I am sitting on board a long cross country flight back to the east coast from Seattle. I have just taken a week away from my every day life. Every once in awhile everyone just needs to do this. This was a business as well as a pleasure trip. I spent 2 days in Portland Oregon at The Justice Conference, followed by 4 days in Seattle with one of my best friends who just moved there. It has been a wonderful and much needed mental health break.
Who knew that sitting around a convention center for 2 days discussing the biggest, the worst, the heaviest problems in the wold would feel like a welcome relief from my day to day life? But that is exactly what I found it to be. By stepping away from the ins and outs, ups and downs, the problems and issues of my own of life and looking at the world thru the long telescope lens of God's view I gained such a different, broader, deeper, perspective on everything. The things that we are so engrossed in daily? Most of them don't matter at all. In the eternal scheme of things, what we do, how we live, where we spend our time, money, effort takes on an entirely different meaning when we try to see all of life thru the eyes of the Father. This is really the entire point of The Justice Conference. Just 2 years old, this conference seeks to bring together Christian activists who wish to live more kingdom oriented lives. It is open to people of all faiths and none at all. But it is unabashedly and unapologetically Christian. All of the speakers speak from a Christ centered perspective. A reporter from the Portland newspaper there to interview one of the speakers implied that all the emphasis on faith and God might be a little disturbing and weren't they (the conference leadership) worried about putting people off? My response- who cares? If you are put off by the idea of people coming together to serve the world because their faith in who God is compels them to do so, then just stay home. Or start your own secular conference. But don't try to change who we are or why we came. I believe the speaker answered a bit more diplomatically. He said something to the effect that we make no apologies for who we are or what we believe, but we welcome all people interested in justice to join with us. Ok, so that works too.....
All of the speakers were phenomenal. The keynote address address came from Francis Chan,
probably my favorite living Christian pastor, author, speaker. He brought the house down. But I was moved equally by a couple other speakers. Walter Brueggemann. Richard Twiss, and Miroslav Volf. Volf, a survivor of genocide in his native country of Croatia, spoke of the necessity of honoring everyone. Every single person. Even the Saddam Husseins of the world. The Osama Bin Ladens. The Jeffery Dahmers, and Columbine killers. Crazy people who fly airplanes into towers full of workers on a beautiful Tuesday morning. Equally crazy people who call themselves leaders and order the death and destruction of millions of innocents in retaliation for such an act. People we think of as evil. People we want to see receive punishment and judgement for their terrible acts and actions. Honor them as well. Seperate them from their acts. I sat there thinking of a few people in my own life who I refuse to honor because of their actions and how they leave a large swath of destruction and pain in their paths everywhere they go. Honor them too. Wow. Very convicting stuff. I sat squirming in my seat, unable to deny the truth in his words. Honor everyone. It is so hard to do. Impossible in fact. On our own, this is impossible. But this does not keep God from calling us to do the impossible. In fact, this entire conference was about that very thing. Doing the impossible. The good news is that He never calls us to do it on our own. He gives us his Spirit in order to make such impossiblities realities.
One organization at this conference has set an ambitious goal of eradicating all extreme poverty in the world by the year 2035. That's only 23 years from now. I could still be alive by then. Wouldn't it be something to live long enough to see such a thing become a reality? Wouldn't it be better yet to give my life over to helping to make that happen? The Isaiah 58 project is the name of this multidisciplinary group. There were 180 other such groups in the exhibit hall all showcasing their faith based organizations working to end the evils of hunger, disease, sex trafficking, illiteracy, war rape, genocide, slave wage exploitation of third world peoples by large US corporations- just to name a few minor problems!! So many great organizations to support. The hard part is picking a few to focus on. Trying to figure out where to give my time and resources. I am already overwhelmed with ministry obligations at my own home church. How can I possibly think about taking on more? I don't know the answer to that. Only that I can and somehow I will. Because there is so much to do. The harvest is heavy and the workers are few. There is so much need in the world. I can no longer sit on the sidelines pretending that life in suburban America is the be all, the end all of existence. It's not even close. God has a much bigger dream for our lives than this. It takes courage to turn ourselves over to His plans for us. My prayer is that I will find this courage. That I will be able to step out in faith to whatever it is He is calling me to do. That I will trust Him to be my guide and that I will have the willingness to follow where He is leading. If you are reading these words right now, stop and say a prayer for me. I thank you so much in advance. Shalom.
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