Thankful Thursday - Do Something with the Red Letters

I finally finished reading Red Letters: Living a Faith that Bleeds, by Tom Davis. I guess you can tell it takes me a long time to finish a book. That's not just because I'm not the fastest reader on the block, but mostly because I only get to read in 2-3 minute snippets about 2 or 3 times a week. My only quiet reading time is the last few minutes of my day, right before I fall asleep...which usually happens about 3.2 minutes after I lay my head on the pillow. By the time I fall into bed every night I am so exhausted I can't read for long. And lots of nights I can't even manage the 2-3 minutes.

Being a working mom means there's no time during the day for doing laundry or running errands or picking up around the house or cleaning the bathtub or ironing or cleaning the fuzzy stuff out of the refrigerator or sorting piles of papers or paying bills or buying groceries or even just planning what needs to be done and making a list....or any of the other 427 jobs a mom is called upon to do.

So all of those things have to be done between 3:30, when I get home from picking the kids up from school, and 5:00, when I try to start dinner. Add in after-school snacks and homework, and it's a really tight squeeze. What about my Fridays off, you ask? Well, I volunteer in Jacob's classroom from 8:30 to 10:00, then come home, plan a menu (which generally takes me FOREVER because I can't ever come up with good ideas that will please a non-pasta-eating husband and that we're not desperately tired of), make a grocery list (which also takes me a fair amount of time), and go to the grocery store. I usually get home in time to unload the groceries, put them all away, grab a bite to eat, have a spare half hour or so, and then head back up to school to pick up the kids.

On Saturdays we do regular house cleaning, but that's also the day we have sports, birthday parties, haircuts, kid dates, occasional church activities....you know how it is. Not just a whole lot gets done around here on Saturdays either. Hence, my night-time weariness.

ANYHOO....that was huge digression drama. I apologize. What I was really trying to tell you is that I FINALLY finished the book!

And I'm not mentioning the fact that I kept avoiding it for days at a time because of how it made me feel like I'd been punched in the stomach. Conviction tends to do that to me.

Have you guys read it? It is a heavy hitter. I don't recommend reading it if you're not ready to hear from God.

Actually, maybe I'm the only one who needed the heavy-hitting.

The premise of the book is that the Christian church is failing in the mandate to give our lives away for the sake of Christ....to be His hands and feet to a hurting world. In other words, we are not living out the Red Letters - Christ's words. We (I) like to take our families to church, sing praise songs, put a few dollars - maybe even more than a few - in the offering, wear t-shirts with Christian slogans on them, go to Bible study, memorize scripture with our (my) kids....and stay in our (my) nice, safe comfort zones while the world around us (me) is dying. We are talking our Christianity without walking it.

I'm certainly no book-reviewer, but I will say I think he's right on the mark.

"What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well” — but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do? So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless." James 2:14-17 (NLT)

Please hear what I am saying. I am NOT saying I think every person who calls themselves a Christian is shirking their responsibility as a Christ-follower. What I do think is that the American church as a whole (including ME) has gotten comfortable in our well-protected, Christian-nation environment (including ME), and it gets really easy to think we (I) can just pray for someone and give an offering and everything will be alright. It can be ugly to get our (my) hands dirty by digging in and actually giving MY life away to serve the least of the least.

Read slowly and let these statistics soak in for a minute:

• 28 million children die from curable diseases each year

• 17 million children die from malnutrition and starvation each year

• 2.2 million children worldwide are living with HIV

• 33% of the world's population is malnourished....1/3 of the world. How can that be when we throw food away by the truckload in this country?

• 20% of the world's population has no access to clean water

• 10 million children are involved in the sex industry....children!!

• 100 million children in the world live on the streets

• 143 million children are orphans

No one can fix it all. But it's wrong to think that because we can't do it all - or can't even do a lot - that we should do nothing.

For a long time now, almost a year in fact, God has been repeating two words over and over and over to my heart.

Do something.

Do something.

Do something.

It's everywhere I turn. Books. Magazines. Sermons. Songs. Blogs. Fliers. TV. Seriously....EVERYWHERE....do something.

At times it's actually gotten humorous. I'm telling you, it's every.where. Even an investing seminar I went to.

For the longest time I kept asking, "What, God? Do what? If You'll just tell me what something You want me to to, I'll do it!"

Honestly sometimes God cracks me up. Although I'm sure He wasn't laughing at how dense I was being. One day not too long ago I came across this post by Amy at Building the Blocks. Did you catch it? It's there, at the end.

Do something. Anything.

Could God GET any clearer? (don't answer that)

Wanna know something? That question I kept asking God? The "what do You want me to do?" question? It was my ticket to doing nothing. See, I didn't know it at the time, but as long as I kept asking the question, I was avoiding the doing. I was so afraid of doing the wrong thing, or spending my money and efforts in the wrong place, that I did nothing.

Really....is there a wrong place to spend our efforts in helping someone who's hurting and in need? Is there a wrong someone to help? Is there a wrong time to be the hands and feet of Christ? I wanted God to lay it all out for me. I wanted Him to say, "This person, on this day, will need this sort of help from you. That's what I want you to do."

Or, "I want you to send this amount of money to this worthy cause on this day during this specific campaign."

What I didn't realize is that I didn't want to make a choice. I was overwhelmed by the enormous volume of need in the world. I didn't want to have to pick just one. I didn't want to have to decide that one need was more important than another, and thereby more in "need" of my help. I didn't want to choose wrong....and leave someone out in the cold.

But I think what God wanted was for me to get my duff out of my comfortable recliner and just do something. I have a friend who said to me some version of this: we have already been given the command to GO and to GIVE and to HELP those who are lost and hurting and in need. If we have the ability to do something, why would we need to pray about doing it?

No one can fix it all. But it's wrong to think that because we can't do it all - or can't even do a lot - that we should do nothing.

So guess what? I am doing something.

I have started - in very small, timid ways - responding to the situations I see around me. Not big things. Nothing I could write a book about. Or even an essay. Maybe just a sentence. But it's something. And I cannot begin to tell you how it feels. It is HUGE. My little tiny something is HUGE to me because it is my heart. And it's God's heart.

And I pray I will continue to do something for the "least of these" (Matt. 25:40) for the rest of my life.

Because you know what? I want to be Christ's hands and feet. I am the body of Christ, and I want to act like it. It is my deepest longing and desire to answer the call of Jesus and DO SOMETHING to serve and to minister and to help and to provide for those who are hurting and hungry and lonely and orphaned and in need. I want Him to be able to say to me, "Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master." (Matt. 25:21)

The book? Tom Davis was right on. Right. On. Truly, I highly recommend reading it. But be careful....you will never be the same.

And Thankful Thursday?

I'm so THANKFUL to my God for continuing to shove nudge me out of my comfort zone and into a life that looks a tiny bit more like my Savior. Someday I may just live a faith that bleeds.