Love with action

I remember watching a man on TV speak about the organisation he founded, a non-profit organisation, caring for thousands of orphaned children around the world. I don't remember the name of the man or the name of the organisation, but what he said stuck with me.

He spoke about a child who died in one of the homes they supported. The organisation provided extra money to the orphanage to cover the funeral expenses and more. And yet four days later the child lay, dead, on a table. No one buried him.

It wasn't their responsibility, they said.

Sometimes it's not a lack of money that's the problem. It's the attitudes. No one buried the child because a dead child wasn't important to them.

The way to change the world doesn't lie simply in the redistribution of wealth. It starts with us; it starts with our hearts.

That's why it's so heart breaking when people have the attitude that one person can't make a difference, so why bother trying. Because it's not the money they don't donate that's the problem, it's that pervasive apathy.

Change the attitudes, and the money follows. Change our viewpoint, and the redistribution of wealth and resources will naturally follow.

What's your viewpoint? What's your attitude? It starts at home - how you treat the people around you, how you view the sick, the weak, the struggling, the lost. If you live all year thinking only of your own happiness and comfort and then send off a cheque to some far away place and think you've done your 'bit' - think again.

If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 1 John 3:17-18


Make Lent about more than giving up chocolate. Make Easter about more than eating chocolate. Make your life about more than your own happiness.


Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. Philippians 2:1-4


If the love of God means anything to you, what are you going to do about it?

Blogging through...Sharpening the Cutting Edge #1

With a name like Sharpening the Cutting Edge you would expect John Smith to give it to us straight, and he doesn't disappoint. Which is refreshing. I even see it in myself - a tendency to get too concerned about being offensive or saying the wrong thing or being misunderstood that I dull the blade of what I really think. But sometimes things become so safe and palatable that they've lost any meaning.

And so do our lives become insular and sheltered from what is really going on.

The first thing that really got me as I read this book was the sentence: "But how many people deny themselves chocolate on the basis that a large proportion of the world's supply is produced from cocoa farmed by slaves?"

I felt sick.

I had never bothered to think about it. I can't excuse myself for lack of knowledge - I'd heard about it and the information is not hidden had I looked for it. But I had chosen not to care.

Do I need chocolate that much that I don't care if people are in slavery to produce it?

We joke about being addicted to chocolate, needing our chocolate fix... but when we really think about it, how pathetic are we, relying on a sugary luxury to the detriment of others. It's chocolate. Not water. Not medicine. Two things which many people are denied and yet we value a confectionary product and our own taste buds over those things.

We look back on the abolition of slavery in the 19th century and applaud those who stood in opposition to the status quo and stood up for human rights. We probably imagine ourselves being those people - because we are at a safe distance from those events. No one can actually call us to action on that issue. And yet most of us probably sit on our couches eating chocolate quietly ignoring the fact that slavery is still happening.

This was my first introduction to John's book. It must have shocked me so much I didn't dare pick it up for a while after that, because it was months ago that I read that sentence.

Take the quote on the back seriously when it says, "This book is dangerous in the righteous sense of the word. One simply cannot read it without feeling the ground on which one stands being shaken..." (Alan Hirsch)

So with that in mind, I read on with trepidation but excitement. I love a good ground shaking....