30 Hour Famine...

when i began the process of preparing my church for '30 Hour Famine' i was consumed with "doing". there were literally 161 items on my '30 Hour Famine' TO DO list. over 3 months i was busy, busy, busy. and yes, there were moments when i stopped to think about the impact we could have or the ways that God could speak to us. but if i'm honest i very rarely thought about those things.

so friday, march 26th rolled around and i began fasting. i had talked the with students about fasting a lot. we'd talked about how it was a way we could find more intimacy with Christ. we'd had conversation after conversation about how God can be made strong in our weakness. but most of friday passed and i found myself simply 'not eating' and not really 'fasting'. then 6pm came. and in walked some of these faces:

they came hungry. they came energetic. they came armed with stories of how food had tempted them throughout the day but they stood strong. and a little piece of me began to remember why "30 Hour Famine" is powerful.

throughout friday night we played games and watched movies. as a leader i had planned a schedule that i hoped would inspire just as much as it instructed. i wanted the students to know uganda. short of actually going, i wanted them to be able to taste it. so i showed them some short films that invisible children produced. they were powerful stories. the students got caught up in them. after the games and videos we moved on to our craft. this is what the jr. highers have titled "tommy's blankey". they each decorated a quilt square and we're sending the quilt to the orphanage that jeff and amy got tommy from. the things the kids wrote were so beautiful and simply sweet. my favorite one was: "you live here (a picture of africa). i live here (a picture of the us). God loves us both (a picture of a heart)."

by the time saturday rolled around i was exhausted. my tummy ached, my head ached, and my energy level was definately way down. i walked into the church in the morning ready for "30 Hour Famine" to be over. and then the students started arriving. i could hear them talking with each other as i set some stuff up. here's a paraphrase of one of those conversations:

Ben- I am starving!

Dillon- No Ben, you aren't. The kids in Uganda are.

Ben- You know what I mean.

Dillon- Yeah, I know what you mean, but I don't think we should say we're starving anymore.

Ben- Yeah, maybe you're right. Hey, do you think this money is really gonna help any kids?

Dillon- I dunno. Maybe.

Ben- You know what would really help them?

Dillon- No, what?

Ben- If we went to Uganda and taught them to skate.

Dillon- Dude! Totally, let's do it.

Ben- Think Chelsea would take us?

Dillon- As long as it's ok with our moms why not? But we probably need a lot of money so we should start saving.

Ben- OK, I bet we can be ready by next month.

that conversation is why i do what i do. because a relationship with God is more than just loving God. it involves loving others too. these past 3 months i have seen my students slowly start to get it. the way they talk about tommy like he's their own little mascott of love. they way they ask me if God could drop some food on haiti. they are starting to put the pieces together on their own and its wonderful.

we ended "30 Hour Famine" with a handcraft. 25,000 people die each day because of hunger related issues. my kids made 2500 handprints and i told them each hand represented 10 people that died because they didn't have enough food. but i told them the hands represented something else too. each hand represented the effort and love with which they had entered the "30 Hour Famine". i told my students that with each hand they should remember they are changing the world. and they are. they really are.

i was beyond exhausted when i got home late saturday. but i had started the weekend with no thought of my Jesus and i ended the weekend completely safe in his embrace. completely sure of the cross. completely convinced that there isn't a single statistic on this planet that is stronger than my Lord. and as if those lessons weren't enough: i ended the weekend knowing that someday God's gonna have hold of my students' hearts the way He has mine.

hole in my heart...

Isaiah is my absolute favorite book of the Bible. It is the place I go for strength and courage. The words I find there consistantly challenge me and grow my faith. In my favorite book of the Bible there is a chapter; a seemingly small chapter. It is in this chapter that I hear my calling. It is in this chapter that I know how to throw myself into the work God has for me.

My heart always aches to be in Africa. I'm not ever truely whole until I'm there. But usually its a dull ache that I can ignore. Lately though I haven't been able to. My dreams are a world away. I wait on pins and needles for the day when the Lord says I can go there and never come back. So this morning in an effort to soothe the pain I'm meditating on Isaiah 61 and the above picture of my heart. Join me.

The Year of the Lord's Favor

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion- to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.

They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devestated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devestated for generations. Aliens will shepherd your flocks; foreigners will work your fields and vineyards. And you will be called priests of the Lord, you will be named ministers of our God. You will feed on the wealth of nations, and in their riches you will boast.

Instead of their shame my people will recieve a double portion, and instead of disgrace they will rejoice in their inheritance; and so they will inherit a double portion in their land, and everlasting joy will be theirs.

For I, the Lord, love justice; I hate robbery and iniquity. In my faithfullness I will reward them and make an everlasting covenant with them. Their descendants will be known among the nations and their offspring among the peoples. All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people the Lord has blessed.

I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.

yesterday...

at the end of this month my students and i will be holding an event called "30 Hour Famine". it's purpose is to raise awareness and funds to fight world hunger. the basic idea is that we will get our friends and family to sponsor us a dollar amount for each hour we fast. for example i'm fasting 30 hours and my good friend Tyler hellinga is giving me $3 for every hour fasted. then we send that money to Uganda through world vision. i've done this event before and it's a great way to help students and leaders see the world around them with more compassionate eyes.

anyway, yesterday in preparation for the famine i was watching some videos i bought from invisible children (http://www.invisiblechildren.com/). i'm going to be showing some of these videos throughout the event and i wanted to make sure they were jr. high appropriate. i spent about 2 hours in my office just crying and crying. and there were a lot of reasons for those tears.

i think the most obvious reason is that my heart just can't comprehend how we can be so cruel to each other. you can get way more detailed thoughts on that throughout my blog. but there was something else. when i was 15 years old i went on my very first mission trip to mexico and while there i saw a movie about the aids crisis in africa. and ever since that night, ever since i first heard the call for help my whole being wants to respond. if you know me, you know that i end up bringing up the topic of africa in almost every conversation. i can't help it. the person that God made me to be is screaming to do something; to love more completely.

watching the videos from invisible children reminded me that i have left so much work unfinished. i have left children, who are longing to be held and i have left mothers with too much work to do alone. its interesting to me that i got a heart for this wild and untamed continent while sitting in a room a world away. i guess that's why we do the famine, because who knows how God will touch the hearts of my students.

so i would like to ask all of you that read this (i actually have no idea if its more than haley, carlee, and amy) please be praying for me and my kiddos on march 26th and 27th. pray that God would let His spirit fall on RLC. ask Him to change lives and hearts. and maybe through your prayers and God's diligent work we will find that my students grow a heart to change the world, just like i did.

heart abandoned...

last week i couldn't sleep and so i went to my trusty books for something to distract me. among my beautiful and prized bookshelves there are a handful of books that i haven't read yet. usually those books comprise of gifts, things i was given and either haven't gotten to yet or don't really ever plan on getting to. so, i started purusing and i came across on old yellow library copy of the hiding place by corrie ten boom. i'm not sure if that book is familiar to you- but if not: it's one woman's true accounting of how her family became involved in holland's underground during WWII, hiding jews so that they could find freedom. i was surprised i had it, because literally i can account for every single volume i have and here's one i didn't remember. i was also surprised because i had never read it and i am facinated by world war II and i usually devour everything i can get my hands on that's written about it. so i picked it up. i settled into my cozy bed and i readied myself to enter into the magic world of words.

i wish desperately i was a more talented writer. because the following post is not even going to scratch the surface of what this tiny little novel did for me.

i want to begin with: how does God love us? how can he love us when we are so intentionally cruel to each other? i consistantly had to put this book down and ask God to forgive me of my cruelty. as corrie wrote so simply of the pain she saw inflicted on her jewish neighbors i realized that we are capable of so much hurt. and that hurt shows up in small ways like a jab at our friends to make ourselves shinier but it also consists of this:

"how often it is a small, almost unconsious event that marks a turning point. as arrests of jews in the street became more frequent, i had begun picking up and delievering work for our jewish customers myself so that they would not have to venture into the center of town. and so one evening in the early spring of 1942 i was in the home of a doctor and his wife. they were a very old dutch family: the portraits on the walls could have been a textbook of holland's history. the heemstras and i were talking about the things that were discussed whenever a group of people got together in those days, rationing and the news from england, when down the stairs piped a childish voice: 'daddy! you didn't tuck us in!' dr. heemstras was on his feet in an instant. with an apology to his wife and me he hurried upstairs and in a minute we heard a game of hide-and-seek going and the laughter of two children. that was all. nothing had changed. mrs. heemstra continued with her recipe for stretching the tea with rose leaves. and yet everything was changed. for in that instant, reality broke through the numbness that had grown in me since the invasion. at any minute there might be a rap on this door. these children, this mother and father, might be ordered to the back of a truck" (pg. 74).

it's unimaginable the kind of suffering that we inflict upon each other. but there was another aspect of this book that wormed its way into my heart. corrie and her entire family willingly offered their lives to God. this wasn't signing up for a short-term mission trip where they could go somewhere safe and safely serve God. this wasn't proclaiming their faith in God while putting their own desires before everything else. it was a concious decision that death would be preferable to turning away from God's people. do i love my Jesus that much? do i love my neighbor that much?

"dr. heemstra came back to the living room and the conversation rambled on. but under the words a prayer was forming in my heart: 'Lord Jesus, i offer myself to your people. in any way. any place. any time'" (pg. 74).

corrie and her family would end up hiding hundreds of jews. they eventually built a small room in her bedroom so that if they were ever raided they would have a chance to keep all the jews living with them from arrest. i posted pictures of the actual room at the top of the post. and they went about their lives. they took thousands, millions of risks and there were so many times when they were given the oppurtunity to stop. they could have climbed safe and warm into their beds and said to themselves, "we've done what we could. God would be proud. but it's just too dangerous now."

eventually they were caught and corrie and her family were arrested. they were all sent to prison. her father died there. her brother and one of her sisters were released, but corrie and her sister betsie were sent to a concentration camp. not because they were jewish. not because they were mentally or physically disabled or for any other insane reason the nazi's were sending people to the camps. because they loved. because they loved others more than they loved themselves. no, wait that's wrong- because they loved God more than even the air they were breathing.

betsie died in the concentration camp. and when corrie was finally released because of a clerical error she entered a world without her father. without her mother or sister. she lost everyone she cared about. she was broken physically and emotionally. she was scarred in ways that were just beginning to show themselves. but she was also gloriously whole. because she had done exactly what Christ did. she offered all she had to her Father. it wasn't much, but God used her small life to feed millions, including me.

i have no idea how to summarize in this post the mark the chapters of their imprisonment left on me. i feel like a completely different chelsea. i feel more lost and more found. i feel closer to my Lord. i feel like a bomb went off next to me and took pieces of my selfishness with it. i want to end with corrie's words on how desperately she clung to our Lord.

"the instant of dismissal we would mob the door of barracks 8, stepping on each other's heels in our eagerness to get inside, to shrink the world back to understandable proportions. it grew harder and harder. even within these four walls there was too much misery, too much seemingly pointless suffering. everyday something else failed to make sense, something else grew too heavy. 'will you carry this too, Lord Jesus?' but as the rest of the world grew stranger, one thing became increasingly clear. and that was the reason the two of us were here. why others should suffer we were not shown. as for us, from morning until lights-out, whenever we were not in ranks for roll call our bible was the center of an ever-widening circle of help and hope. like waifs clustered around a blazing fire, we gathered around it, holding out our hearts to its warmth and light. the blacker the night around us grew, the brighter and truer and more beautiful burned the word of God. 'who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecutionor famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?... nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.' i would look about us as betsie read, watching the light leap from face to face. more than conquerors.... it was not a wish. it was a fact. we knew it, we experienced it minute by minute- poor, hated, hungry. we are more than conquerors. not 'we shall be.' we are! life in ravensbruck took place on two separate levels, mutually impossible. one, the observable, external life, grew every day more horrible. the other, the life we lived with God, grew daily better, truth upon truth, glory upon glory" (pg. 194-195).