Lines

“Just a little line.  And yet it quickly feels like a huge rope that binds.  A rope of stigma, injustice, discrimination and judgement.”

“. . . if I’m honest it’s my human nature to draw little lines.”

I would like to share this brief post by my friend, Melissa.

I haven’t thought of HIV/AIDS in awhile.  Just Friday I had mentioned to a coworker that one of the men was wearing hearing aids, just a random thing I’d noticed as I sat at the back of a workshop bored during one particularly circular conversation.  Later on, we saw this man outside and I nodded towards him and told her he was the one ‘with the aides.’  My friend immediately thought I was talking of HIV and gave me an odd look.  It was then that I realized what I’d said. 

(Where IS my brain sometimes?)

I am a different person than when I went to Africa, but not always in the ways I and others think I should be. 

Where are my lines?  When is it OK and even good to cross them?  When should I run screaming and flailing across the line and help people erase the line all together?

Dear Lord, please help me to see the lines that need to be crossed and show me the way to stop making them in the first place.

update

I’ve updated Pray With Me.

Change

I feel like I need to make a decision about my blogging.  I have become a definite facebook addict and love keeping up and catching up with friends and family that way.  However, regardless of how much I live to write a good ’status’ I really miss blogging sometimes.

Now, do I keep blogging or just do it all on fb via the notes section?  No, that’s not enough.

Do I keep both this blog and my previous blogger blog?  I only started this one for my work in Kenya and have really let the other slide.  I think it may be time to combine the two.  You will see randomness far greater than previously, I’m afraid, but what fun, right?!

I think it’s also time for a name change and I’m taking suggestions.  I’m a fan of alliteration so ‘Amy in Africa’ worked great for me.  It doesn’t have the appeal now that I’m not there and ‘Amy in Lamar’ isn’t rockin’ it for me.  (did I really just say that?  for Pete’s sake)

Anything you looking for on my blog?  I know that there are still people reading, bless your hearts.  THANK YOU!

 

7 times 70

I was part of a team of employees (I know that two of us are Christians as we have discussed it) who care for our students that had to deal with a difficult issue tonight.  I received a call on my work phone and put ‘on call’ and told to be ready to come to campus to deal with one of my international students that had a violent incident over the weekend, something quite out of character for him.  There is a lot involved, including possible demonic possession.  Yah, not kidding.

This kid is reaching out to Christians to learn about Jesus and try to escape the beliefs with which he was reared.

This kid broke some pretty big rules and made really big threats.

Do we kick him off campus but let him continue his studies (which he is barely attempting)?  Do we let him stay on campus and possibly follow-through with his threats (which he does not remember making)?  Do we expel him and send him packing back to his country?

As soon as I hung up from the initial call I called home and another dear Prayer Warrior.

Discernment.  I pray for discernment a lot.  God calls us to forgive 7 times 70.  How does a liar involved in a scary and sad past and not incredibly fruitful present benefit from this mandate?  Does he get a free pass?  Does he deserve one?  Is it to his detriment to get one?  Is it to the detriment of the other students to keep him?  What if by keeping him, he comes to truly know, love and accept Christ?

Dear Lord.  Protect this young man.  Fill his heart and Spirit and evict his demons.  Keep his Christian friends near.  Let him know your love.  Abate the loneliness he feels in a foreign land.  Grant me and the others discernment to do what you know is best.

Psalm 24

I know I’ve been absent, please forgive me.  I have a new job, praise the Lord!  I’m working as the Coord. of International Programs and Services at Lamar Community College in Lamar, Colorado.  I’ve only just begun but it looks to be a great job.  I am renting a sweet little two bedroom in a beautiful neighborhood.  Unfortunately, there are mice.  It keeps me on my toes!  I’m mostly unpacked and down to rearranging and decorating.  I’ll be off to church and the laundromat later and then back to organize my scrapbooking stuff – hooray!

I wanted to share this with you from my friends, Larry and Linda.  I have shared from them before.  They worked with me in our Malawi office and attended SC, so we had a couple of connecting points.  I try to think about this a lot and thought it was well worded and simple so wanted to share.  I hope you enjoy it as I did.  And I’ll try to be back soon.  Facebook is just so tempting and easy these days!

——-

This morning on the way to church we followed a bus down the main road.  Laden with passengers headed for Blantyre the bus spewed black smoke – and bits of detritus from the windows.  A candy wrapper flew out one window.  A banana peel flew out and slithered across the road.  A wad of chewed up sugar cane arched over to the side of the road.  A plastic big with the remains of a take-away meal floated down to the middle of the road, under a car passing in the opposite direction, swirled around, flew up into the air and settled to the earth in the ditch – joining several months collection of wrappers, bags, discarded rags, and all manner of other stuff just waiting for the first rains to wash the ditch clean – and carry the stuff down to sparkling Lake Malawi.

What are we doing to this place we call home, this world where we live?  Do we think we can trash it and then move on to a more pristine place?  And where would that be?  Why are we so callous about the way we treat the earth?  Just because we don’t SEE what we are doing to the earth, just because WE don’t have to clean up the mess we leave behind, doesn’t mean the mess isn’t there!

Ideas have consequences.  The ideas we have about how we live in the only place we have to live – this earth – have consequences, too.  Whether you buy into the impact of human activity on global climate or not, if you extrapolate the way you live out to the extent of your life and that of your children and grandchildren, are we living in a sustainable way?  Are we being good stewards of the resources that are at our disposal?  Are we using those resources in such a way that acknowledges that they don’t really belong to us?

Stewardship seems to be a strange idea to many people.  Yet it was not unknown many years ago when God was moving King David to record the songs He was putting in his heart.  Take a few minutes to read and ponder David’s song in Psalm 24. What does this song have to say about how we live in this world?  Why should we live this way?

Through this song God claims ownership over not only the physical world, the work of his own hands, but also over all who inhabit the world – you and me.  And because he claims ownership, there are certain expectations and results.

God expects that those who will approach him in his world must be those who live in a way that glorifies him; lives that acknowledge that he and he alone is Lord over all.  This involves not only what we DO (hands), but what we worship and what we say – the whole of our lives.  God isn’t interested in Sunday worshipers but in those whose whole lives proclaim his lordship.

When we live in his world as he has designed us to live there will be blessing, vindication – and worship!  We will acknowledge in all our ideas that God and God alone is LORD, King of Glory.  Those glorious ideas must be expressed through the way we farm, what we grow, how we eat, how we treat our neighbour, what we do with our trash, what we wear and how we wash it – EVERY area of our lives is holy before the eyes of God for as we live on this earth, we stand on holy ground – His world!

Lord Jesus, teach me how to live so that ALL I do proclaims YOU as Lord!

For further study:  Dt. 10:14; 1 Chron. 29:11; Job 41:11; 1 Cor. 10:26

Black? African American? American?

A friend posted this on facebook and I thought it was interesting.  I’d like to know what you all think.

Here  it is and it’s not very long.

ding!

I just had a flashback to Kenya. 

I was watching TV and The Mentalist just came on and it is theme song just zapped me back to my couch in Nairobi.  So strange what will ‘toss’ me back into my ‘former life.’  Sometimes it is a smell or a word or in this case, a song.

It’s a good way that people can remember, don’t you think?

sleepy

I am sooo tired.  Have I developed an allergic reaction of sleepiness to Minnesota?  Who cares, because my friends, tomorrow I’m off to the Great Minnesota Get-Together – the STATE FAIR!  Fried food-on-a-stick – here I come!

updates

I have updated my calendar page (just adding new dates at the top so you don’t have to scroll down) and prayer page.

NOTE

I pray that my posts do not offend. I used to have everything checked prior to posting and that is no longer a requirement as I am no longer working with CRWRC. It was nice to have that buffered opionion to help me reword things is needed. I apologize if I offend, sound confused (I probably am) or spell things incorrectly. Please do not hesitate to let me know (hopefully in a loving way).