And so it begins...
Last night I "Skyped" India...Symbolic of what is to come I hope.
This "blog" that I am writing is not going to be a place for me to satisfy my urge for people to hear me but a place to share with people who are preparing themselves for something...
In this case it is for preparing myself for the mission field.
I have been praying for god to break my heart for the oppressed and I can already feel it happening. it is amazing the things god has shown me that I DONT need. This is a pretty vague beginning to a blog, but this is what I feel right now.
Vox Populi, Vox Dei
that is a Latin phrase that says...
What the people say, God says.
this broke my heart today because I realize how much truth is in this simple phrase. we allow a majority to speak for so many.
often times we get so angry that a few Christians can mis-represent the god "we" follow and society/culture begins to view "us" as the same lost Christians yelling hate through their actions.
I think this is why it is so important to show tolerance and compassion towards all view points and truths.
By the simple fact that we are raised in a culture where we are NOT persecuted for our beliefs, we have to understand that the Great Commission is way bigger than our worldview. By world view I am referring to the little glimpse of the rest of the world that we get in the United States.
The freedom we are so blessed to have(key word being, Blessed), is wasted if we are not using our freedom to bless others. this means we must overcome the Latin phrase by "living" a life of reflecting our blessings onto other people.
I am not by any means saying we should all leave and move to third-world countries. I am saying god gives us the freedom to discover his truths, god gives us the freedom to discover rights and wrongs, and by promoting a culture that doesn't cultivate discovery of truths we are blaspheming god. In the beginning, told adam not to eat of the tree of life. What we so easily forget was that Adam and Eve still had the choice to eat of the tree. Free-will is at the center of gods character because free-will is at the center of love. if we want to love a lost world, we must allow the world to make a choice. we must not come at the world with ultimatums and deals. we must, as paul says many times, come at the world with one truth. Christ Died, Christ rose.
These numbers you are about to read are not put here for guilt, guilt does not "do" anything. Guilt does not motivate with the heart, guilt does not motivate with love. these statistics are here so we can hear them and understand how far this world really is and to remind us of our blessed state. These numbers we must learn to incorporate into our lives and our love.
Over 1.5 BILLION people in the world live on less that one dollar a day.
An additional 2.5 BILLIONS people in the world live on less than two dollars a day.
This means that over half the world lives on less than 2 dollars a day.
Key word in these statistics is live.
the average american teenager consumes, not LIVES, on 150 dollars a week.
The average american household spends more on trashbags in a year than one-third of the world spends on GOODS!
it is easy to say that the cost of living is less or that its about choices, and my response to you would be...
You(and I) sound alot like the people on mount sinai when moses called the people to love the orphan, love the refugee, love the widow.
Also, We would sound alot like the people (Gentiles and Jews) when jesus instructs them to take care of the lost, less fortunate and oppressed.
So many times we point fingers to "those" people, or say what about them, or it is their fault...
but that is not how or why jesus came. the first and greatest commandment is LOVE. That is loving god and molding your heart to his(his heart breaks for the oppressed, that is why jesus was in Jerusalem. Jews were being oppressed by a roman government/empire) and to love people. if we take that verse an stop trying to justif things to it, we can see what we are called to do in the "Great Commision."
I know I ramble but I pray you could follow me and see where my heart and hopefully may others' are headed.
With Hope and Love,
Tyler
