When those times of doubt come, it is usually good to get back to the basics.  If I am having trouble serving, maybe I need to take a moment and worship.  I need to spend time in prayer. In my reading this week were Psalms 104 and 105.  Psalm 104 is a great meditation on the wonder of God and His creation.  But 105 opens with:

1 Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples! 2 Sing to him, sing praises to him; tell of all his wondrous works! 3 Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice! 4 Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually! 5 Remember the wondrous works that he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he uttered

The Psalmist lists some of the works God has done for His people and why they should be thankful.  I could fill a book with the blessings that God has rained down on me.  When I begin to doubt what I can do I need to remember that it isn’t about me, it is about what He can accomplish through me if I just let Him.  I am a child of a mighty God who guides me for His purposes.  In other words, I need to remember who I work for.  And I need to set aside time to worship Him.   I have to admit that lately, thanks to Johnny Cash and the fact that I am driving to work again every morning, I have had some uplifting time during my morning “commute.”

I want to hear when ya’lls favorite worship time outside of church happens.

Which is why, after stumbling upon this verse, I am suddenly and powerfully filled with a sense of conviction. This is a verse that I have read dozens, if not hundreds of times, and while it’s always been something that I’ve found provocative, it’s never stirred quite the reaction in me that is has upon today’s reading, in light of current world events.

According to World Vision, as of right now, one fifth of the country of Pakistan is underwater. Let’s pause there before moving on. Since we’re Americans, we have to think of everything in terms of “us”, so picture a map of the US in your head. Got it? Divide it into five sections. Now imagine if one of those sections was gone, forever underwater. And the rain is still falling.

20 Million people have been affected, and 6 million are in urgent need of assistance. To put that into a perspective for us over here, that would be like the ENTIRE state of FL losing their homes, jobs, and livelihoods, and the ENTIRE city of Miami without food, water, or shelter. Can you imagine the impact that would have in the news, and in the world? It would be a world changer, and would affect almost every American in some way. Undoubtedly aid would pour in from multiple countries, and every effort would be made to save lives.

The fact is, while I was typing that, people in Pakistan right now are hungry, thirsty, homeless, and in danger. Yet when I turned the news on last night I saw an update on Dancing with the Stars. When I logged into my favorite magazine’s website, I see an article on Glenn Beck’s rally last weekend, and when I survey the things that are most pressing on my mind, on the top of the list is my plans for dinner.

Why are we as a nation, and more importantly, we as Christians, not caring or reacting at all to what is happening right now to millions of people in Pakistan? Why is there not the global outpouring of support and attention for Pakistan as there was for Haiti? Where is George Clooney and the MTV telethon? Where is Kanye West making inappropriate comments on live TV? Why have I not received 15 text message forwards urging me to add $10 to my Verizon bill and send money to the Red Cross? Why is is that when the news is on, the computer is on, and the Christian websites are updating, we are mostly silent about this horrible disaster? More importantly, why don’t I care as much as I want other people to?

I have no answers, but I have guesses. It could be pure proximity, the fact that disasters like Katrina were personal, Haiti was our neighbors, and Pakistan is well…..a “terrorist” nation on the other side of the world. Or maybe it’s the chicken and the egg, did we care about Haiti and Katrina and that’s why it was all the world could talk about, or was the world talking about Haiti and Katrina, and that’s why we cared? Regardless, none of that changes the fact that right now people are dying, and very, very few Americans seem to care.

Which is why, upon re-reading this verse, I am struck with a horrible feeling of shame. Who else could Jesus be talking about in this, if not those in Pakistan? What are the ramifications for us not sending them aid, or at the very least, praying actively for them as a people and nation? What is wrong with us? And more specifically, what is wrong with me?

This also appears on my blog, EmilyThinksYoureAwesome.Blogspot.com.

I have been thinking about this a lot the last couple weeks.  I think that materialism is one of the chief challenges to the church in the US.  Given that, I have really been struggling through how I would respond if Jesus showed up at my work today and asked for the same thing from me.  Sadly, I would fail the love your neighbor as yourself test (thanks to God for grace), but I think an honest assessment of how easily I would give up my house, emergency fund and 401k, speaks volumes about how opened handed we are to God.  I think that God put this story in the Bible not to be allegorical or symbolic, but rather to put reality on the concept of how much we have turned over to God.

Sadly, I feel I would act much like the rich young man.  I rest in the grace found in Christ, but I think that those of us who are given much should certainly repent regularly of our / my desire to make earth our home.

Where have you noticed God today?

So, um … this is really hard, is it not? I’ve spent some time this week reflecting on this verse and holding my thoughts up to it. I’ve discovered a couple of things:

* Sometimes following this advice makes me feel very boring. There, I admit it. Nobody likes a Pollyanna. Except God, of course, whose opinion ought the be the only one that matters …

* Most things I can think of comprise both lovely and unlovely aspects, and yet my mind jumps first to the unlovely, then (perhaps) to the lovely. When I do think of the lovely in things, it’s nearly always tempered by an underlying focus on the unlovely.

* My Web habits do not help. It’s not like I spend my days surfing porn or anything, but if I really get down to it, isn’t Failbooking just another way to make fun of people? Don’t I read the Huffington Post because I know somebody’s done something that will make me mad?

* It’s a lot easier to think on the right things if I don’t get off track in the first place. I found myself earlier this week standing at my sink doing dishes, running and re-running a scene through my head that involved a certain person picking a fight with me and what I would say in response. I left the kitchen mad at that person, even though none of it had happened in reality. But the next time we saw one another, I found myself hard-pressed to be friendly. Wonder how different it would have been if I had been thinking about this person’s good attributes while I did dishes.

I knew I had a tendency to think negative, but I didn’t realize what a big problem it is for me. I also had no idea how hard it is to get out of the rut of that kind of thinking.

To be a writer, you have to not only think that you are interesting enough that people would care to hear what you have to say, but also delusional enough to believe that people would pay money to read your work. In a word, you have be be a cocky crazy person. I am without a doubt a writer.

The common knowledge on writing is that an author should, “write what they know.” So I write a lot about faith, fat, and family. And cheese. In the past year I have also discovered something new to write about – relationships – after ending nearly half a decade of singleness. Relationships are hard, and loving someone the way that Jesus would love them is about as natural to me as eating nothing but kale for a day (ie, not natural.)

Sometimes when my boyfriend is forgetful, clumsy, inattentive, and other qualities that remind me of my dad, I think about that old wives warning, that, “all women are destined to marry men like their fathers.” Creepiness and reverse Oedipal complex issues aside, there is a lot of truth to this in my relationship. Both my boyfriend and my father are sensitive, loving, caring men who sometimes struggle to communicate their feelings effectively and are physically incapable of putting clothes into hampers. While those seem like general enough qualities that men have, what is not so common is the fact that both my boyfriend and my father have mothers that are very protective and controlling. Both myself and my mother have had difficulty being accepted by mother-in-law and mother-in-not-yet-law, and dealt with relationship drama as a result. It wasn’t until a recent talk with my Grandmother that I realized that she too was not accepted by her MIL, and was married to a man whose mother just couldn’t let go. This concerned me.

How could I have known when I met my boyfriend and decided to pursue a relationship with him, that he would have a type of relationship with his mother that previous matriarchs in my family had endured? Was this chance? Fate? Or was it something scarier – like a curse? As a Christian, I don’t believe in things like, “luck”, “chance”, or “Harry Potter” (just kidding I LOVE Harry Potter, go Gryffindors!) I do believe in the Bible though, which states clearly in the book Exodus that God punishes those He loves for the sins of their fathers. Suddenly I was reminded of the time when I went to a sister church’s “generational healing” service, where we were told to write down every sin of every family member we knew of, and then burn the paper to “cleans the sins.” I had angrily dismissed this as extra-Biblical manipulative nonsense and stormed out, clip art family tree in hand. Was I wrong? Had my great-great-great-great grandmother lied on her tax return form and cursed all future women in the family to suffer through, “he’ll always be my baby”’s for the rest of time? If you take the verse literally, the answer would be no, since it says nothing about sins of the mother, but that probably wasn’t God’s point.

Emotional hyperbole over with, I started to meditate on the truths about God I knew and held onto. That He loved me. That nothing I could ever do would separate me from His love. That He has plans for my life and a purpose for my being on this Earth. That He will always be in control, even if it’s hard for me to understand why He’s doing the things He’s doing. And also, that He likes to party, and when I get to meet Him in heaven we’ll probably enjoy some kick-ass wine. I realized that I was focusing far too much on the first part of the verse, the “punishing” part, and not enough on the second part, the “loving.” I might not ever understand what that verse, or the hundreds of others just as confusing as it in the Bible mean, but I will always know that my God loves me, and is not sitting up in Heaven plotting out ways to exact revenge on me. Even if it feels that way over Thanksgiving dinner.

For example, near the end he explains the differences between authentic Christian cool and being a self-righteous hipster jerk. Hipsters, as Brett explains, are all about individualism. Everything they do is a self-conscious attempt to be better and cooler than the average square (do people still say “square?”). Jesus, on the other hand, calls us to be other-centered instead of self-centered. He’s less concerned about how “cool” you are than how loving you are. Jesus says the world will know we are His disciples if we love one another, not our Macbooks or our TOMS shoes or our iPods full of Sufjan Stevens tunes (all of which I own, by the way).

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I can be a hipster snob. I’m not one of those kinds of people who want all eyes on them, like Paris Hilton and Michaela Salahi. But I don’t want to fade into the background, either, so sometimes I consciously pick out clothes that I hope will make people think, “Wow, that guy’s cool!” But why should be so concerned about looking cool, when I’m supposed to show God’s love before anything else?

Of course, there’s the other extreme, and that’s getting so wrapped up with church culture that we don’t know how to communicate the Gospel to our peers.

I think the thing to remember is balance. Paul often used culture to help preach the Gospel (1 Corinthians 9:19-23), so I don’t think it’s wise to completely divorce ourselves from culture. I love my Macbook, TOMS shoes, and Sufjan Stevens records just as much as the next guy. However, at the end of the day I don’t serve those things. My main job is to love Jesus and love others, period.

Then this verse pops into my head.  Romans 12:1 “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”

Then a question or two comes:  What does God want from me now?  How will God get the glory in my life?  Am I willing to surrender everything to Him, to make any sacrifice no matter what is asked of me?

Tough questions to be sure, and not questions I am taking lightly.  I am struggling to lay down my desires, my self, my wants and perceived needs, and trying to let go of it all to allow God to ask of me whatever He will, and I am struggling to cultivate a willingness to accept whatever that may be, and make a purpose driven decision to let God have His will in my life.

In war, when a soldier surrenders, he gives up every right to self-determination after that.  His weapon, his personal effects, what he eats, where he sleeps, even his very life are given over into the hands of whomever he has surrendered to.  Not an easy thought to be sure, but if that person were God, shouldn’t it be easier?  Surrender.  Sacrifice.  Not so easy after all it seems.

I guess the start of it all is the questions themselves.  If I have surrendered to God, then shouldn’t the questions be something more like “What does God want to see done in this and every situation?  How will I act to be sure God gets the glory from this life that now belongs to Him?  How could I possibly say no to whatever sacrifice is called for?”

Look at how the bible tells us to treat one another as Christians.  Paul does a great job throughout the New Testament describing how we should view ourselves as the Body of Christ left on earth to fulfill his work.  A beautiful metaphor, something that is apt, easy to understand and should probably be the guiding principle whenever we have differences of opinion or opposite ways of working.

Romans 12 is just one section that lays out how we are to act towards one another.

If we were filled with the Holy Spirit, wouldn’t we follow what Paul writes:

9 Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. 10 Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. 11Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. 13 Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. 14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another.  Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. 17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20 To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Such a great picture of what living the Christian life should be like. How much of the world could be brought to Faith if His followers acted as Paul says?  Look at where his focus is.  It is on love, hospitality, humility, forgiveness and harmony.  When I look around at those in my church, at a lot of the Christians in my area, on the internet and yes, in my own life; I do not see a striving for the qualities that Paul calls for.  And yet I think we all KNOW that we are to life with these priorities. What is stopping us? What are ways in which the Church in America is failing to be the body of Christ?  And what can we do to change it?

• The movie Precious –  Wow I only made it through about 20 minutes of this movie.  The movie gives a view into the life of a young, overweight African American teenage girl that is truly horrific.  To describe the depth of despair, her mother let her father rape her so that the teenager could keep giving birth to children so that the mother can get more welfare money.  The fact that I was born to 2 white middle class parents who loved me thoroughly has way more to do with my current life than my hard work.  Mark against my pride of status / success in my life.
• A conversation with a good friend – A friend and I went to a movie a couple weeks ago and conversation veered to kids.  His sister came up in the conversation, and I was sad to hear that her firstborn is still experiencing real problems.  It appears that the young child has bi-polar and is still quite violent and down-right threatening sometimes.  Both my friend’s sister and husband are faithful, smart, excellent parents who are struggling day in, day out with their child.  This really shook me up as well as I act as if my children’s relatively good behavior is largely a result of my “good” parenting.  Another heavy mark against my pride of the “job I have done” in parenting my kids.
• The movie The Road – This was another movie that shouldn’t be watched after a hard day.  Basically it consists of a post-apocalyptic world where there is no food / animals left.  The story is about a man who is just trying to keep him and his son alive on the road.  It is incredibly bleak, but it again it just showed me how much I have come to expect out of life.  Safety, regular food production, clean water.  These things are insignificant until we start to think about what we would do if they were yanked away.  Of course, my sinful heart would think, well that couldn’t happen in America, but I see no place in the Bible where I am promised that.  Huge mark against my pride which lead me to expect all of the things of my life to continue uninterrupted.

All of this has caused me to pray more humbly, to thank God deeply for simple things (air, food, family) and to generally distrust my natural state of evil pride.  I still forget regularly about my need to do these things (chief sin of Israelites who forgot God), but I have been clearly shown my sin.  God, please be merciful to me and help me to further confess and turn from my sin.