Merry Christmas World

It’s Christmas time again.  My kids are excited.  The youngest are expecting Santa to bring some great presents.  My oldest knows the scoop on Santa but there is still excitement about a celebration that includes presents.

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On the twelfth day of Christmas

My true love gave to me, a goat?

How about an Ipod, a new outfit, or even a new tie, but a goat?  This is one of the things our family did this year.  We decided to give a goat through World Vision.  It’s an extremely modest gift really.  $75 doesn’t compare to what we spend on ourselves.

I wrote a post about the Advent Conspiracy back in June or July.  At the time I was seriously contemplating doing away with all expensive and material gifts at Christmas.  In the end, we made lots of reductions and the decision to focus on others during Christmas, but we weren’t ready to go cold turkey yet.

It was really fun going through the World Vision catalog as a family and picking out a gift to give away through their program.  I think this is a new family tradition in our home.

We also decided to start a new birthday tradition.  Each of us gets to choose a World Vision gift for their birthday.  We give a World Vision gift of their choosing, in their name, up to a certain amount.  The birthday person then adds to that if they want to do something even bigger.

My daughter has a December birthday so she chose another goat but the one she chose includes an extra $25 that goes where it can have the most impact.  For the extra donation she’ll get a stuffed goat that will remind her of the needs around the world every time she holds it.

My son has a birthday in January and he is busily working out his list to figure out his World Vision gift.  It’s great to see the kids just as excited about these gifts as any material gift for themselves.

Remember whose birthday it is this week.  Open your hearts and give to those that have little or none.  Be a wise man, and lay your gifts at the feet of Jesus.

Matthew 2:11 (ESV)

¹¹ And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.

Who is your neighbor?

Back in July I wrote a post expressing my frustration with myself for not loving my neighbor as myself.  Here is a follow-up post as I continue to work through this problem as I seek to work out my faith.

In my previous post I wrote about wanting to pray for a dying co-worker but in a short time forgetting about him as I got caught up in my own life again.

This is not an isolated incident. I often have great intentions of praying for others and serving those in need. However, in spite of my best intentions, my life is usually wrapped up around me. It’s hard to love your neighbor when you don’t even think of your neighbor.

It’s not a lack of desire. I want to love others. The problem is how I perceive love. Like most people, when I try to love others, I try to “feel” love for them before I “act” with love for them.

Jesus explained this to his disciples when he gave them a new command.

John 13:34 (ESV)

³⁴ A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another

Jesus, the rabbi whom these men had given up all to follow for the past three years had just washed their filthy feet. This was a job for a servant, not a teacher, not their Lord. However, Jesus was teaching them and teaching us, how to love.

Love is serving others. Love is putting others needs before your own. Love is not merely an emotion although there may be no emotion stronger. However emotions are fickle, the action of love is real.

Calling my sick co-worker to check on him was nice. It was a step in the right direction but it was a very guarded step. When I asked if there was anything I could do for him, I was relieved when he said he did not need anything. Really, a dying man, whom I am fairly confident did not know Jesus, does not need anything?

I accepted his answer because I was afraid not to. Isn’t that one of the main reasons that even though we want to love, we don’t. Acts of love on our part often open our hearts to more than we dare let in.

We all know the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). I think we hear that story and we tell ourselves that if we come across someone dying in the street that we will stop and help. Well, people are suffering and dying all around us. Sometimes we have to cross the street (or the tracks) to find them.

You may not know anyone dying of AIDS, but they are there. You may not know anyone homeless and starving, but they are there. You may not know any scared unmarried teenage mothers or mothers to be, but they are there. They are there, waiting to be loved, fed, and comforted. Where are you?

You don’t have to wait to stumble across someone dying in the road. You don’t have to wait for a co-worker to get sick and die. The time to love your neighbor, your enemy, and the stranger is now. If you wait to “feel” the love, it will never happen. I know…

Remember the Refugee

A little boy is squatting with his brother and sister outside of the small hut-style home.  They are playing a local village game, laughing and giggling.  Suddenly their mother comes running over to them, “Come quickly! We must go now!  The soldiers are coming.”

The children are confused.  Where is their father?  When can they finish their game?  When will they go back home?

What if this was your child?  What if this was your family?  What if you had to run and leave home, and leave everything behind?

We’ve seen this even in our own country after natural disasters.  However, we’ve never seen this where we had to leave because either the government or rebels where killing those that stayed behind.

There are around 11.4 million refugee’s in the world today.  Most of these men, women, and children have been forced to leave their homes and possessions.  They have nothing but maybe what they were able to carry.  Many of them are in warehouse type camps where they have no rights and survive only on what compassion their host country or charitable organizations provide.  In many cases, they have no hope, as they have been displaced for years.  They are foreigners, but not by of their own choice.

Unfortunately, many of us are desynthesized to the plight of these people.  We quickly click through the news flashes if they get much coverage.  It’s part of the fallen world we live in.  What can I do anyway?

You can get involved (from www.refugee.com).

• Sign up to receive our Bulletin
• If you represent an organization, endorse the Statement Calling for Solutions to End the Warehousing of Refugees
• If you are a refugee, write to share your experience of warehousing with us and others
• Link this page to your personal or professional website
  (http://www.refugees.org/warehousing)
• Donate to the Anti-Warehousing Campaign
• Write to Members of Congress to make the U.S. Millennium Challenge Account refugee-friendly!

Deuteronomy 10:18-19 (ESV)
¹⁸ He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. ¹⁹ Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.

Care for the refugees because if you are in Christ, you are one too in this this world.

Out of Africa: Prayer for the Fatherless

Psalms 10:17-18 (ESV)

¹⁷ O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted; you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear ¹⁸ to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.

There are no good stories behind how one becomes an orphan.  However, there is something extra repulsive when a child becomes an orphan by the hand of man’s hate.

This is the story throughout Liberia and in particular in the Fairfield Baptist Mission orphanage in Liberia.  Every child in this orphanage is a war orphan.  This was a war of hate which is often the root of most wars.  However, as I listened to the people talk about the war, it was clear that in this war, there was no side on the side of justice.

Prince

My third night at the orphanage (still on my own) I hung out on the back porch with the teenage boys.  One of them had a cell phone.  Cell phones are abundant in Liberia.  One may not have bread on the table but still have a cell phone.  Nobody was making any calls.  My guess is that there are rarely any minutes available on this phone.  We were all sitting around listening to the musical ring tones like you might expect to see a bunch of teenagers doing in the US sitting around a boom box.

They were laughing, singing, dancing and making fun of each other like teenage boys do.  I decided that I would share some American music with them so I pulled out my iPod and let them listen to Toby Mac.  I did not have speakers so the boys took turns listening on the headphones.  Toby Mac was a big hit.  However, the bigger hit was the pictures on my iPod.

As we huddled around sharing the headphones, we browsed through my family pictures.  These boys were all excited to see pictures of my kids and my wife.  There was not a sense of sadness of seeing pictures of a family they did not have.  I sensed more a presence of hope.  A hope that there was a world beyond the orphanage where there were moms and dads and families.

A young man named Prince told me that he did not have a mom and dad.  He told me that the president killed them both.  I knew he meant in the war of hate, the government soldiers killed his parents.  I have no idea why, but why does not matter when a 10-year old boy has his parents killed by his government.

Prince is 15 now and has been without a mom or dad for 5 years.  He told me that night, that now I was his dad since he did not have one.  I was his dad, why?  Because I had shared some music and pictures?  No, because I was there which meant to him, I must care.

Prince did not ask to come home with me.  He only asked me for some flip flops.  His had busted.  There is a real sense of needs versus wants when you visit a country buried in poverty.  “I have an American visiting and he wants to know what he can do for me.  I’ll ask for my hearts desire, a new pair of flip flops.”  Is that the request I would get from a typical teenage boy in America?

Moses

Moses was with us as we looked at the pictures.  Being the celebrity that had actually been to America, he started to tell the other boys how great America was and how bad Liberia was.  This did not go over well with Maude and she rightly admonished him that he should not talk that way about his country, a country she has chosen to stay in to care for children like himself.

Moses does not like to be corrected (do you know any other thirteen year olds like that?).  His emotions that he had been keeping in came out.  He wept in the midst of his friends for most of the rest of the night.  It was heart wrenching.

The good news is that the next day we had a successful visit with a lawyer in Monrovia.  There is a Liberian family in our church in Cypress that wants to adopt Moses.  This lawyer was fairly confident that he would be able to get the paperwork through a system that had been bogged down to this point as Liberia investigates child trafficking problems.

One of the reasons he was confident in our success was the legitimacy earned by bringing Moses back when his medical visa expired.  While Moses does not understand why we had to take him back (he asked my why I did not just call the President and explain his situation) it pays to honor God by following the laws of the land.

Pastor Anthony and I correspond each week.  He says he is praying with Moses and helping Moses to understand and learn patience waiting on God.  This is a hard lesson for us grown-ups.  It has to seem like an impossible task to a 13-year old boy.

Princess

We met Princess my last day at the orphanage.  We were eating with the kids in their lunch hall (a dark mud-brick building with two long tables for 70 kids).  A 9-year old girl came over to Pastor Bill.  Unlike all of the other children here, Princess was not wearing a smile.  As soon as she came over, Pastor Bill began to cry (I can’t even write this without tears).  He explained to us that she had seen rebel soldiers kill her parents.  In fact, she witnessed a rebel soldier slice her dad’s throat from behind.  Princess was 4 at the time.

The boys and girls in this orphanage are well fed thanks to Christian Aid.  However, Christian Aid can only supply food for 50 children as Liberian law only allows 50 orphans per orphanage.  There are 75 orphans being cared for by the Fairfield Baptist Mission in Liberia.  Nonetheless, all the children are fed.

The needs are great.  At one level, the needs seem too great and too overwhelming.  However, when you ask the children what they need the answers are simple.  A matchbox car, a baby doll, but really a request that someone knows they exist.  I can’t tell you how many of these kids wanted to make sure I knew their name and wanted to know my name, my wife’s name and my children’s names.  They want to be connected.

Our church is working with an organization called BrightPoint to do just that.  Our goal is to match up every child in the orphanage with a family sponsor in our church.  A family that they can call their own.  A family that will know their name, pray for them and write them.  They want a mom and dad because “man who is of the earth” stole theirs .  We hope that together with Bright Point, God can use us to bring them that desire of their heart.

If you or your church want to get involved and reach out to the fatherless and the oppressed you can do it.  Check out organizations like BrightPoint and Children’s HopeChest.  There is really no reason to ignore the fatherless, whether in Africa or your own backyard.

However, I must warn you.  Once you open up your heart to hear what is on God’s heart, your life cannot ever be the same again.  There is no telling what God will have you do.

My journey is now leading me back to Africa once more.  This time, Ethiopia, where God has a fatherless child that he has prepared for our home, to change our lives forever.  Read more over at Hipp is my middle name.

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