Inspiration

Delighted to see that Christians Against Poverty scooped the Best Christian Organisation Website award at the Christian New Media Awards and Conference 2014. They were also runners up for the People's Choice award while 40Acts and Flame: Creative Children's Ministry also featured, along with some REALLY big names! (HTB and Hillsong spring to mind...)

for in a mirror dimly March 29th 2013

 I was able to guest post a couple of months ago over at inamirrordimly...

"Micah 6:8 is a constant challenge. To do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly. Boy, that’s a tall order.

I know I don’t walk humbly when my hackles rise anytime someone corrects me.

I know I don’t ‘love’ mercy. I’m too big on ‘fairness’ to be as merciful as I would like to be. I’m a teacher, big on ‘consequences’ and ‘fair play’. After all, if you let kids off a punishment, how will they learn? I’m trying to ‘love mercy’ more, though. I try to be kind, really kind, more than I used to. So there is some hope there for a Better Me.

But I know I don’t ‘do’ justly when it comes to being more involved. I don’t march in protest against injustice. I don’t write letters for Amnesty International. I’m not even involved with our local, for very low-key offenders, prison.

Yet, there IS one thing I do.

Many years ago – pre-best friend boyfriend, pre-fiance, pre-husband, pre-children – I volunteered as a teacher in western Kenya.

Because it didn’t seem ‘just, right or fair’ that I, born in the privileged West to comfortably off (albeit still at times slightly struggling) middle-class parents, should have so much.

So much (relatively speaking) money.

So many opportunities.

So much education.

So I signed up as a volunteer, working in a run-down local school, earning a local teacher’s salary.

It was enough to put food on the table and, with careful housekeeping, afford travel on the (very cheap but dangerous) public transport to visit other volunteers and rent a small house (read ‘run down cottage’) at the coast for a week’s holiday. I felt it was ‘fair’ – on a par with the other, local, teachers. Like the young Francis of Assissi, I was aware of my privileged upbringing but at least, for a time, I earned just the same as my colleagues.

I did my best to help the students I taught to climb up the education ladder. To share what I had been given with those who hadn’t had the same opportunities, who life had treated more unfairly. I did my best to ‘do justly’.

Then I met my soon-to-be husband. We married. We carried on living in Kenya. Amid gross injustice, where so many were hungry and thirsty; homeless; sick, unable to afford good medical care; lacking in clothes – and education.

Oh, how I tried to ‘do justly’ without becoming a patronising, bottomless purse. I rarely gave money to the people who came to my gate EVERY DAY, asking for handouts. I offered work – usually refused. (In the first year in a new house on a busy road in the city, TWO people accepted the simple jobs – a couple of hours work – I offered for a day’s pay. And one of those was drunk. The other, an elderly lady, then accepted a permanent job, staying a couple of years.)

I tried to treat the people who worked for us fairly. I think I succeeded. (Our housekeeper cried inconsolably when we left and she is still a good friend. I bless God for the creativity of those clever minds which invented email and mobile phones.)

But then we moved back to the West. To a ‘fair’ society. Where justice was usually done – or seen to be done. Where material needs, at least, were fewer.

‘Doing justly’ became different. I translated it to treating my own children fairly. To being a ‘fair’ teacher, not having favourites among the children in my class. To being friends with all my colleagues, regardless of where they were in the pecking order: I treated the caretaker and cleaners the same as the head. To being ‘fair’ and honest in all my dealings with others.

It wasn’t enough.

Then I met Sue. A doctor. She had volunteered in Tanzania for a couple of months and then, just ten years ago, started a fund to help AIDS widows and orphans.

She started caring for one child.

Now she is responsible for more than twenty thousand children, nearly seven thousand of them in secondary school. Children getting life changing chances. Getting justice – because it is not just, or fair, or right, that they should be denied education because of an accident of birth. As Sue says: “There is a mountain of injustice which sees these children dressed in rags...their only set of clothes, unable to access education, drinking dirty water and too often going to their rest at night having had no food that day: when we think of the very different way children live in our countries and how much waste we throw away, when they have nothing, we become very aware of the injustice that is disabling these children. “

Feeding, clothing and sending so many children to school takes a lot of faith. And money.

So I do my little bit for justice.

I persuaded the school I teach in to ‘adopt’ the fund as their school charity. I organise fundraising events, encouraging the children to consider how they can help other children who do not have the same privileges.

The money we raise has built houses, fed and clothed and sent many children to school. We have ‘done justly’.

It’s not enough. It can never be enough. But it is what we do."

I pray that I may have eyes opened and a heart willing to do more.

For more inspiration, go to http://www.40acts.org.uk/ for many ideas about doing justly by living generously.

Nearing the end of Lent...some reflections

During Lent, I've subscribed to a couple of messaging services which have offered daily encouragement. One has been 40Acts - absolutely brilliant and inspiring. The other has been The Carbon Fast, a Tearfund initiative which encourages us to think about ways of saving energy and protecting the planet. Much of what has been suggested I do anyway: cycling or walking instead of using the car, turning off lights, turning the heat down or off, recycling...so when today's email arrived, encouraging me to avoid using the tumble dryer, I nearly didn't bother to read on. I am passionately against tumble dryers and am fortunate to be able to hang washing out to dry, or inside in a utility room. Not relevant, I thought - slightly smugly, I have to admit.
Then I read the post:
But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But you, (wo)man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. (1 Timothy 6:6-12)

No matter how long we live, when we die we will leave all our possessions behind. So travel light! Jesus commanded us not to accumulate treasures on earth. We are warned that seeking to get rich leads to ‘all kinds of evil’. When profits take priority over people and planet, the result is ‘ruin and destruction’, as we can see in increasing environmental destruction. In what ways is it ‘great gain’ for us to live simply? How does your life fit with this verse?

So yes, great encouragement to live simply. Lent has been a time of lifestyle evaluation and reflection, of heightened sensitivity - not that I've always been able to do anything about it - to the needs of the world. But the verse caught my eye for other reasons.

A Bible study group I attend has been looking at the theme of A Generous God. We've thought about these verses from Timothy frequently over the last six weeks. I've always focused on the beginning of the passage but today, as I come to the end of studying Ephesians with Good Morning Girls, the 'fight' caught my eye.

Ephesians 6:13-18 says, in the Message: Be prepared. You're up against far more than you can handle on your own. Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has issued, so that when it's all over but the shouting you'll still be on your feet. Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation are more than words. Learn how to apply them. You'll need them throughout your life. God's Word is an indispensable weapon. In the same way, prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. Pray hard and long. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other's spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out.

It's been so encouraging and helpful doing this study with a group of others. Just the other day, as we struggled to REALLY understand what 'rightrousness' was all about, Rose posted this definition: virtue, honour, justice, integrity, honesty, purity, faithfulness, uprightness, blamelessness..

Wow. I'd love it if my life looked like that!

Lent..40Acts

40Acts is a wonderful Lenten initiative. Inspiring - and depressing, as I 'fail' at so many acts of generosity. I try to build many of them into my life anyway, often unsuccessfully.  But it is inspiring to read others' attempts at living more generously - Jeff Doucette, for example.