Go to the Atlantic City Rescue Mission!

Hey Gang,

Let me give you some info about the Atlantic City Rescue Mission. Beyond being a simple soup kitchen, it is also a shelter. And beyond being a shelter, it also has a series of programs that help equip people to be self-sufficient in society. There are programs for men, for women, and for families (which typically consists of a single mother with a child or children). Programs for detox, for crisis intervention, for housing location, for prison re-entry, etc. In addition to the facility being a shelter and a soup kitchen (and an area food pantry), there is also a medical clinic there. And there are several programs I have not mentioned as well.

Now I’ll shoot you some numbers. The mission served over 280,000 meals in 2007, helped over 8000 people and provided almost 95000 beds of safe shelter. 56% of their funding came from individual gifts. Almost 95% of their expenditures go towards programs or development.

It is the only rescue mission in southern New Jersey. That’s a travesty and an embarrassment for the State of New Jersey, and for the Body of Christ. This is a place where you can not only be the hands and feet of Christ, but you can also learn a lot about love for your neighbor and the Gospel message while you do it. Consider taking a trip down to AC to help your fellow child of God…rather than having fun at the casinos.

I was down there with for a day with some of our own (thanks Veronica, Greg, Jenn, and Nicholas) helping and learning. I encourage you to do the same.

Grace and Peace!,

Kevin

Money...Dinero...Geld...Mammon

There has been a single winner in the Mega Millions lottery. Somebody in a suburb of Cincinnati has a winning ticket worth $196 million dollars. Now, after taxes, and depending on it they take a lump sum or an annuity, it will be less. The fact remains, however, that someone has just one a boatload of cash. Ever thought about winning that much money...about what it would be like? I have. When I do, I waver between thoughts of laying on the beach on an exotic island, and doing a lot of social and humanitarian good.

But let's try to put this amount of money in perspective:

-half the world lives on less than $2 a day.
-the poorest 40% of the world's population accounts for 5% of its income. The richest 20% accounts for 75% of the income.
-over 20,000 children a day die from poverty-related issues.

And those are some of the rosier statistics. Forget about the 196 million...it makes you and me look vastly wealthy. The media is jumping around and making a lot of noise about how bad the economy is, and how there are tough times ahead. My response is: as compared to what? As compared to the majority of the world where the idea of three full meals a day is only a day dream? Where every product imaginable is not at your fingertips, within a few minutes drive, or at least attainable online w/ a credit card?

Our society has a serious case of affluenza. Our society is far too comfortable with our standard of living while other children of God are starving at the gate (check out Luke chapter 16 for the reference, starting at verse 19 and following). And I'm guilty of it too.

We are truly blessed...overly so...and perhaps we need to share those blessings a little more. I know I do.

Peace,
Kevin

Be the ball....Be creative!

Today's pic is of the gopher from Caddyshack. Why? Because I like Caddyshack!

There was a little girl drawing a picture in class one day. The teacher asked the girl, “What are you drawing?” The girl confidently replied “A picture of God.” The teacher tried to gently correct her, “But no one knows what God looks like.” The girl replied, “They will in a minute.”

The confidence of kids is fantastic. Would you even attempt to draw a picture of God? Probably not. You might put your theology hat on, and draw a picture of Jesus and deftly explain: This is a picture of Jesus. Jesus is God. Therefore, this is a picture of God. QED.

True? Yes. But also a bit of a cop-out. To draw a picture of God seems an impossible undertaking. The Scriptures tell us that no one has ever seen God. And indeed, I think that is true (with the aforementioned exception of God incarnated in flesh as Jesus).

So what is it that underlies this audacious claim by the girl? Creativity. Children have a creativity that we can’t even begin to touch. Something happens to us by the time we come out the other side of our educational system…and I’m not sure it’s a good thing in some ways. We lose a lot of our creativity because we have believed what we have been told: you can’t do this, this other thing is impossible, it would be too hard to do that, etc.

But what if we were to cast off the shackles of those who came before us and instead rediscovered our imaginations? What if we saw our dreams as possibilities…even probabilities…rather than flights of fancy.

Take the rubrics and conventional wisdom of the past for what they are…suggestions. Step out in faith and, as Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in the world. Don’t let the naysayers be your guides. And don’t trust anyone over 30…er, um…wait a minute – I’m over 30. Scratch that! But listen to the other stuff I wrote!

Peace,

Kevin

A Drop in the Bucket...

Have you ever heard the metaphor that the length of time that humanity has been on earth has been a drop in a bucketful of water when compared with how long the dinosaurs were on earth? When I was a kid I was fascinated with dinosaurs – they rocked. And since I was into them, paleontologists have found a bunch more. Kids today who are into dinosaurs have that much more to explore and learn about!

But back to the math for a moment. The dinosaurs were on the earth for over 150 million years. Human civilization has been around for…oh…like maybe 20,000 years (and that’s probably with a generous definition of what ‘civilization’ means). Have you grasped what an incredibly small slice of time we have been around?

It’s sort of the same feeling you get when you look at a night sky full of stars and realize how utterly tiny the earth is compared to what else is out there.

So where am I going with this? Well…have you thought recently about the afterlife? Now this isn’t a big speech about Heaven and Hell. But have you really thought recently about what happens after you shuffle off this mortal coil?

Usually we don’t. Usually we spend almost all our time thinking about what’s going on right in front of…whatever is requiring our action (paper, job, etc.). A friend of mine calls it “the tyranny of the urgent.” But think about how loooooooong eternity is. And so how infinitesimally small our time on earth is. It doesn’t even register a blip. Not even that drop in the bucket, or the blink of an eye. Our time here, as a percent of the time we spend in the afterlife, is so close to zero that it can’t even be fathomed.

And I think that makes our time here really precious. In fact, our life here on earth is the only ‘time’ when the word ‘time’ has any meaning. When one moment being followed by another and another has any significance. So take a few of those moments, and consider what a rare and wondrous gift this thing called life really is.

Have a good weekend.
Peace,
Kevin