Because "Jeff" told me to

Somebody - we'll call him "Jeff" - recently complained about my lack of blog posts in the last few weeks. I wish there was a good reason for it, like that I'm off doing something amazing for the benefit of humanity, but mainly it's because I've recently discovered the tv show Fringe and now spend any free time I have at home watching it. I just started season 3 last night. Olivia is stuck on the other side and her mind has just been infiltrated with Olivia from the other side's memories while Olivia from the other side is back on our side pretending to be the real Olivia and Peter doesn't know! Oh my!

Anyway, I'm sorry, "Jeff," and everyone else, that I care more about watching tv than blogging. I've also decided to refinance my house to a 15 year mortgage, and this has taken up about 1 hour of my life as well. It's possible "Jeff" has been helping me with this. Here are some snippets of conversations that we've had over the last 10 days:

Jeff: "Give me your social security number."
Me: "Ok."

Jeff: "Give me your credit card number."
Me: "Ok."

Jeff: "Sell me your soul."
Me: "Ok."

Wait, that last one hasn't happened yet, but the day is still young and full of soul-selling potential, and I wouldn't put it past him to slide that one in on the side.

We also had this conversation:

Jeff: "Go see The Hobbit with me and some other people."
Me: "Ok."

So I went to see The Hobbit on Saturday with "Jeff" and some other friends. I don't see a lot of movies in the theater, probably because I'm at home watching Fringe all of the time. In fact, The Hobbit is only the 3rd movie I've seen in the theater since May. Don't tell "Jeff", but I kind of liked The Hobbit, only because I haven't read the book in 14 years and couldn't tell you where Peter Jackson strayed in accuracy. But "Jeff" can, and he disapproved.

Here is where today's blog post takes a sudden, unexpected, dark turn. I warned "Jeff" that this might happen.

About halfway through the movie on Saturday, I looked around the dark theater at all of the people sitting there enjoying the show (or not) and eating their popcorn (or spilling it on the ground, like I did) and the first thing that popped into my mind was, "Please don't let anyone come in here and gun us down."

It was an awful thought, and yet it being the day after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in CT and five months after the shooting in the Denver movie theater, it also wasn't an entirely unrealistic thought. And that grieves me.

And after the movie, I went to the mall to get a couple of things and as I walked into the mall, the same thought hit me: "Please don't let anyone gun us down in the mall." And it grieved me even more that I would have the same thought twice in one day and that it's real things that have happened that triggered the thought in the first place.

It's heartbreaking to live in a world where elementary schools, movie theaters, and malls are all of a sudden targets for angry, hurting gunmen. It's unfathomable to see the sweet faces of six and seven year old children on the news whose lives were snuffed out way too soon, and know that there are presents under Connecticut Christmas trees that will not be opened this year and families who will spend their holiday together amid many tears.

But it's also a reminder to me of why we even celebrate Christmas in the first place, because the world is a dark place in need of light.

I'll confess - I hate Christmas songs. It annoys me to no end that my favorite radio station decides to play Christmas songs 24 hours a day starting in mid-November. I ban the station from my car during those 39 days. I'm really not ready for Christmas songs until about 3:30 PM on Dec. 24, unless it's Amy Grant's "Tender Tennessee Christmas." This one is on my iPod year-round, because who's not ready for a tender Tennessee Christmas in the middle of August?

I talked to someone last week who had just returned from the predominantly Buddhist country of Myanmar. She said it was such a stark contrast to be in a place where there are very few Christians and most surround sound she heard while there were Buddhist chants and then to come back to America and be bombarded by our extreme love of all things Christmas, especially Christmas songs.

It is, after all, the one time during the year that people don't seem to mind being reminded of Jesus and singing songs about Him for 39 days straight. It's like this 6 week window where light is allowed to shine mostly unhindered and it's a beautiful thing.

This Christmas is going to be a hard one for a lot of people, maybe even for you. There are many heavy hearts both right here in Fort Collins this week and around the nation. If that is you, I will be praying for you. There are never perfect words to say to someone who is grieving or hurting or broken. You simply have to keep living each day, one moment at a time, until the pain lets up enough that you can start to breathe normally again. And that day does come.

But be reminded that there is light in your darkness. We celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25 because it's the day that Christians picked to acknowledge the day that God entered into our world as a human baby. It was the brightest day in the history of the world.

 

In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understoond it...the true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world....the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."

 

- John 1:4-5, 9, 14

 

My prayer for all of the families who will be hurting this Christmas is that somewhere, somehow they will find a little bit of light in their darkness. And if you are blessed to be healthy and safe and at peace within your family this year, think about how you can be a little bit of light to someone who is not.

 

Christmas blessings to you.

 

P.S. No, "Jeff," I will not sell you my soul.

 



Sneak Peek

This is going in the Lifetree Adventures newsletter tomorrow, but you, loyal blog reader, get to read it here first. And you get the better version, since this one has pictures. Don't say I don't love you.

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Thanksgiving meant a lot more this year to our team of 15 who served on Lifetree Adventures’ final 2012 mission trip, to the Dominican Republic, the week before the holiday. For most of our group, our week in Santo Domingo distributing Operation Kid-2-Kid backpacks and Spanish New Testaments to needy children was the first time most of our team members had traveled outside of the United States or Canada.

We spent most of the week visiting Compassion International projects and one day visiting a World Vision project, and interacted with close to 1,200 Dominican children throughout the week. We were impressed with the work that both of these organizations are doing within Santo Domingo communities but humbled by some of the things we heard during the week:

“Some people in this neighborhood have electricity for just one day a week.”

 

“For many of the children in this [Compassion International] project, the meal we give them is the only meal they will eat all day.”

“This neighborhood has almost no access to clean water. To buy bottled water costs more than some people make in one day, so they just don’t buy it and the drink water that is bad for them.”

 

Coming from a country where we can walk into virtually any public facility (hospital, library, grocery store, etc.) and get a drink from a drinking fountain and losing power usually only happens during a really fierce thunderstorm, and even then it’s usually restored within a couple of hours at most, and none of us have ever lived a day without food, it was an eye-opening and, at times, hard week.

But we also came home with hearts full of good stories of hope and healing.

Three of our team members got to meet children they sponsor through Compassion International. For these children, the bond that they have with their sponsors, now cemented even more from getting to meet their sponsors in person, will give them the motivation to stay in school, learn about God, and rise above the circumstances they were born into. At least one other person on our team came home with the name of a child that she will begin sponsoring later this month.

 

We learned that for every New Testament we gave out, it’s estimated that at least 5 people in that child’s life will read that New Testament. That means almost 3,000 Dominicans will have the chance to read the good news about God’s love for them because of this trip!

 

We discovered that two of the seven sites we visited have already begun clean water initiatives to provide their community with clean, cheap water, which will drastically reduce the number of water-borne illnesses currently affecting these areas.

 

So there is hope in the midst of darkness and reasons to be thankful. Thank you to everyone who financially supported, prayed for, and encouraged our team of 15. This trip could not have happened without you. And we know that the hundreds of children we met and shared God’s love with are thankful for you too.

 

We are excited to see all that God has in store around the world in 2013! Would you consider praying about joining one of our teams?

Hope

It's Sunday, December 2. There are so many noteworthy events that occur today that it's hard to keep track of them all!

First of all, it is Erika's 6 month wedding anniversary. And Robert's anniversary too, I suppose, since he's married to her. Happy 6 months to you both! I was honored to be part of your wedding and to continue to be part of your married life, even though we don't live as close to each other as we used to. Thanks for throwing your bouquet at me, even though it hasn't worked much magic yet. (To read the pre-Erika wedding blog post, click here)

Second, since it's Erika's anniversary, it is therefore also my half birthday. I am 33.5 years old today, which means you only have 6 more shopping months until my birthday. I like giftcards to Amazon and Starbucks. And sunflowers are my favorite. And as always, checks can be made out to Robin Clark.

Not only is it my half birthday it's my stepsister Diana's birthday and my oldest friend John's birthday. Oldest as in longest lasting friendship, not oldest in years, but you can read more about that here.

Finally, today is the first Sunday in Advent. In church this morning, we lit the first Advent candle, which stands for hope.

Hope. It's a small word with big expectations, sort of like the entire season of Advent itself. Advent is a short period of time in the church calendar but full of anticipation as we await the birth of Jesus, the moment when God did the impossible - entering into the confines of time in the limitations of a human body.

There is something about new life that brims with hope. My sweet little niece Sophie was born five weeks ago. She has a head full of dark brown hair and is on the verge of smiling any day now. She is just about as perfect as she can be and I can't help but be filled with hope every time I'm near her. I know she will someday have to face sickness, heartache, disappointment, and sorrow, because you can't live through life and not experience those things. But at the same time, I have hope for all of the joy and blessings that will come into her life as well.

Webster defines hope as "to cherish a desire with expectation of fulfillment." I hope that Sophie's life is full of joy, happiness, promise, and big dreams. And I don't just vaguely wish these things for her - by hoping for them, I long to see them actually happen and will do my part along the way, as her trusty aunt, to help them come into fulfillment. And I also promise to smack the first boy who tries to kiss her. And every subsequent boy after that.

I was reminded of hope through a different child earlier this week. Some of you may remember my blog about baby Joseph, the sick little boy our Peru team met in the jungle a few months ago. If you never read that story, you can read it here.

I found out on Wednesday that Joseph died in September from pneumonia. The reality is that out of the probably 1500 children I have come into contact with in Peru, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic over the last 18 months, there have most likely been several others who have died too. But Joseph was a hard to one to hear about, mostly because we all had so much hope that he would make it. We had hoped that we had helped him in time. We hoped that he would have a better life once he got that help. We hoped so much for him, and to hear that he died only a month later was very hard and seemed so unfair.

So much so that I woke up in the middle of the night on Wednesday and couldn't go back to sleep as I thought about his frail little body and how unfair it was that his life was cut so short. Being born in the jungle lowers your odds of thriving after birth anyway. Between lack of clean water, parasites, dangerous animals, and disease, any child who makes it to age 5 is a walking miracle. Joseph in many ways was probably the norm rather than the exception.

As I lied in bed thinking about how unfair it was that he died so young and wondering why God didn't honor our hopes for wholeness in his life on earth, I sensed God's gentle and quiet voice reminding me to think beyond the confines of my human body and think about eternity instead. And in the quiet stillness of the night, I realized that Joseph is healed now. His earthly body was too frail to support him and he never walked on his little legs in this life. But now, in heaven, he is not only walking, but running and jumping on legs that are strong and able to hold up his body. In his earthly life, he never had enough to eat and he never had clean water to drink. But now, in heaven, he is feasting at the table of the King and he is drinking from the river of life.

Every Sunday in church, whether it's Advent or not, we say the Nicene Creed together. I was struck today by the last sentence of the creed and it made me think of Joseph. It says, "We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come."

I am hoping for the life of the world to come. Joseph is already living in it.

And that's the whole point of this first Sunday in Advent, to remind us of what we hope for, to remind us that without a Savior who makes us clean and whole, we have no hope for the life of the world to come. We don't deserve the life of the world to come, and yet, when Jesus was born into human time, that hope presented itself to us.

My hope for this Advent season is that by the end of it, each of us will find ourselves closer to the One whose birth we celebrate in just a few weeks. If you think of it, please pray for Joseph's family. Even though death is a normal and expected part of jungle life, it is still hard and sad, just like it is here in America. Pray for their comfort and healing.

 

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?

But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently."

 

- Paul, in his letter to the Romans (8:22-25)