Wooden Heart

click here for Listener "Wooden Heart"

Needed to be reminded of this today.

How do I (best) love my neighbor?

"One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "of all the commandments, which is the most important?"

"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." The second is this: "Love your neighbor as yourself." There is no commandment greater than these."
-Mark 12:28-31

How do I (best) love my neighbor?

This is a question that has come to the forefront of my mind over and over in the past months of life on Eucalyptus. I remember the first weeks in the neighborhood being an introductory honeymoon period… Kris and I were the new kids on the block. Starting out, I think we were happy just to seek out acceptance from the neighborhood kids that came by our place on Wednesday nights for a church sponsored meal. In a new place with a new culture, it was quite the adjustment, but exactly what I signed up for. 

 I have long felt a conviction to learn what it means to love my neighbors next door and the Fellows program finally left me out of excuses. Over the course of these first three months, it has been a journey as these new relationships are being built and grown.  It has been a crash course in learning about myself, and how to best use my understanding of self in relationship to my neighbors. It has also confronted me with the depth of our depravity and our great need for God’s restoration. As I have gotten to know the stories of my neighbors and have spent more time with the kids on Eucalyptus, I have hurt with and for them and the ever-present brokenness in our community and all of us. Brokenness of; crumbling families, harmful relationships, over-sexualization by the media, and abuse of various drugs. There have been days that have been full of joy and hope, and day that have felt empty and near hopeless, and I feel at a loss for how to help or what next steps to take.  But if I believe the gospel to be true, I can have faith and trust that God has been longing to restore rightness to these relationships long before I have, and is already working to redeem and reconcile this brokenness. Now it’s our job as Christians to get involved in that process and to love well! 

Seems simple right?

Loving is so hard, and love hurts. Loving well takes wisdom and perspective, wisdom and perspective that we as humans cannot possess on our own. Pray along with us as we seek God’s wisdom and direction, and continue to live in community with our neighbors, doing our best to love, continually longing for His redemption and healing to come, right here amongst us.

Should we abolish wealth?

Click here for video- embrace this guy's spectacular accent!

Today in out Fellows meeting we viewed this clip together and discussed the question "Should we abolish wealth?" Watch this clip of Claudio Oliver sharing about how we should embrace the values of limits, renunciation & sacredness in our lives to do the work of abolishing wealth.

A New Kind of Poverty

“Blessed are you who are poor,
    for yours is the kingdom of God. 

 Blessed are you who hunger now,
    for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
    for you will laugh.”

Luke 6:20-21

Through the course of these past weeks, the topics of the poor and/or poverty have come up in several conversations and my understanding of the subject has expanded and shifted. There is no doubt more to poverty than meets the eye. I would love to share some of what I have learned, and I’ll start by asking you a question.

If you were to stop reading right now and go to the top of your browser right now and search poverty, what images would you expect to see? What sort of emotions and feelings would you affiliate with such a word?  

-a Lack of: Shelter- $$$- Ability- Freedom- Food- Resources

I just searched it and found countless images of sad malnourished children from various third world countries around the globe. The individual people, our brothers and sisters, captured in these stills are no doubt experiencing intense material poverty. Most often we think of poverty in terms of material lack. But is that all there is to this brokenness called poverty?

This past week at our Wednesday night gathering at “The House” (Kris, Jeudy and my house) with our neighbors, Jeudy and Becca shared about their experience on short missions trips to Mexico. They touched on how through connecting with individuals in the communities they visited in Mexico, they saw incredible faith and intense joy in a place one might not expect; in lives gripped by the unyielding hand of material poverty.  A place of beautiful reliance on God, when they had nothing else to rely on. Maybe Jesus know what He was talking about when He shared the beatitudes with us…

A second conversation about poverty occurred at our bi-weekly Community Fellows training where we discussed a chapter out of the book, “When Helping Hurts,” by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. (I would recommend this book to EVERYONE)  The chapter was entitled “What’s the problem?” and included a whole new perspective and definition of poverty. A perspective shared from the material poor themselves. They shared about poverty primarily in terms of, “shame, inferiority, powerlessness, humiliation, fear, hopelessness, depression, social isolation, and voicelessness.” This starkly contrasted my initial thoughts on poverty and the poor. For them it was less about the physical things they lacked and more about the mental and perspective repercussions of the material lack. This is a HUGE and necessary paradigm shift. I realize that for me, as long as poverty remained cornered in the physical realm, I could ignore the true relational poverty I was dwelling in.

“Poverty is the result of relationships that do not work, that are not just, that are not for life, that are not harmonious or enjoyable. Poverty is the absence of shalom in all its meanings”

            -Bryant L. Myers

Poverty can look just like me… or you.

Sin is the root, and inceptor of this prideful perspective I so often can have of myself. I love being self-sufficient and okay--- ALL THE TIME. It is underneath that façade of collectedness and self-sufficiency that my poverty is exposed. I am really good at convincing myself I don’t need anybody. This is my brokenness and my struggle. I was made for community with creation, others and myself, yet I make choices every day that deepens and widens the chasm between myself and the shalom God desires.

Thank God for my neighbors, the needs they have exposed in me, and the opportunity to live in community with them.

I need them.

Bellflower High Class of 2012

Jocelyn and the crew

Kero and the guys

 Congrats to Jocelyn

D'Montae

And Kero!

Some of the regular Wednesday night neighbors graduated last week and we joined them to celebrate. Congratulations to Jocelyn, Demonte and Kero! Such an accomplishment! Blessings upon your next steps!

HOME

Why Bellflower and Why Now?

Phew... Time is flying! Faster than I ever imagined it would. Here I sit, now a COLLEGE GRADUATE, with a bachelor's degree in Social Work... I feel like just yesterday I was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed little 8 year old going to Calvin College for a siblings weekend with my then RA brother Ryan! Playing Starfox 64 til late at night, (probably really was about 10pm) and watching Toy Story for the first time. Those were the days! A much simpler and slower time...

*Blink*

Some 10 plus years later, and I have now come to the conclusion of college, facing the reality of "real life" just around the corner. With this passage of time comes the re-evaluation of values, priorities, and direction. This re-evaluation is spurred on by resounding questions of; who am I, who have I been created to be, what should I do and how should I live? These questions are both broad, and focused, frightening and exciting. They are issues that seemingly every college grad is confronted with upon exiting the four (hopefully just four) formative years of university. It is an exciting new frontier as we have our first crack at life outside of an educational institution. This has inspired within myself several different reactions and emotions ranging from total freakout, to great excitement, from great sadness to total bliss. It is almost as if one must go though a mourning process as we bid farewell to the old realities of college and explore one totally new.
There were several staple moments, that through God's guidance and provision, He directed my path for the future. In my sophomore year I was afforded the opportunity to study abroad in South Africa. In my time there I was given the chance to plug in and invest in a local community of Mpophomeni. Mpophomeni was a township of 30,000 native black South Africans with diverse cultural backgrounds. While there I had a chance to see the beauty of joining a community as first and foremost a learner. This trip was followed by another two-month stint in the summer of 2011. In my cumulative 6 months in South Africa, I came to realize that as rewarding and fruitful as the time had felt, I was only beginning to scratch the surface in my understanding of the Zulu culture. Without a deep and comprehensive understanding of the Zulu paradigm, the effectiveness of my community development and incarnational ministry left more to be desired. It was then that I believe God revealed a piece of His plan and desires for my life. He made it nearly impossible for me to avoid the question of why it is so difficult for me to live with that kind of intentionality in my home culture in the United States. The exciting part though, is that in the last few months one thing has become progressively more clear. With God's help, I am ready. Ready as I will ever be for what awaits in the great unknown of seeking that life in the U.S. That's the reassuring thing about this journey as we stay dusty following the Rabbi. There is no place I could go where He has not walked before.
This knowledge brings shalom.

Shalom (שָׁלוֹם): a Hebrew word meaning peace, but shalom is more then just simply peace; it                   is a complete peace. It is a feeling of contentment, completeness, wholeness, well being and harmony. 

That is why I am ecstatic to share an amazing opportunity that God has provided for me for this upcoming year. Shalom is all I have felt about the opportunity to move into a living and learning community in the Eucalyptus neighborhood of Bellflower, California with the Community Fellows Community and Leadership Development Program. Myself and two others will be immersing ourselves in life in this neighborhood as we learn to love our neighbors and the city well. It is a seemingly vague and difficult role to define, but I look forward to stepping boldly with the Holy Spirit's help into the unknown. I am more excited than ever to share the joys and tears, successes and failures, confident steps and the stumbles with these individuals as we learn along the way. Relying on God, each other and all of you whom support us will be integral the refining of our hearts in this process, and will be the only way that God's glory will be exposed in our lives, and this city. I invite you to proactively journey along and share your wisdom, prayers and encouragement, because it will no doubt be needed! The adventure begins June 1st, and you are invited to come along.

Now all there is left to do is JUMP into the beautiful unknown of God's gracious plan. Here we go!