A Hero in Pakistan

CNN had a story about a hero in Pakistan named Pervaiz Masih, a Christian, who gave his life by preventing a suicide bomber entrance into a cafeteria at a Muslim women's college. This unknown janitor, though unable to read, blocked the bomber's entrance and saved lives, but he forfeited his own life in the process. Because of his actions, Pakistan's government is calling this humble man a national hero. Imagine. A Christian hero in Pakistan.

We often talk about the costs involved in having our faith, but few in the U.S. have ever faced life and death situations where we must choose to give up our lives for the sake of others. Few in the U.S. face any kind of persecution because of their faith as well, so when I hear a story like this, tears come to my eyes at the purity of the faith of those who must struggle for it.

I believe that we all need to reach toward faith. We should be stretching out our arms to God and continue stretching toward Him everyday. In the U.S., we don't always have to struggle for our faith and we think that it comes easy. We never really think that we might have to give up our lives. We think we are safe and usually we are.

Tonight, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, a Christian family mourns the loss of their provider. A mother mourns the loss of her son, who gave his life so that others might live. Already living in an apartment house with seven members of his family,
Pervaiz Masih's family must now look for a way to provide. Tonight I mourn along with them.

Pervaiz Masih gave his life for Muslim lives. I hope the world hears that message and starts to value life more. While those who strap bombs to themselves are radicals, so was Mr. Masih a radical. He radically believed in Christ enough to protect the lives of the women in the cafeteria no matter their beliefs and no matter the personal cost.

A Lesson From an Artist

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Every evening I walk with my neighbor, Sarah, around a course in our neighborhood. We sweat and talk and talk and sweat some more. I’m usually the one doing the most huffing and puffing. The other night, our neighbor’s garage door was open and he sat inside his makeshift art studio, his walls lined with oil paintings of various scenes. I was attracted by the photograph of mother Theresa, complete with the deep lines in her face, yet in the pose of submission all the same. I decided to stop and say hello to our neighbor, so I stepped forward to his garage and admired his work. My dog caused his little black cat to hiss and arch her back, but I was concentrating on the artworks of Jorge Lacoste.

While I didn’t comment on it, it was clear that Jorge was suffering from some kind of disease. His body jerked in awkward directions, but Jorge sat in front of his laptop and offered to send me a link to his website, and so I gave him my email address eagerly and later that evening, I sat in front of the screen and watched a mini documentary about Jorge and his art. Jorge has Parkinson’s disease, but it’s clear that he doesn’t want to be defined by his disease. In fact, in some amazing way, Jorge managed to call it a gift. He calls it that because he was afflicted by Parkinson’s while he was in his final year of law school, but he learned that he had the ability to paint long after his body began to be afflicted by Parkinson’s. In his documentary, George says, “If it’s broke, don’t fix it. Just try to understand it and try to understand and use the gift that you‘ve been given.”

You see, it was only about four and a half years ago that Jorge tried painting for the first time. Since he has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s since 1981, you can see that his talent is a fairly recent discovery and one that perhaps he might not have discovered without his diagnosis and yet he has been driven by some unseen force to paint over 300 paintings.

We often look at the things in our lives that strike us as a curse, and yet, I have found that some of the most resilient and amazing people that I have met were people who have suffered greatly and yet still manage to find a way to embrace their new existence. Perhaps in suffering we sometimes learn things in life that we could never come to know without the suffering. I’m sure that Jorge would agree with me.

God has a way of reaching us when we need Him the most. What we might consider the place of deepest darkness, God sees as an opportunity to tune us into His Holy Spirit. Jorge calls himself a “pipe” through which art is sent. I can relate to that because I have felt the same way about my music and this ministry.

I look out there and see many of you suffering, and I empathize. I can’t always understand it, but I can see it and it pains me at times to realize that it’s there, but there is always something that you can find in this pain that will reach out to you from God. God’s Grace and beauty are revealed when we need Him the most and it takes darkness to feel the need of God, but it is also in that darkness that we find that beautiful joy that can only come from Him. It’s a momentary glimpse of God’s kingdom here on earth, much like our detour into Jorge’s garage.

My prayer for you is that if you are suffering, that it will not be in vain--that you will feel the presence of the Living God who reaches all men from the inside and turns pain into joy and suffering into beauty. He truly does have the power to handle that kind of transformation if only we will allow Him to work His wonders.


You can find out more about Jorge's art at http://jorgelacostesart.com

Walking Two Miles

Several months ago, I was pulling into my driveway and a large, unrestrained dog came up and tried to lick my car half to death. He belonged to my neighbor who lived across the street, and she was having a hard time restraining him. She was a small woman of slight build with a frailness to her that I detected. We carefully pulled into our driveway and started up a conversation about her overly friendly dog and I mentioned that a dog of this temperment needed to be walked regularly, but I could see that she could barely handle him, so I casually suggested that perhaps my eleven-year-old son might be able to do that for her since my other neighbor and I made it a nightly job of walking our dog and ourselves for exercise. She was both grateful and took us up on our offer. That started my son's first job and a new relationship with our neighbor.

Over the next couple months, I learned that my neighbor was indeed frail and that her condition was quite serious. She was struggling both with a slow-moving cancerous pair of tumors recently removed from her bladder and also with kidneys that were shutting down. She was very ill, and I listened to her one day in our front yard telling me about it.

Since that time, our new neighbor has grown quite close to us. Above and beyond my offer of help for their dog, my son's quiet and responsible presence in walking their dog regularly became a great relief to them. They look to my son as a welcome presence as their dog waits in the upper window of their house at 7:00 pm each night whining and looking for him to come out and take him on his nightly excursion. My son hasn't shirked his duty and has been quite responsible about it, and it has made our neighbor open up in a way that I couldn't have imagined.

When I turned up with a severe ear infection a week ago, my neighbor and my husband struck up a conversation and tonight she asked how it was going. Thanks to antibiotics, my ear is healing and I am nearly back to normal, but I was touched by my neighbor's concern and the way that she reached out automatically for a welcome hug. To me, this is what life is all about.

Jesus said that if someone asks us to walk a mile with them then we should walk two miles with them. I think that is an awesome statement of how we are to behave toward those around us. Imagine a world where everyone was going further than they had to and where neighbors could rely on one another in times of distress and trouble. That kind of experience is within our grasp, if only we will extend what we are willing to do for others.

When my life is over, I will stand before God and there my regrets will stretch out before me. My regrets will likely not be that I didn't work hard enough at my job or that I didn't achieve enough fortune or fame, but most likely they will be about the time that I spent with those around me and the impact that I was able to make in their lives. I think about that a lot and I pray that my regrets will be few. I pray that when I meet my Maker, I will find that I walked more than two miles and that the miles that I walked were valuable and important to those I shared the road with.

Sometimes, I imagine myself after my death approaching the gates of heaven and I imagine joy and celebration at the reuniting of myself and those I have come into contact with throughout my life. I imagine them greeting me at the gate and welcoming me in and I will for the first time know the impact that my words and love had on them. When I do, I hope that they will far eclipse the regrets or the times that I didn't walk those extra miles.

Your Faith has Made You Whole

My neighbor told me last weekend that she had recently had one of her kidneys removed and that she had some tumors that were likely cancer on her bladder as well. She had those removed as well last week. Whenever I hear about such things, I get quickly to praying partly because I feel powerless and partly because I believe in the power of God’s healing.

Today, I was reading about several of Jesus’ healings and I was struck by the way that the bible describes it. After each healing, Jesus would often say to someone that their “faith has made them whole.” I wondered what He meant by being “whole” and I also noted that the person’s individual faith seems to be at the very core of the person’s healing.

The word “whole” that is used in the New Testament is from the greek word “sozo” which means “to save, keep safe and sound, to rescue from danger or destruction…to save a suffering one.” It’s interesting to me that the word healing was not used in this context. The greek word for healing is often “marpe” which means to cure or heal. Another greek word used often is therapeuō from which our word therapy is derived. In both of these words, we tend to think of healing as something that happens to us physically like the curing of a disease or injury. We seldom think about healing in the way that we probably most often receive it which is in the form of spiritual healing. You see, I believe that God doesn’t always heal us in the way that we might expect. I believe that he always saves us from our suffering. He restores us, but not necessarily physically as that may not be the type of healing that we need most.

I have pondered many times over the years why some great people are struck with disease, pain, or tribulations while others’ lives are virtually free from any. Life rarely doles out fairly the infirmities of life. Still, I have found that no matter the highs or the lows of what we suffer through, we always have something important to take from those experiences. The apostle Paul wrote about an infirmity that he suffered from, and he came to God three times with a request for God to remove it, but it was never removed. God’s beautiful response to him was that “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”
Maybe today your strength is also made perfect in weakness. God is a gracious God. He wants to make you whole, but if making you whole means that he is saving you from whatever will prevent you from receiving His love, then it means that healing is not always about our physical bodies, but our spiritual souls. I believe that when we pray for healing, we always receive it, but in what form it comes is a very often a mystery.

Many of my loved ones and neighbors live with a variety of ailments. I would love to be able to stand before them and promise healing, but instead I would rather promise that no matter the circumstances, their faith will make them whole. Whole, to me, means that even though your body, brain, or heart might be breaking down, your spirit is brought to a deep and abiding peace through your relationship with Jesus Christ. That relationship holds the key to the greatest healing that we can receive. Our faith will make us whole. Jesus has promised that to all of us and even if that doesn’t come in the form of physical healing, it comes in the form of peace and abiding love.

Childlike Faith

I stepped out into the early evening sunshine with a scowl on my forehead. Deep in thought about what I was going to do to get dinner on the table for my family, I wasn't thinking about those around me, only what I was doing and how it was affecting me. Suddenly, a young toddler jumped in front of me, planted both feet a foot apart and gave an unrestricted smile right at me. Even though I continued on, the smile stayed with me for quite a little while and the scowl that was aging my forehead was turned smooth and soft as my eyes crinkled into a smile instead. I wish I could do what that toddler did.

When Jesus talks about coming unto Him like a little child, I realize that this surely must be what He meant. The openness, honesty, and purity that I felt from the little guy was worth more than anything. He wasn't mine, but I wanted to pick him up and cuddle him until all the horrible weights that I have placed upon myself are lifted.

What does it really mean to come to God like a little child? When I was a child, I didn't feel like I was. I thought I was just as equal and important as the next person. Now, when I look back, I am sometimes embarrassed by my childishness. As a mother, I have gotten into the habit of correcting my son on everything that comes up. Obviously, that is a mother's job, and if I didn't, I would raise a child who doesn't respect. So, I get in the habit of viewing children through my mother eyes. Instead, I should be trying to see life more often through my child eyes. The child in all of us sure must still exist. We have done everything that we can to put it aside, but it is still there waiting for us to acknowledge. Perhaps even standing before there daring us to smile again.

I think Jesus knew that coming to him like a child meant without reservation and without question. I think He felt that we should make our home at His feet or perhaps even in His lap, loving Him as the protector that He is. If we could come to our Lord in that way, perhaps we would understand that the adult thinking that we have developed has really been somewhat detrimental to our faith. We have learned not to trust in the adult world and that isn't faith.

Even beyond the way that a child comes to his Heavenly Father, the way a child brings joy and unconditional love into the world is one of life's most precious and beautiful things. If each of us could even for a day or a moment tap into that beauty there is no telling the way it could change the world. That is the kind of beauty that Jesus taught. He taught us to love one another like a child, open and without reservation. He taught us to be accessible the way a little child opens his heart to you. He taught us to reach out to others and to our saviour the way a little child reaches out to be held. That is childlike faith.

I wish I had a button that would bring that kind of accessibility and love to light in my own life. I think that's what Jesus meant when He told us that others would "know us by our love." It's what He meant when He told us to be the light in the darkness and for us to shine like a city on a hill. If I could just once jump in front of someone, plant my feet, and give a beautiful, open spray of sunshine in the form of smile, others might know that my light comes from light of God.

P.S. The picture is my beautiful niece, Eden Grace.

Acting Out of Faith

Every so often, I have a dream about being high up in the mountains and hiking in a precarious area where I could step off a cliffside at any moment. Sometimes, I am just standing in a precarious situation, other times, I am clinging to the side of a cliff nearly ready to take the fall. Sometimes, I am sliding down the slope.

I think we all have times when we are slipping in our lives. Lately, that has been me. I have let a lot of things lapse lately, and they have lain at the back of my brain burdening me until finally I got tired of having them there. At that point, I had to get off the couch and into action.

It's easy to leave our faith in that place in the back of our brain as well, but I believe that faith is a far deeper and important faith when it is an action rather than a reaction. Don't get me wrong, I think it's important that we react to the wonderful gift of salvation that God has given us, but that same faith has to be driven by an action. Faith has to be more than just what we think or feel, it also has to be something that we do.

I learned that lesson when we started our senior ministry six years ago. Before then, faith was something I spoke about, read about, thought about, prayed about. Then, one day, my family and I took a step forward and we made our faith an act. In doing that, our lives were forever changed.

One of the things that I love the most about God, is that He always manages to do at least two or more things at the same time. Through us, He reached out to seniors and showed them their value and worth, and through the seniors, He spoke to us and showed us our value and worth as well. As we stretched our hands out, a spiritual hand stretched out to us and changed the way we approached our God and our community.

That's why I always encourage whomever I meet to take their faith to the streets. Maybe not literally, but I do encourage them to make their faith an act, whatever their personal cause is. Whether we are interested in environmental issues, homelessness, world hunger, human rights, it changes us to be part of the working force of Christ-followers. Let's face it, there are plenty of non-active members of the body of Christ and we need more people who will make that faith an action.

I walked down the halls of one the senior facilities about a year ago, and I saw hundreds of seniors in the rooms of a wing I had never been in. I realized at that moment that I was barely scratching the surface of the need that is out there. What if everyone started to take seriously Jesus' call to visit the widows and homeless? Would the wings of that senior facility suddenly be filled with people standing in line to chat with the seniors?

Faith is an act. It doesn't save us, but it does redeem us and teaches us. When we move into the action of faith, we learn so much more about ourselves and our relationships with others. We learn how to love.

Losing the Winning Game

My new job at work affords me the opportunity to train people on computers and lately, we have been in the throes of bringing two districts online with a software student information program for schools that our office supports. Today, I had to be the hall monitor for a bunch of adults who think it's okie dokie to write emails while in the middle of training. This is the reason that we tag-team these classes. One trainer stands at the front of the class and the other--in this case, me--stands at the back helping folks through the exercises.

Before the class, I was instructed to step in if anyone was checking emails during class, and I did so--three times. It's the third time that actually was interesting. When I stepped behind this particular person and calmly said, "Could we please stay focused on our task?" she turned to me with a red face and said, "I already know this!" The irony is, that one day I will be getting the support phone calls for these people once they go live with their software. Attitude is everything, as the saying goes.

This week, God has been reminding me of that fact. In my regular post at www.doableevangelism.com on Mondays, I wrote the contrast between strength and weakness. Today, I am considering how it often takes more strength to be a person who is willing to take second than it does to be the one who wins a good fight. It is supported by Jesus' concept of "the first shall be last and the last shall be first." We all should stop a moment and consider exactly what that statement means and what it means when Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Huh? The meek? Why the earth? Why do they inherit the earth. I wonder if maybe it's God's way of saying that if we can give up first place, we make a better way in the world.

You see, it's really hard for me to be meek. I mean, really hard, but I find that when I carry off a quiet strength as opposed to a loud agressive one, I am viewed in a totally different manner. Of course, there are times when it's easy to be meek and mild, and there are other times when it just seems so impossible.

In the whole first vs. last concept, we have to consider the fact that we are actually losing when we win. We also have to consider that we are winning when we, in fact, think we are losing. Why? Because the way that God judges things isn't by the standards that we judge them. He thinks it is more important to be good to others than to be right. That's often hard for me to live by, especially when I don't think people are being fair.

Think about how Jesus handled being here. He was a king born in a stable. He lived so that he could die for us. He lost so that he could win. And what was his advice to us? Be last and you will be first. Be first and you will come in last. That is a sharp contrast to a world that tells us that we have to strive for what we get in our lives. It's a sharp contrast to a world with bumper stickers that say, "He who dies with the most toys wins." God has his own bumper stickers and they are totally contrary to what we think they should be. He says to have the faith of a little child, to live by putting others first, to love others as you love yourself, to bless those who curse us, do good to those who despitefully use us, and to walk two miles if someone asks us to walk a mile.

I don't know about you, but I could be a lot better at that.