only had room for about 40 people (sold out). Really really awesome and beautiful.

The eternal struggle...

If you know what's in this picture... you know that we've been trying our whole life...

If you don't know what this is... you wouldn't understand.

Content with enough

This member of the Junk Car Club says exactly what I’ve been thinking about the last few months on his Junk Car Blog.

So what direction are you heading? Are you moving towards getting more or giving more? I heard an amazing statement this week in Ecuador about how we need to figure out in our lives how we can “move towards enough.” I think this statement is profound and represents exactly what we are trying to do here at the Junky Car Club. Too many of us are moving towards more. More cars, more clothes, more shiny, more options, more stuff. The challenge for us is to dedicate ourselves to living a life of enough. To find a place of contenment in our lives.
The United States represents 6% of the world’s population and yet uses 43% of the world’s resources. Mother Teresa said that it is poverty that you let a child die so that you may live as you wish. I agree. We must stop this crazy consumption and learn to give to those in need. We have everything we need in our hands to stop poverty and make a difference in the lives of the hurting, suffering, and rejected. It’s now just a matter of what are we going to do with our resources. The time has come for us to pursue moving towards enough and rebel against moving towards getting more. Be generous and give to those in need. It is the only way to live and be fully alive.

God, Life

Thrifting

Im at a thrift store trying to shop for clothes. These stores stress me out so much because there is just so much stuff. Mt ADDness is kendled and its hard to focus.

Unsettled about spending so much on coffee...

 

I have been wrestling with how much money I spend on some of the things that I consume... like coffee... and fast food. Coffee would be the bigger one I think, because I don't do fast food that much. Of course I could include other things like pop, but a 24 pack of pop is sometimes only a bit more than one cup of Starbucks!

To the point. The reason is that spending so much on a cup of coffee is unsettling to me when millions of people die everyday year because they don't have enough food. How can I spend $4 on a cup of coffee when kids are starving and dying right now in Uganda? It's estimated that someone dies from starvation every 3.6 seconds. Pause for a second and really think about that. Someone with dreams, hopes, loves, hates, friends, family... a real person. That real person who will die in the time it took for me to write this sentence.

I mean... look at the statistics:

www.care.org

www.stopthehunger.com/

Now I'm sure those particular numbers may not be perfectly accurate, but if that is a critique that you have I would challenge you to ask yourself a question: "Do I feel that those numbers are an over exaggeration to push some kind of agenda forward because I truly feel that way, or because it really doesn't feel good to see those numbers and then go on living as if it's not happening?"

Regardless if those numbers are wrong or not... I'm positive that the numbers are astronomically higher than any of us could really handle if we were to encounter it in person.

Now to the business of following Jesus. The primary reason that I am so unsettled is that it tears me apart. Because of what Jesus has done in my life and heart I place enormous value on people... they are simply beautiful. Sometimes I can't handle how irresponsible we (yes, including me) can be. Since this is something that has changed within me because of Jesus it is only reasonable to assume that this is God's heart as well. Just look at a few of the hundreds of verses from the Bible that talk about the poor and injustice:

Deut 15:4 “There should be no poor among you, for the Lord your God will greatly bless you in the land he is giving you as a special possession. (This definitely contextual in that it's talking about the land God will give the Jews, but it gives amazing insight into some of what God considers should be true for his lands and his people - There should be no poor among you)

Proverbs 22:9 Blessed are those who are generous, because they feed the poor.

Matthew 25:31-45 "And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’

Luke 17:18-19

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,

that the blind will see,

that the oppressed will be set free,

19 and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”

James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Just what should God's kingdom look like?

If you drink coffee from places like Starbucks, please understand that I'm not going to think less of your or anything like that. That is not my aim. I just don't know if I can handle spending $4 bucks on a cup of coffee anymore...

God, Life