Feeling Alive Again
G'milut Chasadim: God's compassion is our example. Deuteronomy 29: 5 Yet the LORD says, “During the forty years that I led you through the wilderness, your clothes did not wear out, nor did the sandals on your feet.
Our Journey to Spiritual Renewal
If you’re retiring or already retired you need to read our story to learn about new retirement options.
God has helped us find healing for the sick, help the lame to walk and influence the non-believer by imitating the authentic Jesus, not with our words alone, but with small acts of kindness.
Matthew 4: 24 And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them. 25 And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan.
I’m talking about
changing your life, tapping into the abundant life Jesus promises us. Have you ever felt bored with your routine? Is your
spiritual life growing? Or are you a cancer Survivor, living with uncertainty?
I’ve found uncertainty is the biggest challenge to 'Feeling Alive Again'.
Uncertainty can put your life on hold. Our story will tell you how to start
living without fear, having a deeper spiritual life with God and with your
family, especially your wife or husband by living inside God’s will.
I’m talking about changing the lives of
everyone who is weary of their daily struggle against boredom, fear and the
talk they hear about wars in the Middle East, increasing gas prices, economic
hard times and one more test, six months from now, to see if you are still
cancer free.
The story of our journey and the pictures of the orphans and our friends who traveled with us always warm up people’s hearts. Our pictures demonstrates what is possible for you to feel if you partner with God by doing His will. The men who go along with us seem to have the most profound reactions.
Our rewards have been so much more than we ever expected and we want to share what we’ve discovered, how and what to do and how to look for God’s footsteps in our lives, leading us to His abundant life.
Life throws us
curve balls from time to time. Sarah
and I have had to face the lonely journey of being operated on for cancer and
our cancer treatments by ourselves, holding hands till the very last moment the
nurses wheeled us out of our room down to the operating room. But we've been
able to renew our life's journey together, on the other side of surgery and
treatment, living inside God's will. Our rewards have been so much more than we
ever expected and we want to share what we’ve discovered, how and what to do
and how to look for God’s footsteps in your life. God keeps His promises.
I’m not talking about
an exclusive works doctrine for salvation. It takes works and faith. I’ll let
James explain it to you. James 2:14 What doth it profit, my brethren, though a
man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? 15 If a brother
or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, 16 And one of you say unto
them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them
not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? 17 Even so
faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.
I’m talking about doing
God’s will to get to know God through a relationship with the Holy Spirit or as
I like to call Her the Comforter as you do God’s work. I’ll explain how that
works more specifically a little later.
I’ve seen and felt
God’s presence when I’m working on an obscure problem only a few of us know
about and can’t make anything happen and then some stranger, who has sought us
out not knowing about our specific need, comes along and gives us the answer;
the answer to our prayers. That stranger has to be from God. And it has happened too many times to
be serendipity.
I continue to do God’s
will because my faith and trust in God is growing and I want it to continue to
grow. I’ll explain this reality throughout our story about what has happened to
us, to me and what has happened to our heroes.
This is also the
story of my personal struggle with God and His victory. I resisted God’s will for many years. My work got in
the way of God’s will and church didn’t inspire me.
Let me make a comment
about church in my life today. We have a small Circle of Friends at church,
friends who share the same passion for our mission verses. I’ll share those
verses with you later. There are about 25 to 30 Christians who share some or
all of our interest in orphans, children and adults in Israel, India, China and
here in America. We’ve all helped out with our time and our money.
Most of our encounters
with Jesus are through the Comforter, outside of church with our friends. I
think of our church building as a community well where I go to refresh myself
by seeing members of my Circle of Friends, study and worship with them and
hopefully hear something that will stimulate my curiosity about the Scriptures,
which will encourage me to study more.
I said earlier church
had not inspired me, and that remained true until I established my Circle Of
Friends with other like-minded members. I want you to understand a Circle of
Friends is not a social group or a study group. Circle of Friends is a group of
Christians of many denominations and of non-believers living in many places
around the world who have a common goal. The common goal is delivering God’s
small acts of kindness to people, children and adults who have serious needs
which they cannot provide by themselves. We have common goals and we work at
accomplishing those goal. We all have weaknesses and strengths and by banding
together my weakness can be strengthened by another’s strengths. I’ll let Paul
explain how that works a little later in 1 Corinthians 12 where he talks about
gifts of the spirit.
I no longer pay
attention to the worldliness, which has crept into my church because of
financial problems, expressing the worldliness through meetings about financial
matters, budgets and reduced community outreach.
Our Elders might
disagree with me, but my family has been attending church at Woodmont for over
25 years and I remember our outreach programs we no longer support. Church was
once 99% of my religion full of ritual and noise, now the messy world is my
religion with a lot less ritual. I’ve discovered my Christian imagination in
the world, helping orphans and the people who help orphans.
This Is What
Happened To Us
Baptized by the Holy Spirit in
fire
Matthew 3: 11 I indeed
baptize you in water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier
than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you in the Holy
Spirit and in fire:
Our Beginning
This story is about our life
for the last 7 years, doing God’s work. God was behind our spiritual journey.
God waited a long time for me to respond to His invitation.
It all started with this little girl from China in 2001.
This is Sarah Helena standing
in front of her bed in her orphanage in Jingdezhen China. Sarah Helena came to
her orphanage when she was 7 months old. She came to America just before Christmas
in 2001. She was 15 months old. Sarah Helena changed our lives.
I thought my Mission Verses
from the first chapter of Isaiah and Sarah Helena started our journey of
leaving a legacy, but I would discover it was God, who started helping us a
long time ago.
We cashed in a 401K, bought
airline tickets to China to see the sights and go to see where orphans live and
how we can help them. A few friends went with us. I will introduce our friends
and a number of our Heroes throughout our story.
After you’re finished reading
our story you are going to know what a Hero is and how to become one. You’re
also going to learn what a Circle of Friends is, how to find one, join one or
start one on your own. You’re also going to see how to raise money to finance your
legacy. You’re going to learn how to choose a ‘Mission Verse or Verses’ from
the Old Testament to live out in your life. Why the Old Testament, because it
would have been what Jesus knew and studied and it was His reference point
in His life and in His teachings. I
challenge you to reread the Old Testament with the purpose of finding your
Mission Verse.
If your Mission Verse is in
the Old Testament I challenge you to then reread the Gospels looking for how
Jesus interpreted your Mission Verse through His own words. I want you to
reread the Gospels and discover all the references to Isaiah and the Prophets.
I’ve found so much of what Jesus said in the Gospels originated in our Old
Testament.
I’ve discovered the laws of
the Old Testament will pass away, but the words of Jesus will never pass away.
I’ll explain that idea a little later and its implications. Your mission verse
shouldn’t make you feel warm and fuzzy, it should condemn you to action; make
you feel uncomfortable.
You’re going to learn how to
discover the authentic Jesus as he lived His life in His time, not in the past
or the future, but in the present. As a bonus you’re going to improve your
marriage and renew your spiritual life, if you embark on the journey Jesus has
planned for you. So sit down, relax and let me tell you our story.
This is an idea I want you
to think about as you read our story.
Our physical presence here on earth takes up space and consumes time. I want
you to stand up and stretch out your arms and turn around in a circle. That is
how much space you take up. If someone comes along and pushes you out of that
space they will only push you into another space you will occupy.
Your grave or urn actually
takes up space, as does your memory in the minds of those who knew you and
loved you. How I live in my family’s memory has become really important to me.
I want to inspire them to be working Christians with strong spiritual
relationships with God. I don’t want to waste their time and send them down the
wrong road, which can produce insipid spiritual lives. I want to be a good
strong example for my family members, present and future and my friends and
acquaintances.
While we are physically
occupying our space and consuming time we can reflect the Kingdom of Man,
acting out the complicated natural rules of life and death, codified man made
laws and base human desires like envy, lust, greed, sex, hatred, well I think
you get the idea. I can also chose to reflect the Kingdom of man thousands of
miles away by sending a hateful letter, criticizing someone or if I’m a
politician I can kill someone by waging war on them. I can actually occupy
space and time in hundreds of places at the same time, affecting hundreds of
people, over the Internet, with worldly information I send.
While we are physically
occupying our space and consuming time we can reflect the Kingdom Of Heaven by
promoting peace, good will, small acts of kindness and pure worship of
God in as many places as we
choose. We can choose to be a compassionate Christian lighthouse on a hill by
imitating Jesus. We can become a presence in the world where the weary can find
peace.
Another thought I want you
to consider is behavior develops our brains. You can’t learn how to ice skate just by reading about how it’s done;
it takes practice. If we imitate Jesus on a daily basis the process of
imitation develops our brains in the direction of compassion, sensitivity to
others needs and the ability to pray authentically for help.
If we live our lives on a
daily basis imitating worldliness, the process of imitation teaches us how to
be like our bosses (Herod) and fellow workers and that kind of imitation will
develop our brain in the areas of competition, looking out for yourself,
practical decision making based on profits not on human need for justice.
How will we act when we
retire and what will we think about? I
am a perfect example of trying to erase all the cold, indifferent business
thinking which pushes back on what God has intended for me to do. I wasn’t as
familiar with authentic praying as I was for doing for myself.
Luke 10: 38 Now
it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a
certain woman named Martha received him into her house. 39 And she had a
sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word. 40 But
Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost
thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore
that she help me. 41 And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha,
thou art careful and troubled about many things: 42 But one thing is
needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away
from her.
It’s been so easy for
me to get caught up in the things of the world. My brief case (burden) was not
as heavy when I carried my Bible and sack lunch in it, but it became a heavy
load to carry when I filled it up with worldly papers. I’ll tell you about my
brief case in a few minutes.
Sarah said, "John you need to go to China and I'm going to take you!" Sarah had already gone to China with Nina and their brother Charles to get Sarah Helena. On my first trip I met Little Fayth. Fayth had an inoperable heart condition. I looked down into her face and saw little blue lips. Her hands were blue. She was so still, not like a normal, wiggly 7 month old baby. Her Nannies were going to hold Fayth until they handed her back to God. I feel in love with the orphans, God's journey and the Chinese people.
Our second donor asked us to go to Israel and help the orphans in Israel like we were helping orphans in China. We found Phillip and Mary Margaret at our church. They had been going to Israel over the last 30 years. Phillip accompanied Sarah and me to Israel and took us to 3 hospitals that took care of children. I didn't know I could like the people of Israel as I did like the Jews, Palestinians and the Christians that make Israel home.
This hospital is in Bethlehem. The staff are Muslims, Jews and Christians and they take care of Muslim, Christian and Jewish children. When we got there the staff had not been paid in over 2 months and didn't know when they were going to be paid. They were dedicated to their patients.
This is a picture of a Christmas party at the hospital. Phillip is Santa Claus and throws a Christmas party for the children, their families and the staff. Phillip and Mary Margaret have not been able to travel for health reason so they passed their work on to Jim and Glenda. Glenda raised $4,000 to send to 2 hospitals last Christmas.
We got a nice donation and were able to replace this old school in India with a new school for 120 Tsunami orphans and another 200 students. Their teachers didn't always report to work.
This is their new school. We built it next to Grace Home #2 which is the orphan's home built by our Mission Committee at church. Most all the teachers are Christians, but they can not teach Bible in school because it is against the law to teach any religion in school in India.
This is another picture of the School. You can see the big bus and small bus that goes into the community to pick up paying students.
This is the children's new, air conditioned computer lab. We were able to buy a generator for when the power goes out, which is frequently. I wanted to do God's work. I didn't yet know all the treasures He held in store for us.
This is Russell. Russell helped us ship $200,000 worth of medical supplies to Israel and $200,000 to Haiti.
God has blessed us in so many
unimaginable ways. We have new friends. We have new dreams. We have a Godly
mission. We have a thriving faith. We have 5 adopted Granddaughters, 4 of which
are under 4-years-old. These are just a few of the reasons why you should want
to leave your own legacy for your family, friends and God’s children you help.
I’m sure your blessings will be different from ours, but just as meaningful. I
think it will only happen when you imitate Jesus.
I want to add just a few
words about my personal spiritual journey. It started a long time ago in my
twenties, but it soon fizzled out for many reasons. When I jumped into the
world of business Sarah bought me a very nice leather briefcase. I carried my
Bible and a sack lunch to work with me. Soon I was given more responsibility
and my brief case started filling up with reports and business papers. My Bible
was the first to go and then my sack lunch. I had been seduced by success.
Success can be an all-consuming taskmaster offering stingy rewards compared to
God’s promises and rewards.
That was the beginning of my
worldly journey, but then after many years Sarah Helena came along and our
trips to China and Israel materialized, opening my eyes to new possibilities;
spiritual possibilities.
Seeing the plight of the
orphans awakened my sleeping spirit. I think our new experiences meant more to
me than they did for Sarah, because Sarah somehow had been able to nurture her
spirit through our child raising years, while I maintained and protected a big
spiritual void. I didn’t stop going to church, nor studying, I just stopped
imagining new spiritual possibilities.
I think you will see how I
was able to suppress my spiritual development as I continue my story. Before we
started our journey in earnest I believed I belonged in America and not in some
foreign country and I thought I need to spend my time working instead of
helping God’s needy.
When we went to Israel I
started a serious study of the man Jesus. I realized I might be standing in the same places He stood. I was
looking at crippled and helpless children and started wondering if Jesus could
have had the same feelings I was having, seeing the same kind of human needs I
was seeing. Jesus did something about all the human needs He saw and I knew I
had to follow His path.
As I started my study in
earnest, I realized there were a lot of intellectual ideas about Jesus, His
life and His church, which confused me. I think those intellectual gymnastic,
Bible scholars and church leaders performed in words and ritual, are the very
reasons for arguments, debates and the causes for Christians to separate into
denominations, jealous of each other’s influence.
I wanted to rediscover my
youthful faith in the man Jesus and His teaching I possessed before I got a
briefcase and my career. I wanted to let go of my contrived safe, religious
faith, which misled me into defending manufactured rituals most all my adult
life. I had become part of the problem. I had bought into the idea it was
alright to pigeonhole my religion into the activities that occurred over a few
hours one day a week. I also thought what could the Bible tell me about
managing six complicated Coca-Cola plants and hundreds of employees?
After we started our journey
I began wondering if those men who talked at me every Sunday morning, wrote and
debated all those scholarly ideas about Jesus and His church in books, which I
had substituted for a personal relationship with Jesus, if they had personally
been involved in helping a crippled child find healing or finding a family to
adopt them?
I’m wondering if our
spiritual leaders substitute spending time in their office studying for getting
out into the world teaching as an ordinary Christian? Isn’t it easy to talk to
an audience who can’t talk back instead of talking to a non-believer with all
those hard to answer questions originating in doubt, looking them in the face,
desperately needing to change their
The rest of our journey’s story is about how you can leave a legacy in your retirement for your family, just like we have. We’re also going to give you the reasons why you should want to leave a legacy.
I hope you enjoy reading our story and seeing our pictures and I hope you can see yourself leaving a legacy for your family. I want you to look at the faces of our Heroes, most of them are your contemporaries, and consider if you would fit in doing what they are doing. Would you like to travel and make new friends and create new lives for God’s children?
Life Is Not About Being A Success,
It's About Taking The Journey of Faith
Last night Sarah and I
attended our classes at Gilda’s Club. I went to my class for family members and
Sarah went to her class for Survivors. We talked about a lot of personal things
in my class, which I cannot tell you about. Each of us has a chance to talk
about what happened to us during the week. Last night something was said that made me think this little
safe room was like my Uncle Tom’s porch most every Friday night in the spring
and summer where our whole family would gather in the dark and talk. I was just
a child then. I hadn’t thought about Uncle Tom and Aunt Jose in years. Those
were the best of times and comforting to think about in Sarah and my time of
distress.
The adults sat in the
chairs and the swing on the porch and we kids would sit on the steps or in the
grass listening to the adults. We all talked about things that were important
to us and everyone would listen to us. Sometimes we kids would say something
that would remind an old timer of a personal story and experience.
Yes that’s right, the
adults even listened to the kids and gave us advice in the form of personal
stories that were usually funny. Like the time Uncle Tom sneaked the shotgun
out of the house and accidentally shot his fathers bull. When asked about it he
lied and said the bull got struck by lightning. He got a big whipping for the
lie, and another one for sneaking the shotgun out of the house and he was under
house arrest for 6 months, which meant he had to do all the dirty chores that
he and his brother use to share, but because of his trouble he had to do them
all by himself.
That story made a big
impression on me. You see, they gave us advice that didn’t sound like advice.
They didn’t say don’t lie, they made a personal story that made sense to us
children.
The old timers told
stories that became our life’s lessons. Stories that helped us figure out how
to get along in life and solve problems. At Gilda’s Club I’m now an old timer
telling my stories, which I hope help the new comers help their loved ones through
their journey of healing, or their loved ones passage through to letting go of
life.
I woke up in the
middle of the night thinking about what was said at our meeting last night. I
can share this one thing with you. I think it’s important. It’s not personal
about an individual family. Over the course of attending meetings I’ve heard my
classmates talk about disappointments, crying, fear, stress and what love
looked like helping a family member survive or die.
Last night one of the
guys said he saw a TV New’s Show where they discussed a judge’s ruling that
took the children away from a mother because she had stage-4 breast cancer and
the ex-husband, who had earlier divorced her, was now demanding custody of his
children, because her diagnosis was death. My classmate said that the idea that
this man had given up on his wife and felt no reason to help her made the hair
stand up on the back of his neck.
All of my classmates,
who had been struggling with the ravages of cancer for a number of years
repeatedly talked about emotions I could remember, but spent so many wasted
years not feeling them and it
wasn’t until we started our journey to help orphans did I rediscover those
emotions.
I had just finished writing
our story and I suddenly remembered writing about our journey to China helping
the orphans and talking about learning to communicate with my feelings,
emotions and body language in China, because of the language barrier. I also
was able to resurrect unused emotions because seeing the human suffering in
China touched me so deeply, unlike anything in America had touched me.
I started rediscovering in
China the same feelings I've heard about in class, emotions and feelings I had
not been in touch with for years. I got up out of bed and sat down and started
writing this chapter to share my experiences with you because I think for me,
being in touch with my emotions is important to living life to the fullest;
tapping into my spiritual strength, which I had forgotten I possessed. I think
it will be important for you to experience getting in touch with your emotions
if you’re presently not fully in touch with them.
Our journey of the last 7
years has required Sarah and me to live life more intensely, to embrace those
feelings empty nest living and good health doesn’t always expose us to. Part of
our journey was thrust upon us unexpectedly, like Sarah’s cancer, but another
part of our journey was of our own choice after some encouragement from a
little girl and Jesus, going out into the world and doing God’s will, which
wasn’t always easy, but has become so rewarding.
We needed to learn to
live over bad news and good news.
Good news can trip us up as fast as bad news can. You got a promotion, but you
will need to work a lot more hours. Part of our journey was an uncomfortable
choice for me, because I had to face up to some real tough personal truths that
were hard to accept. Those truths had to do with my spiritual life, no the lack
of my spiritual life. If you chose to read our story you will learn what those
personal truths of life were, which I needed to learn about and change.
My intention in writing our
story was to be as honest as I can be, because I think a lot of my readers will
be a lot like me, a middle of the road Christian, satisfied with a weak
spiritual life. I would have never realized my problems were standing in the
way of a healthy spiritual life without help.
I want to give you a road
map that will take you to a special spiritual place, making your life a lot
happier than it has been. I’m going to tell you about my spiritual struggle and
the reasons I think prolonged my struggle. The results of taking this journey
for me was like being in a dark stuffy room without windows most of my adult
life and finally finding a door and opening it and stepping out into the
sunshine and fresh air of spring.
Living with cancer requires
that same kind of living life more intensely. Cancer makes life intense. You
can’t drift through living with cancer like you can drift through empty nest
living. You can be a fool and stick your head in the sand or like was said in
our meeting last night about friends who disappear and stop seeing and calling
you or family members who can’t stand to live with you, just waiting for you to
die or because you have all those scars, which seeing all the time creates the
collateral stress they feel, so they run away, playing the divorce card,
abandoning the one they loved for all the selfish, self-centered reasons fear,
stress, change of routine and uncertainty produces.
My little sister’s husband
divorced her, because she lost both breast and he told her he couldn’t stand
the stress, worrying about if her cancer would come back. We’re not supposed to
abandon or throw away a life like some people do to a tomato with a rotten spot
in it.
The choice of living life,
eyes wide open or running away has its rewards or its regrets. I don’t think
there are two more intense reasons to live in our lives than to choose to
actively do God’s will and give justice to his needy children and take care of
the widows and the fatherless, or to choose to live life to the fullest in
spite of cancer or any other life threatening disease or even financial
disaster like loosing retirement money you expected to live on because Wall
Street and your advisors failed you or you made inappropriate choices or you
were the unfortunate victim of bad luck. When God is in control of the really
important things in life you don’t need to depend on luck.
Important people watch
us. Don’t think our children, after
they are grown, stop looking to us for guidance, even if they don’t ask us for
advice. They watch how we handle good and bad news. I want you to remember our
children are watching us in what the world labels our declining years. They’re
supposed to think less of us as we become forgetful and repeat ourselves.
What we do guides our
children even in their adulthood. The last time we visited our middle son Joel
and Sara Pauline, his wife, at their church in Maryville I introduced myself to
a lady
I had never met before and she said, “Oh, we all know you and what you
do for the orphans.” We go to their church maybe 3 or 4 times a year and each
time meet just a few of their friends and every visit we meet a stranger or two
we’ve never met before. I really believe they all know us because of what Joel
my son and his wife Sara Pauline tells them about what we are doing, because
what we’re doing inspires our children as their being foster parents and
adoptive parents of four little girls, inspires Sarah and me.
I don’t believe, if we
didn’t have the orphans to help, that Joel would tell his church friends how
pretty I keep our yard or about cruises we go on or the books I read. Even if
Joel said that about us the chances are remote that anyone would remember what
we do. I also don’t believe I would brag on Joel and Sara Pauline as much as I
do if in 7 years of marriage they hadn’t kept dozens of foster children.
I like leaving a positive
legacy for my sons. I think what we decided to do, leaving our legacy with
orphans, helped them decide to be foster parents and adopt four little girls.
Joel and Sara Pauline were Foster parents of the Year in East Tennessee a
couple of years ago. We’re sure proud of them.
I think you can inspire
your children by leaving a positive legacy of your own, a worthy Godly legacy,
as opposed to just drifting through old age. Think hard about the kind of
legacy you want to leave them.
We’re in Jaipur, the Pink City. It’s called the Pink City because the Maharajah painted all the buildings pink when the Prince of Whales visited Jaipur in 1858. Jaipur, designed and built in 1727 by Maharaja Sawai Sawai Jai Sing II was the first modern city in India. We’re in a park where the Maharaja built sundials. The main sundial is accurate to 2 second, remarkable. The Maharajah Sawai Jai Sing II completed his Jaipur Observatory in 1728. It is thought to contain the largest stone sundial in the world. We’re having fun learning about India. When we understand about the history of a country, where we work, our understanding of the history helps us with our relationships with the local people, because they know we’ve taken time to understand and respect their country. I love traveling with Sarah. Sarah is such a happy companion.
Look at the glow in Sarah's face.
Doing God's will puts that glow in
everyone's face who travels with us.
Our Big Opportunity
American society is
changing. In less than 3 years there
will be more Baby Boomer eligible for retirement than enlisted and reserve men
and women in the United States Military. We started thinking if Baby Boomers
got organized into small groups of Circles of Friends and instead of retiring
in the ordinary way, they sought to leave a legacy in their retirement, we
think Baby Boomers could change our world.
Our story is a proposal for
retiring Baby Boomers to get organized and leave their own legacy. We want you
to see what leaving a legacy looks like when a husband and wife set their minds
to making a difference in retirement and God helps them. You see, 2 Christians
take up twice as much space and consume twice as much time in life and instead
of drifting they can do God’s will by reflecting the Kingdom of Heaven here on
this Planet and can accomplish so much more together than by themselves. That’s
why a Circle of Friends is so powerful.
We’ve needed to learn how
to work together. When Sarah and I
were newly married, 45 years ago, we went on a canoe trip with some friends and
neighbors. We borrowed a big tent and camping equipment and set off to this
pastoral river at the foot of the mountains in East Tennessee. We quickly
learned we did not work well together. We went under every overhanging branch.
We ran into every bridge support and we spent more time going backwards than
going forward. We shouted at each other a lot. Our dysfunction turned into the
butt of everyone’s jokes. Forty-five years can change all that with the right
reasons.
Amos 3:3 Can two walk
together, except they be agreed?
We’ve matured as a couple. After all these years we’ve found when we started
planning our legacy and traveling together we are better at working with each
other, at least on legacy work. We’re also sharing things about ourselves that
we had never told each other, because we talk to each other more. The things we
share aren’t secrets; they are things we haven’t thought of in a long time,
like that canoe trip and Uncle Tom’s porch get-to-gathers. Some of our memories
concerned raising our family and some were childhood memories, long forgotten.
At least this is true for me. As it turns out, I’m the last living person to
remember my childhood and the adults who loved me.
I’m having memories of
events, which were physical experiences, people memories and then there were
memories of emotions. A physical or emotional experience in today’s life can
trigger past memories of useful experiences, if we let them. A person we meet
today can remind us of a person from our past. Thinking about the orphans and
our travel seems to make us more reflective; at least they do for me. I’ve been
able to connect our current adventures with past adventures.
I had a lot of experiences at
work with troubled people whose problems we were able to work through and those
experiences help me today as I work through current experiences. I remember
meeting a salesman and his wife after church at the plant. He had a drinking
problem and he beat his wife the night before. He begged to take two week off
and go to a rehab. We had a hard and fast rule about not letting salesmen off
without a weeks notice, but I looked at her with a swollen jaw and two black
eyes and I had to say it would be ok. Two years later he was fired for
stealing. I wouldn’t have changed my decision to let him off even if I knew he
was such a troubled employee. Rules are rules, but you don’t need to always
think about what makes you look good at the expense of others.
This is one of those happy
memories. Sarah remembered driving home from her driver’s license test after
her 16th birthday. She ran a stop sign and her Father said that was terrible
driving, but they shouldn’t tell Mother. That was one of those life’s lessons, showing how a
parent bonds with a child, just a little secret between Father and Daughter that makes a child
appreciate a parent. That was a good memory and we both laughed. I had never
heard that story before. We both shared that pleasant memory of Grand Daddy.
Why is it good to remember
our past? It’s good because our past
has made us what we are today and today’s experiences, combined with our past
experiences will make us who we become in the future. I want to share with you
how my past really does connect with what we’re presently doing. The following
is just one example of how remembering our past helps us make sense of life
today.
A recent meeting about
our church being debt free in 3 years at Woodmont triggered the following memory that happened in the early 70s in
Wilmington, North Carolina. I
remember when Billy Mattox came to Wilmington and became our preacher in the
early 70s. We had all kinds of problems. We didn't have elders, a full-time
preacher, an adequate building, an effective education program, no outreach
into the community past a few blocks around our building, which really didn’t
have many results, no regular song leader and no organized effective spiritual
leadership.
Sarah and I both wondered
if we shouldn't go to another church, but there were no other C of C churches
in Wilmington. I wanted my sons to grow up in an active, fun church, like I
remembered from our college years in Nashville. Sarah and I babysat a Wednesday
evening class at West End and one of the children in our class was Amy Grant.
What did Bill do? He didn't
try to fix everything at once and he didn’t shame the old members for not
knowing what to do. He wanted to get our attention in a positive way or at
least that’s what it looked like to me.
After years of the church
trying to find financing for a new building and being turned down, Bill chose
to find the financing for a new building that everybody had dreamed about and
his second project was to have the members select elders. Billy chose the two
biggest things that would take our breath away and all the while he was quietly
working on our other problem areas, like preaching spirit filled lessons every
Sunday morning.
Billy called Jim Bill at
West End C of C and got a loan for the building. Our new elders found a
building lot and they put out bids for the construction. Billy breathed life
into all of us.
Most every weekend Billy
would be at the construction site picking up trash and straightening building
materials. Soon members started meeting him at the building site, helping him.
I'll never forget one Saturday when the Moms brought the children to pick up
and dig rocks out of the front lawn so we could turn the rough ground into a
grassy lawn. The children started singing camp songs, then everyone joined in
and we spent all day in the hot sun preparing the ground for planting. Someone
brought a grill, somebody brought the meat and bread, some women went to the
store and bought cookies.
I'm not so sure angels
hadn't gathered above us and flapped their wings to provide the brisk breeze we
enjoyed all day.
Billy had just had surgery
for a bleeding ulcer, but codes required we have planted grass and Billy was out
there working along side us all day Saturday. If we didn't have planted grass
we couldn't have our first service in our new building. Billy had persuaded
codes to work on Saturday to give us the approval. By evening Billy got the
Codes document that said we could have service tomorrow morning.
I had long private
conversations with Billy in his garden and at his office. He told me about what
he had to do to keep Lubbock Christian College running and about preaching in
CA, when he was a young man, and about the guy who started Western Auto, who
was a member of his church.
He might have talked more
to me than anyone else because I invited myself into his life more. We even
built a solar oven in his garage and cooked a roast on his driveway. That was a
great day, and I know he had great days with almost everyone he came in contact
with. Bill Mattox was truly a Christian mentor for me.
I'll never forget the time
in an elders and deacon meeting when one of our money conscious Elders
reprimanded Billy for giving a homeless family, traveling through Wilmington
without any money, what the Elder characterized as 'toooo-much-money' and asked
Billy what was his 'excuse'? Bill proudly announced it was God's money and he
wasn't going to be stingy with it, even if he got scammed! I fear our current
Elders think too much about money.
Bill Mattox did everything
in life with Godly passion. That ‘money conscious’ Elder became a special
spiritual leader in our church with time and he learned saving the church’s
money wasn’t as important as serving people. I know he learned that lesson
because of how he changed over the years I knew him. I’ll tell you another
story about how our Elders grew in faith a little later.
I think when Bill came to
our church he saw God's children wandering in the wilderness of Eastern North
Carolina and he thought giving his all was not too much to give even for a 70
something year old man who thought he was going to retire in Wilmington and go
fishing with his son. Billy didn't
come to Wilmington to be our preacher; he came there to retire and be close to
his son Joe and his family.
Those memories came back to
me after the meeting at Woodmont Hills Church and helped me put our current
church challenges and our Elder’s reluctance to take that leap of financial
faith into perspective. That past experience made me realize while our Woodmont
Elders are growing we still need leadership like Bill Mattox provided the
Wilmington church. I'm going to tell more of Billy's story with us in our next
book ‘Finding My Spiritual Heart in Israel.’ Bill Mattox is truly one of our
heroes. Do you know men and women you could call heroes?
Our priorities have
changed. Planning our legacy has put
us in a different state of mind. It has recast what life is for us today.
Building our legacy and getting out of the rut we had dug for ourselves were
the reasons why we thought about those forgotten memories, causing us to laugh
at ourselves and appreciate our friends and heroes.
I’ll never forget a
Thanksgiving dinner at Sarah’s Mom and Dad’s home on Granny White Pike in
Nashville when Sarah’s Dad, who we all called Grand Daddy, asked me to pass him
a bean or two and I dished up two beans and passed them to him. Grand Daddy
didn’t have the best sense of humor so my sons held their breath, expecting
Grand Daddy to fuss, but he laughed and his laugh caused our boys to laugh,
causing all of us to laugh, including Grand Mother. That might not be a big
deal for your family, but it was so rare to see Grand Daddy laugh at himself.
I’m sure if you’ve gone to church all your life you’ve know a few very serious
Christians like Grand Daddy.
Church can be a very serious
place. I’m not surprised that I’ve found a lot more cheerful and hopeful
Christians in the world doing
God’s will than I’ve found at church. I’m wondering if it’s because church is
such a formal place where we spend a small amount of time and when we visit our
Heroes they are surrounded by babies and children, they share with us, 24 hours
a day 7 days a week.
Most of our Heroes are happy
and light hearted, even if they’re working under difficult circumstance. I
wonder what life experiences make us serious while some difficult life
experiences makes us light hearted and happy? For me physically doing God’s
will, combining doing His will with faith in Him keeping His promises, has made
me happier and able to see the joy in the world, no matter how problematic and
messy it can be. Maybe that’s a shortcoming of our churches. I’m thinking
church and formal places of worship weren’t intended to take the place of being out in the world.
Sarah’s Mother and Father
were very serious people. Sarah’s Father was a Preacher and Bible salesman and
her Mother taught for 29 years at the elementary school at David Lipscomb
College. Sarah and her brothers and sister were always taught to be serious
children. In the 50s all the Lipscomb kids were taught to be serious.
I remember Sarah’s Father
didn’t approve of me dating Sarah because my parents were divorced and I drove
too many fancy sports cars. He could never understand I sold those little fancy
sports cars because that was the best way for me to pay my tuition at Lipscomb.
I’m not being critical of Grand Daddy, because I understand that some of our
choices in what we believe can limit our imagination. He believed that a
husband from a divorced family wasn’t good enough for his daughter. I remember
seeing a church tract about how bad divorce was. I couldn’t help but question
why Grand Daddy would blame me for my parent’s problems. I must say that over
the years he came to respect me and he let me know he respected me in so many
ways.
Do you remember what the
Gospel of John said that there were some leaders who wanted to believe in
Jesus, but they were afraid they would lose their place in the synagogue. Grand
Daddy grew up in a time and a Christian society that had hard and fast rules if
you broke you could be asked to leave your church and divorce was one of those
reasons you can be prevented from leading prayers, serving the Lord’s Supper
and teaching classes. Those attitudes are changing, but they still are alive in
some denominations.
It was safer for Grand
Daddy’s generation to not make waves.
There were little emotional
events in our past childhood and early-married life we had also forgotten
about, but were so very important for today’s life. Thinking about the orphans
and things we saw on our trips and new people we met brought those enjoyable
feelings to our consciousness again. Those memories and feelings, we had
forgotten, help bring our current lives into perspective and made us realize
how important what we were doing for the orphans really was. Those past
experiences helped us solve some of today’s problems.
I wonder how important the
memories Jesus had of His past were to what He did in His ministry? Do you
think He remembered Torah wisdom or what His Mother or Father did for others?
Do you think those people who remembered Mary was pregnant out of wedlock
looked down on Jesus and their possible ridicule of Him might be why he related
to the outsiders in His society like tax collectors and Samaritans?
I realized when we helped the
orphans get adopted we were giving them the chance to have loving family
memories instead of memories of their orphanage life, remembering Nannies who
come and go like convenience store clerks. Maybe they would have an older
orphan to look after them, like Lilly who I’ll tell you about a little later,
but they too would not be a life long big sister or brother if they stayed in
the orphanage.
Remembering sitting up with a
crying son, who just had his tonsils out, really touches me when I see a crying
baby, all alone in a crib without someone to love them. I’m motivated to help
all of them, but like Mother Teresa said, “If you can’t feed 100 feed 1.”
You’re probably asking why is
that experience important to living my life today. Well, back then I thought
life was so complex, but looking back in the rear view mirror I now realized we
handled the most serious problems and the problems didn’t kill us.
Maybe what I think is so
complex and stressful today is really simple and I should remember that. Our
past, present and future are all part of the greater picture we’re creating
with our lives. All those experiences work together and remembering those
experiences also helps me not to take myself so seriously and focus in on what
is really important in life, like helping an orphan be adopted by loving
parents.
Ever so often God has
reminded me
not to take myself too
seriously. There will always be someone to pass us a bean or two. Because of
our journey I’ve been looking for the humor in my life’s circumstance, instead
of the problems and today’s problems, I would have emphasized in my past, seem
to work themselves out without my meticulous attention.
This memory about Jay helps
me feel compassion about the orphans and neglected children. My experience,
working with the orphans breaks my heart thinking they don’t have loving
parents to sit up with them when they are sick or hold them in the dark when
they are afraid. I’ve come to realize my heart should break and I should be
constantly aware of the children’s needs. Jesus was displeased with His
disciples when the disciples rebuked the people who brought their children for
Jesus to bless.
Mark 10:13 And they
brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples
rebuked those that brought them. 14 But when Jesus saw it, he was much
displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and
forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. 15 Verily I say unto you,
Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not
enter therein. 16 And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them,
and blessed them.
Shouldn’t we take the orphans
and neglected children in our arms and bless them with the blessings they need
just like Jesus did?
I’m having a lot more fun. A lot of those happy memories even made Sarah’s
cancer experience more bearable. Finding the picture of 2 year-old Jay brings
back so many happy memories, like putting the top down on my red VW convertible
and standing our Christmas tree up in the back seat and riding it around in our
neighborhood in Chattanooga, listening to Jay squeal with joy.
You might think traveling to
China to find orphans to help would be so complicated that you just don’t want
to get involved at your age, besides you’re probably thinking about all your
daily problems and challenges that you just can’t let go of for two weeks.
You’re probably thinking who would feed your cat or get your mail or pay your
bills.
I can guarantee you that here
in America our cares and problems pale in comparison to the struggles of
orphans anywhere in the world. God is telling us what to do and when I don’t
follow His instructions I’m like the Rich Young Ruler in the New Testament.
Reread that story in Mark and then write your name in the place of the Rich
Young Ruler. When I write myself into his place I start remembering so many
times asking God, but not liking the way He chose to answer me. I spent so many
years reading the Bible looking for the Word to validate and justify what I
wanted to do, instead of what God wanted me to do.
These are the Nuns at Saint Vincent's Hospital in Jerusalem.
Phillip introduced us to them and their hospital.They take care
of approximately 60 mentally challenged patients.
of approximately 60 mentally challenged patients.
We're giving them a check for a whirlpool bath.
Sister Katerina commented that Phillip was truly Santa Claus.
This Is What Happened
To Me
Wilderness Wandering
Matthew 4: 1 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit (is the Spirit the same as our Holy Spirit/Comforter?) into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. 2 And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. 3 And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. 4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 5 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, 6 And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. 7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. 8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; 9 And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. 10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. 11 Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.
Emotional feelings atrophy
if we don’t use them. When I talk
about feelings I mean what’s behind the tear that comes to your eye, what causes
the chill that runs up your spine, how the cause of a blush makes you feel and
what makes your face warm into a pleasant smile. For so many years I had
stopped experiencing and searching for many of those feelings on a regular
basis, because I was practicing the same old dull survival techniques in my
dull life’s routine, which didn’t allow for intense feelings or hard to answer
questions.
Sarah and I no longer have
children at home to make our lives exciting. We didn’t have Grand Children yet.
My outside work was dull. It is interesting how Sarah and I could make
mountains out of molehills. We live in a forest that is full of raccoons,
squirrels and chipmunks. We would wake up most mornings hearing them jumping
from the trees onto our roof. We couldn’t have worried or fretted more if they
had nuclear weapons strapped to their backs. Most every morning when I went out
to my car the squirrels and chipmunks would scurry out from under opposite ends
of the car and disappear into the woods.
I was fixated on the little
buggers. Finally we called Critter Rider to catch them. The man promised Sarah
he wasn’t going to kill them, but I knew better. I remembered how good fried
squirrel tasted when I was a kid, especially if I shot it with my Dad proudly
looking on, sitting with me on a log in the woods.
I’m saying all this to say
how easy it is for me to major on the minor. When our children are growing up
their opportunities and missteps help focus me on what is really important and
it is easy to remember all those times they really needed our help and by
remembering those situations can help me focus on what is important today.
I wonder what wonderful
things I missed while worrying about the squirrels? Lately, I’ve come to enjoy
watching all the animals and birds that visit our yard, without any negative
thoughts. Today when I see the scars on our house the animals have made, I
think of them as character marks.
I had forgotten all those
wonderful snapshots from our past. Starting our legacy and all our new
experiences gave rise to real feelings and memories that were so much fun to
remember and talk about. Feelings we had developed in our past don’t need to be
reinvented, because we already own them. They are already in our family picture
album in our heads, along with answers to current questions.
Our hopes and dreams for the
orphans have made us more hopeful about our marriage and our life together
today and with the help of God we’re thinking about what we can accomplish in
the years we have remaining; at least that’s what I’m thinking and feeling.
It’s hard for two individuals to think the same things all the time. No matter
how much time you have spent together and life events you have experienced
together you still have independent experiences like childhood and work
experiences that are just as important.
You have independent thoughts
and unique experiences. I know things Sarah doesn’t know and Sarah knows things
I don’t know. When we work together our combined strengths overcome our
individual weaknesses. Our lives are like history books with important
information in them.
Courage is another thing
partnership with Sarah produces in me. Back in my past I could really solve
complex problems and had the courage to try new and difficult projects, because
I knew Sarah was there to help me. I wasn’t afraid of life. What happened to
that guy I use to know, before I became so self absorbed?
Seeing the overwhelming
human needs in the world shocked us out of our complacency. I think why we had forgotten our past experiences and
emotional feelings was because over the years we have become so narrowly
focused on our immediate life and self-centered thinking, which left no room
for anything else. I’ve been so focused on today (squirrels) and worrying about
tomorrow (raccoons eating our roof), I forgot who I really was and what I could
become.
There’s a movie about a
British couple drifting through empty nest living. The wife is dog sitting for
a neighbor, who has this huge dog that has never eaten meat. She and her
husband have steak every week on a certain night, but she feels sorry for the
dog and feeds the dog their steaks. When her husband sits down, expecting a
steak, but getting eggs and potatoes, he goes ballistic. Sarah and I have
watched that movie numerous times and get a good laugh out of the couple’s
rigidity and especially the husband’s self-centeredness. I might as well laugh at my self and my
own self -centeredness. The name of the movie is ‘Shirley Valentine’ and I
recommend it for a lot of good laughs and the truth it delivers.
Making room for new
experiences in my life has been made possible by deleting trivial thinking (Spam-self-centered thinking) to free up my mind for new
important files (New spirit building projects). Self-centered thinking and
creature comforts are trivial excuses for not doing God’s will. It doesn’t
really matter if we can control what we have for supper compared to human needs
going unmet. Shouldn’t we experiment with how big we can think, not how safe or
comfortable we can think?
Past experiences of successes
can help us realize we can still accomplish big things in life, no matter how
old we are. The important memories of my past are what can make me the man I
can be and can become. I started deleting unimportant daily details; creature
comfort details and selfish thoughts I had been playing like tape recordings in
my head, to make room for new and important thoughts and plans, which
surprisingly many of those new thoughts and plans have origins in our past.
Having steak for supper once a week is not the most important thing in the
world for me or anybody else to worry about or even plan for.
Before we started our journey
I would go grocery shopping every week for my comfort foods Sarah would
prepare. I’ve stopped shopping because I’m embarrassed at how much we have and
how so many vulnerable people have nothing. It has been an eye opening experience to see how happy orphans are and how
people who barely get by don’t complain. I think they are happy for what they
have, even if it’s not having enough food to eat every day.
I can complain about the most
trivial things. I don’t know about you, but complaining is my default mode and
I now realized, complaining gets in the way of my happiness. Have you ever
ripped out the seat of your pants? Did you complain, fret or chastise yourself?
A good laugh would have been better medicine for your health.
I’ve discovered thinking
about other’s needs is what dreaming is all about. Here in America we have the
resources to get what others in the world can only dream about. The father in
India who can fit his wife and three children on his motor bike knows what it
is to dream for a car, which is completely out of his reach, because he can’t
see ever saving up the money to buy a car. Think about the orphan who dreams
about a family and how you can be a part of making their dream come true. We’ve
been a part of thirty orphans finding loving families.
I want you to realize
starting this journey is helping me discover all these wonderful things that
are possible to accomplish, helping dreams to come true for others. I’m
becoming part of their lives.
It only takes piddling
amounts of money to make those dreams come true. Helping others make their dreams come true started for me
when I discovered my Bible mission verses. I’ve known the verses most of my
adult life, but I never thought about acting on them, until now.
Sarah Helena, what we saw on
our trip to China and the encouragement I have received when I have shared my
dreams became God’s perfect storm, motivating me to action.
Nobody is telling me how to
do this. I’m discovering what God really wants me to know, simply by starting
the journey in the Bible with the authentic Jesus as my mentor and teacher.
Reading my Bible has become
like a scavenger hunt for the map to happiness. In my past I studied my Bible
for information not destination or outcome. I understood the information
intellectually, but not emotionally with the purpose of connecting the story to
emotions that would cause me to grow into another level of understanding and by
reaching that new level, change the outcomes of my behavior. I could either let
the information lay on the surface of my consciousness, which I could easily
forget or I could embrace it emotionally, making it a part of me, deep in my
bones. I can do that by substituting my name for the biblical character’s name,
allowing me to become a part of their story. I’ll give you an example of how to
do that in a few minutes, by retelling the story of Abraham and Sarah.
Having important goals
strengthens relationships. We’ve
found while sitting on an airplane, returning from a trip from a different part
of the world, making plans for the orphans we had met, we enjoy each other’s
company more than we did when we were at home with Sarah in her office, working
on her computer and I’m in the den working on my computer with me listening to
old movies on television.
The orphans and our travels
have brought us together mentally and physically. Our love and respect for each
other has expanded and blossomed. I remembered what brought us together in the
first place, Sarah’s character qualities. No that’s not right, I first felt
safe with Sarah, then I realized I had never known a woman in my past,
including my Mother, to be as strong and steady as Sarah was even in her
twenties. Today, I see those same qualities in Sarah when we are trying to help
orphans.
Challenges in our lives help
bring out our character qualities.
Sarah gets to use all her character qualities helping the orphans. I’m also
discovering new qualities I never knew Sarah possessed so deeply and
passionately. I’ll not try to explain where her passion for life comes from.
I’ll accept all her wonders as a gift from God to me. I think Sarah is a lot
smarter and more resourceful than I am. Sarah helps me be a better man. It’s so
easy to miss all that when you drift.
I’m feeling like I did when
we first got married. I was really optimistic back then, looking forward to
unknown adventures. Unfortunately, I had turned out to be a
‘glass half empty’ old man. The opportunities and challenges of helping the
orphans have helped me return to a ‘glass half full’ young man again; at least
a young man in my thinking. We’re a team again, working on important things together.
I don’t mean redecorating our 1960 ranch style home. The Lord knows there is
plenty to do to our old home. I mean important projects outside our selves and
our immediate personal needs. I’m optimistically looking at new selfless
opportunities. I think as individuals, disengaged from the real world, we
aren’t the people God wants us to be as we are when we are helping others.
We are important when
someone needs us. When a child’s life
and future depends on us their dependence creates a bond, between Sarah and me,
like we had when our baby boys depended on us. 10 or 15 years of empty nest
living can take meaningful purpose out of our lives or at least diminish
purpose. Maybe it’s because of that narrow focus on our present routine and
comforts. We can loose memory capacity, running on autopilot, seeking selfish
comforts. I did.
Driving the same streets,
going to the same destinations day after day is dull compared to the exciting
places, planning a trip to China lets you visit. You can always plan on including a stop over in an exciting
European or Asian city. You might visit one of your email pals who had helped
you with your projects.
Big boy and girl toys and
property are nothing but burdens, sometimes making us older than we really are.
Possessions are burdens, compared to smiling, laughing little brown face babies
whose lives represent so much hope, even if they have physical blemishes,
medical problems and dirty diapers.
When I’m holding them and
their head is rested next to mine I can feel God in them as I hear their sweet
restful breathing. You see I think God and His Angels hover nearer to orphans,
because they don’t have powerful advocates like parents.
I believe what Jesus said
when He said, I wouldn’t leave you an orphan; the Comforter is coming to take
my place. Why should I leave them orphans? We can’t help them all, but we have
helped 30 orphans find happy American families to love them.
Maybe I am their comforter or I bring the
Comforter, Jesus talks about, to them. The orphans and their needs are
challenging in good ways. It’s really a Godly way and I believe by providing
their needs we are empowering the Comforter to work through us. I also believe
that every time we give the Comforter a chance to work through us we are building
a relationship with the Comforter like a wife and husband build as they work
together raising a family. It’s one thing to say we know the Comforter can
work, but a far better thing to say we KNOW
the Comforters has worked
through us.
Planning a vacation is not
the same as figuring out how to make an orphan’s life better. You can have your vacation and help orphans all in
one big happy event. We started saying we need to visit that foster home we
heard about over that mountain in China. I wonder what it looks like? I wonder
what we’ll find? Maybe we’ll go there on our next trip. A child who needs you
or a whole orphanage needing you is a more important reason to go back, than
staying at a special resort in a spectacular setting, getting a suntan. A depressing
orphanage full of little bright living jewels is more spectacular than an ocean
view, at sunset, from the balcony of a 4 star resort. On some trips you can have both. Don’t you know God has a
travel agency that can book your trip, giving you all you need? We’ll put you
in touch with God’s Travel Agency when you’re ready.
If you don’t want to travel
that far, how about substituting a dowdy, down on its luck nursing home in your
city? I’m sure the residents and workers would welcome your attention. I once
met a man in a nursing home who helped build the Panama Canal. I also met a
professional baseball player and the stories of Depression kids help me
understand what America was and is all about. I don’t think there is anything
as good as hearing another person’s story, especially a person with time on
their clock.
Nursing homes are full of
American stories. Just last week there was a senior sitting in a wheel chair,
wearing a ball cap with his bandaged left foot up. Someone asked me would I
like to meet Bill Wade. “The real Bill Wade?” I responded. I met the real Bill
Wade, professional football player, at a recital Sarah Helena performed in at a
local nursing home. Bill Wade was a big football celebrity when I was a boy. He
was the quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams and the Chicago Bears. Meeting
Bill Wade was such a surprise and made my youthful memories kick in. I
remembered the sports writer Fred Russell and I asked Mr. Wade if he was ever
the target of one of Fred Russell’s infamous practical jokes. Mr. Wade warmly
laughed as his face brightened up. If you get out of the daily ruts you’ve dug
for yourself, your visits to nursing homes and the people you meet can spark
all kinds of pleasant memories and it pleases God. It also does a lot of good
for someone tethered to a wheelchair.
A consumer society isn’t
conducive to meaningful relationships.
Looking back on our lives since our sons have left home I think we did a lot of
drifting and substituting collecting personal property for real feelings and relationships.
I think when you are filled with hopes and dreams for others you stop drifting
and discover unfulfilled hopes and dreams for yourself, which don’t have
anything to do with money or personal property. I don’t think dreams are dreams
until you share them with others. I think our dreams should be shared. What do you think?
Have you been reluctant to
admit or say out loud your dreams to someone you love and spent most of your
life with? Haven’t you ever felt like telling your mate you’re bored with your
life, but you didn’t? Don’t you think God intended for us to have meaningful
purpose so we don’t need
to feel bored? I don’t mean
God wants us to fill our homes with new stuff as a substitute for doing His
will. Redecorating your home or buying stuff isn’t the meaningful purpose I’m
talking about. For me, meaningful purpose is giving justice to His people,
taking care of the widows and the fatherless as expressed in the first chapter
of Isaiah. Discovering Mission verses have ways to move drifting Christians to
purposeful action.
It took me 2 years to get the
courage to tell Sarah my dream after I discovered I had a dream. I made the
announcement I was going to quit my job and we were going to start a foundation
to help American families with adoption expenses, with some reluctance. I had
hinted at it, but I never took the deep breath to announce it. I made my announcement, at our home, on Christmas
morning 2004, after Nina and Sarah Helena came to our home to open Christmas
presents. I should have known Sarah would be supportive. If I had not made my
announcement I wouldn’t have this picture of Sarah and the little girl at the
orphanage in India and we wouldn’t have experienced this wonderful spirit
filled life of helping children as we’ve shared.
We can make a difference. I want to be clear about this, because it is an
important reason to put yourself out in the world, doing something you’ve never
done before. Consider this thought; we can help an orphan correct medical
conditions, get them out of an impoverished orphanage into a clean safe foster
home and into an adoption pool of special needs orphans.
Every one of those special
needs orphans is put on the fast track for a family to adopt them. If we hadn’t
come along and helped that orphan, they would spend their childhood in an
orphanage and when they turned 15 or 16 they would be put out on the street
with little education, a new set of clothes and maybe a little money and if
they came to the orphanage with a serious medical condition they probably are
going to leave their orphanage with the same medical condition, if their
medical condition hadn’t already killed them. That’s happening all over the
world, right now today. Orphans are put out on the street to be preyed on by
the sex industry and those who would enslave them in other ways.
Even in Israel human
trafficking is a big business and prostitution is legal and girls as young as
12-years-old, sell their bodies. The United Nation has listed Israel high on
the list of nations having problems with human trafficking. You should check
that out for yourself. Type ‘United Nations human trafficking Israel’ into
google and read the articles. You can also type, ‘is prostitution legal in
Israel.’ I mention Israel, because I always pictured Israel as a place full of
purity, because I thought the Jews were trying to restore their relationship
with God. I think we’re all vulnerable to the depravity of greed.
America
is no better than Israel when it comes to human trafficking.
You are important. Think how we can change their childhood and their
future life and we are doing it for someone we’ll never see again or maybe
never see at all. Maybe we’ll just have a picture of them. Hopefully we’ll have
a picture of them here in America with their new families. What a miracle!
This is a note from a young
Chinese girl we helped her parents adopt. We sent her a High School graduation
present and she sent us this note. I talked about Lily a little earlier.
Mr.
& Mrs. Rummage:
Thank
you for the Target gift card! It will definitely help me a lot while I attend
college this fall! Thank you so much for donating money to my family so they
could adopt me. This means a lot to me and my family. Without your help, the
adoption could not have happened. Again, Thank you so much! Love Lilly
Lilly was 13 years old when
she was adopted. She was one year away from never being adopted according to
Chinese adoption laws. We have a picture of Lilly when she first arrived in
America and we have her H. S. Graduation picture. Lilly means a lot to Sarah
and me.
In most cases a few Americans
can pay for children with medical needs without putting a strain on their own
budgets. A cleft pallet operation is less than $1,000 in China, including
travel to a big city hospital with a Nanny as the baby’s escort. That’s why you
create a Circle of Friends to spread the cost. Do you have 10 friends to share
the cost? Doing unselfish acts of charity surely pleases God. I think God will
be more pleased with our motives and efforts, rather than our money. Our money
is God’s money anyway and we shouldn’t be stingy with it.
Have you ever wondered
what is in the mind of a mother who adopts a special needs child? Many people respond, “Why adopt a sick or physically
handicapped child?” Here is a snippet from an adoptive Mother’s email about her
specials needs orphan. Notice the reality in the Mother’s words concerning her
little girls medical condition, but notice the hope her little daughter gives
her. You’ll see her complete message a little later. We helped the Foster Home
with financial help, which makes us feel a part of this new family’s joy.
The
spina bifida for which we researched and prepared for has not been the extent
to which we anticipated. The unknowns of other issues have been more than
we could have predicted. Her story is a picture that adoption is most
always a chance of unknowns; and always, I believe, worthy of the extent it may
require. To be a part of changing a life, not only the child adopted, is an
amazing process. Not an event, but an experience. One in which only
the future will reveal the end of the story.
Her
story is one that, while we are happy to be able to bring her home, saddens
me. Like so many waiting children with multiple or severe special needs,
she was available for adoption a long, long time before we were able to be her
family. I hope that her story will be an encouragement to other families to
take a chance and open their hearts to a child they may not have initially
considered.
This Mother is the salt of
the earth the Bible talks about.
Matthew 5: 13 “You are
the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made
salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and
trampled underfoot.
What does salt of
the earth, loosing saltiness and how can it be made salty again possibly mean? I want you to remember I’m not a Bible scholar so any
answers I give you are going to be ‘a man on the street answers.’ I did go to a
Bible college a long time ago and I’ve been going to church ever since, so I
might have a little more knowledge, but probably not much.
There are approximately 30 references to salt in the
Bible. I don’t think God, Jesus or the Comforter would leave us in the dark
about the meaning of being the salt of the earth. They knew that gentiles were
going to be adopted then and now and we would need to understand. I just don’t
think They would confuse future generations.
I think we know salt is basic to survival. Nashville
was established very near a salt lick where buffalo, deer and other animals
came to lick the salt deposits. Man and animals need salt for health reasons.
Salt was put on wounds to heal them and newborn babies were washed in salt in
Biblical times. Salt also provides zest in our lives. It flavors our food and
makes eating enjoyable.
Salt also has a destructive nature. If you water your
garden or flowers with salt water they will die. Salt melts snow and rust our
car fenders. Too much salt in our diets causes high blood pressure. The nature of salt is a two-edge sword.
In Biblical times I understand salt represented
faithfulness, peace, permanence and honor. God made a salt covenant with David
and man.
2
Chronicles 13: 5 “Don't you know that the LORD, the God of Israel, has given the
kingship of Israel to David and his descendants forever by a Covenant of Salt?
Numbers
18: 19 Whatever is set aside from the holy offerings the Israelites present to
the LORD I give to you and your sons and daughters as your regular share. It is
an everlasting Covenant of Salt before the LORD for both you and your
offspring.
I
have a few last thoughts about salt. The table salt we use at home takes the
form of white crystals. The interesting thing about those white crystals is
when you put them on food or in a broth, the crystals disappear, but the taste
of salt remains. The taste doesn’t disappear. When I put myself into the lives
of the orphans, pour myself out to them, I think I disappear, transforming
God’s instructions for me to help into actions which exhausts me, but the value
of our relationship and what I add with the help of God will last, like the
flavor of salt. I disappear, but the taste of the love of God continues to
flavor their lives. I’ll talk about pouring myself out a little later. Pouring
myself out was an important step in renewing my spiritual life.
Do
you remember Lilly’s note to us? Through God’s love we helped her American
parents adopt her. Lilly nor her little sister or her parents knows what we
look like because we, like the crystals of salt disappeared, but the flavor,
God’s love remains in their lives and in our lives. Only God can make us salty.
We are meant to be the
salt of the earth and I think helping a stranger helps us to be made salty
again. Even if you’ve wasted years
like I did, just look at what can happen in 7 years of earnestly partnering
with God. If we can make that much difference in a child’s life, you can also.
It’s not too late for you to become the salt of the earth, even if you’ve lost
your saltiness. You’ve got a big selection of God’s children to help. There are
obviously the orphans, but there are also the homeless, the disabled, hungry
seniors and children and students in your city who need to learn English and
eat three meals a day.
Just think how much more this
purposeful life can broaden and deepen our own spiritual journey, change our
own circumstances and change the lives of our children and grand children. I
can hear the Godly hope and compassion in that Mother’s thoughts about her
little girl in spite of all her medical uncertainties.
If we give our help in God’s
name and God is with us just think what we can accomplish. Do you remember the
Bible verse, which says if God is with us, who can be against us? We are the
salt of the earth when we do God’s will and it’s never too late nor should it
ever be inconvenient to do God’s will.
Does America have the
wrong idea about age? It may be that
society has the wrong idea, but some people don’t believe life is over when you
reach retirement. These are just a few examples.
Some of the most meaningful
human accomplishments have been through the work of people over 60 years of
age. Noah Webster completed his American English Dictionary in his 60s. Paul Newman, in his 60s, started a food
company that has given millions to charity. Jimmy and Rosilan Carter have
established and direct a humanitarian foundation accomplishing much to help
underprivileged people around the world. Ronald Regan was the oldest man sworn
in as President twice and the second time he was already in his 70s. Benjamin
Franklin helped draft the Declaration of Independence after 60. Casey Stengel, who said, “When you come
to a crossroad take it,” began managing the New York Mets after his 70th
birthday. Just think of what you can do.
Grandma Moses started painting at 77.
We should be more valuable at
retirement age than we were at 30 years old, because of experience and skills
learned. You should be getting the idea age is not a hindrance or an excuse why
you can’t accomplish important work that can leave legacies. All you need to do
is look at what the majority of people have seen and think something different
from what they thought.
Think how important your life
is, no matter how old you are, if you can save a child from a childhood in a
bleak orphanage or their illness’s death sentence, because they were born with
special medical needs and their parents and their orphanage couldn’t afford to
get them medical care. Think how powerful a group of experienced Baby Boomers
can be, especially if they enlist God’s help.
Sounds like your Circle of
Friends (modern day Apostles), I’m proposing, is a Baby Boomer Peace Corps of
days gone by, operated by God and manned by older people. If you’re too old to
travel or if your health won’t permit travel your Circle of Friends can finance
a younger couple to travel for you and find orphans to help.
We’ve met a lot of Heroes
on our journey. Arthur couldn’t travel, but he sent Sarah and me to do God’s
work for him in Israel. A little
later I’m going to tell you about Arthur, a 97-year-old man who changed the
lives of hundreds of orphans and school children in the last year of his life
and how he will change thousands of children’s lives into the future. He also
changed the lives of two of his Grand Children, because they’ve seen first hand
his good intentions and how their Grand Father’s good works became reality.
They’ve seen the school his gift built and the orphans whose lives his gift has
changed. It made such an impression on his Grand Children they wanted to forgo
seeing tourist sights and spend all their remaining time with the orphans. I’ll
guarantee you their Grand Father has changed their lives by making his gift.
We haven’t given up
anything. Sarah and I still have the
lives we were living, but our lives have another dimension and are just fuller
and more satisfying, but you can make your own judgment about us as you read
our story and see our pictures. I’d also say, associating with people who have
big unselfish dreams, like our Heroes, stimulates us to dream bigger and be
more hopeful. That’s the way it worked for us. I hope I can help you see that.
Spiritual Renewal Is Another Benefit Of
Leaving A Legacy
My neglect for the needs of
people at risk in the world caused God to wait a long time for me to come to my
senses. I was like the Prodigal Son. I’m glad God waited for me. Unlike Jesus I
didn’t have the spiritual strength to resist the things of the world the Devil
was selling. I put my spiritual life on hold, too busy scratching for success
and things.
Change can be challenging. I have to confess not long after we started planning
our legacy I was feeling uncomfortable. The deeper we got into searching for a
concrete plan the more I was needing to depend on God, which in truth I wasn’t
accustomed to doing. Were you frightened when you bought your first house?
Buying a house was a big scary deal for me. My Mother and Father lost 2 houses
and ended up living in a rented house before their divorce, but I did know
people who had bought houses and didn’t loose them. When you buy a house you
have all these experts who can help you and give you advice. I had confidence
that what happened to my Mother and Father wasn’t going to happen to Sarah and
Me, but I was still uncomfortable.
Starting a legacy is not
like buying a house; it’s actually scarier. We didn’t know anybody who was leaving a legacy, not even at church;
that’s because they weren’t telling and we weren’t asking. Our lack of
knowledge wasn’t because they weren’t there. We knew a lot of people who could
give us advice about buying a house. You see, selling homes is a big business,
which gets a lot of advertising attention, but somehow organized Christianity
thinks it’s bragging to tell people about doing God’s work, so they don’t
advertise.
Too many Christians ‘hide
their light under a bushel basket,’ instead of shinning it for the entire world
to see. Jesus didn’t hide His light. The ministry of Jesus caused a big
explosion in His world. I think we need to change the attitude that telling
what we do in God’s name is bragging. I think many more Christians would be
leaving a legacy if they knew what other Christians were doing.
Some legacy builders were at
church, but we didn’t know how to find them and enlist them as mentors. We
didn’t even know to call what we were trying to do, creating a legacy. We
started calling doing God’s work a legacy after we saw how our results affected
those who we helped, our family members, friends and even strangers. God’s work
through us and our Circle of Friends was truly a legacy for all of us. It was
God’s legacy, which we were privileged to be a part of. In the beginning we
were also a little timid about announcing to the world what we were trying to
do, especially because we didn’t know how to explain what we were doing or how
to answer questions.
We were afraid people would
laugh at us for giving our time and money away to orphans in China, but we knew
how important Sarah Helena had become to us and how precious she was and the
thought of her still living in an orphanage was so unsettling.
I didn’t know how big the
opportunity was, waiting for us in China.
We were risking a large part
of our retirement funds. We had already spent thousands of dollars setting up
our foundation. We were contemplating spending the rest of our money on travel
and care for orphans. We didn’t know how much all of it would cost and if we
really did have enough dollars to see the job to the finish line. I didn’t have a job anymore and at my
age the prospects of replacing my income seemed impossible. Sarah was
neglecting her real estate business, because our planning was taking up so much
time. Our personal expenses continued to eat away at our money and we were
already spending money on our future travel expenses as we stumbled around in
the dark. Like hungry wolves biting at our heels, time was ticking away. It was
already summer and November was our “D Day” to travel.
I admit I had second thoughts. If I didn’t have the hope I could change an orphan’s
life and if I didn’t have Sarah as a partner, I think the process of helping
orphans and spiritual renewal, pouring myself out, leaping into the unknown by
faith, I think this journey would be beyond bearing. I could not have done this
on my own. At the time I didn’t know what we were doing was giving birth to
personal spiritual renewal. Taking on the management of a Coca-Cola plant and
real employees at 27 years of age wasn’t as scary as jumping into this
complicated dark hole. No amount of life experience can prepare you to actually
meet God face to face in the “Tent of Meeting.” I’ll explain “Tent of Meeting”
a little later. It’s actually in your Bible and I’ll quote the verse. In all my
life I had never met God face to face, or so I thought at the beginning of our
journey.
Please don’t get my
intentions wrong; I’m not a Bible scholar. I’m just an ordinary man quoting a
Bible verse and I’m interpreting the verse emotionally and practically from my
life’s experience, as best I can, not from a scholarly point of view I acquired
at a University through advanced study. What I learned about spiritual growth
was learned on the job, out in the world full of orphans and needy people.
I was about to understand
a Bible story in a new way. I was
afraid I would fail and Sarah would think less of me. Maybe Abraham had the
same apprehension of failure and letting down Sarah, his wife, when he packed
up and did what God wanted him to do. I wonder if Abraham’s friends told him he
was crazy and if moving was a crackpot idea? Maybe Abraham was like us and
didn’t say much about what he was going to do, or Who was sending him.
I wonder how many people back
then, or for that matter people today, believe that God actually speaks to man.
How does God speak to flesh and blood man? Does God only use Scriptures, or
does He have a voice like we do, or does He speak to us in dreams, or through
angels or does He speak to us with gentle nudging, like through a little girl
named Sarah Helena? There are many examples of God appearing to man in the Old
Testament. Maybe you should look them up.
I could substitute my name
for Abraham’s in their story. I don’t
know how Abraham felt about failure and letting Sarah down and leading her into
a wild place where they might die or he might be killed by himself, but his
actions sure fit with my own experience. It’s very human to be afraid of
change, failure and unknown places. I think because Abraham introduced Sarah as
his sister, he must have had some of the same fears I have. Maybe Abraham was
still holding on to the false belief he can control events in his life, even if
he needed to lie. Maybe I acquired that silly idea from Abraham, along with
some other bad habits.
I understood Abraham’s story
differently as an adult dreamer about to embark on a journey I had never made
into the unknown in China rather than a journey, from a boy’s perspective, in
my parent’s car driving to the mountains in East Tennessee for a vacation in
the 1950s or Sarah and me taking our kids on a vacation in our VW Camper Van.
I’m going to include a lot of
Bible verses and stories in our own story. You see I discovered being a
know-it-all, thinking I knew everything there was to know about the Bible
stories I learned a long time ago, didn’t quite help me know what I needed to
know today as an adult.
I had no idea the old Bible
stories have new meaning when you put them into the context of your present
circumstances, if you read their stories on an experiential level, if you read
them with an open mind, not interpreting them solely by what some religious
leader said they meant, without personally pondering all the possible meanings
yourself, if your circumstances have changed enough to make you uncomfortable
with the status quo and oh yes, if you’re dreaming dreams for others you’ve
never dreamed before; dreams you’re finally willing to share and say out loud;
those kind of dreams are life changing dreams.
The Bible is not a guide for
picking out the best new car or the best steak at the supermarket, but it is
the best guide for developing character, a spiritual relationship with God and
solving problems; the solutions of which will please God. You see character
development, establishing healthy relationships and solving life’s problems,
are all best expressed as balanced emotional activities with God’s instructions
at its core.
I think if we limit solving
problems to our intellect or what someone else says, we won’t recognize all our
potential solutions. Intellectually I would have never understood the problem I
had with a weak spiritual life or how to have a strong spiritual life just by
believing what others believe. It was when I considered my spiritual life with
my own emotions did I feel the true depth of my spiritual hunger. I needed to
recognize that I was spiritually bankrupt without acting out God’s will and
that God would breath life back into me.
Genesis 12: 1 The LORD
had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s
household to the land I will show you. 2 “I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse;
and
all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” 4 So Abram went, as the LORD
had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old ( Abraham
was past RETIREMENT AGE! ) when he set
out from Harran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions
they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set
out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. 6 Abram traveled through
the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time
the Canaanites were in the land. 7 The LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To
your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to
the LORD, who had appeared to him.
8 From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his
tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to
the LORD and called on the name of the LORD. 9 Then Abram set out and
continued toward the Negev. 10 Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went
down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. 11 As he
was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful
woman you are. 12 When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his
wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister,
so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because
of you.” 14 When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very
beautiful woman. 15 And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to
Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. 16 He treated Abram well for her
sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and
female servants, and camels. 17 But the LORD inflicted serious diseases on
Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai. 18 So Pharaoh summoned
Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was
your wife? 19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my
wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!” 20 Then Pharaoh gave
orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and
everything he had.
I always thought
Abraham’s story was only about obeying God. I never considered Abraham’s feelings
or his failure to be honest. Even if their situation was dire, lying about his
relationship with Sarah demonstrates he didn’t trust God would protect them and
he had a serious character problem.
Try rewriting this
story with you and your family in it. Maybe it was taking a new job you were
afraid was beyond your skill level or you were getting a new boss with a bad
reputation or maybe you got transferred to a new city in a new state where your
family didn’t know anyone. Maybe you felt uncomfortable about a friend or a
boss paying way too much attention to your spouse.
Write how you felt
making your move in a rented truck you packed yourself or a company paid moving
van. How did you handle jealousy? See if you can enjoy all of Abraham’s or
Sarah’s emotions concerning what was unknown, their feelings and mistakes by
considering how your emotions, feelings and mistakes made you feel back then. I
guess Sarah was sexually compromised in order to keep Abraham’s lie and save
his life? I want you to remember this same faulty Abraham became Father
Abraham.
I’m thinking back to our
past. I’m thinking of the decision
Sarah and I made to move to New Bern, North Carolina and how it changed our
lives. I’m also thinking of Nina’s decision, years later, to get her law degree
from Pepperdine and after graduation, moving from CA, taking a job at a health
care company in Chesapeake Virginia and go to a little community church meeting
in a public school building cafeteria and meeting a couple who went to China to
adopt a little girl, which gave Nina the idea and courage to adopt her own
little girl baby from China. Now I understand those decisions we made were
truly God driven decisions, because all our decisions over the year were
essential to what we are doing today.
When I write our names into
Abraham and Sarah’s story it sounds like the following. “John, Sarah and Nina I
have some things I want you to do. You won’t understand now, but you’re going
to be a part of a great spiritual journey I’m planning for you. Nina you’re
going to have a baby.” That’s what God said. Nina said, “But I’m not married!”
God said, “Don’t worry Nina, I’m going to take care of everything in my own
time.” Back then adoption never entered Nina’s thinking. God would send Nina an
example.
Sarah and I said, “Moving to
New Bern, North Carolina sounds like a big scary move! It’s such a remote
little town and so far away from home and our family.” Over 30 years passed
from the time we moved to New Bern to when Nina and Sarah went to China to get Sarah
Helena. A lot of things happened and didn’t happen in those years. I haven’t
really begun to tell you what happened to all of us during those years.
Those decisions were just too
complicated and intertwined to be serendipity. I’ll talk about this idea of
being part of God’s plan and what happens to us not being serendipity, a little
later. I believe God has a plan for all of us. God will make us feel alive if we’ll just let Him have His
way with us. I just can’t imagine living the same old dull, lifeless life today
that I was living ten years ago. That old life looked good, but at its core it
had no purpose except to create creature comforts for me.
I started remembering
important experiences. I was feeling
like I felt after a doctor told me I had cancer in the center of my chest,
which complicated operating on me and I should go home and write a Will. I was
devastated. My prayers were prayers of desperation. I prayed so hard, if I
could have sweated blood I would have. I was so frightened. I had so much to
loose and so much responsibility and so much more of life to live. I had an
exceptional wife and 3 beautiful little boys and I couldn’t stand the thought
of leaving them for some Pharaoh to take my place and sleep in my bed and raise
my children with weird ideas I wouldn’t approve of.
I had a career to die for and
that seemed to be exactly what it looked like I was going to do. I thought with
all that I had and such a bright future, it would be a waste of a good life to
die and leave it all behind. I felt like I was being cheated. I would go in the
bathroom, lock the door and sit on the cold tile floor and pray desperate
prayers for God to save me. I even made promises I wasn’t capable of
fulfilling.
I remembered a Bible
concept that gave me hope. The first
thing I did after the Doctor told me about cancer was to go to my Elders and
ask them to pray for me and lay hands on me. That’s what the Bible tells us to
do. I looked at God’s instructions as a promise He would heal me.
James 5: 14 Is any
sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray
over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: 15 And the prayer of
faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have
committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. 16 Confess your faults one to
another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent
prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
My Elders said they didn’t do
that sort of thing, but our new preacher, F.W. ‘Bill’ Mattox said, “you do
those things” and he said he will show them how to pray and lay on hands. I
wonder if God was responsible for sending Bill to Wilmington, N.C. just for me
and the training of men who just months before had been the church’s business
committee and had no idea of the responsibility of Elders, beyond managing the
church money.
The Wilmington Elders didn’t
understand they had the full authority of Elders to do that sort of thing. My
crisis was part of their spiritual journey. I should have asked them what they
thought about me not dying. I also wonder if the power of Elders praying for
healing really sunk into their consciousness, since I was their first
experiment into praying for healing.
A cancer diagnosis is one
of those deep dark holes you can get sucked into without the hope of surviving.
Everybody I ever knew who had a
cancer diagnosis died a very painful death. My Father’s brother died of a
painful stomach cancer. As soon as the family heard the diagnosis they prepared
to bury him. I remembered my Father coming home from visiting my Uncle Beau in
the hospital and he said Beau had started vomiting up his stomach and he threw
away a handkerchief he used to wipe Uncle Beau’s blood off of his mouth.
The two weeks before my
operation I read two novels about death. I re-read Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Mayor of
Casterbridge’ and Ingmar Bergman’s ‘The Seventh Seal.’ My spirit was so dark
and morose because I was wallowing in the idea of dying. And then in Time
Magazine or News Week I read a letter from a woman who had cancer and was
dieing and was also wallowing in the prospects of her death. She explained she
had determined she wasn’t going to spend any money on herself and isolate until
she died. She went on to say she got a toothache. She thought she would tough
it out until she died, but the pain became unbearable so she gave in and had a
dentist fill her tooth. Then she said “what the heck,” those are my words from
memory, and went out and bought a new dress.
Her Letter to the Editor
helped me stop feeling sorry for myself. I renewed my hope that maybe I could
make a deal with God. I started praying give me time to do a good deed in my
life, a really big good deed. In the weeks before my operation I also did a lot
of searching for human understanding like Abraham and Sarah searched for
understanding with human eyes and experience, instead of searching with
spiritual eyes and spiritual experience.
My prayers were still all
about my needs. Can you sense I still
thought I could control events in my life, even control something as powerful
as cancer? I didn’t even think in terms of waiting to see what God had in store
for me. I just jumped into the cancer dilemma and was going to figure it out
for my self. I even got the address of a Mexican clinic, which had an
experimental cancer therapy and I made a plan how to get there and when to go.
I think I was thinking, I’m
going to die so I’m not going to wait for God; I was going to figure out death
for myself. Thinking back to that time I now see while I believed in the Bible
and God’s promises, I wanted to embrace human suffering on my own terms. I
wanted to discover the words of human beings who knew about death. I took
comfort in knowing that from the earliest history of mankind, human beings have
always feared death and I was looking for a human process, an example of dieing
to express my fear, give words and images to my feelings of desperation.
I thought with so much death
in the world human beings surely have developed a dieing philosophy I could understand.
I found it, but it was like watered down chicken broth you could see through.
What a contradiction when you consider I continued to pray for God to save me,
give me more time so I could accomplish something really big and great for God
and mankind.
I think I was like Abraham
and Sarah who heard God’s promise of a child, but they used human reasoning and
sought out what they knew would work, a man having sex with a woman of
childbearing age.
I was vacillating between
faith in God and faith in human reasoning. I anchored my human reasoning in
Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge,’ Ingmar Bergman’s ‘The Seventh Seal’
and my personal life experience of people dying of cancer.
I anchored my faith in God
from my understanding of what God had promised about healing. I thought God had
made me promises and I could show Him the warranty agreement for life, it’s
right there in the Bible, ‘thump-thump’ and He would remove my cancer by me going to my Elders to pray for my
healing and for them to lay hands on me, following His warranty like I do at
the dealership where my new car warranty is enforced.
I believed He would heal me
when I went to the Elders, but then my confidence wavered, so I was back to
human reasoning and getting ready to go to Mexico. My thinking raced back and
forth with the possibilities of God or some Mexican clinic. I didn’t think how
Mexican cancer clinics can come and go, but God is steadfast and forever. God
was about to show me His will is the only thing certain in life, no matter what
I wanted. The truth is I can't pary expecting to change God. I should pray to change ME!
I’m afraid you really won’t
understand all this until you face a death sentence type experience.
Contemplating your own demise through the filters of your intellect and
religious rituals doesn’t really do justice to the act of dieing viewed
personally through your own emotional journey, initiated by the sudden collapse
of your health or the diagnosis, treatment and the agony of personal pain. I
now think I would rather die of a heart attack serving people at the homeless
shelter rather than on my couch reading my Bible; that is if I have a choice.
I continued to have second
thoughts about going to China. Sarah
and I had made a commitment to help orphans get adopted. I had quit my job. We
cashed in and spent a large part of our retirement before we knew how hard it
would be to get started and we might fail. I don’t know that Sarah had the same
fears I had. We didn’t talk about our fears, just our dreams.
If I had not had the hope,
when we started, I could change an orphan’s life like Nina changed Sarah
Helena’s life, which I had no assurance I could do after weeks of struggling to
make a plan, I would have almost abandoned leaving a legacy and continued to
cling onto my old excuses and religious beliefs, which were so familiar and comfortable,
even though I knew deep down in my soul they don’t work and they don’t please
God, but in spite of all those old comfortable excuses and religious beliefs I
didn’t give up trying to change orphan’s lives.
If I gave up and didn’t
follow through and help the orphans would I be like the Rich Man who didn’t
see Lazarus? I think about the
sheer terror I hear in the Rich Man’s plea to Father Abraham, imploring Father
Abraham to warn his family to give justice to God’s people and take care of the
widows and the fatherless, so his family could be in heaven with Lazarus and
not in hell with him.
Could I end up being like the
Rich Man after I die, pleading for my family not to make the same mistakes I
made concerning God’s needy? So much of me doing the right thing in my life
could be characterized as ‘too little too late.’ I didn’t want to be
responsible for my family going to hell, because I was weak or I was a bad
example about following God’s will. Isn’t it comforting that Abraham had time
to straighten out his faith?
In life the biggest things I
prayed for was God to let this cup of cancer’s pain, early death, a new career
when I decided to change jobs and finally ordinary middle age boredom to pass
and oh yes, the effects of a stroke in 2005 to go away without any lasting
damage. If you throw in me praying for good health and material blessing you’ve
pretty much described my prayer priorities.
If you had asked me if I was
like the Rich Man I would have to say no, answering that question in my worldly
frame of mind, but then I think people like Lazarus have always been invisible
to me or at least I’ve never really gone out of my way to help them beyond
giving money and for sure I need to admit they’ve never laid heavily on my
heart, until now. I’m not saying that was the right attitude. I’m saying I
regret the time I’ve wasted.
By my own admission of not
seeing the invisible needy I was condemning myself to be just like the Rich Man
if I gave up and didn’t journey to China, because helping orphans was too
difficult, complicated, messy and it would bring up feelings and emotions that
would make me feel too uncomfortable.
All these years I thought I
deserved and expected God’s help for my trivial needs just like the Rich Man
probably thought he deserved to have Father Abraham’s help. He probably
attended Synagogue like I attended church. He probably compared others to
himself and thought he was glad he wasn’t as hopeless as they were hopeless,
just like I compare myself to others seeking delusional comfort. In the end he
might have thought he deserved God’s help for his intractable problem, but as
we learn it was too late for him to make a difference.
I think I thought I was
different and wasn’t at risk like the Rich Man was at risk, because I certainly
wouldn’t pass up a poor person sitting at my front door without helping them.
You see, my daily routine didn’t have time to worry about the poor. I needed to
get to work. If I were lucky, I would read or hear about the Rich Man’s story
once every few years on Sunday mornings.
I don’t understand why I ever
doubted God’s sincerity, with this Bible example challenging doubt head on? I
think I’ve actually diminished my relationship with God that desperate prayer
about someone else’s problems can foster. I was only praying for selfish needs
with ME as the
recipient of God’s blessings.
Genesis 18: 10-14 The LORD
said, "I will surely return to you in the spring, and Sarah your wife
shall have a son." And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind
him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased
to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed to
herself, saying, "After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I
have pleasure?" The LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah
laugh, and say, 'Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?' Is
anything too hard for the LORD? At the
appointed time I will return to you,
in the spring, and Sarah shall have a son."
Genesis 21: 1 And the
LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did unto Sarah as he had
spoken. 2 For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the
set time of which God had spoken to him. 3 And Abraham called the name of his
son that was born unto him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac.
I think ‘at the appointed
time’ is the key phrase. My
appointed time was when I realized I
needed to help children like Sarah Helena. I felt shame when I considered the
overwhelming needs of children like Sarah Helena in orphanages all around the
world compared to my trivial needs, which I could provide for myself anyway and
if I couldn’t, I probably could have done without what I thought I needed. You see when I asked for God’s help
through prayer and I didn’t see results or like the results, I just went out,
by myself, and did it like I thought it should be done.
God had faithfully waited for
me so He could accompany me on my journey to find my spiritual life after years of wilderness wanderings. God did
come to us in the spring of 2005 after our journey to China in the fall of 2004
and gave us proof and reassurance, but like a drunken fool I still didn’t
understand how God works in our lives.
I should have realized we
couldn’t have succeeded without God’s promise and help, but I still held on to
the idea God needs our help, you know down here on earth since he was so far
away in Heaven, like Abraham and Sarah thought. I wonder if I misunderstood God
like the Apostles didn’t completely understand Jesus and His life’s work.
I was thinking new
thoughts. I’ve learned that spiritual
renewal doesn’t mean retirement from worldly responsibility or giving up
pleasure. I’ve found that a life of giving has unexpected rewards. When you
look at the rewards of giving they don’t appear to have the adrenalin rush,
glitz or pizzazz of self-centered living like when you buy a new car, a new
couch or eat at your favorite restaurant every Friday night, but a life of
giving rewards you with peacefulness and restfulness that energizes you like
waking up in the morning after a good night’s sleep.
Self-centered living compared
to a life of giving is the difference between going to bed after drinking and
waking up with a headache and going to bed after working on saving an orphan
and waking up with hope and feeling blessed and being at peace with your
existence. Your life is all the better because you’ve shared a relationship
with God because you’ve needed Him to get the work accomplished.
My Old ways of thinking
started unraveling. My religious
routine, church service and Sunday school classes every week were taking a back
seat to helping the orphans. Bible stories and individual verses took on new
meaning. My life was evolving into a completely unrecognizable routine. The
time I was spending on our trip and making plans, made me feel closer to God
than I did at church.
The truth was I had stopped
sensing God at church a long time ago. I know that because I now know what it
is really like to be one with God when I look at a baby orphan and say to
myself or out loud, “What do you think God; how are we going to help this
child?”
I’m thinking a lot of church
experience for me had become hearing someone talking about God and talking at
Him, but not really helping me make Him part of my DNA; at least I thought
church had not been successful at making God part of my DNA.
I now know why Jewish writers
talk so much about God rescuing them, because how could unarmed people, no
matter how many they numbered, fight Pharaoh’s army. In my case how could Sarah
and I without experience or knowledge and not even being able to understand the
language rescue orphans in far away China, without God’s help.
In church I had become a
simple spectator, maybe like the people who witnessed the spectacle of the last
hours of Jesus, wondering what it was all about, because they didn’t have all the facts or maybe because they saw the
drama played out so many times before, when Roman soldiers arrested Jews and
had them crucified. And how do you explain the Apostles having all the facts
and still not believing. I wonder if it was because they hardened their hearts
like Pharaoh and just didn’t want to believe in spite of what Jesus told them
over and over again.
I’ve started questioning if
personally working in the lives of God’s needy and imitating Jesus is more productive
in making God part of my DNA than being a spectator in church. I was giving
working in the lives of orphans and imitating Jesus a try and it was working
for me.
I think what I’m talking
about is like the difference between just dating a person as opposed to making
a commitment and marrying them. They become intimately part of your DNA after
you’ve married them, lived with them and maturely desired them to be part of
your DNA, even if there is still ‘mystery’ about who they really are and you
still doubt they could love you because they’ve discovered your
shortcomings.
I understood the authentic
life of Jesus more because I was looking at what He did in His life and I
was trying to imitate Him. Jesus was a Jew whose belief in God was founded in the
Torah, the Prophets and the Psalms. I started studying what Jesus would have
studied. I was praying more for understanding Jesus and myself, saying less and
listening more to the answers I was finding. I came to realize that praying
could be more rewarding by just being quiet, listening to God, searching for
answers in the Scriptures and in a real life rather than superficially talking
at God or listening to somebody superficially talking at God.
I found myself praying in
a new way. I also found that writing
this story about what has happened to us as a couple, family and me as an
individual has helped me understand and trust in God more. I sincerely
encourage you to write your story.
At night I was praying, “God
show me what I need to know” and He was giving me new understanding the next
day by allowing me to explore new ideas in a lot of new places with new people.
Just yesterday in our Sunday school class we had a university professor talk
about prayer and the research he had done on prayer. Last night I prayed for
understanding the power of prayer and if it really worked, like if I could give
peace to someone in a stressful situation just by praying to be able to help
them.
This morning, before dawn I
was awake and thinking about prayer when I remembered one of my lunch periods
in the Vanderbilt University Library where I discovered that our bodies have
electrical fields and we could transfer electrical energy to another person. I
next wonder if there is good electrical energy and negative electrical energy?
I’m wondering if I could
transfer my good feelings to another person who was really troubled? It can’t
be such a far-fetched idea if my body has an electrical field that can be
measured. If I’ve got good feelings within me, could I transfer those good
feelings to another person who has negative feelings? I don’t mean with words.
It’s printed in a scholarly book, by a doctor and on the University library
shelf for everyone to read.
I googled, ‘can one person
transfer electrical energy to another person.’ I found ‘empathetic blending’ and it can be done. I
think I’m getting closer to the answer to my questions about the power of
prayer, even thought I’ve never heard in church the answers I’m finding.
I’m thinking the power of
prayer is invisible like my body’s electrical field is invisible and I can’t
know either unless someone shows me how to use the power that prayer and my
electrical energy can produce in another person. I’m thinking because it is
hard to see how our prayers act in other people’s lives we can mistakenly
dismiss the true power of prayer.
I started to wonder if I
needed a prayer mentor to show me how to see answers to my prayers for other
people? Maybe I need to explore my prayers with the people I’m praying for and
see if they can put into words how my prayers have or have not affected them.
Well, I’m guessing I’m
scaring some of you and you’re going to start discounting what I’ve got to say.
Are you thinking electrical power in your body that can be used to calm a
stressful situation in another persons is a ‘humbug?’
If you’re doubting what I’m
saying think about a crying baby and how when you pick that baby up with good
peaceful feelings for that baby, maybe that baby is receiving your good
feelings and intentions from the electrical field in your body and touch and
our good feelings are what sooths the baby’s fears and stops the baby from
crying.
I know those thoughts about
positive electrical energy transfer are so foreign to our intellectual
religiosity, but are those thoughts foreign to our visceral experiences with
babies. I think our experience tells us babies stop crying when we lovingly
pick them up, while our experience might not explain the scientific reasons
why.
Think about Jesus and these verses. Mark 5:21 21 And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the
other side, much people gathered unto him: and he was nigh unto the sea. 22 And, behold, there cometh one
of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and when he saw him, he fell at
his feet, 23 And besought him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the
point of death: I pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be
healed; and she shall live. 24 And Jesus went with him; and much people
followed him, and thronged him. 25 And a certain woman, which had an issue of
blood twelve years, 26 And had
suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and
was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, 27 When she had heard of
Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. 28 For she said, If I
may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. 29 And straightway the fountain of
her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that
plague. 30 And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out
of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? 31 And
his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and
sayest thou, Who touched me? 32 And he looked round about to see her that had done
this thing. 33 But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in
her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. 34 And he said
unto her, Daughter, thy faith (believing in things that can’t be seen?) hath
made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.
Can you differentiate being touched by
your spouse from behind from the touch of a stranger? Not all handshakes and
embraces are alike. Most of the time I can feel the difference between good
will and love in a handshake or an embrace, instead of a hand shake or an
embrace motivated from indifferent cultural custom.
What do you think the meaning of the
phrase, ‘knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him,’ means? Could
virtue be the same as compassion or a drain on our positive energy reserves?
What does virtue mean?
Have you ever shaken someone’s hand or
looked into their eyes and felt or seen pain and need and felt something stir
in you? On many occasions I’ve seen distress in the posture of a stranger and
felt compelled to actually walk up to them and say, “Is there anything I can do
for you,” or introduced myself and say, “Hello, I’m John. I don’t believe we
know each other,” and start an exploratory conversation that says I want to get
to know you. I think there are a lot of invisible feelings, which happens
between 2 people that they can individually feel in a crowd that no one else
senses even if many people bump into them. I also believe people can sense a
strong compassionate feeling in another human being and I believe that we are
all looking for that person who genuinely wants to get to know us.
I remember a time when I was 12 years
old, walking in the Arcade in Nashville with my Father and I saw a girl about
my age walking in the opposite direction with her Mother and Father and me
feeling this compelling force drawing her to me and me to her and after we
passed I turned around to see her looking back at me. Today that memory of that
girl is as alive and compelling as it was when it happened. I think that
experience is one of those unexplainable feelings that disallow the ‘humbug’
that some people would use to dismiss things they don’t want to believe or
feelings that are difficult to explain all of which are invisible.
Jesus was a man like you and me and I
think he was able to use the ‘gifts of the spirit’ that I had dismissed earlier
in my life, but that I now recognize when I leave the insulated world of my
home and the interior of my car or the shell that I can so easily create around
me when I’m uncomfortable and frightened with what is happening to me in the
moment.
I think the Comforter has
helped me put what Mark says about Jesus and the woman’s encounter in context
with what Paul says about what is so easily dismissed in today’s world about the
workings of the Spirit in our lives.
1 Corinthians 12: 1 Now
concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. 2 Ye know
that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were
led. 3 Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the
Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the
Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. 4 Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 And there are differences
of administrations, but the same
Lord. 6 And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God, which worketh all in all. 7 But
the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. (The following makes what Paul is trying to say clearer
to me.) 8 For to one is given by
the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; 9 To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of
healing by the same Spirit; 10 To
another the working of miracles;
to another prophecy; to another discerning
of spirits; to another divers
kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation
of tongues: 11 But all these worketh
that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.
To me the Message actually
makes the verses clearer. I Corinthians, 1-3: What I want to talk about now is the various ways
God's Spirit gets worked into our lives. This is complex and often
miss-understood, but I want you to be informed and knowledgeable. 4-11: God's various gifts are handed out everywhere;
but they all originate in God's Spirit. (I can’t help but ask the question,
is God’s Spirit like an electrical field, real but hard to see?) God's various ministries are carried out everywhere;
but they all originate in God's Spirit. God's various expressions of power are
in action everywhere; but God himself is behind it all. Each person is given
something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone
benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by the Spirit, and to all kinds of
people! The variety is wonderful:
What do you think? Could this
mean you could be empowered to participate in some of these activities,
understand the mysterious feelings and encounters with others that are
happening to you on a daily basis? Could the Comforter interpret those
mysterious feelings and encounters if you asked Her to do that for you and you
were willing to believe Her answers? Do you think what these verses talk about
is no longer available in modern times?
Do you believe that Mark
believed what happened between Jesus and the woman really happened or it was a
nice ‘urban legend’ that fit into his story? Do you think Paul could be
misleading us? I say yes Mark believed and I don’t think Paul is misleading us
and I don’t think it’s far fetched to think I could pass my good feelings,
without me using words, one of the gifts I’ve discovered that God has given me,
on to someone who is suffering, using
nothing but my feelings, touch and my prayers for me to be of comfort to them.
I’ve tried it.
I can not touch a cleft lip
and heal it, but I believe I can pass my feelings of heartfelt compassionate
acceptance in spite of what a persons looks like. I can pass on comfort and
happiness to another and I know I can write a check and get the cleft lip
minded.
If you find it hard to
believe, why not try it for yourself? Go to your nursery at church and pick up
a crying baby or go to a nursing home and hold the hand of a sick person and
think comforting thoughts. I think we all need to believe in the ‘signs and
wonders’ Jesus told us about and be able to see ‘signs and wonders’ for
ourselves.
The deeper we got into
planning our trip to China the more I was sensing a new path. I was sensing new personal information and Bible
understanding. I almost believed I could experience a new adventure, but it had
been so long since I had an adventure I couldn’t quite believe it could happen
to me again.
My intellect still wanted to
control the process, but my emotions told me control took the adventure right
out of our future. I just knew I had to let go because, Sarah and our future
Heroes were revealing things to me I couldn’t have seen if I controlled the
process.
I started to realize if I
were in control of our new adventure it probably would turn out like all the
trips I had meticulously planned all my life. It would have turned out to be
just another business trip. Helping orphans would turn out to be like selling
Post Toasties, Coca-Cola or real estate, not the glorious adventure God had
planned for us, helping orphans.
I started to feel an inkling
of what blind, out of control faith really meant; not the stingy kind of
dribbling faith I had always practiced. God, Sarah and a lot of strangers
needed to be in control of this adventure, not me. I had never been in an
orphanage in China or held an orphan or met people who took care of orphans.
My life wasn’t always
pleasant. My life has had a number of
sobering moments, like leaving the hospital after my operation for the cancer
in my chest. After the operation the hospital said I would need to go home
early. I begged to stay, but there was a northeaster blowing outside and a lot
of sick people needing my room. An elderly Candy Stripper, in a rain slicker,
came to my room and helped me into a wheel chair and rolled me down the hall
into the elevator and down to the first floor, through the entrance, down the
canopied walkway to a spot where I saw Sarah. The rain was blowing sideways. I
was getting soaking wet and shivering cold.
Sarah was standing next to
our station wagon and without warning the Candy Stripper gave me a push towards
Sarah and I was immediately freewheeling down this incline. I felt helpless. I
was picking up speed and Sarah looked like she was a mile from my out of control
wheel chair that at any moment would topple over and spill me onto the wet
concrete. The wheel chair drifted first one-way and then in the other
direction. I couldn’t reach down with my right hand to grab the wheel because
my right side hurt so badly. I couldn’t slow the wheels with my good left arm
and hand. The more I tried to slow the left wheel the more I veered left. Sarah
was shifting back and forth with out stretched arms, waiting to catch me.
When I got home our house was
full of church friends waiting to greet me with fellowship and food. After a
couple of hours of friends coming and going I was frantic and talking about
taking the car out and going to the plant. I thought my office, with its closed
door, would be sweet refuge from all the commotion at home. Sarah called Joe
Mattox, Billy’s son, and he came straight over
and gave me a shot of something to calm me down. I went to bed and rested all
night.
That was the beginning of my
dark year’s long journey to recovery and the hole I was digging, searching for
control, thinking control was the real meaning of life. My cancer experience
terrified me. I was so out of control being told what to do at doctor’s
appointments, during test and at the hospital. I was so helpless, sitting in
those flimsy gowns, having people poke at me with sharp, cold instruments. I
felt like I always felt, but everybody and every thing happening to me told me
I was going to die. Cancer is such a dramatic diagnoses and it’s easy to get
sucked into unavoidable emotional conclusions.
I was determined never to be
out of control again, sort of like Scarlet O’Hara’s promise to herself to never
be hungry again. That kind of thinking is what gets us into trouble. That was
the same kind of thinking Sarah and Abraham had when they took having a baby
into their own hands. I spent the next 15 or so years in a fog of delusion. Oh
I functioned, but I can’t say I was happy.
All those years I
struggled with control issues. As
much as I wanted to let go of control I wasn’t ready to completely let go and
let God lead me. In my work career I was accustomed to reluctantly adjusting my
expectations, calling all my failures anomalies and now when I was about to go
to China I was making the same mistake by making just one more adjustment,
trying to justify my need to exercise control over our trip.
It was like I had amnesia
when it came to remembering the past and how my ideas didn’t always work. I had lost contact with the fresh young
man with so much to live for. I can see now I had actually stopped looking for
adventure and started looking for problems. I was lost in a forest of
opportunity which years earlier I had navigated so easily, but now I just
wanted to limit the opportunity to fit my need for control; if I couldn’t
control, I wouldn’t participate. Everyone around me suffered because of my
stupidity. I’m so blessed Sarah stuck with me.
I also thought I would
always have my religion as an anchor.
I was dead sure everything I believed or didn’t believe about God was written
in the Bible and I already knew all about it. I went to a college that taught
the Bible and those Bible classes gave me license to think I knew all I needed
to know about the Bible and besides, I’ve been studying it all my adult life. I didn’t realize God was always writing
new stories into the lives of His people and today He’s telling His old stories
in new ways I had not yet come to realize. I’ll explain about that a little
later. I think I’ve already started to explain what I mean with Abraham and
Sarah’s story.
I was discovering my belief
in the Bible was wavering and I was ignoring the stories God was trying to
write on my heart. Simply going to church was no longer satisfying. I started
seeing verses and understanding ideas I didn’t know were in my Bible. My safe,
comforting book was becoming an indictment of my life and my lack of
participation in doing God’s will. Everything was becoming a mystery that was
condemning me and without knowing it, I was heading for a train wreck.
I wonder if God was making me
uncomfortable to get my attention? I’m describing a dark uncomfortable journey
taking years for me to make. That was a journey I’m ashamed of now. That was
the journey that started with my cancer diagnosis and living in fear that the
cancer would come back and cheat me out of life.
Sitting in the airplane I
contemplated the prospects of failure.
It was time to travel. I realized I couldn’t control the events hurtling us
towards the airport and a 14-hour flight to China. How could a 15-month-old
baby girl named Sarah Helena have made all these changes in my life? What if
this plan, we thought God had helped us make, failed and we couldn’t help an
orphan get adopted. I never liked failure. I finally had to give up and put my
fate in the hands of God. Life got better from that point on.
This kind of revelation could
not have happened to me back home. Back home I still could hold on to false
ideas, actually the dirty little lies I kept telling myself, like Abraham did
when he said “she’s my sister Mister Overseer!” I was still thinking if I was clever enough and
worked hard enough I still could control some of the events of my life. My
thinking kept drifting between I thought up this idea to help orphans in China
by myself and then I was asking who talked me into this insane trip? Was it God
sending us to China like He sent Abraham and Sarah to a new home in a new land?
There are so many ways to connect our current lives to old Bible stories, if we
try and use our imagination.
Life back home, living that
lie and letting God plan our trip, what a contradiction, was just part of a new
birth for me. It started back home, but only materialized in China where I was
hopelessly out of control and no matter how clever I was or hard I worked, I
couldn’t change being out of control.
In China the only person I
had to wrestle with was my self and I didn’t have all the distractions of false
supports I had created back home; so who I was fighting with became crystal
clear in China. Without the distractions I needed to realize I was only
fighting with my self or fighting with problems I had created on my own.
Distractions were the routines I invented to keep my flawed ideas propped up.
I had to come face to face
with how hard life is for most of the people in the world, especially children
and orphans. They didn’t have time to fight with themselves; they only have
time to survive. I realized how easy I’ve had it. My failures were because of
my false ideas and bad decisions, not the harshness of life in America. I had
started out living a privileged life, but looking back I never really thought I
deserved such good luck and probably I was and had been sabotaging myself.
I wonder how the Tent of
Meeting plays into us as individuals seeing God face to face. I think maybe
clearly seeing God’s will is another way of saying seeing God. I don’t have all
the answers, mainly I have questions, which I’m beginning to think I get
answered only when I take the journey with Him and act without a guarantee of
the outcome. I think if I don‘t go, I don’t get the answers.
I fight with my self and I
fight with God. I say to God I won’t stop fighting until you bless me and God
says I’ve already blessed you. God says, “John wake up and look to your past to
see My blessings.” I say to God, “that’s not what I wanted.”
This new birth I was
experiencing held all the uncertainty and problems a child faces growing up. I was growing up again. I was like Nicodemus, “How
can I be born again?” “How can I grow up again?” Well the answer is my body
wasn’t growing up, but it was my spirit that was growing up and maturing and I
wasn’t responsible for my spirit growing up, God was responsible. The importance of the change,
which was happening to me, was for me to be completely out of control without
any hope of being able to function on my own.
I was in China and had
American money in my pocket, which wouldn’t buy anything and needed to be
exchanged for Chinese money, but where? I had good sturdy shoes and warm
clothes, but I felt cold and homeless like those homeless men standing on
street corners back home in Nashville. I found myself in a packed airport foyer
with what seemed like a thousand Chinese people speaking a language I didn’t
understand. I kept telling myself to keep my left hand in my front pocket to
keep a pickpocket from stealing my wallet and Passport.
We were looking for our
Chinese guide, but everybody looked alike and when I tried to communicate with
the people standing around me, “where are the guides,” they just shook their
heads and turned away. We were so tightly packed in that sea of people we were
being led by the crowd where they wanted to go. In America people respect your
space, but in China personal space is not understood. In China tightly packed
bodies everywhere you go is the norm, especially on public transportation and
in public places.
Part of my fear was I would
get us arrested and immediately sent back to America. I had heard of
circumstance where foreigners were immediately sent home, or worse arrested and
put in jail. Haven’t you heard how Christians are persecuted in China and even
put in jail? I’ll tell you a little later how our friend Roger and his friends
were detained in China by Airport Guards with guns and how they were expelled
from China. As I write this I can’t help but think of how Abraham must have
felt real fear when Pharaoh took Sarah into his house.
Genesis 12:14 When Abram came
to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman. 15 And when
Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken
into his palace.
I was still fighting with
myself. My mind was spinning out of control with negative possibilities. I was
still trying to depend on myself to get us through all this uncertainty in the
Beijing airport and then in the midst of all that confusion was this little
white sign, popping up and floating above all those Chinese heads that read, Rummage.
The opposite of fighting is letting go. What a relief to see our name in big
black letters. God was saying, “John wake up and see my blessings for you.
Here’s your English speaking guide.”
That’s how I gave up, more
than I ever had let go of control in my whole life and started welcoming God’s
control of the events during our trip. That was the first of many problems in
China I couldn’t solve myself, but they all got solved. God was in control and
I couldn’t do anything else, but accept His help. I was so relieved. I had
forgotten we had booked our trip with God’s travel agency. I didn’t know our
guide would have a little white sign and
he could spot two white American giants towering over the Chinese crowd.
God blessed Sarah and me and
I recognized the event for what it was. I didn’t say, “It wasn’t what I
expected.” I just said “thank you Lord,” relieved like a drowning man, finding
a floating log, in the midst of a raging river.
God’s way always has
surprises. Leaving a legacy has
taught me something about spiritual renewal. You need to pour yourself out
completely before your spirit is renewed. The process of pouring yourself out
is painful, but you’re making room for a healthier spirit, a fuller life with
your loved ones and God. This spirit is not one a child knows, but a spirit a
mature person can only understand when we live with God’s purpose for us. For
me I needed to marry my self to God’s word and the life He has laid out for me
to live. That’s why children don’t marry adults. It takes two adults to enjoy
the benefits of a mature marital relationship.
Sometime an immature adult
marries with unrealistic or immature expectations, desiring a mother or father
from their mate and the marriage fails or is sour. Sometimes an immature
Christians seeks a spiritual life with unrealistic expectations and that
spiritual life never materializes and the real and meaningful spiritual life
remains invisible.
I think for me I was
beginning to understand the worthlessness of an old spirit that was tired of
chasing after childish understanding. I was exhausted from false starts leading
to disappointments. I was praying God would heal my spirit from the cancer of
being neglectful and the unknowing neglectfulness fosters and the anxiety
created by uncertainty. I wanted to see the ‘signs and wonders’ and the
invisible things Jesus promised, just like the simple little white sign with my
name on it. I really hope you can have the same intense God planned experience
as I had in China.
It worked something like
this; at least it did for me. Think
of your spirit as the contents of a glass. You are the glass. We Christians
have been filling our glasses over a lifetime. We read and study, go to church
and hear sermon lessons and we go to Sunday school classes for more
information. Week after week we keep trying to pour more information into our
already full glass. What happens when you try to pour fresh wine into a glass
full of stale wine? The new fresh wine just spills out and is lost and all
you’re left with is the same old stale wine and just maybe a taste of the fresh
wine floating on top of all the old wine. You get a taste of the new fresh wine
big enough to leave you dissatisfied with the old wine.
What did the wedding guest
say about the wine Jesus made for his Mother? I think it was something like why
did you save the best wine for last. Thank you God for saving Your best wine
for a time I could understand what you were offering.
Spiritual renewal happened to
me when I was able to empty my glass and pour new and fresher wine in. For me
it was the new fresh wine, new experiences, understandings and unexpected
problems, inside my empty glass making me different. I still had the same
glass, but new spiritual contents in it.
My new spiritual contents
came with the struggle to help the orphans in China, and seeing the results of
depending on God. The new wine for me was doing God’s will concerning the
orphans and the new physical and mental experiences I was encountering while
helping the orphans. I was out of my comfort zone and my world of control.
Doing God’s will also allowed me to understand Bible stories in new and more
meaningful ways.
Leaving a legacy allows me
to pour out my old spirit, which
wasn’t working well for me anyway, by serving the orphans in need, and only
then was I ready for renewal. That pouring out of the spirit happens during the
legacy process, or at least it did for me.
Isaiah
58: 10 And if thou draw out
thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light
rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday:
That didn’t
mean reaching in my pocket at an intersection, in response to a homeless man’s
sign for food, fumbling to find a dollar and finding a $10 dollar bill that was
way to much, causing me to fumble around in my pocket again. That’s not the
pouring out or drawing out myself like the verse is talking about.
Let me say that
verse in my own words. John, if you pour out your spirit to the hungry, let
yourself feel their pain and satisfy the afflicted spirit of My children, orphans in my case; then John, your spirit will
rise above obscurity (boredom), and your old spiritual darkness (understanding the word of
God as a child and living a self-centered life taking care of my own needs) and your old spiritual darkness will
be as bright as the noonday sun (smiling orphan’s faces and the glow they
put in Sarah’s, mine and our Hero’s faces). That’s how it sounds to me, and the only way I can
make sense of its meaning.
If I pour out
my spirit to the hungry, I have an empty glass ready to be filled with fresh
new spiritual wine (God’s work in the world with me helping real people,
understanding Bible wisdom in new ways and an imagination capable of seeing
unseen things) and my
darkness will become bright as the noonday sun.
John 14:
26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy
Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, (S)He shall teach you all things,
and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. I’ll explain the (S)He thing later.
I think remembrance is
an important concept. The Comforter/Holy Spirit is going to help me and you’ll
remember what Jesus has said. This is the Apostle John speaking and telling us
what Jesus said. Does remembrance explain my prayers asking for understanding
and finding the answers to my questions in the various and mysterious ways I’ve
already explained like a stranger bringing the answer or googling my questions
like, analyze John 14: 26. I also think ‘reminding me’ means my memory will
come from my study of the Word and the remembrance of my experiences all
throughout my life.
On the farm I lived on we had
an orchard. Sometimes a fruit tree started to decline and each year it may bear
fewer and fewer apples. Sometimes it would begin to die. The tenant farmer who
took care of the orchard would cut the tree down, probably not using Bible
wisdom, but using agricultural experience. I remembered Mr. Loggins tending the
trees just like Jesus said, trees that don’t bear fruit should wither and die.
The same thing is true about
good employees who loose productivity and interest in their job. There are many
good options for a supervisor to use to re-motivate them. The supervisor could
provide new training, sometimes switch them to another job or possibly retire
them. Sometimes you will need to fire them.
My memory is a vast
depository of experiences. I am the temple for the Comforter/Holy Spirit so it
lives in me and helps me remember what I need to remember and if I don’t have
the proper memory to answer my question then the Comforter will teach me.
John 14: 23 Jesus replied,
“Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we
will come to them and make our home with them.
I don’t think Jesus is saying
this relationship is just for the Apostles. Jesus says ‘anyone.’
How do you empty your
spiritual glass in order to have a meaningful relationship with the Comforter/Holy
Spirit? For me it was taking on tasks that were way beyond my ability and
foreign to my experience level. It also took choosing a task that I desperately
needed to fulfill.
Every time I look at Sarah
Helena and think about the hundreds of thousands of orphans we left behind I
just knew I needed to do something about those we left behind. The need I recognized coupled with
those verses in Isaiah 1 about giving justice to God’s people and taking care of
His widows and orphans was like a fire in my soul that could not be put out.
1 Kings 18: 30 Then
Elijah said to all the people, “Come here to me.” They came to him, and he
repaired the altar of the Lord, which had been torn down. 31 Elijah took
twelve stones, one for each of the tribes descended from Jacob, to whom the
word of the Lord had come, saying, “Your name shall be Israel.” 32 With
the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he dug a trench
around it large enough to hold two seahs of seed. 33 He arranged the wood,
cut the bull into pieces and laid it on the wood. Then he said to them, “Fill
four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood.” 34 “Do
it again,” he said, and they did it again. “Do it a third time,” he ordered,
and they did it the third time. 35 The water ran down around the altar and
even filled the trench. 36 At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah
stepped forward and prayed: “Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it
be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have
done all these things at your command. 37 Answer me, Lord, answer me, so
these people will know that you, Lord, are God, and that you are turning their
hearts back again.” 38 Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the
sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in
the trench. 39 When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and
cried, “The Lord—he is God! The Lord—he is God!”
I needed to choose a
work only God could finish and when it was finished I would be exhausted and
the world could see, “The Lord—he is God! The Lord—he is God!”
God lit the fire in my
soul, we went into that scary place where the Comforter gave us courage and God
performed the miracles.
How can we be sure we are
doing God’s will? It takes us about a
year to plan how we are going to do our legacy building work. We start out
unsure of what we are going to do. Because we are serious, the process requires
a lot of soul searching and prayer. Our soul searching and prayer grows stronger
as the uncertainty of our work intensifies. We depend on God. We expect Him and
we need Him to answer those prayers.
At first we don’t know how
God is going to answer our prayers for us to find the right orphans in need or
the things we’re going to do to help them or who is going to perform their
medical procedures. We send out a lot of emails to people and organizations we
don’t know and we don’t know what they do or if they are reliable. We start a
dialogue and during our dialogue process, while we are fervently praying for
God to enlighten us, some how it becomes clear what God wants us to do and
where He wants to send us, or so it seems in the planning stage. I know that’s
not at all comforting to Baby Boomers who built the Space Station and whose mantra
is always ‘be in control of the outcome’.
Why aren’t my prayers
answered? In my past, I can’t say I
saw answers to my prayers. I think the reason I didn’t see answers to my
prayers might be because I had my agenda laid out all nice and neatly planned
before I went to God in prayer. My prayer life didn’t work for the same reason
the old manager’s agendas didn’t work at the Coca-Cola plant. When I was hired
at the Coca-Cola Plant I replaced a number of managers who had failed. Do you
remember what the old managers did? They had the answers before they knew the
real questions. They came equipped with the answers, before they knew the real
problems at the plant. The employees realized the problems, but the managers
didn’t ask them because they didn’t ask or listen.
If all the answers to my
requests in prayer weren’t worked out like I thought they should be worked out,
I just thought He wasn’t listening, so I stepped in and tried to make them
happen for myself, the way I thought they should happen. I never gave God the
opportunity to ask the real important questions. I always assumed I already
knew His question and if God didn’t confirm my answers I took matters into my
own hands because I was self-sufficient. I thought I could live independently
of God, like the managers thought they could work independently of the real
problems. I was always asking God to endorse my plans, without including Him in
the planning. Authentic praying for help is messy and can be off-putting and
takes a lot of faith.
In my prayer life I never
really put myself completely in God’s hands and admitted I didn’t know, like I
needed to do in China. Abraham and Sarah wanted a child and they didn’t believe
God could or would fulfill His promise to give a child so Abraham and Sarah took
matters into their own hands and involved child bearing age Hagar to be the
Mother of their child.
They were impatient with
God’s timing. Their thinking was my thinking. I never really considered that
aspect of their story; I mean being impatient with God’s timing and not
believing His word.
Leaving your future to God
may be too uncertain for the Baby Boomer and pre Baby Boomer generations. Don’t we believe individuals can do anything they
want to do? Isn’t that what we believe? We’ve created the computer generation,
built a space station and created 3D TV, haven’t we? And we’ve ruined a
perfectly good 356 Porsche by replacing it with the complicated and
ridiculously priced 911 series. I’ve sold them don’t you remember.
God did provide for us in
unexpected ways. It usually takes us
a year of prayer and faith to plan one of our trips. It truly becomes a leap of
faith finding the orphans to help, funding our project and finding the people
who are going to help us. None of our trips have been the same. When we get to
where God has sent us everything is new to us; new friends who start out as
strangers, new food, new places to stay that don’t look like American hotels,
and new orphans, all of which create new purpose filled adventures and it’s all
very scary, but turns out to be exhilarating.
We usually spend almost 2
weeks on the ground. It takes about 14 hours to get to China and another 14
hours to come home. Sarah and I are sitting side-by-side talking small talk,
orphan talk and dream talk about where God is going to lead us next.
We’re a little unsure. At least I am unsure, but brave and so hopeful. We
are wearing our best faces with big reassuring smiles. The process is fraught
with troubles, dashed dreams and human needs that are gigantic. Some of our
trip is ‘hurry up and wait.’ Sometimes the wait is so long you can take a nap.
Sarah ordered a kosher meal on one of our flights to China. When the attendant
served us she leaned down and in a low voice said, “I’m afraid you’re not going
to find many kosher meals in China.” There’s also a lot of humor and fun and
sights you’ll never see in America, which will make you think you’re a time
traveler, into the past. Then there are the times you can really feel the
presence of God, or probably to be more precise to feel the presence of the
Comforter.
We fail ourselves and
others fail us. Sometimes the task
God has put us to handling just seems beyond human comprehension and then
through prayer God starts supplying the answers;
in the trouble and unknown is the fun, maybe it is best expressed as deep
abiding joy, knowing God is present and He loves us; all’s right with His
world.
I think I never really felt
deep abiding joy, except in those moments Sarah says something to me, revealing
she really loves me. It’s the simplest things that reveal person-to-person deep
abiding love like a reassuring touch, there I go again talking about good
electrical transfer from one person to another, a smile and the sincerity of
one of her surprise kisses on my cheek or the back of my neck. I felt deep
abiding joy holding my sons, grand children and baby orphans, feeling their
wiggling warm bodies or having them peacefully fall off to restful sleep in my
arms.
I first felt God’s presence
in China when I first walked into Amanda’s apartment with all those orphans and
her helpers, I knew God was there, watching over His babies and His helpers.
Have you ever arrived home to the smell of onions and garlic cooking to be part
of a tasty Italian meal? The smell can be sweet and at the same time
overpowering. That is how the God presence was in Amanda’s apartment; sweet and
overpowering. Knowing God has helped me help a baby also gives me that feeling,
even when I’m at home reading emails from our Heroes about the babies we’ve
helped and the new ones who need help.
Do you remember the joy you
felt the first time you got to hold your just born son or daughter or saw them
walk for the first time, moving from one piece of furniture to another, holding
on for dear life with the expression “look at me, look at me! I did it!” Just
think of the thrill of independence a baby must feel when they can walk from
one side of a room to the other side, able to climb up in your lap for a big
hug, or reach up on a table and get a snack. Think back to how you felt when
you got your first grownup job with real responsibility.
Have you ever been to Jericho
or the Mount of Olives, the Taj Mahal or the Great Wall in China? Have you ever
seen Christians from India being baptized in the Jordan River, singing Christian
Hymns in the very place Jesus was supposed to be baptized? That feeling of
discovery and the certainty of God’s promises is what I’m talking about. I
wonder if God arranged our trip itinerary to bring us to the Jordan River just
when the Indian Christians started their baptisms and their singing.
Amanda is one of our Heroes. We have over 20 Heroes. Here is part of Amanda's story in pictures and in her own words through an email. Amanda started out with 6 orphans.
We visited Amanda in Xi'an China, not
far from the Terra Cotta Warriors. What a contrast between Amanda acting out
God’s mercies in her apartment and the first Emperor of China in his
magnificent tomb, buried a few miles away with his Terra Cotta Warriors
protecting him. The emperor brutally reflected the kingdom of man at its worst
and Amanda reflects the Kingdom of God. God protects Amanda and the babies and
all the Emperor has to protect him is a pretend army of clay soldiers.
A Legacy Started in Your Home Caring for Sick Orphans
Amanda in Xian
Who called this meeting.
Hurry up, I'm hungry.
Help somebody! Don't drop me!!
Oops, I think I had an accident!
Wow Cailean, what's that smell?
Sarah is holding the baby on the left. The baby has cast on her arms to keep her from touching her stitches from her recent cleft surgery. Amanda is in the middle. She came to Xian to teach English. She was bored so a friend of hers told her to go to an orphanage and play with the babies. She started bringing sick babies home and ended up with 30 sick babies at one time.
This is one of Amanda's bedrooms. Her home is filled with baby beds. Notice the clothes hanging out to dry on the balcony. We gave Amanda enough money to buy a washing machine.
Assembly line feeding. Imagine what it takes to feed 30 babies. The woman on the right traveled with us. She is an American. Everyone who visits Amanda gets to volunteer doing whatever needs to be done.
This is Amanda's building. Her building is in a gated complex. Notice on the left in the background is the Chinese national bird, the crane. Recently a baby was place by the gates with a note to give the baby to Amanda. This is the first time a baby has been left at her gates. The first time we went to Amanda's home the driver said you're going to see Amanda, I've seen her on television!
Manuel is a volunteer. It's truly amazing
how many people know about Amanda.
Amanda’s Newsletter May 2010
Notice how Amanda bares her soul and admits she has dreams bigger than she knows how to accomplish. Also notice how she handles being told no. Ever since I started the foster home, I was fascinated with the idea of arranging an opportunity for surgeons to come to China with a medical team and help the babies. My very first medical mission was at one of the fanciest hospital in China, the Shanghai United and I was there when Dr Lazareff and his team did 13 Spina Bifida surgeries in December 2005. I was so impressed that he would leave the US and come to China and help children that he often never heard of again.
This dream stayed in the background while I traveled often to go with the children from Starfish to find doctors on medical missions. I watched and learned, hoping that one day I would get a chance to do something like this. I asked everyone I knew and was repeatedly told to give up, that it could not be done. I had the idea of doing surgeries in Xian and after 16 months, the answer was still: It is not possible. One day I was asked to see about an orthopedic mission and called the only person whom I thought could help, the director of the Xian Red Cross hospital, who had offered free surgery a few months earlier to one of my babies.
Antoinette and Gabriel
He had said to contact him if I found a medical team. It was a shot in the dark. He graciously agreed to see us. At the end of the conversation I could see that the whole idea that the team was proposing was not going to happen. I asked if he knew other hospitals that would be interested. I got on the phone and called the director of the biggest children's hospital in Xian. We were driven over there and in an hour we got in touch with everyone who could make a decision at Xian Children's Hospital (XCH). They told us that they were eager to help us, and it gave me so much hope that they wanted to have medical teams come often.
Brennan
A few weeks later we submitted our Dutch medical team's dates and what they were planning to do and soon we had their medical requirements to issue licenses to operate in China. XCH were so extremely generous in the hospital fees and asked a fraction of the usual costs. I extend my most grateful thanks to the XCH and the doctors and staff who worked with us. We made history! In the 80 years the hospital had existed they had never had a foreign medical team.
Cailean
We had everything ready in China but never did we expect that volcano erupting. It grounded the whole medical team and caused a week long wait and cut the time in half, and we helped less babies than we wanted. The upside was that the medical team was on TV and that helped to get them seated on a flight to China sooner. However, eight babies had their lives changes and that was worth everything. Dr Johan also looked at David and made some recommendations for his care in the future, and he later went back to Guiyang, but not before we had all fallen in love with him. He is already tri-lingual (Mandarin, English and Dutch), as his foster family is Dutch.
Sarah’s Operating Room Nurses
We also found a boy with a cleft who needed surgery but his parents did not abandon him. The doctors found a previously undiagnosed heart condition that needs to be taken care of first. I feel that if we could offer some care and information right after birth that so many of the children will not be abandoned.
My most grateful thanks to Dr Johan Verhof, Dr Hing Gwan Kho, Astrid Paauwen, Elise van Haalen for their superb effort in helping the children. I got to watch them in action and I have to say I covet their skills, especially since I think I would be very happy to do something similar. I just loved watching Dr.Johan transform a baby's face. A great gift that will stay with the children through their lives.
Sean needs to take a break from a busy day of playing.
I also have to thank Elsie and Tineke from Care 4 Tina Foundation, who raised the money for this medical trip when they were in Holland. They worked so hard on that and have had so many creative ideas that they have still to execute, that there will be even more funds for the babies. They both feel so passionate about this and it is wonderful to see what a difference they can make.
The 3 Amigos before surgery.
The result of the medical mission: Eight babies got surgery, the Dutch and the Chinese formed wonderful new relationships, Elise and Tineke are working on getting two doctors invited to Holland for a trip to learn more about special techniques for cleft palate surgery. It would seem that the Dutch medical team plans to come back again next year. As for me, I fulfilled a dream. I am working on more medical missions, three teams before the end of the year, if everything goes well. Organizing a medical mission check that, a dream fulfilled. Life, love and laughter, Amanda
Helen is another one of our Heroes.
Helen started a street ministry, including feeding the homeless. She has baptized over 1,000 homeless souls. Everyone who finds out about her work on the streets thinks her work sounds dangerous, but Helen says she doesn’t fear for her safety when she is on the streets. I’ve already told you about the summer she revived a homeless man who had fainted, by giving him water. A few years later the same homeless man gave her water when she had fainted from the heat. Helen went to David Lipscomb College. The following is Helen’s story in her own words.
II Cor 5: 7 “For we walk by faith and not by sight.”
This scripture is a hard truth to learn and to be nurtured by. Yet, once taken into the heart, believed and followed will lead us to a great blessing, which will fortify everything else we try to do for a lifetime.
In the early nineties I had just come off of two jobs, which rounded out my career in the corporate world. One of those jobs was being the Coordinator for Institutional Advancement at David Lipscomb University in Nashville. The other was working as an Associate with World Christian Broadcasting in Franklin, Tennessee. World Christian Broadcasting is a short wave Radio station that prepares its radio material in Franklin, Tennessee, ships it over night to Anchor Point Alaska, and broadcasts it across the Bering Straights into Russia, China and the Pacific Rim. Though both jobs were appreciated and had their own appeal, like many others in that time I was caught in two back-to-back layoffs. Donor bases were declining; money was short, frustrations where high.
For a time I developed my own business teaching computer training. It was needed. We had just been given “Windows 95,” which opened a new playing field in the business world. People who could not master the old Binary Number and Code system could operate Windows 95 with very little effort. Over night America had changed from being an industrial nation to becoming an age of information. Jobs changed, benefits changed, the way we did business changed. We begin to hear words like “P.C.’s, Lap Tops, Internet, online, surfing the net, and e-mail. And as we became more acquainted with these terms something of the era gone by was slipping from us. With all the new information we begin to loose our precious privacy. Now one can sit and talk with someone across the world on something called “Skype.”
Both parties can see each other. I personally have no desire to sit in my hair rollers, in my pajamas while someone looks on.
After three years I had fewer students. Windows was not difficult to learn and the market was simply drying up. Once a student mastered Windows 95 they could easily teach themselves as newer soft wear came out.
Simultaneously to all these others things I had been taking care of a sick friend at church who had no family. Her experience had drained my bank account completely. For the first time in years I was on tile one with my income and assets. I would have done it all over again. She was a loyal and true friend. We were very different women. We dated different kinds of men. We like different kinds of things, read different books. Once we went to New York City. She insisted we go to the top of the Empire State building. I told her “I drew the line there because I hated to be up so high.” She pleaded all the more for me to go with her. I asked, “Why this was so important to her? “ She paused then said with great excitement, “Helen this is where King Kong took his last plunge and died!” She was my friend. She had cancer, I was willing to help her, but I was not going up to the top of that tower of Babel.
The previous three paragraphs are a brief overview of twelve years of work, care giving and struggle. Instead of traveling “The Road Less Traveled,” I was going down “The road less graveled.” One day I sat in my living room, looking over my bankbook, which revealed I had $2.00. I had nothing in my purse. Now I was precisely where God wanted me. I had had no income for ten months. This was where I came face-to-face with the scripture that says, “For we walk by faith and not by sight.” I feel very sure until that afternoon I had never believed or been obedient to that passage. With tears and frustration I began to pray, “God, I have always walked by what I have seen around me. I have walked believing I was taking care of myself. I have been filled with pride. Teach me now to trust You and begin to live in a real believing faith.”
The next day the mortgage was due and walking by the promises of the Lord I wrote out my full mortgage payment. On the bottom of the check I wrote, “Lord I praise You for what you are about to do.” The same day I drove to the post office and mailed the payment. When I returned home I brought in the mail. In the mail was a check from some friends in California. Their note said, “We never did thank you for helping our son when he was in college.” The check was for the exact amount of my mortgage payment.
The next day the car payment was due. Determined to not live by what I saw, I wrote a check for the car payment and mailed it that day. On the bottom of the check I wrote, “Lord, I praise You for what you are about to do.” When I returned home I checked the mail. There was a check from an over payment on my taxes for the exact amount I had written for the car payment plus one dollar. Now the mortgage and the car payments were paid and I still had $3.00. I was making money walking by faith.
The next day I needed some medicine. I went down to Walgreen’s and ordered them. I wrote on the bottom of the check, “Lord I praise you for what You are about to do.” When I returned home there was a check in the mail from an elderly friend. The note read, “Helen I wanted to thank you for helping me shell the lima beans last week.” Her check covered the medicine and I had twenty-five dollars left over. All of my most immediate needs where met. My two dollars had swelled to twenty-eight dollars. During the next six months this happened more than ninety times. God was faithful to take care of every single need and more. He was “Pouring out a blessing from the windows of heaven, pressed down, shaken together and running over.” God is not waiting for us to be people of ability. He is waiting for us to be people of faith. I have learned that faith is a practiced behavior. The more we practice not walking by the things we see, but rather by faith, the stronger and more powerful our faith becomes.
The point of my misery became the beginning of ministry. When we are experiencing a “simple, trusting faith,” we are ready to yield to what it is that God wants us to do. My story is a simply story. I have learned to work like I do not need money. I have learned to love like I have never been hurt, and I have learned to dance like no one is watching. I do not burden myself with the doubts and fears as to the obstacles that may block my progress. I can only take one step forward at a time.
You may be curious as to what I did with the Twenty-eight dollars in the till. I went to SAM’S bought peanut butter, jelly, bread and bottle water. The next morning I took sack lunches to the homeless in downtown Nashville. They were thankful to get it. This became a routine over the next months. I knew I was doing what I was supposed to be doing, and moving into a new effort that would become my work. As time went by I understood that it was easy enough to hand out food but I really didn’t understand their lives.
This led me to decide that I would go out on the streets and live with them for one week. Out I went to live among them. I ate the same garbage they ate, I slept in the same allies, had to search for rest rooms, drank from public fountains and fought the heat and rain right along side of them. After one week I returned to my home a changed woman. Now I understood the deeper hidden shadows of what they feel.
And so Fresh Approach Ministries was born. To work on the streets I added teaching classes to women inmates in our local prisons in Nashville. The following are brief encounters I have had with street people and women in the local prisons.
# 1 Coffee in a pineapple can
The Cumberland River banks are teaming with whole communities of homeless people. A homeless woman with whom I had shared some food invited me to come to her house. When we arrived at the riverfront she led me to a large box, which had been a deliver box for a refrigerator. She had all of her belongings in the turned over crate. She asked me “if I would drink some coffee with her.” She left for a few minutes and retuned with some river water in a coffee can. She boiled it over a small fire outside the box and handed me in a cup of coffee in a pineapple can. For several hours we shared about our lives. She was very opened to hearing about Jesus. Later that day I baptized her in the Cumberland River. She had no intention of leaving her box. It was home. My job wasn’t to get her off the street. My mission was to share information that could make an eternal difference. When we hold up Christ—people are drawn to Him. Whenever I eat pineapple I think of this woman, of a simple exchange, a brief encounter with a profound results. I had gone to share Christ with her. I came home with a far clearer picture of God for my own life.
# 2 Living water makes all the difference
It was a hot, sultry day in Nashville and as I drove toward down town I saw a man lying on the sidewalk. I pulled the van over and got out. He was so weak he could not even sit up. No smell of alcohol. I always carry a washtub filled with ice and bottled water. I pulled him into the shade and began bathing his face with the cold water. Drop-by-drop I let water drip from my fingertips into his mouth. After a while he began to speak very softly. He had simply collapsed due to the heat. He also had not eaten in several days. After some water and a sandwich he was able to sit up. He asked, “Who are you?” I replied, “A friend who wants to tell you about Jesus—who is the Living Water.”
Three years later I was working on the streets one day and had a bout with my blood sugar and was not able to stand up. The heat was so oppressive that day that it was difficult to keep working. Finally I had to get down on the curb and stay down. I felt a kind hand bathing my face with cold water. Back to me this stranger had come and was giving me cold water and a sandwich. Little-by-little he brought me back to life. When I realized who it was I was amazed.
“I met a stranger in the night whose lamp had ceased to shine.
He paused and lit his lamp from mine.
But then a storm arose and shook the world about,
And when the storm was gone my lamp was out.
Back to me the stranger came, his lamp was glowing fine.
He paused and lighted mine.”
Anonymous --
# 3 Learning to be free on the inside
Up at the “Big House,” there is one cellblock of thirty women who are “lifers.” Most of them are there for murder or being part of drug rings that sell to children, or sex trafficking. I was allowed to go in and teach Life Skills like reading and writing and also Bible lessons. One hot summer day we were allowed to have our class in the cage out doors. As I was teaching two women came from the back of the cage and began to taunt me calling me “religious girl” and other unsavory things. One of them stepped right in front of me and grabbed my blouse and with one fast jerk ripped it right off of me. The next one got my under garment. Boldness came over me that I have never felt before. Why should I fear what these women could do to me? I said, “You need to understand that there are angels all around me.” The one who had gotten my blouse dropped it, got her feet tangled in it, tripped and brought both of them down to the concrete. In the mean time one of the other inmates ran for a guard. He quickly gave me his shirt, which by the grace of God fit perfectly. Two months later with a little persistence I was able to baptize both of those women. The lesson at which they responded was entitled “Learning to be free on the inside.” They will never be free to live in society again, but they are learning to walk in peace and in the love of Christ day-by-day.
# 4 Don’t make me have to stop this car
The chapel at the Davidson County Correctional Department was filled with women inmates who were far more interested in getting out of their cell blocks for a while than they were in listening to me teach a Bible lesson. Nonetheless I began talking about the great struggle Jacob had with the angel of the Lord. It is a great story to share with inmates because they very much relate to struggling with life, long after they have lost the strength to do so. I noticed two women at the back of the chapel who were doing lewd things in broad daylight. So without missing a word I strolled down the middle isle, stopped in front of them and said, “As my daddy used to say, ‘Don’t make me have to stop this car,’ “They threw out some obscene comments and I asked one of the girls to go get a guard. When he came in he began swinging his club at the two women. By this time class was over. I stepped in between them and asked him not to hit them. Before he could draw back his club it came down across my arm. He hauled them out and put them in the hole for a week.
Some weeks later they returned to class. One of them asked me, “Why I stepped between them and the guard?” It was the perfect time to share with them how Jesus had stepped in for us. Both of them began to cry and one said, “You will never have to stop the car for me again.” Both became Christians. They are out and working and learning the secrets of the kingdom life.
We make “Ministry” to difficult. The condemnation of life so often is that hurting people are hungry-hearted, and we give them no sweet sympathy. Many are thirsty for love and we give them no cool, comforting drink at the fountain of our hearts. Many are strangers to the locked up, sealed things of life, and we do not take them into loves warmth and shelter. Many are sick with emptiness, misunderstanding and with the pressures of a day’s hard work, we do not visit them with words of encouragement. Some are in the prison of their small narrow rooms, and we do not come to them with the companionship they crave. They are not far away in third world countries. They are here, next door, down town under bridges, along the river, on park benches. They are nearer to us than we realize.
There is no great mystery to ministry. It is simply developing all of our senses to such a peak of awareness that nothing good or helpful will escape us. The secret to serving others is in developing understanding, sympathy, love, unwavering loyalty and a heart that sees the possibility of Jesus in every life.
In John’s account of Jesus washing the disciple’s feet (John 13:5-13) there are many clues for us regarding service. The clue I love most is that Jesus knew what to do and when to do it. The Bible says, “When supper was over Jesus laid his garment aside and began to wash the disciple’s feet.” It is a natural thing for us to want to sit at the table and be served. But there comes a time we understand that supper is over. Dishes need to be washed. People need to be loved and cared for.
The first step to ministry is to, “Lay aside your garments” like Jesus did. Lay aside whatever might be keeping you from investing your time, your money, your heart. The more we “Love our neighbor with all of our hearts,” the more heart we develop with which to love our world. God is not looking for “gifted” people. He is looking for “willing” people. Many times “gifted” people are perfectionists who get very little accomplished. It doesn’t take perfection to give someone some food, or to take a neighbor to the market.
Too often we try to commence, to begin to do or fix something. That would be the Southern way of saying, “We spin our wheels and never get on with the thing at hand.” Simply get up from the table of life, lay aside things that hinder you, and do something for another person.
Make no mistake God will reward the slightest effort. He loves to see His children reaching higher. Don’t you? Whatever we do “In word or deed, do all in the Name of the Lord.” When I am on the streets feeding hungry people I do it for the good pleasure of the Lord. When I am sitting in the rain talking with a woman who is holding a three spoke umbrella over her head and telling me her story, I listen for the good pleasure of the Lord. When I am ankle deep in mud baptizing someone in the Cumberland river, I am doing it for the good pleasure of the Lord. When I am teaching Bible classes in the women’s prisons, I am doing it for the good pleasure of the Lord. When I am praying with groups of women who have AIDS, I am praying for the good pleasure of the Lord. When I am reaching out to prostitutes and sharing with them about the power of God’s Grace, I am sharing for the good pleasure of the Lord. When I am giving a Bible lesson over WNAH radio, I am teaching for the good pleasure of the Lord. And always He receives the glory for any good accomplished.
As we grow older we can park our life in front of the computer or the wide screen TV, but ultimately it will not be very fulfilling. We were made for such times as these. Our world is scrambling to keep pace with the latest fades, to earn money we don’t have, to buy things we don’t need, to keep up with people we do not even like. It is hard to slow down and take a good deep breath when life is going by like a speedboat. We must ask what is really important. People are sitting in great darkness, and we are the “Pillars of the Earth.” How to be a Christian and how to serve the world is the real question?
Our neighbors are the world now. They are of every nation, every race, and from all background. I do not get evolved with too many arguments, too many issues, too many problems, or too many differences. It would hinder me from serving. We must recover our vision of our world as it is. The most important thing is how to be with another person. This is the pure gold of life, especially if what they see in us is Jesus.
I was driving in Hillsboro Village one afternoon in Nashville. I stopped to help a homeless man. As I drove away a friend who was with me said, “Helen we need to get ‘sucker’ tattooed across your forehead. I asked, “Why?” She replied, “Didn’t you see he was wearing new tennis shoes?” It never occurred to me that he did not deserve our help. I was happy he had good shoes on his feet. The gracious presence of Jesus would teach us to give people more than they might deserve. That is exactly what Jesus did for us. We deserved to carry the cross. We deserved to die. But with every ounce of love in heaven He stepped forward and took the crushing blow. Let us be people who are known for our generous ways.
Fresh Approach Ministries is a non-profit ministry, which was established in 1998 to serve the needs of hurting people. We have learned a lot about how to do that. God has blessed us over and over by bringing people to partner with us in our efforts. We also help to serve the needs of children in Nashville, and in the Appalachian Mountains with food, clothing, shoes, and school supplies. For the past twelve years we have also helped to supply items that are needed by the Saratov Children’s Home in Saratov Russia. We are thankful for the opportunities we have to serve. We are pleased to have a Board of Directors who support and guide our work.
I appreciate this opportunity to share about Fresh Approach Ministries with anyone who might be interested. We encourage all with the heart to serve to reach out to others. The blessings are many. Every person can do something. If you are not able to do great things, do what we try to do; do small things in a great way. Keep your eyes and hearts on Jesus. Watch where He went, you do what He did. His was a love that came at a great cost. As we serve may we all serve for His good pleasure?
There are 18 additional Heroes in our book.
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