The Phil Files

After yesterday’s post and a few bits of feedback and some healthy skepticism about the good of donating to certain relief efforts, I would like share two things with you.

First, my own experience with the child we sponsor in Uganda with Compassion.

What you see are the medical treatment records of our sponsored child, Doreen. These records were more than an inch thick. They were carefully taken and tracked.

Doreen was brought into the Compassion’ Child Survival Program at 1 year old because she was felt to be at high risk. Without medical treatment, immunizations, regular doctor’s visits, mosquito nets for her bed, treatment for her mom, training for her mom and grandmom, Doreen and I would probably have never met because she would have not survived the two and a half years before I met her.

The second picture, of Doreen with me, reveals to you how great a tragedy that would have been for both Doreen and her family, as well as my family and me. Where God will take Doreen, how she will respond to the love of God and the opportunities she has, are really outside my control. But, I can help give her a chance at life, a group of people who will help her meet Jesus, my daily prayers, notes and cards, and the assurance of the basics of life — in other words, I can help release her to have an opportunity at life — for about 110 pennies a day!

Second, I’d like to point you to my friend, Shaun’s blog to learn more about what it means to “release children from poverty in Jesus’ name.” Check out Shaun’s clear and vivid explanation.

You see, we’re not donating to a cause or an organization, we’re helping children … we know … we’ve held … and we pray we’ll know forever.

Click the Sponsor a Child with Compassion button at the top right and see for yourself!

What we sometimes call worship, but it’s often not.

What we long to share with those we love, but often don’t.

What so many of us want in our daily lives with God, but often won’t.

What the name of the slum is that I sat in this morning claims to be, but isn’t.

I sat in a matchbox-sized house — 7 foot by 9 foot, one wall a little over 5 foot tall and the other about 9 foot tall. Sweat from my hair ran under my collar and down my back. The light filtered into this tiniest of homes through the crowded doorway. Eight souls share this cramped box called a house on Celebration Hill, in Kampala, Uganda.

Over the shoulder of a child standing in the doorway, I could see the beautiful mosque on top of the hill. Other than the call for afternoon prayers that filtered down the hill from the mosque and spilled into this neighborhood, the mosque’s presence offered little visble impact, and even less solace, in the lives of these people caught in death grip of poverty. This is supposedly a largely Muslim neighborhood, but the lack or morals and the darkness of the “night” in this place are really testimonies to the lack of faith, no matter the claimed religion.

We were gathered to learn and to love from this family. The mother went to her knees to thank us for our presence. She openly shared her deepest concerns: a better relationship with her husband and better health for herself and her children. Underneath lay the other request: a way to escape the poverty and a way to replace her secret income from her home brew that only brought a more recognizable blight to her neighborhood.

The father of this family, her husband, worked part-time with the anti-terrorism police. He showed up near the end of our visit and proudly put on his uniform — hat, shirt, baton, and rain hood. She dyes some kind of clothing or rope, but also runs a business that provides the “celebrators” with their neighborhood hooch, a home brew, and her only income. But drunkenness and sexual attacks are result of this awful brew during Friday reveling on Celebration Hill. Like the neighborhood around her, this mom-wife-brewmaster is trapped in the squalor and deep poverty of poor choices, poorer opportunities, and the poorest kinds of hope.

Little by little, this family is being led out of the cycle of poverty and self-defeating choices, by the one reason to celebrate on Celebration Hill: a church partnered with Compassion International to give children in this neighborhood a figthing chance. Unlike neighborhood flight in the U.S. as a neighborhood “changes demographics” (Code for “changes racial composition”!), the leaders of this church come from outside the neighborhood to redeem it and bless it. Many of them have escaped the traps of self-defeating behaviors and are committed to help these people find a reason to hope and a way out of the darkness.

For a few moments, I was blessed to be in indescribable squalor and yet feel that I was among people who truly lived it when they prayed, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

“What would good people do if the wicked destroyed all that is good?”

The psalmist, David, asks this question in Psalm 11:3 (ERV). However, all three psalms in our reading today (Psalms 10-12) focus on this same basic issue. Those who scorn the will and the way of God have not only abandoned the poor, the needy, the helpless, the orphan, and the good people, but they also have abused, taken advantage of, and brought injustice upon them. They assume God doesn’t care, if of course, any god is there at all. They bring evil on the powerless and curse God on whom these helpless call.

//Inspiration: Psalm 12:7-8 (ERV)
LORD, take care of the helpless. Protect them forever from the wicked people in this world. The wicked are all around us, and everyone thinks evil is something to be praised!

//Incarnation:
When your heart is focused on something and go back and read familiar Scriptures, an amazing thing happens: you see things emphasized in God’s word you never noticed before. As my heart has turned to the poor in recent days, especially the poor children of Uganda, I have been overwhelmed at what God has been saying to me from the Gospel of Luke and now the Psalms. I don’t know if this is part of His plan to etch His will on my heart. Some of my Heartlight.com friends would call this not a coincidence, but a “Godincidence”!) Or this could simply be that my eyes are open to read the Scripture from another vantage point. All I know is that my eyes have been opened and that God has etched some newly discovered truths deep in my heart. Those who suffer from evil in both high and low places of authority are always the poor, the helpless, and the children. So we do cry out to God. And I will let my prayer, my invitation to God tonight be the words of the psalmist.

//Invitation:
LORD, get up and do something. God, punish those who are wicked. Don’t forget those who are poor and helpless. And, dear Father, I pledge to do what I can to help those who are forgotten, abandoned, and abused in Your name. Through Jesus I pledge this and ask for Your intervention in our world. Amen.

You know if a culture values human life by the way it treats its children. That’s why Mother Teresa responded to a Newsweek Magazine question many years ago the way she did. She was asked what she thought about abortion in America. Her response was something close to this: “When a society kills its own children, what is there left to say?”

Jesus makes clear in Luke 18 that He not only loves children, but that he will also hold accountable those who keep them from Him or cause them to stumble. In addition, Luke has emphasized strongly the way Jesus wants us treat children and the poor for the last three chapters, Luke 16-18. So often, poverty keeps children from having a chance at anything … a healthy life, opportunity to thrive and succeed, and most of all, to find Jesus and a world-wide family of grace.

I had not expected or anticipated the powerful message of these chapters to coincide with my preparation to go to Uganda and my families’ opportunity to write the two children we support monthly through Compassion, Doreen and Estarlin (both pictured in the blog). God has a way of both confronting and confirming His call to us and I see this happening to me in these chapters. I hope you will be in prayer about what God is showing you in Luke 16-18, too.

//Inspiration: Luke 18:16
Then Jesus called for the children and said to the disciples, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children.”

//Incarnation:
I must hear the call of Jesus to me and not wait for others to recognize His voice, for He may be calling them to some other act of kindness to the poor and the childre. But this I know, I must be faithful to His call on my heart!

//Invitation:
O Lord Jesus, please help me see how can help with the many who are wanting to know you, but don’t yet know it and may never have the chance because of their circumstances. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, back to my devotional post I had to postpone because I fell asleep. My devotional reading Saturday was from Luke 14. Twice, Jesus mentions four groups of people often overlooked in life and in religion — the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind (vs. 13 & 21).

This forgotten set of four caught my attention for several reasons. First, I was preaching from John 5 and the story of the paralyzed man that Jesus healed at the pool of Bethesda. Second, I have been preparing to go a trip to Uganda to work with those who are often the most forgotten — children of poverty and AIDS orphans.

Jesus’ two points in regard to these struck me powerfully.

First, it is easy for us invite our friends and family into our lives, but to be like Jesus, we must invite those who cannot repay us! Of course, my passion is for children. I serve on a board for Christian Homes and Family Services, trying to help children, birth moms, and adoptive parents find a future. In addition, Donna and I have been involved with supporting a child with Compassion International for several years.

Jesus’ second reference to these forgotten four had to do with the “normal religious folks” being too distracted with the things of life to be ready to accept God’s invitation to a party, so God made sure the forgotten four weren’t forgotten!

One of these references is a challenge and the other is a warning. so what will I do with them? And what will you do with them?

//Inspiration: Luke 14:13-14
But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.

//Incarnation:
I think the real challenge for me is to not just care for those forgotten from a distance, but also those around me everyday. I know that I can easily begin to not notice those who I see regularly. I know that my human nature makes me wary of messy entanglements. So I’ve got to hear Jesus and follow Jesus into the service of His precious, but often forgotten creations.

//Invitation:

O Lord Jesus, please help me see people as you do. O Father God, stir in me a compassion that values each person as someone you know, love, and made for a purpose. O Holy Spirit, empower me to care when others around refuse to even notice, the forgotten around me. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Donna, Megan, and I are in one of those family adjustment periods. It’s not a bad thing, but it sure is a something — I’m not sure exactly what to call it. Megan has done the go off to college and live on her own and get her own stuff and have her own furniture thing. She’s been at it for 4 1/2 years. So she has a lot of stuff she has accumulated. Now she has moved home to save money and get ready to go to physical therapy school in the fall.

We are genuinely excited about her being back and also excited for her plans for the future. The problem is, however, pretty simple. She has a lot more stuff than when she left for college and we have moved into a house that is smaller than the house we were in when she left. We’ve got way more stuff than we have places to put it and time to use it! Megan has been working furiously to go through her stuff and decide what she needs to give away, what she needs to give to Goodwill, and what she needs to keep for the future.

As I was reading back through Luke 13 — my daily Bible reading for today — and discussing it with Donna, one verse really caught my heart. Part of the reason is because this verse is addressed to folks who are leaders among Jesus’ people. So that means I have to pay close attention to it. However, this passage caught my attention for another reason: my upcoming trip to Uganda with Compassion International. Listen to what Jesus said:

//Inspiration: Luke 13:48
From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

//Incarnation:
In a few short weeks, I will be around people who will never have as much “stuff” as my daughter will give away or give to those in need as she moves back home. The luxuries I take for granted contrast sharply with the basic necessities that most of the children I visit will never have. Having visited with people in this kind of poverty before, I am directly confronted with one overwhelming and convicting question: WHY? Why have I been given so much when so many in my world have so little.
Jesus reminds me that there is a simple answer to that question: I have been given what I have by God to bless others in His name. He will expect me to be a blessing to others with the “stuff” He has entrusted to me. In fact, the Father requires this of me! I have not been blessed because I’m better or smarter, but because He believes I will be a conduit of His blessings. And, God is deadly serious about me using these blessings properly.
I don’t believe God wants us to feel guilty about the blessings we have; instead, He wants to feel honored. Honored that we are entrusted with things that He has given to us to carry on His work in the world.
We are honored to have so much and we honored to be able to share some of what we have with children in poverty because we believe that is what Jesus expects us to do with our blessings. We sponsor two children each month through Compassion, won’t you sponsor one, too?

//Invitation:
O Father, thank you for the opportunity to share your blessings with others. Please use this upcoming trip to Uganda to help others see that in the name of Jesus, they have a great opportunity to bless children in poverty. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.