Inconvenient Truth

I wish sometimes that I didn't know the things I now know. Life would be simpler, easier. I have always known that there were starving kids across the world and that oppression and hatred burn across this world like wildfire, but it was all cerebral, it was all from the head. One of my favorite authors, Shane Claiborne said in his book "Irresistible Revolution" (don't read it unless you want to change by the way), you can know CPR, but unless you use it on someone who is dying from a heart attack, the knowledge is useless.

The Holy Spirit has shifted that perspective and that knowledge from my brain, something I know, to my heart, something I know and now must act upon. It is not only the knowledge that people are poor and oppressed, it is new knowledge that has been thrust upon me. The knowledge that God called us to act. Not just missionaries, not just pastors, not just unmarried, not just catholics, not just people without kids, but all of us. Ultimately, that was Jesus' message to us - love me, and love each other. Those who love the poor and brokenhearted have loved Christ.

I have been really pondering a passage from 1 John 3:16-18: "By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth." Is this not a call to ACTION? Christ calls us to DO something. I can no longer do nothing, I must move from cerebral understanding to heart felt action.

It is inconvenient. It would be much more comfortable to sit in my house, watch my TV, work 9-5 for the next 25 years, and then retire and play golf and fish. (Well, at least fish, knowing that people in the U.S. spend more on golf in one day than would feed the entire developing world has completely ruined golf for me). It would be much more convenient, but I now know TRUTH - God calls us to step out of our American Dream and towards his call for each and every Christian - to love Him and each other. That is going to look different for each and every person, but it can not equate to living the life of comfortable consumption I have been unconsciously living. It is inconvenient, and I must change.

I also know that God will honor our faith and our actions, and will bless us with so much more. Not in the American view of "blessings" which is probably monetary blessings, but with understanding, discernment and ultimately the fruits of the spirit, which are so much more than money. I pray that God will continue to remind us of this truth as we begin our downward spiral.