I can't believe how God is softening my heart for the things I used to just drive by, walk by, brush off and...ignore. This verse did it for me a few months ago:
If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God's love? It disappears. And you made it disappear.
My dear children, let's not just talk about love; let's practice real love. This is the only way we'll know we're living truly, living in God's reality.
1 John 3:17-18 (The Message)
As God continues to renovate my heart, I find myself lying awake at night thinking about vastly different things to what kept me up at night a year ago. A year ago, I'd lie awake at night thinking about the next sermon series, the next marketing push, or the next stage set idea. Nothing wrong with those things...I'm just saying God is doing some amazing work in me to position me to fulfill the assignment He's given me in Columbia and beyond.
So here's what kept me up until 4:00 this morning...
55% of the student body at one of the high schools on our side of town, which happens to be in the wealthiest school district in South Carolina, live at or below the poverty line. As a result, they are on free or reduced lunch and breakfast. The question: if their family can't afford to feed them breakfast and lunch, then what do they eat for dinner? What do they eat on Saturday and Sunday? What do they eat in the summer? Remember...that's in the wealthiest school district in South Carolina!
Lara Beth and I met with a friend who is living her life as a missionary in largely hispanic trailer parks in East Columbia. She told us about a 14 year old girl who just had a baby...and has no one to help her with the baby...no one to help her keep up with her education...no means of sustainable income. Then she told us there are more girls between 14-16 who are pregnant as well. And it's no wonder...most of their moms are prostitutes. This makes me sick...sick that this kind of unmet need exists in my city. Sick that for most of us pastors, our default answer is "lets get them in church." How foolish and arrogant to think that all those people need is a good dose of church...and church the way we do it. How can we take the gospel...be Jesus...to that 14 year old girl, to her mom, to her baby, to her neighbors by serving, loving, clothing, feeding...I think Jesus said when we do that for people like her, we've done it for Him.
Columbia has one of the fastest growing gang populations in the country. Over the weekend, I heard about a neighborhood in wealthy Northeast Columbia that is literally split in half in terms of school designation because of the gang wars that exist in the neighborhood. If we know enough to pinpoint where the gangs are, but our best answer is just to send them to separate schools, have we really done anything? That keeps me up at night...
My mom sent me the findings of a recent study that ranked Columbia as the 13th "Drunkest City" in the U.S. It was the first city in the Southeast. I wonder how many of the "drunks" that contributed to this ranking wear great clothes, drive nice cars, live in nice houses, have high-paying jobs, say, "Fine" when you asked how they're doing, and are at the end of their rope. How do you reach that person? I venture to say that every one of them has heard the name of Jesus and knows where a church is. Yet they've chosen the bottle over the gospel. They've chosen isolation over community. Why?
I could keep going. I used to think that because "mercy" didn't rank high on my spiritual gift inventories that I was excused from meeting needs, having a heart of compassion, and caring for the least of these. God has obliterated that idea.
If you live in Columbia, let's open our eyes. We don't have to go to a third world country or a big inner city to find homelessness, poverty, sex trafficking, lonely people, hungry people...hopeless people who've lost their sense of divine potential. They are in the cubicle next to yours. Under the bridge you drive over everyday. In your classroom. In the house next door. In the neighborhood you drive past to get to yours. On the cold sidewalk outside your favorite restaurant.
If you're in Columbia and want to join us in attacking these issues and others, let me know. A holy discontent is rising up in me that screams, "Not in this city...this is the city of God and hopelessness has no place in the city of God!"
That's what's keeping me up at night...you? Any answers out there?
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