HELPING THAT DOESN'T HURT

Ever wonder how compassion can enslave?  Has it ever entered our crusty craniums that maybe our most noble and compassionate efforts toward the poor have actually hurt them?  Well, Steve and Brian have given this a lot of thought.  Just kindle, nook, or book it to to get inside their heads.


 As I've listened to the discussions over this book in one of the small groups I attend, I've found the foundations of my missions-driven, pedal-pumping life challenged, shaken, breakin', and topplin' over.  

The big ah-hah for this blog is simply a new answer to the old question, "What is pOvErTy?"  Hands shoot up quicker than a hold-up.  I know.  I know what poverty is--lack of water, lack of food, lack of adequate housing, lack of education, lack of reading skills, lack of job-skills, lack of . . . lack of . . . lack of . . .

Textbook answer: 

"lack of material things and services.
Yes!  A+! 

But missiologists and social scientists have come up with quite a different answer.  Poverty, they would quickly tell us, is the result of God-designed relationships that are broken.  Call it sin or addictions or falling short of the glory of . . . but poverty happens when relationships are broken and thus lack harmony and joy. 

Sitting in a tin-walled ten by ten in black Shanty Town, South Africa is as much poverty as sitting in a middle-upper class twenty by thirty living room--if we've got broken relationships with God, ourselves, others, or creation. We're all in the same boat; we're all on the same lonely island.  So the first step to addressing poverty is to identify the place where we are impoverished.  "We" and "them" suddenly become just "us". 

How's your relationships these days?  Any cracks?  Anything broken that needs fixing?  Just remember what Jesus alluded to as the first step out of poverty:  "Blessed are the poor in spirit."  Or "blessed are they who know they are spiritually bankrupt."  Only the Savior can fix the broken places, only the Lord can repair nerve-damaged relationships.  And that, for me, is Good News.

More later,


Thomas 

BE MY VALENTINE

BE MY VALENTINE  

Today maybe Valentine's Day, but in Missoula, Montana, overcast skies, dipping mercury, and snow waits just outside your cockled heart to paint your nose blue and your ears crimson.   

So I've stepped onto the warm side of this romantic day.  June 19th, for example. That's a warm day and the day Glacier Nat'l Park finally opens it's roads to travelers and the day that we'll be passing through the park on our 2014 Polar Cycling Expedition.  

Once again, I'm morphing into a Wild Hog (more like a naked mole rat) and hitting the road with my fellow-recumbent colleague, Rick Stiles, to pedal past the Arctic Circle and all the way to where the road ends and the polar bears begin at the Arctic Ocean.  

If that isn't romantic, what is?  No sag.  No support.  Just two spouses drowning their sorrows in a two-month shopping adventure in the lower forty-eight while their two boomer husbands bicycle to the end of the world. 

So stay on the warm side of Valentine's Day.  Keep the passion alive and steaming in your marriage.  (Heaving bosoms and soft embraces.)  But don't stop there!  Build robust passion into your dreams.  Be a Wild Hog at something and take off.  You may look like a naked mole rat to some, but deep down you know who you are:  You are an adventurer!  You are a risk-taker!  You're a gal or guy that fuels your soul with Heaven's romance and earth's adventure.  

Keep in touch . . . let me know how your Valentine's Day went.  

Gotta go.  Have some roses to pick up.

Later,
Thomas Hall