A workers hands photographed by David Grays, I spotted this on Reuters at this link http://blogs.reuters.com/photo/2007/08/13/less-is-more/

Back in June I wrote a post about hiring a homeless man to clean my air conditioning unit. His name was Tony. A couple of weeks ago I was serving dinner in a homeless shelter and encountered Tony again. I told him to stop by when he had a chance. A few days later he dropped in the office. We visited and caught up with each other.
 
A couple of days ago, Tony came in again. He was looking for some possible work to make money to get a prescription filled. A recent electrical accident left him with a skin issue that needed treatment. We had some service work at the church that was long overdue and within Tony’s capabilities, but was outside the norm of what our custodian could do. We hired Tony to work for about 3 hours it was once again a win/win. He provided us needed service at a price that saved us a good deal and we were able to pay him significantly more than we would have given him for the prescription.
 
As he got ready to go, he came into my office and was curious about what Presbyterians believe. I gave him a little booklet that explained the basic beliefs of Presbyterians and a few distinctions. He was curious. Tony is now out of the homeless shelter and has managed to get a room in an apartment a few blocks from the church. He is rather seriously considering coming to church next Sunday. I hope to see him. I would love to worship with Tony as a new brother in Christ.
 
I am going to close this post with the exact same lessons I posted back in June because, frankly, I am still learning them. God seems to think I need some repetition and as usual God is right. So here they are…

THE LESSONS LEARNED

1. I don’t have 60k to loan, but God puts people on my step that I can help with what I do have.
2. It takes some time and creativity to figure out solutions that help everyone. You can’t be in a hurry and figure out a solution like Tony and I did. You have to work at it.
3. When there is an exchange for assistance it helps preserve someone’s dignity. I don’t have any problem giving without any strings attached. We do it all of the time. Sometimes though someone needs the gift of work as much as they need the money.
4. Entering into partnerships to help someone yields a very different relationship. Tony and I have a different connection from the people that I have given gas to in the past. I haven’t found words to describe it.
5. I still have a lot to learn about giving.

 
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Hi John.
Last Wednesday I read your post on the Practical Disciple and was inspired to share a story with you. The day before, Tuesday, I was supposed to be at Ferncliff Camp and Conference Center, near Little Rock, AR, on a private planning retreat. However, a saint of the church had passed away the previous Friday, and I was honored to be asked to preside at the funeral on Tuesday morning. Afterward, I went back to the church office to wrap up a few things before heading back to Ferncliff for the rest of the week. While I was there, my secretery ushered in a visitor, ‘Penny’, whom I had met before, and helped with a utility bill. Penny had moved to Arkansas from Atlanta when she needed to be with an ailing parent. Then, she herself had fallen gravely ill, and ended up in a coma for three weeks. While in her coma, she experienced God, and saw and talked with her mother, who had passed away some years before. She woke up and found her family planning her funeral.
 
Tuesday, when she showed up in my office, she handed me a small bag of change and said, ‘This is all I have left for my business, and I need some things to happen today. God told me to sow this somewhere, and I didn’t know where to go, so I came to you, because you didn’t laugh when I told you my story (about being in a coma and experiencing God and her mother). So I need for God to work some things out for me today, I need to know that I’m going the right way with my business, and so I’m doing what God told me to do.’ I took the change, and spent some time talking to Penny. It turns out she had been so involved with organizing and running a local community-wide celebration that she had not been able to devote as much time as she could to her business (a consulting group with three employees that provides assistance with social networking and internet websites). Her water and electricity bills were due within the next few days, and there was no hope of money coming in for at least two weeks.
 
I had been thinking about getting our church more involved with social networking, but had not had the time or energy to devote to it, so this was a God-send for me personally. I called the chair of the committe who manages our publicty budget and got permission to hire Penny’s company for three months. This paid about half of her utility bills. Then, I used some discretionary funds to pay the other half, telling her that I was ‘sowing’ these funds with her, and that if they came back, that would be great, but if they didn’t, I would consider them well spent.
 
Only then did I tell her that I wasn’t supposed to be there that day, that I was only there because someone had a funeral. We were both a little overwhelmed in that moment, both by God’s providence and by the enormity of what we were able to accomplish.
 
I thank God for placing Penny in my life on that day at that time, and I am thankful God helped me to see a creative and useful way to help her and to help our church.
By the way, the change she handed me totalled 192 pennies and about 5 dimes, nickels, and quarters, for a grand total of$2.50. I’m still pondering where to sow this precious gift, but am sure God will tell me where, when the time comes.
God is good!

–

Again, thank you Erin for living faithfully. God bless your ministry and God bless Penny. Erin Potter Kaye is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Camden, Arkansas and I am delighted to have her as my very first guest post.
  

Volunteers serving at St. Paul's Chapel following 911 attacks

 
Ecclesiastes makes us mindful of the rapid passage of life.  I was tangibly reminded of this yesterday when I visited ground zero where the World Trade Center once stood.  Even now nearly 8 years later, the sound of bulldozers and dust fill the air as the ground is prepared for a memorial site.  Visitors continue to flock by the dozens.  There is hushed grief as people relive the memory of that day and viscerally feel the loss of life in the many quotes captured on picture boards lining the inside of St. Paul’s Chapel, an episcopal church immediately adjacent to ground zero.  Five high school girls kneel in prayer at a rail near the front of the church.  They kneel together but are lost in separate thoughts and prayers.  Slowly each peels away in their own time wiping away tears as they reverently leave the others to finish their prayers.  You can over hear visitors recalling where they were when they heard the news as they quietly shuffle with friends and family past haunting memorabilia.
 
Two thoughts emerge as I pass picture upon picture of aid to relief workers and read timelines of the events of that day.  First, life IS very fleeting.  I think of the thousands who died that day thinking the day would be like any other day.  I think of the families who said goodbyes in the morning, clueless that they were voicing a final farewell.  I think about how today truly could be our last day for anyone one of us and we have absolutely no control over that undeniable reality.  With those thoughts comes an urgency to live life very well.  To honor God in all things.  To walk with great care and kindness.  Tinges of regret for wasted moments tug at the edge of my mind and then I realize what a waste it would be to wallow in something that cannot be changed only to miss what is now.  The words have become nearly cliche yet still ring with truth…”Your life is God’s gift to you.  What you do with it is your gift back to God.”
 
A second thought fills my mind as a read quote after quote of relief workers voicing gratitude for the ministry to by volunteers in St. Paul’s Chapel.  As a pastor I try to imagine dealing with the logistics of managing thousands of volunteers providing relief to the hundreds of firemen, police officers, and other relief workers for 8 continuous months.  I think of the thousands of hours and dollars spent by the church unconditionally loving whomever crossed their threshold.  One fire fighter expressed it this way,

When I come in that door, I’m covered with blood, sometimes, and they hug me.  They love me, they take care of me, they treat me as a real human being.  And then they feed me, and they massage me, and they give me adjustments.  These are my people.  This is my place.  This where I come to be with God.

 
As my mind is numbed by the enormity of love laid out, I realize that everyday Christians are pouring themselves out to help the least of these and they go unnoticed or persecuted.  As I leave the grounds I talk with my pastor friends who are there and express my frustration that so many people are opposed to being a part of the body of Christ citing, ‘organized religion has been the cause of more wars than anything else.’
 
I realize in their rationalization they are clueless to the reality of the daily life of Christians holding chaos at bay in communities.  I have come to realize that many unbeliever’s have no clue or concept about the massive hours spent by churches, feeding, clothing, sheltering, counseling, and caring for hundreds of thousands of needed people.  Not to mention the countless schools and hospital founded, funded, and/or operated by Christians.  Nor to mention how often Christians are the dedicated core restoring order in places like New Orleans, Haiti and New York.  A petty side of me secretly wants to say, “Fine.  Every Christian is going to take the next month off and you deal with the needs of the world. And lets see how it goes.”  I am not sure that many people grasp the tsunami of need that would engulf us and the chaos that would likely ensue.
 
I can hardly fault my unbelieving friend’s who are lost in their grasp of the functional reality of the average church or christian.  I realized as I spoke with one atheist friend that by and large the only real grasp he has of the church is from the media.  Unfortunately, the media only reports about scandal or outrageous extremists that hold little resemblance to normative Christianity.  It is no wonder that he sees the church as a collection of hypocrites and nuts.
 
I am not sure how we go about shifting this other than to visibly demonstrate over and over again Christ’s gracious love to a broken and dying world.  We also, must be less overly modest in sharing the great news of the many ministries and missions of local churches. Christians laboring in love are perhaps one of the best kept secrets of our modern culture.  The keeping of that secret veils the great news of God’s love for us in Christ.  So, let us be bold in love and sharing each day, for today truly could be our last chance to honor God and others may never do so if we do not.
 
Blessings from New York from The Practical Disciple
  

I visited someone’s blog whom I met recently. Unfortunately, I met them because I was officiating their mother’s funeral. While it was a sad way to make someone’s acquaintance; nevertheless, I feel blessed to have met this person and their family. I feel blessed for a moment to have vicariously met her mother.

Moments, like these, moments of remembering loved one’s with a family, give pastors an opportunity to regularly reflect on the fragile and fleeting nature of life. It is a mixed blessing, but undoubtably a blessing. This blessing that comes with watching life pass was punctuated this evening as I went with my wife to watch a stage version of the wonderful book, Tuesday’s with Morrie. For those of you who don’t know Tuesday’s with Morrie is an endearing story of a professor’s life who is ending and precious moments spent each Tuesday with one of his students from his past. Many life lessons about what is truly important are passed on during those Tuesday sessions.  Morrie, says something to the effect of, “I wish I had been more aware of death, during my life.”  I don’t think that’s the quote exactly, but that is the essence of what he says.  I also think this is the blessing that comes with watching people’s lives end.  Watching life passing helps us value life so much more deeply.

Tuesday’s with Morrie is a story that will almost surely prompt you to examine your priorities and/or stir up any regrets lurking beneath your surface. I don’t have a mountain of regrets. Frankly, even at only 44 I think I have lived a rather rich and diverse life with a lot of love and limited hardship. Of the things that I regret the most, are those moments when I have filled my plate too full and allowed life to pull me into a place where I am not happy with myself.   Specifically, the times where my threshold has been surpassed so that with my family, friends or most importantly my children and wife I have failed to be the best John I could be. Don’t get me wrong I haven’t been some intolerable ogre, nor am I prone to being ugly toward people, but I regret those times when I didn’t manage my life well enough to be a patient, kinder John.

“LOVE IS PATIENT, LOVE IS KIND”

These words from 1 Corinthians 13 are only a small fraction of the description of love within that chapter. Yet, I find that even just these two small qualities could possibly be a life time of homework.  I began this post mentioning that I visited a blog of someone I had met recently.  Her name is Mary Jane Ballou and she has a lovely blog called Sacred Miscellany. I would love to know how she finds the rather eclectic mix of links and media she shares.  The video at the top of the page is one of those heart nudging pieces.  To me it is a quiet reminder that “Love is patient, live is kind.”  I hope it stirs you to patience and kindness as it did me, for these are the things that matter the most as life passes.
p.s. Check out Mary Jane’s blog

Most of us know the story of the prodigal son.  A young man, probably full of late adolescent angst or early twenty know-it-all syndrome, tells his daddy.  ”I can’t wait until your dead to get my money.  Give it to me now.”  Forgive me for the tremendous paraphrasing but you  get the idea.  Dad gives him the money.  The young man then heads out on his own.  He squanders his money and finds himself yearning to go home.  He realizes that even life as a servant at home would be better than the life he has made for himself.  When he comes home his dad is exuberantly overjoyed.  Dad kills the fatted calf and has a big ol’ party much to his other son’s dismay.  The other son feels very slighted.  He has stayed at home and been a good obedient son.  He feels passed over to say the least.  Dad and the good son have a talk and the dad tries to explain his extreme joy.

THE PRODIGAL FATHER

We almost always refer to this as the prodigal son.  The word prodigal according to one online dictionary is defined as:

Carry a one dollar bill in your bill fold with a paper clip on it.  Pray that God will send you the person that needs this one dollar bill.  Then the next time you are approached by someone needing money, trust that this is the person you need to give the bill to and let them have it.  I suspect some of you just raised an eyebrow and within you an objection is arising.  ”If  I give some guy a dollar on the street, how do I know he won’t misuse it for alcohol or drugs?”  You don’t.

I had the same objection until one day I was thinking, “If I give a guy a dollar to go get a meal and he then uses it for alcohol, how is that any different than the many times God has given me things, only to see me turn around and abuse the gift.  Then it came to me.  What I do is different…it is a lot WORSE!  I then realized  that carrying around my little prayed for dollar was going to be an act of faith and trust every time I gave it away.  Giving it away was going to  require me to trust my prayer and act in pure grace.

I have truly valued this practice over the years.   It humbles me each time I pull that dollar out.  I realize how much grace I have received and realize that I struggle to even give someone literally a dollars worth of grace.  I encourage you to try it.  Even if for just one dollar.

1. Send flowers or a card anonymously
2. Volunteer at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen
3. Seek out a single parent and offer to baby-sit or do errands.
4. Mow your neighbor’s lawn when they aren’t home or shovel his or her driveway in the winter.
5. Clean up a neglected area in your neighborhood.
6. Call the Church office and volunteer to help with a mailing or answering phones.
7. Next time you go out to eat, ask the waitress for someone else’s bill and anonymously buy a stranger’s meal.
8. Find a family in need of food and clothing and begin supplying part of that need. (tip…school counselors are often aware of these types of needs)
9. Adopt someone home bound and visit, write, or call regularly.
10. Invite people who are apart from family to be a part of yours on holidays.
11. Volunteer at a community agency or non-profit group.
12. Fix and extra special meal for your family.

You get the idea. Now come up with your own list. Start by listing 10 people who need an act of kindness right now. These can be friends, family members, co-workers, neighbors, or even strangers. You might wonder, “What strangers could I list?” What about people who work late shifts? Imagine the joy it would bring if you brought fresh baked cookies to a third shift in the Emergency room at the hospital or to some fire fighters.

Once you have your list. Schedule when you will do it. Great intentions mean nothing until they become great actions. You may be thinking I will just do random acts when they occur. That is great but you are more likely to achieve more if you have written plan.

Blessings to you as you seek to be a blessing to others.