Crazy Love- Operation Auca

“God, I pray Thee, light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn for Thee. Consume my life, my God, for it is Thine. I seek not a long life, but a full one, like you, Lord Jesus.”

These words were recorded in Jim Elliot’s journal in 1948, while he was in college. It was during his college years that Elliot felt God calling him to the mission field in Ecuador, South America. In 1952, Elliot travelled to Quito, Ecuador with his friend Pete Fleming. There the two men became fluent in Spanish and spent time learning about the cultures of the area. It was in a linguistics class that Jim Elliot first heard about a native tribe referred to as the Auca tribe. He was working with Wycliffe to translate the Bible into the language of the Quichua people. “Auca” was their term for savage. This people group lived deep in the jungle and was known for their violent ways. Any attempt to make contact with them throughout history ended in death for any outsider. Elliot knew that the Holy Spirit was calling him to reach these people, so he set to work gathering a missionary team.

He married his college sweetheart, Elisabeth, in October 1953, and then together they worked on translating the New Testament into the Quichua language. In January of 1956, Elliot and four other missionaries, Ed McCully, Roger Youderian, Pete Fleming, and their pilot, Nate Saint, made contact from their airplane with the Auca Indians using a loudspeaker and a basket to pass down gifts. Through the loudspeaker they shouted Auca words showing that they were friendly and passed down items such as a machete and axe, much needed tools in the jungle environment. Soon, the Auca people returned gifts, such as a feathered headress and a live parrot. The five men set up camp on a sandbar near the Auca’s land. They were soon approached by two women and a man, who they nicknamed George. They made friends and even took George up in their plane.

Encouraged by this visit, the men felt that it was time to go in and try to minister to them. On the morning of January 8th, after praying and worshipping God, the men radioed their wives saying that they were going to go into the village and would radio them at about 4:30. When 4:30 came and went, the women knew something had happened. Within an hour, other missionaries and the Ecuador military set out to find the men.

The bodies of the missionaries were found speared and in the river by their campsite on January 6, 1956. Jim Elliot was only 28 when he was martyred. Between the five men, they left widows and nine fatherless children. Everyone was shocked. The initial contacts with the Auca tribe had seemed friendly. What had caused them to kill these men? Many would look at Jim Elliot’s life and the lives of the other missionaries and say that it was all a waste. They had set out with the intention of bringing the Gospel to a tribe who didn’t even have a word for God, but had been martyred before they even had the chance. These men died without knowing the impact they would have. Elisabeth Elliot and Rachel Saint, Nate Saint’s sister, acted with unfathomable forgiveness when, three years after the deaths of their loved ones, they made contact with the tribe. The actions of their family had left an impact on the tribe. The men were armed, but did not defend themselves from the attack. This was something the tribe could not comprehend.

Forty years after his father’s death, Steve Saint works among the Auca tribe, (who prefer to be called Huaorani, their word for people.) Now the homicide rate is down 90% from what it had been when his father and friends were murdered by the very men Steve shares meals with. An eighty year old man named Gikita was the leader of the band of murders forty years earlier. He is open about the fact that the killings came down to a misunderstanding. In an effort to cover his own misdeeds, George had said the missionaries had attacked him. This was why the men died. Gikita, now a follower of Christ, speaks of the peace he has in knowing that his children and grandchildren do not have to grow up fearing murders as he did, thanks to the peaceful missionary men and their work carried on by their family.
Here were five ordinary men whose uniqueness comes not from their skill, but their commitment to seek God’s will and to carry out his purposes for their lives. They were aware of the risk they were taking but felt it was justified, though they could have had no idea of the impact their martyrdom would someday have.
Questions
God called these men to give up their lives, literally. They had no idea they would die out there in the jungle. Would you be willing to make the same sacrifice, if called to?
Reread the quote from Jim Elliot. What do you think of praying for not a long life, but a full one, like Jesus lived?
God could take us home at any time. Think about your life. Are their ways you could be living a fuller life for God, as these missionaries were?

Crazy Love- Francis Chan

Francis Chan, author of Crazy Love, is an ordinary man doing extraordinary things for Christ. Born in Hong Kong in 1968, his mother died giving birth to him. His father remarried when Francis was 7, then the Chan family moved to California. Shortly thereafter, his stepmother died. Then when he was 12, Chan’s father died of cancer. Chan has described his dad as a man who would beat him for “disobeying or bothering” him. Chan looks at the brightside of things and says this taught him discipline and respect.

In 1993, Chan established Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley, California. Cornerstone has 4 Sunday services and 4,000 attendees. His sermons rank in the top 20 Christian podcasts and Chan speaks frequently at Christian conferences, such as Passion. His popularity is due to his God-given ability to take the Gospel Truth and present it in applicable, convicting ways.

Not only does Chan teach the Bible well, he lives out what he preaches. He gives away 90% of his income and donates 100% of his book royalties to various causes. Recently, Chan stepped down from his position as pastor at Cornerstone Church in order to follow the Holy Spirit. At the time, he had no idea what God would call him and his family to do. (He’s married with 4 kids.)

For the past year, Chan has worked to establish “gatherings,” home churches that reflect the model in Acts, in L.A. county. Chan and those on this mission are working to change the idea that a church is a building and trying to show that a church is a group of Christians working to serve Jesus wherever they are.

As of last month, the Chans’ sold their house and moved to Asia. They plan to stay until the end of the year, but are willing to stay longer if the Holy Spirit says to.

Chan is open about the times in his life where he has not walked with the Lord, but that just further proves that God can and will use anybody for his purposes. Francis Chan is an excellent author and speaker, but what stands out the most about him is how he lives out the “radical” teachings of Scripture.

For discussion:
After looking at Chan’s life, do you believe God can use anybody to do extraordinary things?

Many people have called Chan crazy for the way he lives his life. What do you think?

Do you think you would be willing to follow the Holy Spirit when He says go, even if He doesn’t tell you where? Why or why not?

Love is Winning: When we don’t fit in – MLK Jr.

It’s not always ”cool” to show love is winning.  Being someone that lives life to show the world that God’s Love is Winning doesn’t often win you many popularity contests.  Jesus says many people will even hate those who try and follow his way of love.

Martin Luther King Jr. did not fit in.  In fact, even though it caused him a lot of pain and eventually took his life, not fitting in was King’s mode of operation.  He didn’t want to fit in if fitting in meant joining his society in the status quo of oppression, greed, violence, and hate. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. is one of my heroes.  Like many of the imperfect men that God has used to carry out his perfect plan, King courageously refused to be comfortable, risking his reputation, his safety, and eventually his life, to show that Love can Win and is Winning in the face of dark evil, oppression, and prejudice.

Read this speech carefully and then listen to and watch it below.  You don’t want to miss one word!

“Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in psychology.  It is the word maladjusted.  And certainly we hear this word a great deal.  And I’m sure all of us want to live the well-adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities.  But I must honestly say to you, as I’ve said before, there are some things in our nation and in our world of which I’m proud to be maladjusted, which I call upon all men of goodwill to be maladjusted until the good society is realized.

I must honestly say to you that I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination.  I never intend to adjust myself to religious bigotry.  I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few and leave men by the thousands and millions smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society.  I must honestly say to you that I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.  For in a day when Sputniks and Geminis are dashing through outer space, and the guided ballistic missiles are causing highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can ultimately win a war.  It is no longer a choice between violence and non-violence.  It is either non-violence or non-existence.  And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to a negotiated settlement of the crisis in Vietnam, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and bringing all of the nations of the world into the United Nations, and thereby disarming the whole world may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation.  And our earthly habitat will be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine.

And so I say that maybe our world is in dire need of a new organization, the International Association for the Advancement for Creative Maladjustment.  Men and women who would be as maladjusted as the prophet Amos who in the midst of the injustices of his day could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, ‘Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.’  As maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln who had the vision to see that this nation could not survive half-slave and half-free.  As maladjusted as Thomas Jefferson when the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery could scratch across the pages of history words lifted to cosmic proportions, ‘We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.’  As maladjusted as Jesus Christ who could look into the eyes of men and women around Galilean hills and say, ‘He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword,’ and, ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you. Pray for them that spitefully use you.’  And through such maladjustment we would be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man and to the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.”

Check out what my brother-in-law said about this clip in his blog:

“This struck me as one way of expressing how Christians can articulate our difference from the world.  We are those called by God and filled with the Holy Spirit to remain maladjusted to the ways of the world that are antithetical[different] to God’s way.  We are to be maladjusted to certain things in this world because we are to be well adjusted to the ways of God’s kingdom!  Every church, as an outpost of God’s kingdom in the present age ought to be an Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment.  In other words, we ought to be analyzing what society says is normal and comparing it to the upside down normality of the kingdom of God.  And when we find the multiplicity [large number] of values and behaviors that do not match, we make a conscious decision to find creative ways to remain maladjusted in those areas.  Then we teach that maladjustment to our church members and children so that the contrast between the kingdoms of this world and the kingdom of God remains as stark as it should be.

However, King thought that doing so would enable the society to “emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.“  Despite the power of his rhetoric and the hope conveyed in that sentence, true freedom and justice will only come about with the return of Christ and the consummation of the kingdom.  Until then, we are to be communities of creative maladjustment pointing toward that coming reality.”

And, that coming reality is…Love Wins in the End!

 

What does MLK Jr. mean when he says we ought to be “maladjusted?”

In what ways do you think Christians should be “maladjusted” to our culture if we are going to show that Love is Winning?

What are some of the ways you are tempted to be “well-adjusted” and “fit-in” in our American culture or at school, work, home, etc? 

How can you become “creatively maladjusted” in these areas to show that Love is Winning?

Love is Winning: Blake & TOMS Shoes

Blake really liked business.  He started five by the time he was 28 years old.  He was pretty successful at a pretty young age.  His dream was to make a lot of money, retire early, and then spend the rest of his life helping people with the money he made from all his businesses.  Pretty good plan, eh?

Well, his plan changed when he took a vacation to South America.  He went to have fun with his family and to see a part of the world he hadn’t seen.  He went to have fun, and it changed everything.

While in South America, he began seeing a bunch of people, especially kids, walking around with no shoes on.  Their feet were torn up, they were getting sores and diseases because they had no protection.  Blake was struck by this and he ran into some social-workers that told him what the deal was.  They said that people unable to afford shoes to protect their feet was a huge problem.  They said because people could not afford shoes for themselves or their children, foot diseases were running rampant and many kids were not able to go to school because, “no shoes meant no education.  Schools require kids to have shoes to attend.

This is when Blake got an idea. ”Why did his plan to make a lot of money in order to help people have to wait.  Couldn’t he do both now?  What if he made a business out of helping people?”  This is when his God-given gift for making money and business fused with his God-given compassion for the shoeless poor and hurting of the world. 

He decided to start a company that could make money and help people.  He thought, “what if, for every pair of shoes I sell, I give another pair away to a shoeless person so that they can go to school and stop suffering from sores and diseases.”  A “One-for-One” model of business.  Smart people call it “conscious capitalism” when a company is not just concerned with making as much money as possible to get richer quicker, but rather exists to help people as a part of their mission.

Here’s what God has done through his company in 4 short years to show over 1 million people that Love is Winning!

Comment on one or both of these categories of questions:

How does this Inspire you?

Isn’t it cool how Blake helps people by using his God-given gifts?  How does this inspire you?  How do you think God might fuse your passions with your compassion to show that God’s Love is Winning? Do you know anyone who has done this?  Comment and tell their story and let us be inspired by them! 

How does this change the way you shop?

Child slavery and unlivable work conditions is a major problem with just about every kind of company out there.  Shoes, coffee, clothes, and jewelry, and even your cell phone are often made by companies that don’t care for people at all.  Do you think how we shop and from whom we buy matters in showing the world that Love is Winning?  Would you rather buy from a company like TOMS shoes that treats their employees well and exists to help people OR a company that exists mostly just to make money and doesn’t care as much for its workers? If we are going to show that God’s Love is Winning, How important do you think it is for us to be aware of the kind of companies we buy stuff from?

You may want to check out this previous blog:

Love is Winning: Corrie Ten Boom

Into the great darkness of World War II, God used several people to shine the redemptive light of his love and hope.  WWII was a time when it seemed to many that God’s love would not win.  It seemed that God had forgotten about his promises and had lost control of his world.  But, just like so many times throughout history, God’s love could not be defeated and his plan to bring about renewal and restoration based on the death and resurrection of Jesus would not be stopped.

Corrie Ten Boom and her family lived in the Netherlands while it was occupied by Nazi troops.  The Nazis were cruel and ruthless toward anyone who was weak, handicapped, or of a different race than they.  They were especially cruel toward the Jewish people.  Corrie’s family believed that God’s love was stronger than Hitler’s hate.  They believed they had to do something to show that God’s love is winning, even if it meant their lives being changed for the worse.

In 1944, their lives got very hard.  They had made a secret room in their home called the “hiding place.”  In this room they were able to hide Jews and other persecuted people.  Many miracles allowed them to provide food for several people hiding from the Nazis.  God was using them to show his love to the truly desperate.  However, this all changed when one of their neighbors informed the secret police about what the Ten Boom’s were doing.

Their home was raided, and the Ten Boom’s were arrested.  The ”hiding place” was not in vain, however, as 6 people were able to hide in the secret room and were saved from certain death and torture.  Nevertheless, Corrie and her family were arrested and taken away to concentration camps.  Thankfully, her mother and two of her sisters were released.  However, Corrie, her father, and her sister, Betsie, were sent on to the camps.

Corrie’s dad died 10 days later.  Corrie and Betsie were sent on to one of the worst camps of WWII, Ravensbruk.  Here, they were treated horribly, starved, and made to work long hard labor in filthy conditions.  Betsie died several months into their stay at Ravensbruk due to the harsh treatment and beatings she received, but not before she was able to tell Corrie this amazing truth:

     There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.

Corrie had a hard time accepting this.  She wanted to hate her enemies.  She wanted to lash out at them and get revenge for what they had done to her and to her family and to all the weak and innocent people she had given her life to protect.  However, the message of her sister and the Holy Spirit speaking to her heart through the Bible she had snuck into the camp worked its way into her heart. 

Slowly, she was able to love.  Love, even her enemies. Love, even the guards that were responsible for her pain and her sister’s death. 

Several years after Corrie was released from the concentration camp due to a paperwork ”accident” (God’s miracle), she came face to face with a Nazi guard who wanted her forgiveness.  He was one of the cruelest guards, and as he approached her, she prayed that God would enable her to forgive rather than hate.  Here’s what she said of the moment they met:

For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.

God answered her prayer. She was able to forgive.

After her release, Corrie did not stop showing the world and those suffering from evil God’s love.  After the war, although she had undergone incredible suffering at the hands of the Nazis herself, she opened a rehabilitation facility for people who had survived the concentration camps and needed healing, counseling, help, and love.

She wrote that in her post-war experience with other victims of Nazi brutality, it was those who were able to forgive who were best able to rebuild their lives.

By the grace and help of God, Corrie Ten Boom and her family sacrificed their comfort, safety, health, and even their very lives for the sake of God’s love.  They showed to many that had lost hope in the midst of incredible darkness that God’s Love is Winning.  I can’t wait to meet them in heaven!

Check out this interview with Corrie a few years before she died.  You’ll be blown away by her stories of Jesus’ love and faithfulness!

Which story or statement that Corrie makes in this video do you never want to forget?  Comment on this blog and let us know so that we can be encouraged by it as well.

Also, if you thought this post was inspiring and you want to show others how God’s love wins, press the facebook  button at the bottom of this blog to share it with those you know.

Love is Winning: Zach Hunter

A couple years ago, at the age of 15, Zach Hunter discovered some disturbing news.  He found out that slavery of human beings is not something that stopped with William Wilberforce or the Civil War.  He found out that slavery is a very real, present, and horrific reality for thousands of people today all around the world and even in the United States.

He felt bad, but he didn’t let feeling bad be the end to his response.  He wanted love to win.  He knew love could win now because Jesus’ love wins in the end.  So, Zach allowed his feelings to be transformed into actions.  He started an organization called Loose Change to Loosen Chains.

Here’s his story and how God’s Love is Winning through him:

What’s your passion?  How do you think God wants to use you to show that God’s Love is Winning?

Love is Winning: Clarence Jordan

What if you grew up in a place and time when they sang:

Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world

Red and yellow, black and white, They are precious in his sight –

Jesus loves the little children of the world.

But, right after church, the same people you had sung that song with were known to beat other human beings just because their skin was darker than theirs?  What if this was just seen to be ok and you were taught it was ok but after reading Jesus’ words and seeing the hypocrisy of singing these songs and treating other human beings like this you knew it was wrong?  What would you do?  How would you stand up for what was right? 

How would you show that love is winning?

Well, this is exactly the situation in which Clarence Jordan found himself.  Clarence decided enough was enough and that he was going to show his community that Jesus’ love is winning.  Check out this excerpt from a book I’ve read about this amazing man.  He and his community was shot at, their homes and barns were burned, and they were kicked-out of their churches, just because he believed that Jesus loved and created people of all colors equally.

Born and reared in Talbotton, Georgia, and son of a prosperous banking family, Clarence Jordan was an unlikely candidate to establish an inter-racial Christian commune outside of Americus, Georgia.  Jordan had been a Baptist from his youth; he sang that common children’s song:

Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world

Red and yellow, black and white, They are precious in his sight –

Jesus loves the little children of the world.

But he saw from an early age that even if Jesus was no respecter of color, the precious little children of Talbotton were not all loved alike.  In fact, the same hometown environment that encouraged his culturally acceptable profession of faith – himself having gone to the front of the church one Sunday to receive Jesus as Lord and Savior – likewise taught him that “a n—-r was a n—-r and must be kept in his place,” as Jordan wrote later in his journal.  Such irony struck Clarence with particular repulsiveness one evening:  he happened to hear the groans of an African-American acquaintance who was being tortured on the “Stretcher,” the Georgia jailer’s version of the antiquated rack.  “What added irony,” as James McClendon tells the story, “was the boy’s knowledge that the administering torturer was the same Warden McDonald who only hours earlier had been lustily singing ‘Love Lifted Me’ in the Baptists revival choir.”

In 1942, having received a PhD in Greek New Testament from Southern Baptists Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, Clarence set out with his wife to establish an interracial community based upon the Sermon on the Mount. The community was based upon nonviolence and a strict equality of ownership in all goods (taking Acts 2:44 as the basis for the practice).  But even more radical for his day, Jordan knew that since the division between Jew and Gentile had been broken down in the gospel, the same was certainly true of black and white.  So the community was open to all, regardless of skin color.

By the latter half of the 1950s, the rage of segregationists descended upon Koinonia Farm.  The opposition began with the institutional church, when a neighboring Baptist congregation excommunicated [kicked out!) Koinonia, given that “said members…have persisted in holding services where both white and colored attend together.”  The national press reported more violent forms of opposition, which began with threatening phone calls and then legal harassments, and shootings at most anything, alive or not – Koinonia buildings, houses, farm animals, and residents.  An almost complete economic boycott likewise threatened the existence of the community.

In the early fifties, so it is told, Clarence approached his brother Robert Jordan, who later became a state senator and justice of Georgia’s Supreme Court.  Clarence asked Robert to serve as legal representative of the Koinania community.  Robert responded:

“Clarence, I can’t do that.  You know my political aspirations.  Why, if I represented you, I might lose my job, my house, everything I’ve got.”

“We might lose everything too, Bob.”

“It’s different for you.”

“Why is it different?  I remember, it seems to me, that you and I joined the church on the same Sunday, as boys.  I expect when we came forward the preacher asked me about the same question he did you.  He asked me, ‘Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ What did you say?”

     “I follow Jesus, Clarence, up to a point.”

    “Could that point by any chance be–the cross?”

    “That’s right.  I follow him to the cross, but not on the cross.  I’m not getting myself crucified.”

    “Then I don’t believe you’re a disciple.  You’re an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple of his.  I think you ought to go back to the church you belong to, and tell them you’re an admirer, not a disciple.”

    “Well now, if everyone who felt like I do did that, we wouldn’t have a church, would we?”

    “The question,” Clarence said, “is, ‘Do you have a church?”

So, what do you think?

Would you have the guts to stand up against friends, pastors, and family, risking your life, comfort, and security, to show love is winning?

After reading the conversation that Clarence had with his brother, what do you think Clarence meant when he told his brother that he was not a disciple of Jesus, but just an admirer?  What’s the difference?

Do you think you are a disciple or an admirer of Jesus?

 Click on this link to see a video of Clarence, his farm, and his beliefs:

http://www.tangle.com/view_video?viewkey=ddfb385ea76b26521ea4

Love is Winning: Abort73.com

Michael Spielman says the first 10 years that he was a Christian, he didn’t really care about thousands of babies dying every day in America.  Well, he probably never thought about it that way, but when he did, it changed everything.  He woke up.  He realized that Abortion was a huge tragedy and not something to keep quiet about.  He realized God cares about the unborn and the fact that over 1 million are murdered every year in the United States alone (that’s every seat in the UNM PIT Stadium filled up 70 times year after year)!

But, that’s not all.  Michael Spielman not only had a change of mind and a change of heart, he had a change of action.  He acted out on his belief that something needed to be done.  So, he started a website geared toward students that would give the facts about abortion.  His website is his ministry.  His website is his effort to show people the truth and to save lives.  He wants to save the life of the babies who need not die as well as show love to the mother’s who are desperate, confused, hurting, and alone.  What Michael Spielman knows is what we need to realize…

If we believe that Love is Winning,

we’d better read-up, pray-up, stand-up, and speak-up for the defensless unborn while meeting the needs of their mothers.

Do you know the facts?  Watch this video then checkout the website…once you check it out for yourself, use it as a tool and point your friends to it for the truth concerning abortion (Warning: video and some parts of website have a couple graphic pictures, so if you’re under 14, go ahead and ask your parents to view it w/you). 

Remember, while we need to speak-up about the terrible injustice of abortion and the millions of babies who lose their lives each year, we must never forget grace, mercy, compassion, and love as we speak to people concerning the truth about abortion.  We speak to and in the hearing of real people with real pain.  You never know who has been affected by abortion and you must always speak with compassion toward those who are considering or have had an abortion.

If you or someone you know is thinking about or has had an abortion, please find someone to talk to about it.  God cares and his love will win in the end.

 

Love is Winning: Mother Teresa

Ever heard of the term “working your way up?”  It usually refers to the process by which someone moves up the corporate ladder of a company to higher and higher positions of influence, responsibility, and importance.

So, for example, let’s say you get a job at McDonald’s your Junior year of high school.  You most likely would start at the “bottom.”  You would go through training and you would be given the jobs that no one else really wanted to do.  You’d take out the trash, clean the bathrooms, clear the grease trap, go into the playland ball pit after some kid puked his happy meal all over the place, etc.  Not fun. 

As you proved yourself to be a good worker in these areas you’d eventually move up to areas of greater responsibility, influence, and diminished grossness.  You’d become a cashier, then maybe an assistant manager, then manager, then area manager, then you could go to the corporate office and write reports, do payrolls, and send emails to all your lowly employees.  The more you prove yourself, the higher you move up in the company, the more important you become, the less “serving” type jobs you’d have to do.  The American Dream!

Well, Mother Teresa saw it differently than McDonald’s.  When a young man came to work with her mission in Calcutta, India, she walked him to the office building and had him start working on filing papers, doing reports, and making phone calls.  She then told him,

“once you prove yourself faithful with the tasks of office work, you can begin cleaning the office, emptying the trash cans, and mopping the floors.  Once you prove yourself faithful in this, you can step outside and clean the gutters and sidewalks where the sick and dying walk to get to their places of rest and care.  Then, if you do well with these jobs, you can enter the place where the sick and dying live.  You can begin to care for them, dress their wounds, and feed them.  Then, if you prove yourself faithful in these things, you can clean their wounds, beds, and bathrooms.”

Mother Teresa believed that the highest position of importance and influence in the Kingdom of Jesus was in service to the sickest, poorest, and most desperate in the world.  She believed that servanthood was the highest privilege a human being could achieve.

She was born in 1910 and at the age of 12 decided she wanted to give her life to the Lord and serving the poorest of the poor.  She became a nun and eventually moved to Calcutta, India where she taught poor children in the community.  One day, as she was walking outside the walls of the church and school, she saw the men, women, and children of the street.  The “untouchables” of India.  These were blind, leprous, sick, and dying, finishing their days in the filth of the open sewers.  She knew that these people needed love.  Even if it was just in the final weeks and months of their life, she wanted them to leave this world knowing that God’s love was real.  She wanted them to die in loving arms.

From this point on she spent the next fifty years of her life, until she died at 87, caring for the sick, blind, deaf, diseased, and dying people of Calcutta.  As people saw what she began to do, others joined her.  So many joined her, inspired by her example, that by the end of her life over 400 other missions all around the world were established under the name of her “Sisters of Charity.”  She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and she was awarded countless other awards from leaders all across the world including Pope John Paul the II and President Ronald Reagan.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about Mother Teresa’s life is that she was human.  A very tiny, weak looking woman, she had many doubts concerning God and His presence in her life.  This makes sense, since she saw so much suffering in the world.  However, while some people call her a hypocrite, insincere, and a “non-Christian,” I believe her willingness to serve God despite what she felt, in the midst of dark doubt, makes her an even greater example of the Christian life.  We may not always “feel” God’s presence.  We may not always be absolutely sure that He is present in our lives, but He calls us to love, serve, and believe Him anyways.  When we are able to believe God and serve others in His name despite our feelings, we exercise true and lasting faith.

Mother Teresa showed us and the countless men, women, and children that received her care and attention while dying in her arms that LOVE IS WINNING.

 Check out what she had to say about life and love:

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

“Live simply so others may simply live.”

“I’m a little pencil in the hand of a writing God, who is sending a love letter to the world.”

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”

Love is Winning: St. Francis of Assisi

Ever since the Fall, public nudity has always made people a bit uncomfortable. Not many people like the idea of being naked in front of a bunch of people and, if you do, it’s not so good.

Well, about 8oo years ago, a guy named Francis took his clothes off for Jesus! “What?!” Seriously, he became so disollusioned with the way that his society, church, and family were living in absolute wealth while people right outside their doors were living in wrags with hardly anything to eat, that he took off all his clothes right in the middle of the town square and gave them to the poor around him!

This embarassed and outraged his rich father so much that he attempted to hit his son in the face! His father kicked him out of the house after several beatings. From this moment on, Francis devoted his life to God, taking a vow of poverty so that he could depend completely on God while serving the very poorest of his community.

He was known to love creation and is often depicted through art as having birds and other animals around him and on his shoulders. He rebuilt an old abandoned church and invited all (rich or poor) to come in and worship Jesus. Slowly, one by one, other men began to follow him, renouncing their wealth and posessions in order to learn from Francis and serve the poor, speaking about God’s love to all who would listen. He is the founder of what are now known as the Franciscans. There are still men today who follow in the ways of St. Francis taking a vow of poverty, chastity, love and obedience.

Today there are hospitals, veternarian clinics, and shelters of all types operating and founded in his name and tradition. All of these were inspired by his vision of a love that reaches through the darkness and pain within humanity and shines bright with the light of hope.

Check out the prayer of St. Francis. You might try making this a prayer for your life:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon:

where there is doubt, faith ;

where there is despair, hope

where there is darkness, light

where there is sadness, joy

O divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

St. Francis believed that God’s love is winning. He believed it so much that he was willing to give up all that he had in order to prove it. He gave up his reputation, his stuff, and his diginity so that everywhere he went people would know that Jesus’ love is winning.

How about you? Do you think you would have the courage to go against your parents, town, and church if they were not allowing the love of Jesus to shine? Do you think you would be willing to show that love is winning even if it meant people thinking you were weird or embarassing?

Today, pray for the courage, strength, and guidance to show the people in your life that love is winning!