slums
Carefully Read this quote from The Big Picture:
“One billion people worldwide live in slums, a number that will likely double by 2030.”
If that doesn’t effect you at some level, then maybe you need to examine your soul for compassion for the world, because this is a real-world issue.
Talking this evening with my friend SaraBeth, she once again stated she wanted to meet a North Uganda pastor. This pastor has been ambushed twice by children soldiers, and shot at once where he was wounded in the arm. Yet he remains, he remains, he remains, because he loves the people. Because they are HIS people. And because he is clear on his calling.
He is a hero.
The slums around the world are like stepping to a different world—a world where there is tremendous fear in their daily lives, diseases and illness runs rampant. Residents scrounge garbage dumps for food. There is significant amount of sexual assault on a daily bas. Imagine children—little, tiny children–growing up in this environment. My soul can scarcely stand it.
I’d like to share with you tonight the photo essay that the Big Picture did recently of the slums, including a large slum named Kibera, nearly in the heart of the country.
Warning, some of these pictures are hard to look at, but important to fully grasp in our little minds the magnitude of the situation.
THE BIG PICTURE (–CLICK THERE)
The Absence of Writing
I’ve not felt much like writing lately. A new grief has occurred and has gotten a hold of my soul and I have had to spend energy and time fighting it. It’s funny how grief can take the very things that are most effective in fighting grief (such as writing) and turn them into activities that seem insurmountable. Writing, right now, feels like climbing Everest. Yet writing is what I do, it’s how I process, it’s how I learn.
So I’ll set aside that grief to write about a pivotal moment from this past weekend.
My crew and I had an incredible experience this past Saturday night at our church’s “Dying to Live” Discipleship Now Weekend event. Parents were asked to attend the last hour or so of the night. My soul was hurting that night. My heart empty, my brain overloaded. I had no desire to go, but I went, not anticipating at all what would take place in my soul or the souls of my children.
I sat down in the darkened youth “red room” to find it to be a typical “last night of a retreat” scenario. Only this time, as I sat there in the back row, I found myself with tears streaming down. It was the first youth event I had attended since our lives fell apart. And as I sat there, this overwhelming tide of memories of hundreds of youth and church events cane flooding over me like a tidal wave—camps at Pu’u Kahea and Maui camp, typical games and affirmation circles and “letter’s to God”—all the things that go in to reaching out to a church, reaching out to students. The memories were so powerfully strong, I could not sop the steady stream of tears. I debated making a run for it, or sticking it out. Something made me stick it out.
We were asked as parents to pray with our kids. So I gathered my 3 youngest (my oldest was at work) to me. My boys were on both sides of me, my girl was sitting in my lap. And, for the first time, we grieved as a family. Bethany sobbed tears, asking me over and over again if we are going to make it and how much she misses her daddy. Tim cried and apologized for wrong behavior and kept telling me that I am a good mom. And Mark just laid his head on my shoulder and cried, saying he missed his father. And as I tried to pray for my hurting children, I cried as well, out of fear, out of grief, out of gratitude that the five of us are a family–and a strong family at that. But I begged God for mercy in those moments, because I don’t know how to parent my crew without His help. I can’t do it. I fail so very often. And I am so weary.
But I think it was a turning point, a pivotal point to opening the doors for my crew and I to become even tighter than we already are. To cut each other some slack. To work hard together to accomplish what needs to be accomplished. To be grateful for the little that we have and not envious of the blessings others have. Because we have each other, and that’s all that truly matters–that and the fact that we’ve got our God and our Jesus. And Grace.
Books: Gratitude
With the proliferation of e-readers on the market today, one has to question as to whether or not “real” books are coming to an end.
I certainly hope not.
I love what e-readers have to offer–instant access to purchase books, easy portability, the opportunity to read just about anywhere, and many more. But I love what real books have to offer me as well.
This post by Kevin DeYoung summed up my experience with books with just the right words. I’ve included my favorite paragraph from his post below:
Old books are like old friends. They love to be revisited. They stick around to give advice. They remind you of days gone by. Books, like friends, hang around.
And they prefer not to be invisible.
I can’t tell you how many often I sit at my desk, push back my seat, and allow my eyes to drift around the room full of bookshelves. I’m not procrastinating, not exactly. I’m scanning the room to see my friends. Their covers jog my memories. They remind me of what I learned once. More than that, they remind me of my life–where I was when I first read Lloyd-Jones on the couch, how I knelt by the bed with tears when I read Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, how my life was so different 15 years ago when I read my dad’s copy of the Institutes as a college student. If all my books disappeared on to a microchip I might have less to lug around and I might be able to search my notes more easily, but I’d lose memory; I’d lose history; I’d lose a little bit of myself.
Me too. Sometimes I will just walk over to my bookshelves and read the titles, remembering both when I read a book and why. I can pull a book off of my shelf and see all the marks and notes and highlighting I have done in those books and it brings back reminders of what I have learned about myself, the world, and my God through books.
When I became a believer, I had a similar experience to C.S. Lewis. He shares in his book Surprised by Joy that at one point in his process of becoming a believer, he felt all the books were chasing after him. Me too.
I hope books–real books–never go away. I don’t think that they will. My books chase me. They comfort me. They kick me. They teach me. They challenge me. And I am grateful for them.