unto me....

man...... last night was really cool/challenging/interesting/cold. Brian Mclaren spoke on the gospel and justice and i must say i felt incredibly convicted, both for my own self and for the American church as a whole. how do we not get, in a real way, that it is our duty as followers of Christ to take care of those who are unjustly treated; whether that be the poor and homeless, the refugee, the ethnic minority who has had one of their arms cut off by a member of the rebel insurgency that has invaded their land. Mclaren's core verse for the night was Micah 6:8... 'He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.' he put it to us like this: you are standing on the banks of the Niagara Falls and you see someone floating down the river toawrds impending death over the falls, you wade in and save them from falling to their death; thats mercy. you turn around after saving the person and there is another person in the river needing to be saved, and so on. the other side of that situation is to go up the river and find out who is throwing people into the river and stopping them; thats justice. i found it quite interesting, however, that he never really expounded on the justice side of things. how is justice served? how are people that are throwing others into the water brought to account? could the pursuit of justice lead to war? interesting, i think...... anyway, it really challenged me to become more socially minded/actioned; we are, as followers of Christ, required to. let me bring it home:

..And what does the Lord require of you American Christians? To fight against every kind of social/political/economic/cultural injustice and to really help those who are poor/on welfare/single mothers/widows/elderly and to walk humbly with your God.


so.... after hearing that inspiring talk about justice and acting mercifully to those who need our mercy, we walked back to Waterloo Station to go home. God, always the teacher and tester of our beliefs, handed us an opportunity to see if we really believed what we had just heard. just as we got to the station, we passed by a homeless women, sitting against the wall, all hudled up, trying to keep warm. we initially walked past her and into the station, leaving her behind. we stopped and Sam Jones and i looked at each other, seemingly realizing what we had done at the same time. so Dave, Sam, and i went back and talked to her and asked if there was anything we could do for her. very long story sort of short, we stood out in the cold night with her (and her boyfriend, Kevin, who later showed up) for nearly two hours trying to find a place for them to stay, waiting more than 35 minutes on the phone with an charity agency who help find people temporary lodging. we decided to take them to a bed and breakfast around the corner (don't be fooled by 'bed and breakfast', it wasn't a nice place) to get them a room for the night, but Kevin, it turns out, had stayed there before and started complaing to the guy about how the TV hadn't worked the last time he was there. so, the guy got really angry and said that he would not rent us a room for him......duh, if he would have just kept his mouth shut, he would have had a warm place to stay for the night; we were paying, i so wish he would have just accepted it and stayed there. so now, after nearly two hours waiting with them in the cold, trying to find a place for them, we didn't have any more options. so, feeling really sad there wasn't anything more we could do for them, we gave them some money so they could eat for a few days and left them to go back to their broken-down truck for the night. i'm sure there may have been more we could have done given the right amount of resources/time/ability, but i pray to God that we served them in a manner that would make Him proud. i pray we served/took care of Jesus the way we should have.