I couldnt sleep last night. I paced around and watched late night TV shows at my friends house untill I just passed out on the couch from sheer exhaustion.
I lost a kid yesterday.
He was 18 years old and had just graduated high school and on his way to start school at the local Junior College. He and his friends got side swiped by a drunk driver doing ninty on a surface street. John was thrown from the car and died on impact.
If there is one thing that my personality is geared towards is fixing things, whether its cars, or electrical, or peoples lives or broken relationships, I want to fix them. But I cant fix this. All I could do was hug his mom as she burried her head and cried into my shoulder. All I could do was cry too.
It would be easy to blame God. No parent should have to burry their kid. But this world is broken, fallen and diseased and as followers of Christ it is our job to take up His mandated from Colosians 1, reconciling the world and others to the Father, throught the Son, by the work of the Holy Spirit.
July 22, 2005
July 18, 2005
Life of the ordinary
Sometimes I wonder how I've gotten to this point in my life. I look at the decisions I've made (and even the ones I didn't make that really were decisions) and wonder how I got to this point of drudgery, an endless monotony, that drones like a swam of bees floating somewhere just out of sight, loud and tonal enough to invade every thought that passes through my head. But i am looking to change all of that. It seems that there have been these amazing revilitory experiences, that I can now look back on, add together as a whole, and make decisions based on these facts. These are not all of my experiences, mearly the ones I've chosen to remeber as waymarkers for me on my journey (even these wont be in chronological order.)
I recently took a class called Applied Christian Ethics at Cal Baptist where the class sought a answer to the question "What is my responce?" A girl gets raped and wants to have an abortion...what is my responce? Eight hundred thousand Tutsi get massecured in Rwanda...what is my responce? Children left orphand by the massive tsunami that happend this past december are being kidnaped; forced into slavery and prostitution in southeast Asia...what is my responce?
Chelsea just got back from Thailand. She went over there on a walkabout touring the countryside on foot. There was a hundred percent humidity with tempretures approching one hundred and ten degrees and the huts that they stayed in were equiped with little more than a fire on which to cook food. But the thing that she shared with me was after the tour was over and she had a few days to spend in Bangkok. She went down to the red light district and into a club where there were girls there, with numbers. They werent in somesort of beauty contest; they were there to be sold to the highest bidder. And to see these girls and the predators that were there to feed on them, made Chelsea so sick, that she started to cry. Some of the girls who worked in barcame over to her at this point, telling her not to cry, that she was beautiful, and that every thing would be okay. They didn't get it. How could they have? They knew no other life but this, brutilized by the world around them, and not even realizing it.
Its then that I realized that I've never taken a risk in my entire life.
But life with Jesus is one of risk and pain and suffering along with immence joys. Another friend of mine Elyse works with young kids in 5-Day clubs. One of her kids that just acceped the Lord, died from a congienial condition. Immence sorrow, but also immence joy. His death will be a catalyst for our lives, to live and love as harder as we know the days infront of us become fewer and fewer as time passes.
I once heard a quote from a guy who said "that all it takes for evil to triumph in the world is for one good man to do nothing." In light of all of this I have mad a decision to apply with the International Justice Mission to go and work in either Thailand or Kenya. The opening in Thailand is more up my alley, working in after care with victims, but I already have a rudimentary grasp on Swahili which is the common trade language in Kenya.
Please pray for me as I am making decisions and preparations over the next couple of months. Pray that I would have strenght an courage and that, like Jesus, I would have the heart to "seek and save that which is lost."
In His service,
Adam
I recently took a class called Applied Christian Ethics at Cal Baptist where the class sought a answer to the question "What is my responce?" A girl gets raped and wants to have an abortion...what is my responce? Eight hundred thousand Tutsi get massecured in Rwanda...what is my responce? Children left orphand by the massive tsunami that happend this past december are being kidnaped; forced into slavery and prostitution in southeast Asia...what is my responce?
Chelsea just got back from Thailand. She went over there on a walkabout touring the countryside on foot. There was a hundred percent humidity with tempretures approching one hundred and ten degrees and the huts that they stayed in were equiped with little more than a fire on which to cook food. But the thing that she shared with me was after the tour was over and she had a few days to spend in Bangkok. She went down to the red light district and into a club where there were girls there, with numbers. They werent in somesort of beauty contest; they were there to be sold to the highest bidder. And to see these girls and the predators that were there to feed on them, made Chelsea so sick, that she started to cry. Some of the girls who worked in barcame over to her at this point, telling her not to cry, that she was beautiful, and that every thing would be okay. They didn't get it. How could they have? They knew no other life but this, brutilized by the world around them, and not even realizing it.
Its then that I realized that I've never taken a risk in my entire life.
But life with Jesus is one of risk and pain and suffering along with immence joys. Another friend of mine Elyse works with young kids in 5-Day clubs. One of her kids that just acceped the Lord, died from a congienial condition. Immence sorrow, but also immence joy. His death will be a catalyst for our lives, to live and love as harder as we know the days infront of us become fewer and fewer as time passes.
I once heard a quote from a guy who said "that all it takes for evil to triumph in the world is for one good man to do nothing." In light of all of this I have mad a decision to apply with the International Justice Mission to go and work in either Thailand or Kenya. The opening in Thailand is more up my alley, working in after care with victims, but I already have a rudimentary grasp on Swahili which is the common trade language in Kenya.
Please pray for me as I am making decisions and preparations over the next couple of months. Pray that I would have strenght an courage and that, like Jesus, I would have the heart to "seek and save that which is lost."
In His service,
Adam
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)