North American Churches - For Such a Time as This Ann Voskamp Do we not hear the call of God to be rich toward Him by being generous and loving toward our family, neighbors, and our brothers and sisters around the world? "Because after I watched that Ugandan woman? That one woman with no shoes and no husband and 7 kids, walk up to the front of the church and put this bag of beans into the basket as her love offering to God – my heart ached this raw conviction and I could feel it with you, North American Church, what you really wanted: You’re hungry to love like this. You are hungry for the uncomfortable. You are hungry to sacrifice your Starbucks coffees, your NetFlix subscription, your dinners out for something More. You’re hungry for more than vanilla services, and sweetened programs, and watered down lives. You’re famished for More, for hard and holy things, for some real meat for your starved soul, some real dirt under your fingernails, some real sacrifice in your veins – some real Jesus in your blood and in your hands and in your feet. When that Compassion teacher stood under that tree on a Sunday morning and told the kids dressed up in not a whole lot more than tattered rags, “God lets us all give just like the widow’s offering,” he was smiling like he swallowed the infamous, original canary. He couldn’t stop laughing giddy: “You don’t have to wait to have more, you don’t have wait to have much, you don’t have to wait at all.” And I’m looking into the eyes of all these African children, all these hungry, dancing eyes and the Compassion teacher’s literally dancing under the tree: “You all get to give!” It’s not just the rich who get to give – it’s all those who give who get to be rich. You don’t wait until you have more before you give to God – you give now so you get to become more in God. The children are all smiling and singing and there’s all this light coming like dappled deliverance through the leaves. “Bring your only mango to Jesus,” the Compassion teacher’s waving his hands in extravagant joy. “Bring your one handful of beans, bring your one heart overflowing with song.” It’s not having much that makes you rich — it’s the giving much that makes you rich. Give and you are the rich. And I’m sitting under a tree in Africa with the richest in the world and it’s not Bill Gates and it’s not Warren Buffet and it’s not Mark Zuckerman and it’s not the family with 2 cars, a flat screen television and one week at Disney. It’s a bunch of kids in Africa in ripped shirts and torn shoes, who have no knives or forks and sleep on floors. It’s only the people who give sacrificially who get to live richly."
Posted on: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 16:17:05 +0000
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