I'm Cutting Up My Bible

 I'm cutting up my Bible.

Let me explain that.  I read about a university student and his friends who went through all the books of the Bible cutting out the verses dealing with poverty, wealth, justice and oppression.  When finished, they were left with a Bible that could barely be held together.

Why would they do this??

When standing in front of a group of people he replied while holding up the mangled Bible; “This is our Bible full of holes.  Each one of us might as well take our Bibles, a pair of scissors, and begin cutting out all the scriptures we pay no attention to and ignore”.

Wow.

That really impacted me.  I’ve decided to do this.  I want this visual constantly in front of my face to remind me what my faith is really about… what this life is really about…  what God Himself is concerned with.  I want my kids to know this and have it serve our family as a reminder that our neighbor IS our responsibility.  That we need to care.   We can’t save the world, but we can reach those who are within the reach of our arms.

So yes, I’m cutting these verses out of a Bible I bought online for $3.   I’m on Exodus (the 2nd book in the Bible) and am already amazed at how much is missing.  Some pages I’ve been tempted just to rip out altogether due to the page hanging by a thread of paper.

I don’t want to ignore this anymore.  I don’t want to live in my prosperous bubble, blind to the needs not just around the world, but around the corner from my house.  God is clearly concerned for the least of these, how can I not be?  I want to be a rebel to the culture that screams: ME FIRST.   A culture that says I need "more" when I have so much already

Whether you are a person of faith, or if you’re not sure what you believe in this life, I hope that you can go past all the images of “church” and the word “christian” to hear the heartbeat of God in this demonstration.

Maybe you wouldn’t "cut up a Bible" (I don't recommend we all do that), but maybe it’s time to get back to seeing how much God really talks about caring for others in need, what we are to do with our wealth, and how He longs for us to be the answer to those living in oppression.

You and I hold an answer in our hand.   That is a journey I’m on right now personally asking:  What does it look like to live this out?

- Connie Jakab

Check out Connie Jakab's blog at http://culturerebel.com where she blogs about her family's adventures in serving the less fortunate and her continued rebellion to what culture tells us.  Be sure to pick up her book, "Culture Rebel - because the world has enough desperate housewives" at http://culturerebel.com/books/.   You can find Connie on Twitter at @ConnieJakab

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Self-Made People

Yesterday morning on the way to work, I heard an interview on the Fan 960 with R.A. Dickey, the new starting pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays. He was telling the story of how he had gone from traditional pitcher to having to learn to throw a knuckle ball if he had any hope of becoming a big leaguer - a transition that he has certainly been successful in making, having won the National League Cy Young as the best pitcher in baseball in 2012. However, in telling his story he said something interesting: “I’m in no way a self-made man.” R.A. then spoke about all of the people who loved him and cared for him in his life and profession - people that made it possible for him to be the man he is today. And I thought, “That is so awesome”.

I know what people mean when they point to someone and describe him or her as a self-made man or woman. But, is it ever truly possible to be that person who is so stable on their own two feet that their family, education, faith and all the amazing people that they have in their lives has not shaped the person they have become? The greatest of people on this earth are in fact a combination of a whole series of influences both positive and negative that allow them to be the man or women that they are.

For example, I am excellent at doing dishes…but I didn’t start out that way. When the lovely Janice agreed to marry me 25 years ago, I was actually very poor at house cleaning. I often say I didn’t know what dirt was until I married Janice, as she just kept pointing it out to me all the time. Now 25 years later I have become quite accomplished at dishes, cleaning bathrooms, and the even the occasional vacuuming of the house. Janice has influenced the man I am today.

I work at The Mustard Seed, an amazing organization that is doing all it can each and every day to build community, grow hope and support change amongst Alberta’s homeless population. Amongst my friends on the street I have truly met some of the most amazing people that I have ever met in my life. Talented people and often terribly intelligent people who had dreams and visions of what their life was going to be. None of these dreams involved being homeless.

Unfortunately, the homeless are often stereotyped in very negative ways. They are described often by people who have never taken the time to hear a homeless person’s story as somehow they deserve what has happened to them, that they must have done something to deserve their situation. Failing to recognize that homelessness is something that happens to good people. That it is, in fact, but a symptom just as most addictions we see all around us are symptoms. The illness is a world that is increasingly so self-possessed that we miss the whole point of our existence on this earth. So how do we finally once and for all kill these misconceptions?

Well, if there is truly no such thing as a self-made man or women – at least in the truest sense, if they are in fact really nothing more than compilation of a series of influences of people and circumstances. We now have an ability to understand my friends on the street. They also are not self-made men and women. They also are more often than not a compilation of a series of influences of people and circumstances; however, in the case of the homeless these have seldom been positive.

We are surrounded by people to whom we could be that source of positive influence or experience, so they too could one day stand up as R.A Dickey did and say, “I’m not a self-made man.”  Then they too could talk about all the people who loved them and cared for them in their lives and professions that made it possible for them to be the man or women they are today. The formerly homeless.

- Bill Nixon,  Director of Public Education, The Mustard Seed
@billbytheminute 

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Something Practical Families Can Do For The Homeless

A few nights ago I saw a sight I hadn’t seen since living in Vancouver.  I saw a young man walking in between cars parked at a stop light along one of our city's busiest roads.  He was rugged, wearing clothes that were old and tattered.  His beard was long and almost ready for dreadlocks.   He had a cardboard sign that he held in front of  him as he walked, stating his homeless situation.

I quickly started to look for something, anything I could give him.  Nothing.  I was panicked, as I was sure the light would turn green and I would miss my chance.  Finally I found three quarters.  I rolled down my window and yelled for him to come.  As I bashfully gave him my measly seventy-five cents he said “Thank you so much.  Everyone has ignored me all day”.  It was six at night.  All day?   All I could think of saying in response was, “Well, I noticed you. God bless”.

Do you ever wish you could go back and say something a little better? It just all happened so fast. As I drove away I said a prayer for him and decided that I needed to get an emergency bag in my van.

What’s that you ask?  I read in “The Missional Mom” by Helen Lee about the idea of having a zip-lock bag filled with a warm pair of socks, granola bars, snacks, gift certificates to places that serve coffee, toiletries, etc and a note with a prayer or sentiment.  The idea is to have the bag in the vehicle so that when your path crosses with someone such as the young man I saw, you have something truly valuable ready to give them.  Beats scrounging around for quarters.

I went home with the best of intentions to get that ready…. and then I forgot.

The next morning, after dropping off my son at school, I was at the gas station and what did I see?  Another homeless man out early with his shopping cart looking for pop cans in the garbages.  Why didn’t I pack that bag?  This time my search for something to give him came out empty. By the time I looked up, he was gone.

You may wonder why the effort?  Is it really worth going through all that thought just for a random person who may not even be in need?  Or what if they’re just collecting money to buy alcohol?   That’s why I like the zip-lock bag.  It’s practical, shows someone actually put thought into pre-planning meeting up with someone in need, and hopefully the thought and the written encouragement inside gives them something they may have not experienced in a long time….. hope.

And hope is something you can live off of for awhile when you haven’t had any.

Here's something YOUR FAMILY can do together!
- take a trip to the grocery store to buy large freezer bags, water, juice, socks, granola bars, gift cards to McDonald's, Tim Hortons, bus tickets, anything else that would help (eg: winter: gloves, hats)
- lay out all the items and stuff the bags with your kids
- write notes of encouragement or draw pictures
- put the bags in your vehicle ready to give away!

 

Check out Connie Jakab's blog at http://culturerebel.com where she blogs about her family's adventures in serving the less fortunate and her continued rebellion to what culture tells us.  Be sure to pick up her book, "Culture Rebel - because the world has enough desperate housewives" at http://culturerebel.com/books/.   You can find Connie on Twitter at @ConnieJakab

We Are All in This Together

Melbourne Harbor, Australia

Space travel these days is nowhere near as popular in the public eye as it was when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Today, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield is sure helping these efforts as he tweets from the International Space Station (ISS) several times a day. Before he blasted off from Kazakhstan on December 19, Hadfield had 20,000 Twitter followers and today he has over 283,000. I have really appreciated the view from space through his pictures and his short 140 character or less tweets. From the spectacular view of the volcanoes at Mt. Taranaki in New Zealand to the harbor in Melbourne, Australia, Chris is giving us a spectacular view of earth from the ISS. The fact that he can tweet from space and I can read it on my mobile phone moments later still amazes me and I assume this has drawn many of the 249,000 who follow him.

One of his tweets in particular a few weeks ago inspired me and has encouraged me down here on earth:

“The world just unrolls itself for you and you see it absolutely discreetly as one place.”

This statement spurs me into thinking a few things:

1. We are all in this thing called life together, all 7 billion of us
2. The sooner we can love our neighbours as ourselves and set aside our differences, the quicker the distance between us all will decrease

Today our world is divided by so many factors. Language, race, religion, gender, socio-economic status and many other factors. While some of these we are born with or born into, others we will eventually have a say in how they play out in our lives.  In my travels around the world and through my career working with people affected by homelessness and poverty I have witnessed firsthand the wide gap between the rich and poor and between the developed and developing world. I see people on the streets of downtown Calgary scurry by the gentleman begging for lunch money or the young lady caught up in prostitution who is only trying to survive in this fast paced and expensive city. When I see them I am reminded of the successful man I met who made $200k+ a year and lost his wife and children in a car accident and could not return to ‘life’. He ended up losing his home, his job and felt abandoned by his friends as they struggled to support him with his newly diagnosed mental health concerns. I am also reminded of a young lady I knew well who hated the reality of sex work but did so to make ends meet and survive the only way she knew how. As she was starting to turn things around in her life unfortunately she was tragically murdered. A close friend said once “these are our mothers and fathers; our brothers and sisters; our sons and daughters.” You see each person is one or many of those. They are a precious person made in God’s own image and they are not only living in our downtown cores or in poorer neighbourhoods, they are living next door to you, across the hall from you and likely in your very own family.

When I have the privilege to speak and educate the public on the issues of poverty and homelessness, I challenge each one from kindergarten to graduate studies that the answers for these issues lay in our hands, in our mouths and in our time. We each need to take a step back and realise that we live in our neighbourhoods right now for a time such as this. We need not travel abroad to see and help brokenness; all we need to do is look out our back window and find practical ways to love our neighbour as ourselves. These efforts will break down borders and fences we put up to keep the those who are different from ourselves or those who make us feel uncomfortable in our society and will help us realize that we are all in this thing called life together, all 7 billion of us.

Byron Bradley, Student Engagement Coordinator, The Mustard Seed
Twitter: @sportsguyB                                                                                                                                        

Follow Chris Hadfield on Twitter @Cmdr_Hadfield

 

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Downsizing

Welcome to 2013!

About 2 years ago, my lovely wife Janice and I downsized our housing. We had the traditional 2500-square-foot, 3-bedroom home with a 1000-square-foot unfinished basement that stored mostly junk… I mean, we could have run a season of Storage Wars in our basement! So, we bought a townhouse, 10 units over from my Mom, and let someone else do our yard work for us, leaving us with the challenge of what to do with all of this unnecessary stuff; all that stuff that we must have seen some value in, or else why did we keep it?

Well, Janice saw some value – we lived in that house for 7 years and there were actual boxes that had not been unpacked, along with a broken ping-pong table that one day I was (supposedly) going to repair. Like that was going to happen! 

So, choices had to be made, furniture given away, and boxes of stuff had to go.

I wonder if our walk with God can, on occasion, use this same kind of “clearing out” of the basement. I mean, just how much baggage have we gathered that common sense says, “Toss it out, why are you hanging on to that?” What are the priorities, and more importantly, what are the distractions that so easily come to us in this world? How do we avoid the kind of modern idolatry that is so prevalent in our lives, recognizing that for most of us, this will not involve worshiping false Gods. Our idolatry is much more subtle.

Money – Do not store up for yourselves treasures on this earth….. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6: 19-21

The number-one cause of distraction in our lives is often our money and our “stuff”: our physical possessions. More often than not, we are seeking to answer the question of “How am I going to get more money so that I can buy more stuff?” Now, personally, I like "stuff" as much as anyone. I can often be found in front of my 65-inch Samsung Idol watching some kind of sporting event. However, when our stuff becomes more important to us than God or the people in our lives, it is likely stuff that needs to be dealt with.

We are by nature easily distracted from the things that are really the best for us. It’s actually very easy to get off of a first-love relationship with God, and instead focus on things that at first glance are seemingly not a problem. Yet it is those necessary things, and those subtle things, that more often than not interfere with our walk with God.

So maybe that’s where the downsizing needs to take place in 2013 – not the obvious stuff, but the subtle stuff that we have stacked up in our spiritual basements that have prevented us from ‘seeking first His Kingdom and his righteousness, and all of these things will be given to you as well.” (Matt 6:33)

- Bill Nixon,  Director of Public Education, The Mustard Seed
@billbytheminute