often times the seemingly mundane can provide a great deal of insight

5.22.2008

Love, love, love.



MTC DETAILS

From June 15th through the 20th (Sunday through Friday) myself and about 45 participants (leaders included) from FirePower (our senior high youth group) will be living and working in Minneapolis (Minnesota). This week is designed to build relationships with our partner ministries in the city and also to give the students opportunities to grow in this act of worship through experience and through teachings. The group is split into three teams, each team assigned to one of three ministries for the week. The ministries are; Parakletos, The Fallout, and Union Gospel Mission. During the day the students will be working with and learning from their experience with the ministries. During the evenings we will have some teachings designed to educate the students with a biblical perspective on issues such as; Human Rights, Oppression, Social Justice, and Poverty. The purpose of this week is to serve God, bless our partner ministries, and create opportunities for our students to grow in compassion. Please pray for us!

$0.02
I have been learning about love. loving others, to be specific. A pretty important thing, being one of the greatest commandments with the other being to love God with the entirety of your being. So how have I been learning these things? Well I am glad you asked. You will be happy to hear that my life has become even more inconvenienced than it had been. I have been intentionally learning about human ecology, social justice and human rights - which just so happen to be directly tied to my belief in God and my belief that God cares about people and wants his people to be loved and restored. Knowledge is responsibility. Now I am stuck with this inconvenient knowledge and need to figure out how I am to respond to it, and the worst part is that I keep going back for more. That's right. I will have even more burdensome responsibility as I continue being informed. frick. Not only that, but I will be sharing this information with students who will then need to process the information and potentially have their lives messed up by having compassion take root in their hearts. frick. I mean seriously, peoples lives will be so disrupted by this venomous information, but the truth of it is.. it is a beautiful complication. I am learning more in order to act and to inform others. Change can happen but it needs to be something more than just wearing a trendy rubber bracelet around our wrist. It will happen when the hand attached to that wrist is willing to sacrifice for the love of God and for the sake of others. This is compassion. This is not convenient. This is loving others intentionally. You cannot do this on your own. This is not focused on personal gain. This is love. love. love. Love is all you need.