The Cleansing

A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, "If you are willing, you can make me clean." Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured. Mark 1:40-42.

Reading this, I begin to see and feel the compassion of my savior. By Jewish understanding, to worship Yahweh, one would enter into the Temple, and bring your sacrifice to the Lord. In Jewish law, it was a sin to enter into the temple if you were unclean. In that same law a person would be declared unclean by a number of things: Handling dead bodies; giving birth; having sex; or even touching a person who was unclean. Jesus reached out and touched an unclean leper. He Touched Him!! Unclean. Jesus cared so much about this man being restored into relationship with God he was willing to be made unclean to allow this man to worship. God's cleansing into his life. The leper for the first time in his life would be able to enter into the temple. He would finally be able to worship the way he'd longed to his whole life. His infirmities would no longer hold power over him. From now on this man would be a product of Jesus' restoring power. Christ would take on that uncleanliness so this man would be able to worship.

Ultimately that is what Christ offers. He lays down his position of authority and power, making a way for every man to be able to have what was lost that day in the Garden. Relationship. Christ embraced the uncleanliness of a leper and is more than willing to embrace the uncleanliness of every one of his followers in order to let them stand without blame before his father.

The Church

Tonight I had the distinct pleasure of being able to be a table host at a church-wide Christmas dinner. It was an outreach event geared towards the lonely and poor in the Paradise community, and I got to be the face of Jesus to whoever would sit at my table. With my passion for poverty, I had hoped to get a table filled with druggies and homeless, but as it usually happens in Paradise, my table was mostly elderly people. 2 of them had just had their 70th marriage anniversary, another was just a lonely old man, and the last was a elderly Mormon whose wife was in the hospital and didn't want to spend Christmas alone. But the thing that really caught my attention tonight was the table next to me. Sitting next to a bunch of elderly ladies was a lady obviously strung out on meth. Her hair was dreaded from neglect and she was wearing an Orlando Magic jacket from the 90's that couldn't have been washed since then. I began hurting inside to talk to her, I figured at this church people aren't used to poverty, so a woman like this would scare our little old grandmothers. I could not have been more wrong. I got to see over the course of the night these older ladies share their food and their lives with this woman. They didn't care that she smelled, or that she could barely speak in intelligent sentences, all that mattered to these ladies was that this lady was here and she needed some lovin'. It put such a smile on my face to see as she left each one of the ladies get up and give the homeless woman a hug, I knew they actually cared for her. I feel as if so often I don't give the body of Christ a chance, I tend to think of everyone as another consumer. Another person just trying to get their fix of religion, but tonight I got to see some little conservative old women be The Church.

Hunger riots in Haiti
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A shooting today in South-Central LA
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This young girl lost her family to AIDS left to fend for herself and her two brothers
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Tsunami kills thousands
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For a mere 30 cents a day you could send a girl like Rosa to school
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Race riots wreck downtown Detroit
....
I guess there's nothing good on TV

My heart is in my throat.
Is this really what God requires?
I've never killed a man before, yet here I am, sword in hand being urged on by my Imam.
What makes him an infidel? He talks about the one true God, so do I. This man ready to die for his God. Would I die for mine? I'm about to kill for mine.
Is
This
What
God
Wants?
...
Bloodshed
Persecution
Purity of our religion
I look down... My hands... Sticky... Warm... Crimson... Is this what pleasing God feels like?

Time had run it's course. Never did it seem like the day would come. He kept waiting for the money to come in, but something always comes up... this paycheck... lost in the mail... clerical error... economic turmoil. All he hear was, "I'm sorry, but it's your problem." It seemed like only a week had passed when he was told he had one month until he saw the dreaded red tag on his door. But sure enough there it was with big red letters saying "EVICTED". He is alone in a strange city with nowhere to go or anyone to turn to.
Everything he owns on what was his front porch with that feeling his stomach. You know that one feeling where its almost like everything inside is trying to escape.
He would've cried if it weren't for the children walking home from school around him.
Where do I go?
Where do I stay?
What about my things?
He didn't have a ride, he didn't have a home, he had a few possessions but most were too bulky to keep...
So
He
Just
Began
Walking

Joy

When I was working at Mt. Gilead, I came to a point when I didn't want anything to do with anything or anyone. Week after week of investing in kids who didn't care just drained me, so much that I simply didn't feel like praising God. I had been completely robbed of my joy.
However when I thought I was at my lowest, God sent me a gift. As I looked around the worship pit I noticed a young girl with down syndrome. I watched her in her to devotion to God, who she only had the simplest understanding of and realized this young woman was doing exactly what she was created for. She doesn't understand the fulness of the trinity, eternity is a word she probably has never heard, eschatology is the farthest from her mind. All she knows is that God is there and that he loves her just the way she is. And in return she loves him. She lifts her hands in the air, and occaisionally claps off beat, but there is no doubt that her affections towards the almighty ignite passion in all around her. She even revived it in me. Which made it all the more fitting that when I met her her name was Joy.

My Inadequacy

As I lay here in my overly adorned bed looking over my photos I took of took of some starving children in Haiti, a few things began to occur to me. The first is that while I'm sitting in my overly comfortable dorm room, which by American standards are absolutely tiny, the people I had come along side there are probably fighting for survival against hunger and hurricanes. So I have enough money to decorate my room to make it "pretty", and I can put in extras like a couch and TV to make it comfortable but some of the people I gave a huge piece of my heart to don't even have enough to feed their family today. Most in fact of the community I was in could only feed their family every third day.
I can't even believe the excess I live in as a "starving college student". I eat three meals a day, I have a warm place to sleep every night (or if I turn on my AC a cool place), I even have a freaking car.
My mind keeps turning to three year old James from Haiti, he's the youngest in his family. He lives underneath a church because that's the only place his family can afford, and even though he's so little and full of life, his belly is bloated from hunger.
Sometimes I wonder where God can be in the midst of all of this. I just feel like screaming to him, "WHY IS THIS HAPPENING" and always with a gentle answer he asks in turn the very same question. Being the hands and feet of Christ we have the power to make the difference. God wants to use us a blessing to all people. As a member of the body of Christ it's my duty to not be so driven by having the right clothes and having the nicest car and the best decorated dorm room, but be driven by love and compassion for my brothers. I feel I've been so caught up in myself and my own comfort I forget about the suffering that other fellow human beings suffer.
I want to change all of this but I feel so inadequate. Where can I start? How can I help? I still don't know all of the answers, but I think it's my goal to find them and help however I can. And maybe if as a body we can unite to change things, we can see entire countries changed, and we won't have to see James eating one meal of rice every other day.