Many people have already seen this video at this point, but I think it’s a great video to watch every year as a reminder to remember what Christmas is really about and to get us thinking about others rather than ourselves.
Oh and I know I’ve abandoned this blog for a long time but I really miss and enjoy blogging and am going to start posting again! 🙂
Water from Cornerstone Church on Vimeo.
Water is life, and because we have no water, life is miserable.
-a voice from Kenya
Right now, almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to safe, clean drinking water. That’s one in eight of us.Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all sickness and disease, and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Many people in the developing world, usually women and children, walk more than three hours every day to fetch water that is likely to make them sick. Those hours are crucial, preventing many from working or attending school. Additionally, collecting water puts them at greater risk of sexual harassment and assault. Children are especially vulnerable to the consequences of unsafe water. Of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and a lack of basic sanitation, 90% are children under 5 years old. Some other interesting statistics I found include:
-At any given time, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from a water-related disease.
-Children in poor environments often carry approximately 1,000 parasitic worms in their little bodies at any given time. Some of these worms can grow up to 3 ft. in length and once full grown will burrow out a person’s skin causing crippling pain and infections.
-An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than the typical person living in a developing country slum uses in a whole day.
-Every 15 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease.
These statistics are incredibly heartbreaking and the clean water crisis that the developing world continues to endure has been weighing heavily on my heart for awhile now. So you can imagine my excitement when the opportunity to actually go do something about it crossed my path! The opportunity came up through an organization called Assist International (run by my old pastor, Tim Reynolds). Assist International is a humanitarian organization that provides assistance and relief supplies to the poor and needy in developing nations. One of the many projects they take on is setting up systems to provide clean water. Since graduating in 2006 with a degree in mechanical engineering, it has been a dream of mine to use my skills to meet tangible needs in this world. When it turned out that the two years of experience I gained in the petrolium industry (before we joined staff with Campus Crusade) was directly applicable to this project, and Assist needed someone with engineering experience to help, AND I had the time and freedom to do so… I knew that God was at work and I jumped at the chance. A bonus on top of everything is that because this trip is sponsored byGeneral Electric, I will be receiving a large stipend for my work to put towards our financial goal for Campus Crusade!
So tonight my journey to Honduras begins. Tomorrow I will be in a city called Olanchito, working at a hospital that currently uses dirty water. Specifically we will be installing a water filtration system (in layman’s terms…it filters all the bad stuff out of the water) – check that bad boy out below! I’ll be in Honduras for 5 days and by next week, if all goes as planned, they will have access to filtered and purified water for their patients. I am so privileged and excited to be a part of this amazing work to bring the gospel to many in Olanchito in a tangible way. It’s so exciting to imagine all the lives that will literally be saved and changed just through this one system! “For…I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink…whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” -Jesus
Please pray for safe travels and safety within the country as well (Honduras is a country with much political unrest). Check back in a couple weeks for pictures and thoughts on the whole experience!
Maybe it’s a female thing, because I know this video doesn’t have the same effect on Sean as it does on me…but seriously, I tear up every time I watch it…and if you know me well, you know I don’t tear up often. It’s just that every time the video hits the 4:33 point, I just lose it. This skit is such a beautiful picture of what Jesus did for us on the cross and the hardships he endured just so that we could be reconciled with God. Well and maybe it’s more than a female thing…maybe it’s because I see myself and my own story in the girl’s character. I haven’t experienced everything she did in the skit, but the hopelessness (when she has the gun to her head) and the pain and obstacles she endures as she desperately reaches out for Christ and the freedom/relief she experiences when Christ steps in on her behalf really speaks to my heart in the deepest of ways.
Although I was raised in a family that attended church on Sundays, I always thought that Christianity was about a bunch of rules that could be summed up as a moral code we are supposed to abide by. As you can imagine, this kind of stale and lifeless religion had no appeal to me as I entered my teens. Along with my misunderstanding of what Christianity was, my family situation was difficult growing up which only served to further alienate me from God, who I felt didn’t care about me. Although I always felt like there probably was a God, I went about the first 18 years of my life essentially ignoring Him as I always felt there were much bigger priorities in my life.
When I graduated from high school in 2003 and began my first year of college at UCSB, I felt like I had it all together. I was getting excellent grades, I was dancing on a hip hop team, I had freedom to do whatever I wanted for the first time in my life, and I was in love. I was living the typical college student life, complete with drinking and partying and all the rest. As the school year went on, however, I found myself unhappy and depressed. I had everything I thought I wanted but somehow I still felt empty inside. I began to isolate myself more and more from friends and only found happiness in spending time with my boyfriend.
Returning to UCSB for my sophomore year of college, I knew something had to change. I began attending Campus Crusade for Christ meetings, and I started to hear bits and pieces of the Gospel for the first time. I was intrigued that I could (and was made to have) a personal relationship with the living God and I was floored that there was salvation through faith (instead of good works). I was told that it wasn’t about rules…it was about believing that Jesus is the Savior of the world and subsequently letting that truth transform my life.
What I was hearing made sense to me, but I needed to research it on my own as well…I didn’t want to be swept into an emotional high without studying the facts and verifying that what I was believing was real. After researching, I found that Jesus was a real man who walked the earth over 2,000 years ago. He claimed to be God and he predicted that he would die and rise again 3 days later and this prediction was fulfilled. Because Jesus’ prediction was fulfilled (and I found compelling evidence for that), it made sense to me that I should really take the things he said seriously. The most important thing being that God loves me, but I am separated from him because of my imperfections. Jesus’ death and resurrection provides the only means of reconciliation to God through belief in Him which consequently enables me to follow in His footsteps.
To be honest, choosing to follow God has not been the easiest path by any means…but it is the right path and it is the path that leads to life. When I chose to surrender my life to God, it meant giving up my own will to follow His. Letting go of my boyfriend at the time is the hardest thing I’ve ever done and I still experience pain surrounding the whole situation to this day. I really did love him but I knew that the relationship was not healthy. Deciding to walk away from him and walk towards Christ was a most painful and gut-wrenching experience, but I now look back on it with an inexplicable fondness because I can see how much that experience shaped my faith. Looking back, I think the reason it was so difficult for me to let go of him was because I had made him my god – I had put my hope, trust, and faith in him rather than the true God who is the only one who will never disappoint.
I have known the Lord now for 5 ½ years and it’s so trippy for me to imagine how different my life would be if I hadn’t had the experience I had in college. I would be a completely different person…and honestly, I think I would be miserable. Life is not perfect and I experience many ups and downs in my journey with the Lord but I am truly a new person and my new life is more fulfilling, more adventurous, more edgy, more peaceful, more dangerous, more genuine, more exciting, and more loving that I ever imagined life could be. 2nd Corinthians 5:17 says “therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” Jesus redeemed and saved my life both on this earth and for eternity and He means everything to me. I strive to live my life every day as a testimony to Jesus’ love and in His power I plan to leave this world a different place because of my existence.
I like this video because it got me thinking about how we spend our time. I started researching and I found something that boggled my mind so bad I just had to write about it. In 2009 the Nielsen rating system found that the average American was watching almost 5 hours of television per day. Um ok wait a second. When they say that is the average, that means about half of us are watching MORE that that! I was trying to wrap my mind around what that actually means, so as usual (since I am an engineer at heart) I started doing some calculations. Think of this scenario: Let’s say we moved all of our TV watching to the end of the year. If you assume that we had to sleep 8 hours each night it would mean that for the last 112 days of every year we would do nothing but watch TV and sleep. Even more disturbing is that by the end of an 80 year life span, it would accumulate to more than 24 years of doing nothing but watching TV and sleeping! I mean DAAAANNNNGGGG. How is this even possible? It is like choosing to get a lobotomy for a third of your waking life. Can you even imagine what could be done with that much time?
Wasting time is something that has come up for me and Melissa more than once and it is something we have to be intentional about keeping in check. Sometimes we just feel tired and it seems like a great way to relax at the end of the day. Or sometimes there are particular shows that are so entertaining we don’t want to miss any of them. I am not saying that we should never watch TV, but when we are wasting such a huge chunk of our lives watching TV instead of spending time with *real* people and actually investing in relationships…it is heartbreaking to God. What it says is that being entertained, or “relaxing” after work is more important than living and loving as Christ did. Because it can be a struggle for us to choose the better option and because we have felt so convicted in this area, we have decided to take action by choosing not to get TV service so that the temptation is removed. Although we have taken action to address the area of time management in our lives, we certainly by no means use all our time perfectly/wisely but we are truly trying to get better at it.
We are living in a culture where isolation is the norm, and I think TV is one of isolation’s greatest allies. It is dangerous because it makes us feel like we are connected, but there is no real interaction of any kind. It is like eating Styrofoam that is flavored like a thanksgiving dinner. You feel full and satisfied up until the moment you die. In fact, I bet a lot of people know more about the characters on their favorite TV shows than they do about their own family or “friends.” We need to genuinely live life together as God called us to! Read through the Bible and see for yourself that it is NONSENSE unless we have some genuine relationships and community as a context. I am afraid that entertainment like TV, video games, facebook, etc. is an enormous hindrance to the kind of connected fellowship that God longs for his people to have with Him and with one another.Â
What if we replaced those 5 hours of TV watching a day with getting to really know a neighbor or coworker? Or volunteering our time to those who desperately need help or companionship…like volunteering at the local homeless shelter, visiting sick patients in the hospital, or writing politicians to encourage them to create legislation to fight against sex trafficking in the U.S. and around the world. Or what if we actually got to know our own family members and asked how they’re really doing and what they’ve been struggling with lately. Or most importantly, spending time with and intimately getting to know the Creator of the universe who longs to know us personally and spend more than 5 minutes with us each day. The truth is that we really could make a difference in this world and truly change lives with our time like the video says, but we’re choosing not to because we’d rather zone out and be entertained than put in the effort it requires to love people tangibly. And ironically, even though the latter takes far more work and sacrifice, when you truly experience it…you realize it is FAR better than the former.
Not only are we missing out on experiencing the blessings of intimacy with one another/God and the joy that comes with loving and serving others, we are all going to stand before God one day and give an account of how we used what He gave us. Remember the story of the “talents”? You can read it in Matthew 25, but I will just say that God was rightfully angry with the guy who did nothing with what was given to him. If I have to tell God that I used 24 of the years he gave me to veg, well it is going to be more than a little embarrassing. It would be devastating. Because maybe God will go on to show me all that He had planned and hoped I would accomplish and the lives I would have affected if I had chosen to invest my time in eternal things rather than squandering it. Because the truth is…there are only two things that will last forever – God and people.
Ok, if you didn’t figure it out yet… we think this guy Francis Chan is pretty awesome. I mean how can somebody be so funny while making such challenging and powerful statements? It’s a gift I guess:
We were married on Sept 1st, 2007 and we surprised our guests with a dance we choreographed ourselves! We would also like to note that this was before the “baby got back” couple who went on the Ellen show… enjoy!
Makarios-Dominican Joe from The Austin Stone on Vimeo.
Cardboard Stories from The Austin Stone on Vimeo.
Missional Community-Austin Life Care from The Austin Stone on Vimeo.
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