Snow Day in Denver and Matthew 25. . .

I am sitting here at home writing this blog post today. Ed Anderson, my CEO at Healing Waters International called at 10pm last night to tell me not to come into the office today because of a pretty big snowstorm that started last night and is supposed to get worse as the day progresses.

The office for Healing Waters is on the campus of Lookout Mountain Community Church in Genesee. The church gives us office space up there, it is very generous of them. Genesee is about 15 miles west of Denver up in the foothills. So when we get snow in Denver, we REALLY get some serious snow up at our office. It is almost 2000 feet higher in elevation up at the office.

So I am working from home today. The change of scenery is nice and Sol (my black lab) is curled up at my feet. (Although that is not all that different from a normal day because Sol comes up to the office with me most days, Healing Waters is a dog friendly workplace.)

Snowy days like this make me think about our field offices in Mexico, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic. Some of our field staff and most of the people that benefit from our water projects have never seen snow.

This makes me realize what a true life of privilege that I live. Here I am sitting in Denver with six inches of snow on the ground and watching it fall. On Sunday I will be hopping on a plane and flying down to Guatemala for work. When I am there, we stay in Antigua, which has an average late Oct. temperature of 75 during the day.

Beyond being able to jet-set around for a change of scenery and weather, I am really privileged to be able to go to my sink for a glass of water. Just like the people who get water at our projects have never seen snow, they have also never been able to get a glass of safe drinking water from the taps in their home (if they even have taps in their home.)

So my snow day is making me reflect on my privilege in life. And with privilege comes empathy and responsibility.

Empathy arises from a profound realization of intrinsic interconnectedness between all humans, a sense of connection that God calls us to recognize. As a result, I feel the suffering and pain of others - to varying degrees - and am called by something very deep inside to do what I can to help them.

Jesus words in Matthew 25:34-40 really speak to me on this point. The version below is from The Message:

34-36"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what's coming to you in this kingdom. It's been ready for you since the world's foundation. And here's why:
I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
Iwas sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.'
37-40"Then those 'sheep' are going to say, 'Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?' Then the King will say, 'I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, (to the least of my brothers and sisters) that was me—you did it to me.'

So that is how a snow day in Denver and Matthew 25 are related.

Below is a video that we filmed at our office in Denver back in September. Ed Anderson, our CEO wanted to record a message for the inauguration of our 35th water system in the Dominican Republic. The day we decided to record the message we were getting one of our freak Colorado September storms. Kind of puts the snow day, and the work we do for Healing Waters in perspective. Enjoy!

Some great quotes on social justice, global missions, prayer and service

I am the interim youth director at Wellshire Presbyterian Church. For the past few weeks, with the help of Holly Inglis, our Director of Christian Education, we have been doing a really cool series with the youth group on prayer.

The first week we focused on "prayer for self." We set up prayer stations so the kids could focus their prayers. I built a cross out of rough-hewn 4x4 cedar and the kids were able to write their prayers on a piece of paper and then nail them to the cross.

Last week we focused on "prayer for others." The kids braided together strips of cloth representing themselves, the person they were praying for and God, symbolizing the way that prayer can bring us together and in closer relationship with God.

This week we focused on "prayer for the world." One of our activities was praying over headlines from the paper and quotes about service, global missions and social justice, and then lighting a candle and placing it on a big world map over the country or region the kids were praying for.

A couple of the quotes that Holly found for this activity are below and I wanted to share them with you. They really resonated with me and I hope they are meaninful for you too:

“It is not how much we do,
But how much love we put in the doing.
It is not how much we give,
But how much love we put in the giving.”
-Mother Teresa


“Nakedness is not only for a piece of clothing;
Nakedness is lack of human dignity”
-Mother Teresa


“If we pray, we will believe;
If we believe, we will love
If we love, we will serve.”
-Mother Teresa


Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which is to look out Christ’s compassion to the world;
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless humanity now.
-Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

A huge "shout out" to Holly for all of her help with this series we have done on prayer. She is a genius with a servant's heart. I am blessed to work with her. Thank you Holly and thank God for Holly!

Patience and a Father's Love

Watch this touching video clip given above which shows a conversation between a father and son.

This Greek short film (with English subtitle) was made in 2007.

Father and son are sitting on a bench. Suddenly a sparrow lands across them. The old Father asks son, “What is that?” to which the son replies “A Sparrow” and looks back into his newspaper. After sometime his father again asks him “What is that”. A little annoyed, son replies “I just told you father, its a sparrow”.

Then, the sparrow flies to the other side and sits there. The father repeats his question “what is that?”. This time, son replies “A sparrow father, a sparrow…s-p-a-r-r-o-w……” and when again the father repeats his question, son is filled with anger and says “Why are you doing this Father? How many times I told you its a sparrow!!!”

Father gets up and goes into the house to take his old dairy. He comes back and asks his son to read a passage from the dairy, which goes like this “Today my youngest son, who a few days ago turned three, was sitting with me at the park when a sparrow sat in front of us. My son asked me 21 times what it was and I answered all 21 times that it was a sparrow. I hugged him every single time he asked me the same question again and again without getting mad, feeling affection for my innocent little boy.”

This video really convicted me. I need to learn patience and practice patience more with the people that I love.

This is the kind of father that I had, and this is the kind of father I want to be.

Thank you Dad, for having such patience with me. Thank you for setting this example for me.

Thank you God for giving me a father that had that much patience for me and modeled that.

I pray that I can live up to my Dad's example and have that much patience with my children and with the rest of my family.

Boring. . . finding joy in the mundane

I stole the text below from my friend's blog, but think it is relevant and right on. Enjoy!

Well today I was in the midday doldrums in need of a spiritual zap. I was working on some tasks that are certainly important to keep things running smoothly, so that is good. But sitting in front of the computer can suck my brain out. The mundane is where we live most of our lives, and in this place we learn to love God, and serve people, even though we don’t always feel like it. This is called having character. Or most days, building character. For this I rejoice, because I love Jesus, and want to learn to love Him more. I want to learn character through the testing pressures of life, including functioning in joy during mundane tasks. I do though fail in this assignment regularly. The stir-crazy revivalist in me wants every moment to be a world changing, earth shaking, devil blasting, holy ghost hoedown. But not every moment of my life fits into that category. As Mike Bickle of the International House of Prayer puts it “We focus on establishing our identity in God as we are faithful to serve in the mundane.”

It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. . .

The sermon at church on Sunday was based on Mark 2:13-17. The text is below:

The Calling of Levi
13Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. 14As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.

15While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 16When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the "sinners" and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: "Why does he eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"

17On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

What an incredible relief! Jesus came for me, not just despite my sins, but because of my sins. This does not mean that I cannot intentionally keep in sinning, but it does mean that Jesus walks with me no matter what I do.

I am already accepted right where I am. Praise God!

Healing Waters Article in my hometown newspaper the AZ Daily Sun!

Below is an article that was published in the AZ Daily Sun, the newspaper in my hometown in Flagstaff, Arizona. I was back in Flagstaff last weekend doing some friend-raising and fund-raising for Healing Waters, and visiting my awesome parents. (Love you guys Moms and Pops, thanks for a great visit!)

I was the keynote speaker at the Missions Brunch at my hometown church, Federated Community Church. I also spoke to the Flagstaff Rotary Club, the great folks who sponsored me and Jessica to live in Ecuador back in 2001. In addition I met with the wonderful people at Faith Works to talk about Healing Waters and hear about their short-terms mission trips they run. Finally I met with the campus ministry group at NAU, where a great reporter from the Arizona Daily Sun joined us and wrote the article below. The original article on the newspaper website is here, but I copied and pasted the whole thing below. Enjoy!

On a mission for clean water


By BETSEY BRUNER
Sun Staff Reporter
Saturday, October 17, 2009


When Greg Allen-Pickett was working toward his Ph.D. in international studies at the University of Denver several years ago, he decided to toss out theories and get his hands dirty.

Inspired by a talk he had previously heard by a Healing Waters International representative, Allen-Pickett decided to leave school and join the nonprofit organization, which is based in Golden, Colo.

Two years later, Allen-Pickett, who was raised in Flagstaff, returned this week to his hometown to give several talks about the mission of the project, which creates clean-water systems in three Latin American countries.

A DAILY REALITY

When traveling, people from wealthier countries sometimes think they are the only ones who get sick when they drink water in Third World countries.

"The reality in 90 percent of the cities in Mexico, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, the water coming out of the tap is so contaminated, you can't drink it, no matter what your nationality," he told a gathering Monday night at the Campus Ministry Center at NAU. "The daily reality is they just can't go to the tap and get a glass of drinking water, and they have to treat any water they are going to cook with, too."

The Campus Ministry venue was chosen for a talk because members of the ministry had traveled in March to Guatemala with Healing Waters.

His parents, Dean and Cindy Pickett, still live in Flagstaff and came to hear the talk at the ministry.

Allen-Pickett, who received a Rotary grant in 2001 to be a goodwill ambassador in Ecuador, also gave a talk Tuesday to the Flagstaff Rotary Club.

BAD WATER-BORNE ILLNESSES

In a PowerPoint presentation, Allen-Pickett showed a variety of water-borne diseases that affect people worldwide: Cholera, E. coli, salmonella, parasites, tapeworm, giardia and fecal coliforms.

Healing Waters statistics show that more than 1.6 million children under the age of 5 die from water-borne illnesses each year, and that diarrhea from water-borne disease is the second leading cause of morbidity and mortality among children.

Allen-Pickett, 31, is the field operations manager, which requires him to spend several months a year visiting Healing Waters field offices. His wife, Jessica, a high-school English teacher in Denver, sometimes accompanies him on trips.

Work in the field includes distribution of free drinking water, raffles for free 5-gallon water bottles, bottle sterilization and the installation of water-purification systems in local churches.

"I'm so happy doing the work I'm doing right now. It's very fulfilling," he said.

CHURCH PARTNERS ESSENTIAL

The partnership with churches is essential to the success of the mission.

Allen-Pickett, who attended Federated Community Church while living in Flagstaff, told people at the talk that churches are ideal locations for water projects because they are stable, trusted and located right in the middle of communities.

"The revenue the church generates goes back to the community," he said. "There is no conversion talk. The Bible doesn't make health contingent on believing in Jesus. It was just, 'Come to the church, get some water.'"

He said Catholics and Protestants in Latin America are often at odds with each other politically. But working together on clean-water projects can unite them in a common purpose.

The relatively simple concepts of water purification can be complicated by government regulations, he said, but Healing Waters workers have received phenomenal cooperation from the Mexican government.

"It's an enormous problem, with one in six lacking access to safe drinking water," Allen-Pickett concluded. "But I don't think this is a story of sadness; it is a story of hope and opportunity."

Betsey Bruner can be reached at bbruner@azdailysun.com or 556-2255.

To learn more

For more information about Healing Waters International, visit the Web site at http://www.healingwatersintl.org.

Guest Blogger: Our Dysfunctional Christian Hearts

Below is a blog post from John Bell, senior pastor at Wellshire Presbyterian Church. He is brand new to the blogging world and his blog is still in Beta mode, so he hasn't made it public yet. As one of his "beta testers" I read this post and thought it was worthy of getting some public circulation, so here it is. Stay tuned and once Pastor Bell goes public with his blog, I will be adding it to my blog roll over in the right column. Without further ado, Pastor Bell's post:


This will not surprise anyone in my family: I was born with a small, hard heart. Literally. Most hearts are about fist size. Mine is roughly the size of a tennis ball. I have a congential heart defect. In a small section near the heart, my descending aorta never really grew from birth, and my heart remained small. It had to work extra-fast to pump the blood through the narrow place, so it became hard. This condition is called coarcation of the aorta. Had I been born 10 years earlier, I most certainly would have died as a young boy; however, the development of the heart-lung machine and new surgical techniques in the 1950’s now give people like me a second chance. Once my defect was discovered, my activity was limited until I had corrective surgery at the age of 11. More on this later … I’m sure.

Like the Grinch who Stole Christmas, who’s heart was two sizes too small, my heart is still naturally hard and naturally small. Therefore, I need lots of exercise and some medication to be heart healthy! (Notice I didn’t say a strict diet! I don’t have a problem with cholesterol. Don’t take away my macaroni and cheese! In fact, my daughters once dubbed me “Cheese Boy,” because of my love of all things cheese.) If I don’t exercise, mentally and physically - and probably spiritually too, I start to wear down, get crabby and easily can become Grinch-like. The medication I take keeps my heart soft and pliable, the way a good heart should work. My doctor at the Mayo Clinic says that with proper exercise and medication, I should live long and prosper. (Well, live long at least. Prosper may be a different issue.)

There is a lesson here for all of us. Metaphorically speaking, I believe that everyone is born with a congenital heart defect, and that none of us have hearts that work properly – without “exercise” and “medication.” It is clear that we weren’t born right. Jimmy Buffett says (sings!) that it’s clear the cosmic baker took us out of the oven a little too soon. Theologians have long called this the doctrine of original sin. We are not able to do the right thing all the time, we are not perfect, we somehow always fall a bit short of the expectation, we are born with a screw loose, we are flawed, we do not love as we ought to love: we were all born with slightly defective, broken hearts …

And we need “exercise” and “medication.” I do not know what this might be for you, but for me it means I have to set aside time and find ways to work at loving others. Love is not just a feeling, an emotion; love is an activity. It’s not enough to say that I love my wife; I have to occasionally do the dishes or clean the potty to prove it. It’s not enough to say that - like Jesus – I love the poor, I have to give up an occasional day off to work on a Habitat for Humanity house or travel to a remote part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and live among and assist an oppressed people for a couple of weeks. Love requires exercise. “Medication” for me means that I have to try to keep my heart open and soft, alert – and not allow it to become hard and callous. It’s easy to read the paper or watch the news and become jaded and cynical, effectively shutting down the heart by closing down that which we call: compassion. “Medication” (Bible reading? Prayer? Meditation? Worship?) keeps my heart soft and open, sensitive to the needs of others, alert to the presence of The Spirit.

My heart requires “exercise” and “medication.” Otherwise, I become Grinch-like, with a heart two-sizes too small and in danger of living a bitter life of cynicism, fear or self-hatred. I imagine your broken heart needs some work too! Love does not come easily or naturally to any of us. It requires time, work and discipline. Exercise your heart today: tell someone that you love him or her and … throw in a random act of kindness!

My second post. Whew. It’s 4:20 a.m. Time to head to the gym and hop on a cardio machine!

The Spiritual Practice of Justice

There was a great insert in my Sunday bulletin at Church that I wanted to share with you:

There can be little growth in holiness without growth in a sense of social justice.
-Edward Hays in "A Lenten Hobo Honeymoon"

We must be for the poor not simply a handout but a voice on their behalf where the poor are not heard and their pain is not registered. If we are to really minister, it is up to us to first be transformed ourselves so taht we can then be really transfiguring.
-Joan Chittister from "In the Heart of the Temple: My Spiritual Vision"

Develop a daily cue to remind yourself to practice justice

• Every time you take money out of your wallet, it can be your cue to "practice justice"
• Every time you start your care, it can be your cue to "practice justice"
• Every time you see someone in need, it can be your cue to "practice justice"

Pick your own cue and use that to keep your calling front and center.

Reflections

• Identify an injustice that troubles you. What first made you aware of it? Reflect on one action you have done or can do to combat it.
• Do you think that all people are born with a yearning for justice, or does it have to be taught? Think back to your childhood and recall your most vivid experience of justice or injustice. How can you participate in teaching justice to a younger generation

I really got a lot out of this bulletin insert and wanted to share it with you. There was also a great Psalm that someone quoted this week that I wanted to share in light of this social justice posting and the healthcare debate:

Happy are they who consider the poor and needy! The LORD will deliver them in the time of trouble. The LORD preserves them and keeps them alive, so that they may be happy in the land; he does not hand them over to the will of their enemies. The LORD sustains them on their sickbed and ministers to them in their illness.

God is calling us to take care of the poor and needy and promises to take care of us when we do. We are called to care and to be the hands and feet of God, ministering to the disenfranchised, the hungry, the weak and the sick. Let us not forget.

World Habitat Day

Pray for those who have substandard housing, or no housing at all. Habitat for Humanity is a great organization that is working to provide dignified housing to everyone.

Check out the info on World Habitat Day: http://worldhabitatdaynews.com/