divine disturbance

Already this morning, I've been disturbed.  Are you disturbed today?

From the issues on the ballot, to last weekend's football games, it seems there are a barrage of things that upset or disturb us.  For you it might be who lost on Dancing with the Stars...  The price of gas... The price of chicken...  Having to change all your clocks for daylight savings...  I'm sure you won't have to think long before you remember the last time you were upset.

While on my run, as my feet shift my thoughts often drift and this morning I realized that today is the first of November.  So then I started thinking about the missions emphasis at the church - which happens during the month of November.  And the whole missions emphasis is really just a virus that attacks and explodes into all kinds of upsetting things.  The failure rate of elementary kids at Shearn, a school about a mile from my house.  The line of people that wraps around the nearby food pantry during the week, where the same people keep coming back, and standing in line for a handout week after week,year after year, because the cycle of poverty has yet to be broken.  The 27 million victims of sex trade enslavement, many of these victims living right under my nose in Southwest Houston.  The 143 million children in the world who tonight, will go to sleep without a mom or dad to tuck them in.

When I start to consider things outside of myself and my life, it is easy to run head-on into a deep need that is failing to be met.  I wonder, too, what you see.  And I wonder what you are upset about?  What need in our world has your heart broken?  What injustice keeps you up at night?  What suffering person or situation drops you to your knees in prayer?  Where are you willing to be disturbed so radically that you can't stand it another second?  

As His disciples, Jesus asks us to follow Him by loving the unlovable, helping the marginalized, and giving to the least of these.  In the remaining hours of today and beyond today, where will you allow God to shake up your comfortable world on behalf of those most in need, whether they live around the world or around the corner?

Often times, our "first world" answer to upsetting scenes and troubled people is to give money.  And don't get me wrong… Money is a good thing, it does a lot of good and it is good to give it away.  Speaking of giving away money, I want to encourage you to learn more about the Advent Conspiracy before you head out with your Christmas shopping list - there's pretty amazing stuff happening there. But I want to encourage you - don't just give of your money.  Give of yourself & your time.  To the poor, sick, hurting, lonely and hungry.

I was talking to a church member recently. I won’t use his name out of respect to him, so I’ll just call him My Husband…. Anyway, he started mentoring a 9 year old boy at Shearn Elementary, where the majority of the students live at or below poverty level.  His third week rolled around to go and sit with the child for 30 minutes, and it almost didn’t happen.  See, he just had too much on his plate – school, a family, the daily stresses of life.  He was just really out of his comfort zone with this whole mentoring thing.  Why did he even sign up?  Who was he to try and be a mentor?  As he sat in his car and debated about going into the school, he finally climbed out of his car and walked inside.  The child met his mentor with concern when he shared “I thought you weren’t coming today.  Just a few minutes ago, the door opened and I thought it was you, but then it was just some lady here for something else” with sadness.  In that instant, the mentor realized the power of simply coming through that classroom door – a presence to that child that says “I care about you and I’m here for you”.  The mentor shared that he didn’t think those 30 minutes a week could make a difference, but imagine if he had opted not to get out of his car and head towards that classroom door on Wednesday? 

We can all make a difference, every day.  Every act and every little moment that we share ourselves to build up others glorifies God.  Our God, the invisible God, who is a concept foreign to so many, is made visible in these acts.  Jesus did not ask us to walk with him when convenient, he commanded us to go the second mile (even when we were FORCED to walk the first mile)!  He called us to radically serve, and radical meets service at the intersection where we find our hearts broken and our lives disturbed. As Harold Whitman once wrote, "don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive".