We wrapped up our Red Letters book study last week, and decided to keep the 8:30pm Sunday chat going with weekly topics until January when we start a new book.  This is a great chance for some of you who could not commit to the weekly chats to join us.  Our topics will be new every week since many of us have holiday obligations that will mean missing a week here and there.  So please, join us - even if only for a week.  This week’s topic will stand alone so you won’t be behind when you start and you won’t be left hanging if you can’t make it next week.  I really want to get to know more of you.  The chats are a fun way to do that.

Since no one else has stepped up with a topic, I guess I have to.  Hmmm… lets see… Oh, I know.  A Pensee by Blaise Pascal.  This one is very short and sweet, but will challenge you in many ways if you really think about it.  Here it is:

Wretchedness: Job and Solomon

That’s it.  But it speaks volumes.  Advance reading in your bible to remember these guys, while not required, may be helpful.  Consider Job in his misery.  Consider Solomon in his glory… but also in his corruption and emptiness (Eclesiates, anyone?).  The topics:

Compare and contrast the wretchedness of these two men.

Which was more wretched?  Why?

Who knew God more closely, who was more faithful?

Now, the biggee: what does your reflection on the relative wretchedness of Job and Solomon make you think/realize about the relative wretchedness of the Africa some of us have seen in person relative to the wretchedness of America?

This is one of my favorite Pensees.  Many have written entire books and not said as much as Pascal did with four words.  When I first read this, I put down my book of Pensees and did not pick it up again for several weeks because these four words gave me so much to think about.  If you can’t make the chat, please comment here with your thoughts.  Please… I want to get to know you.  There is one area in Known to me that I feel like I/we are at risk of failing at - that is, building real friendships and commuinity among EVERYONE here.  Chime in or join the chat, even if just to humor me at first.  I think it will grow on you.

“Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for what He has done for us. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by His call, by His forgiveness, and His promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what He does give us daily… In the Christian community thankfulness is just what it is anywhere else in the Christian life. Only he who gives thanks for little things receives big things. We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts He has in store for us, because we do not give thanks for daily gifts.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I am thankful for the deep blue evening sky, laughter, the noise of the wind in the trees or rustling the corn around our house, the peace and quiet of solitude (OK, little of that these days, but even so…), a furnace and a warm house, the smell of pies in the oven, a warm meal, work I can do to provide for my family, health, life, friends, family – especially my wife, freedom, Jesus’ sacrifice and God’s grace, God’s inclusion of a role for me in His plan for this world.  I could go on, but I would start to bore you…

I am thankful for this holiday.  I am thankful.  Sometimes that is a statement of faith for me rather than a statement of emotional feeing.  But I’ve found that God honors that statement of faith and provides the emotion when I make the statement and act consistent with that statement.

I believe there is a deep spiritual mystery in thankfulness, and the blessings and freedom an attitude of thankfulness opens up to us.  And it just feels so good…

Today I’m going to borrow from two forum posts by one of our members, Christine.  I think both are moving and relevant to the message we are trying to convey.  Before I dive into that, an update on our carepoint:  We have chosen a carepoint – Ludlati – which you can see starting at 4:10 through 8:50 in the “Part 1” video from Monday’s post.  Opportunities to connect with our community there – financially and personally will follow shortly.  More pictures and video from Ludlati will be posted by this weekend.

The first borrowed content is an excerpt from a devotional by Oswald Chambers (I especially like the last two sentences of the first paragraph – very Pascal-ish, so this will substitute for the weekly Pensee):

Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you.  James 4:8
 
It is essential to give people a chance of acting on the truth of God. The responsibility must be left with the individual, you cannot
act for him, it must be his own deliberate act, but the evangelical message ought always to lead a man to act. The paralysis of refusing
to act leaves a man exactly where he was before; when once he acts, he is never the same. It is the foolishness of it that stands in the way of hundreds who have been convicted by the Spirit of God. Immediately I precipitate myself over into an act, that second I live; all the rest is existence. The moments when I truly live are the moments when I act with my whole will.

Never allow a truth of God that is brought home to your soul to pass without acting on it… The feeblest saint who transacts business
with Jesus Christ is emancipated the second he acts; all the almighty power of God is on his behalf…

The second post I’m borrowing from describes a short-term mission trip:

My daughter and I traveled to the DR in the summer of 2008 with Windsor Road Christian Church and GO Ministries. Here is the letter we wrote upon our return. The trip didn’t turn out exactly as planned…

It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees. Psalm 119:71

For me, Psalm 119 polishes off this post perfectly.  What I take from this is that we spend too much time fighting, praying, and believing for our comfort, peace, prosperity…  All good things… all things that are ours through God’s promises… but just not where I see God telling us to focus in most of His Word.  Those things are His job.  The emphasis for us is on taking action.  Taking action in ways that are uncomfortable and that require sacrifice, discomfort, and risk.  Accepting that we have a cross to bear, that the world will hate us because it hated Him first.  And knowing that somehow, in His plan, we will grow and benefit from that.  Refusing affliction denies us the ability to learn from Him (I know you may not like that but don’t blame me – I didn’t say it – He did (see Psalm 119 above)).  I believe that there are incredible, wonderful promises of what we receive as God’s kids.  But we somtimes become so focused on “what’s in it for me” that we spend our time and effort pursuing benefits for us rather than DOING what we are told to do.

He’ll do His part.  I don’t have to (and I can’t) make him do His part, and that’s not my job anyway.  I just need to do my part (which means DO what His Word tells us to DO) and rest in the comfort that He is Omnipotent God of the Universe, and He loves me with a love that I cannot comprehend.  Maybe I’m nuts, but given those parameters, somehow I think He’ll uphold His end of the bargain. 

Our Red Letters book study starts this sunday at 8:30pm on our chat page.  We’ll have some questions to spur conversation, but please add your own Sunday.  Contact us if you have any questions about the chat page or the book study.

To continue my theme of lacking focus, some additional stuff:

Don is home, but Jenny and I have not heard from him or Barbra - we plan to get together tomorrow evening to talk about the trip and how we’ll move forward from here.

Since I can’t have a post without trying to spur thought and conversation with something philosophical, I’ll leave you with lyrics from The Chior’s classic song Consider… discuss among yourselves.

Consider your laughter…
Consider My tears…
Consider My love…
Consider your fear.

Consider your heart.

Really consider each of those lines for a moment or two, then consider the lines and paragraphs together.  I could write an entire book about what these lyrics speak to me.  Choir lyrics are a close second to Pensees in thought provocation.  If you don’t know about The Choir, you really must buy Circle Slide, Chase the Kangaroo, and Wide-Eyed Wonder… really.

Ok, I’ve been told I jumped in too fast with Pensee #1.  I’ll give a bit more explanation on the Pensees and a more straightforward one this week.  Obviously, the real business we’re about this week is Don’s trip.  If you’re here for Don’s posts this week from Swaziland, just scroll on past this.  But humor me while we wait for Don to post something new.  These are really fun - they make me think.

Pascal intended to compile his Pensees (thoughts) into an argument supporting God’s existence and Christianity as the religion that accurately reveals God to the world.  He died before compiling the Pensees into the form of a book, but categorized them into broad groups with the intend of attempting to formulate his argument by making observations about the nature of man and the world.  Major themes are:  order (structure) in the natural world, man’s lost state apart from God (especially vanity, wretchedness, and boredom), the potential for greatness in man, contradictions in man’s nature, and finally a transition from knowing man’s nature to knowing God.

Thus many of his thoughts are very dark and seem despairing… remember that in these thoughts he is attempting to show our frailty and wretchedness apart from God.  He has an equal number of thoughts about our potential for greatness through God’s redemption.  In fact, this contradiction in our nature – wretchedness, with the potential for greatness – is probably the most important theme in the Pensees.  So don’t write off the bleak and despairing thoughts too quickly, but consider them in light of the contrast with our redeemed state as a part of the body of Christ.

So, with that explanation fresh in our minds, let’s think about one that highlights Pascal’s thoughts on this contradiction in our nature… here it is:

Is it not clear that man’s condition is dual? The point is that if man had never been corrupted, he would, in his innocence, confidently enjoy both truth and happiness, and if man had never been anything but corrupt, he would have no idea of either truth or bliss.  But unhappy as we are (and we should be less so if there were no element of greatness in our condition) we have an idea of happiness but we cannot obtain it.  We perceive an image of the truth yet possess nothing but falsehood, being equally incapable of absolute ignorance and certain knowledge; so obvious is it that we once enjoyed a degree of perfection from which we have unhappily fallen.

This one will help you know where he’s going when I get into the darker ones highlighting our fallen condition apart from God.  Comments?  Questions?  Disagreements?  This one is out of order and I’m violating the genius of Pascal’s approach; which is to studiously avoid stating the argument or giving any idea where he is even going until he’s made enough insightful observations and thoughts that you agree with his conclusion before you even know he’s making an argument.  This is fun for me, so I’m going to keep posting these – you’ll start to get the feel for them but I really would like your thoughts on them over time, even if those thoughts are: “what in the world does that mean?”

The email below is from a staff member of Children’s Hope Chest to an online prayer group called iFast58.  As I read it, I was moved to tears and haunted by the question of how I allowed myself to put this in a box and not care for so many years.  I just flat out didn’t care.  That’s the reality, and I’m not going to sugar-coat it.  I knew full well that children like Dima existed, but I never opened myself to any level of personal compassion (that word again) for them.  It is an interesting parallel to the biblical concept that “faith without works is dead”.  I did not really care until AFTER I began to act out of obedience to what I saw in His Word, and my level of care and desire to serve orphans and the very poor has grown exponentially for every small action I take to physically help.  Don’t put off action until you “feel” an emotional call.  God will supply the emotional desire and the joy of doing His will when we act… at least that’s how it worked for me.

As I contemplated the iFast58 request today, my heart was broken. The profile of a young boy named Dima caught my attention. I am not sure why it caught my attention it has been sitting on a credenza in my office for weeks. But today, I began to think about him – how he is a little younger than my son Luke. I thought of how Luke sometimes needs his mom just to hold him or he will just come snuggle with us – Dima does not have that – he is alone. It is easy to dismiss Dima because we don’t know him – he is on the other side of the planet – out of sight and out of mind.
I want you to meet Dima:The is no current information on his parents.

In Russia , when a child is orphaned, they are stigmatized for life. Their options for education, work and a future are very limited. Their suicide rates are high as is their propensity to abuse drugs. Organizationally we have needs but I would prefer that you pray for Dima today. Please pray that he does not feel lonely when he goes to bed at night. Please pray that when he is scared someone will be there to tell him it is ok. Please pray that someone will encourage him and tell him he is special. Please pray that despite his circumstances that he will feel loved and not worthless. Please pray that he would feel the presence of a loving God who wants to him to know that he created him for a purpose.Thanks!

Courtesy of Merriam-Webster online…

com·pas·sion
Pronunciation: \kəm-ˈpa-shən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French or Late Latin; Anglo-French, from Late Latin compassion-, compassio, from compati to sympathize, from Latin com- + pati to bear, suffer

Compassion: sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it

Today, the root words forming compassion mean a lot to me:  Com - meaning with, or alongside.  Pati - to suffer.

Don will soon leave his family to travel to Swaziland.  Motivated by compassion.  I remember the tears when my wife left with her dad to go meet our kids in Ethiopia.  I stayed behind with two of our bio kids and believe me, there was some suffering.  The pain of feeling so alone was intense, knowing my wife would be far from home, beyond contact, beyond my ability to provide anything that she might need.  Seeing my son and daughter weep like I had never seen them weep before as I peeled my 7 year-old daughter from her mother’s neck.  In my weakness, I’m not willing to go through that again… not right now anyway.

That’s why I am so humbled and feel such admiration for Don and his family.  I know what they are feeling, and I also know first-hand that the joy that comes from demostrating compassion consistent with God’s plan competely overwhelms the suffering.  Especially when our suffering in a short-term mission is just that: short-term.

The pain we felt was the pain of being alone - without someone we love beyond what we can express.  But Jenny was with her Dad and our 10 year-old son.  I was with her mother and two of our kids.  Not alone at all.  Not compared to the hundreds of millions of children who wake up each morning with no one to hold them.  No one to cry with them, No one to comfort them, No one to tell them they love them.  No one to just quietly put a hand on their shoulder and to say, “I’m in this with you”. 

Today, think about the little, comforting things you would miss if your loved ones were not with you.  Think about kids who long for those comforts with all their being, but will never experience them without you and me.  They exist… they are very real.  I remember how painful it was for me to suffer the absence of those comforts.  Even though I knew Jenny’s absence was short-term, even though I had the benefit of a background of experiencing that kind of support throughout my life.  I weep (I actually am right now as a matter of fact - I have an office at work so I can close my door… thank God for small blessings) to think of kids who experience the grief and pain I experienced - but without hope.

I know Don will leave with some questions, among them: “what can I bring to the situation I will see?”.  Through Don, God will bring someone to cry with those kids, someone to put a hand on their shoulder, someone to tell them that we love them, and that we will not leave them.  He will suffer with them, as will his family who will miss the comfort of his presence - and they will together feel the comfort of God’s joy and peace.  That is my definition of compassion today.