Monday, August 13, 2007
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
aaaand.....im back
The church of today?
" we decided to stop complaining about the church we saw, and we set our hearts on becoming th church we dreamed of "
" I felt so thirsty for God, so embarrassed by christianity, and so ready for something more"
" we are called not to be successful but to be faithful "
Poor in spirit
" one of the lepers explained to me that oftentimes lepers dont even know the words thank you because they have never needed to say them "
" I learned from the lepers that leprosy is a disease of numbness. The contagion numbs the skin, and the nerves can no longer feel as the body wastes away.....to treat it, we would dig out or dissect the scarred tissue until the person could feel again "
" As I left Calcutta, it occured to me that i was returning to a land of lepers, a land of people who had forgotten how to feel, to laugh, to cry, a land haunted by numbness. Could we learn to feel again? "
Proud to be a white, culturized, desensitized, cheap, self centered american christian ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ??
" During one fo the short term mission trips I had gone on, a group of children were preparing a skit from the gospel story they had read. They came up to me and said, 'Shane, we need you to play Jesus, because you are white and from america'. Ouch! God forgive us, buddy Jesus has become a white american resembling Mr. Rogers "
" I asked participants who claimed to be 'strong followers of Jesus' whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80 percent said yes. Later in the survey, I sneaked in another question. I asked the same group of strong followers whether they spent time with the poor, and less then 2 percent said they did. I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire and wirship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich christians do not care about the poor but that rich christians do not know the poor "
" I truly believe that when the poor meet the rich, riches will have no meaning. and when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end. "
" we knew that the world cannot afford the american dream and that the good news is that there is another dream. We looked to the early church and to the scriptures and to the poor to find it. "
thats all for now. be back later.
May we see, understand, and experience truth in ways discernible by the touch, and may we be a people whose hearts break over the same things Gods heart breaks over. Amen.
" we decided to stop complaining about the church we saw, and we set our hearts on becoming th church we dreamed of "
" I felt so thirsty for God, so embarrassed by christianity, and so ready for something more"
" we are called not to be successful but to be faithful "
Poor in spirit
" one of the lepers explained to me that oftentimes lepers dont even know the words thank you because they have never needed to say them "
" I learned from the lepers that leprosy is a disease of numbness. The contagion numbs the skin, and the nerves can no longer feel as the body wastes away.....to treat it, we would dig out or dissect the scarred tissue until the person could feel again "
" As I left Calcutta, it occured to me that i was returning to a land of lepers, a land of people who had forgotten how to feel, to laugh, to cry, a land haunted by numbness. Could we learn to feel again? "
Proud to be a white, culturized, desensitized, cheap, self centered american christian ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ??
" During one fo the short term mission trips I had gone on, a group of children were preparing a skit from the gospel story they had read. They came up to me and said, 'Shane, we need you to play Jesus, because you are white and from america'. Ouch! God forgive us, buddy Jesus has become a white american resembling Mr. Rogers "
" I asked participants who claimed to be 'strong followers of Jesus' whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80 percent said yes. Later in the survey, I sneaked in another question. I asked the same group of strong followers whether they spent time with the poor, and less then 2 percent said they did. I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire and wirship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich christians do not care about the poor but that rich christians do not know the poor "
" I truly believe that when the poor meet the rich, riches will have no meaning. and when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end. "
" we knew that the world cannot afford the american dream and that the good news is that there is another dream. We looked to the early church and to the scriptures and to the poor to find it. "
thats all for now. be back later.
May we see, understand, and experience truth in ways discernible by the touch, and may we be a people whose hearts break over the same things Gods heart breaks over. Amen.
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