distant acts of charity

Below: some discussion about how most of us are nowhere close to living the type of life that Christ called us to live. It makes me feel real selfish. I'm trying to figure out what to do about it.


"The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament" - Soren Kierkegaard


"Its much more comfortable to depersonalize the poor so we don't feel responsible for the catastrophic human failure that results in someone sleeping on the street while people have spare bedrooms in their homes. We can volunteer in a social program or distribute excess food and clothing through organizations and never have to open up our homes, our beds, our dinner tables. When we get to heaven, we will be separated into those sheep and goats Jesus talks about in Matthew 25 based on how we cared for the least among us. I'm just not convinced that Jesus is going to say, "When I was hungry, you gave a check to the United Way and they fed me," or, "When I was naked, you donated clothes to the Salvation Army and they clothed me." Jesus is not seeking distant acts of charity. He seeks concrete acts of love: "you fed me...you visited me in prison...you welcomed me into your home...you clothed me." - Shane Claiborne

you know you're out in the country when...

so sometimes i have to travel to really really really small towns to do presentations at a high school (like today). here are some signs that you are out in the stix:

-You pass 6 taxidermy places within 20 minutes of each other
-All the streets are named after produce, animals, or farm equipment (Ex: "Blueberry Lane," "Watermelon Road," "Kicking Horse Circle" and "Tractor Drive"....not even kidding).
-The speed limit for the whole town never exceeds 30 miles an hour (and sometimes gets down to 15mph) and there is only 1 stoplight within a 30-40 mile radius.
-You lose all cell phone service from the moment you get off the I-26 exit.

Just a few tidbits from my day..... :)

long time gone

okay okay.....so i haven't abandoned the blog i promise. my work computer has it blocked so I have to make an extra special effort to get on my old laptop to write anything. there have been some complaints from the lack of blogging (well, only by my dad and rachel....who says she needs something to read in accounting). so this one's for you kid.

i just finished reading a book a few weeks ago called "the irrestibable revolution." wimbo read it and said it was awesome. it is.

it is one of those books that just changes you. and you don't really know where to begin in the process of making all of these changes. there will be some quotes from it coming soon....i promise. the writer basically talks about how we really don't live how jesus challenges us to in the bible. how we have watered down the gospel so much to fit in with our often self-righteous habits....and how jesus disliked that most about the pharisees. how often are we spending time with the poor? with hurting people? dying people? how come we have extra bedrooms but we let homeless people sleep on the streets... and then feel good about ourselves for volunteering at the soup kitchen for a night? jesus didn't tell us to give money to a good charity.....he told us to love people. and loving them is not distantly throwing a few dollars or a free meal their way. it is spending time with them and investing in their search for the Lord. and i really think the church as a whole would really change if we stopped always hoarding the gobs of information we learn about Jesus that we use for making us feel better about ourselves and instead we sometimes take the knowledge of Jesus' love and shared it with other people.

i don't know. i have just been thinking about all this a lot. and its taking a while to process how i should be living it out in my own daily life.

beginning on my quest to become paula deen.....

just kidding. well....half kidding anyway.

wow, i have not written on here in a long time.

i can't help it. my work computer won't let me blog b/c it has it blocked. and since this is the first week i have been home in forever, i haven't had a chance.
(haha...i talk like people other than my dad actually read this. i love you dad).

my first week of my new job was spent in pittsburgh. i left charleston around 6am, hoping to sleep on the way there, but sitting next to people on the plane who wanted to chat on both of my flights. however, the lady on the longer flight just so happened to start talking about faith, and her doubts, and her thoughts about the church, etc. etc. etc. Talk about the Lord handing me the easiest conversation ever to talk about my testimony, my experiences with God, and my love of Jesus. Her husband kept asking me if I wanted him to make her be quiet...haha. It was awesome...but...the bad part about plane rides is they are so short and you never see those people again. i am praying that the things we talked about and the reading i recommended will help her on her journey.

so i get to pittsburgh. at 10:30 on a sunday morning. practically everything in the whole city is closed, but i get on the hotel shuttle to go see the andy warhol museum. on the shuttle, i meet a guy and his kids who give me a free ticket to the Chicago Cubs/Pittsburgh Pirates game. I mean, really. Ridiculous.
So I go the museum....drool over the cambell's soup cans.....and meet them at their seats at the baseball game.....ON THE 5TH ROW....ON THE THIRD BASELINE. needless to say,i bought a baseball hat and some cracker jacks and called my dad to gloat over my amazingly strange luck that day.

okay okay. so the job. basically 40 new "rookies"from across the US trained the past two weeks (pittsburgh, then charlotte) learning everything about the Art Institutes nationwide. We memorized presentations, studied, and then had to get up and present...the 15 new culinary reps went into the kitchens with one of the top chefs in the country and he laughed at us while we learned to chop, mince, dice, and julienne. Somewhere between the dicing and the julienne I cut off half my fingernail and quickly got familiar with the first aid station in the kitchen. (i wasn't the only casualty, okay?).

The funny part was, all 40 of us had similar personalities. Meaning....the majority of us could have a conversation with a brick wall and like getting up in front of people. So when we were all together, it was a little.....loud.....to say the least. :)

i think one of the most enjoyable things so far is that i can be more of myself in this job. they want me to be funny....they want me to talk to people. crazy i know. i'm not afraid of taking a wrong step and getting fired for stapling something the wrong way, or not cleaning out the fridge, or something like that.

well....that and the fact that it gives me an excuse to watch the food network.

wrong number

picking up a weird number:

me: hello! this is aly
redneck guy: HE - LLO!!!
me: hello?
redneck guy: who is this?
me: aly
redneck guy: who?
me: ALY
redneck guy: Aly!!!! What's going ooooon?!!!
me: what?
redneck guy: oh, i know i have the wrong number, but you just sounded purty.
me: ........thank you?
redneck guy: YOUR WELCOME!!!!!
me: well....have a good day!
redneck guy: YOU have a good day purty lady!

oh.....hi.......oh!

why are there so many people from ohio here? i don't know anyone from ohio or i would ask them.

has anybody else noticed this?

oh. my. goodness.

i got a new job!



more on this later. :)

happy birthday to me

23.

thats getting close to 25.
when you were little, 25 was old....25 was an adult.

am i really grown up now? most days i feel about... 12.
people i talk to on the phone at work tell me i sound like i'm 12 haha.

forget numbers, how i know i am offically an adult: i am at work on my birthday for the first time in my life. they are taking me out to lunch though, so that makes it a little better. :)

to my family and friends: thanks for all the messages- i love ya'll!

asking

so over the past few months a phrase that debi has drilled into our heads is,
"What comes to mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you."
...meaning that what you perceive God's character to be often reflects on the spiritual condition of your heart at that moment.

and for me, recently I have realized (or God has shown me) that I wasn't acting like i believed he is the giver of good things. i think it really boils down to the fact that i don't feel like i deserve them....well i know i don't. i think i forget to focus on grace.

I have gone through enough hard circumstances to know and believe that they can turn out to be blessings in the end.... though you first have to suffer through the trials. and although that does happen sometimes, that isn't the way it always has to be.

.....what about blessings that are just... blessings? asking God for something good and believing that if it is his will, he will give it to you? some days i have these big dreams....and i am afraid to ask for them because some small part of me is telling me "you are not made for big things! you can't even manage the small things in your life right now!" and that is a lie. God tells us to ask. He wants us to ask for impossible things, so that in our undeserving sinful weakness, he can give us a miracle and be glorified.

http://www.rbc.org/utmost/index.php?month=06&day=09&year=07

James 1:
"If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind."

i'm trying to believe. i'm daring to ask.

title? i don't know. i lose my creative edge after 2pm.

some things i am learning:

-sitting behond a desk for the majority of my day is slowly taking years off my life. i am working on remedying this. people every day are suffocating in the land of cubicles and multi-lined phones and carpel tunnel syndrome and i don't know how they do it for 30 years.

-most people (at least most people i know) are really not enjoying their first job out of college. this makes me feel good....well, better. not because my friends are suffering through horrible work experiences, but because i am not the only idiot that made a bad first career choice. there is strength in numbers guys. we'll learn from our mistakes.

-despite our craziness, my family is dysfunctionally functional. if that makes sense. the more and more I am exposed to really really bad family situations at work, the more I am thankful that my parents are relatively normal the majority of the time. i love them. :) they are really funny.

-how to catch bait. dad has officially declared me a "bubbette" (the female version of a bubba?). this honorable title was bestowed upon me after i successfully learned how to throw the cast net this weekend. after getting covered in pluff mud and a mouth of salt water, i did actually manage to catch some shrimp. yay.

-and....my brain often tries to convince me not to do what the Lord is telling me. Like when I am praying about a job with a Christian company and the Lord says clearly not to take it, my brain is saying "No!!! What are you doing!!! You need a job!!! These people are nice! This doesn't make any sense at all!" This is a problem. I am having to tell my brain to be quiet more and more frequently these days. Perhaps I am learning obedience even in seemingly illogical circumstances. I am banking on the fact that relying on earthly wisdom leads to disorder (see James 3).

*note: after writing this initially, i went home and read this below:
ha. Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor? (and an ironic one at that).


"Yes— But . . .!"

Lord, I will follow You, but . . . —Luke 9:61
Suppose God tells you to do something that is an enormous test of your common sense, totally going against it. What will you do? Will you hold back? If you get into the habit of doing something physically, you will do it every time you are tested until you break the habit through sheer determination. And the same is true spiritually. Again and again you will come right up to what Jesus wants, but every time you will turn back at the true point of testing, until you are determined to abandon yourself to God in total surrender. Yet we tend to say, "Yes, but— suppose I do obey God in this matter, what about . . . ?" Or we say, "Yes, I will obey God if what He asks of me doesn’t go against my common sense, but don’t ask me to take a step in the dark."
Jesus Christ demands the same unrestrained, adventurous spirit in those who have placed their trust in Him that the natural man exhibits. If a person is ever going to do anything worthwhile, there will be times when he must risk everything by his leap in the dark. In the spiritual realm, Jesus Christ demands that you risk everything you hold on to or believe through common sense, and leap by faith into what He says. Once you obey, you will immediately find that what He says is as solidly consistent as common sense.
By the test of common sense, Jesus Christ’s statements may seem mad, but when you test them by the trial of faith, your findings will fill your spirit with the awesome fact that they are the very words of God. Trust completely in God, and when He brings you to a new opportunity of adventure, offering it to you, see that you take it. We act like pagans in a crisis— only one out of an entire crowd is daring enough to invest his faith in the character of God.

trusting in his promises

listening to selah:
you are my hiding place
you always fill my heart
with songs of deliverance
whenever i am afraid
i will trust in you

i will trust in you
let the weak say i am strong
in the strength of the Lord
i will trust in you

then happened to go home and read Psalm 32 on the same day. weird.
well, not weird. God.

1 Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
2 Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him
and in whose spirit is no deceit.
3 When I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.
5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD "
— and you forgave the guilt of my sin.
6 Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may be found
surely when the mighty waters rise, they will not reach him.
7 You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble
and surround me with songs of deliverance.
8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you and watch over you.
9 Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding
but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you.
10 Many are the woes of the wicked, but the LORD's unfailing love
surrounds the man who trusts in him.
11 Rejoice in the LORD and be glad, you righteous;
sing, all you who are upright in heart!

If he says he will, then he will. A promise is a promise, after all.

perseverance

good for me to hear today.

the outcastes

so a week or two ago a missionary came and spoke to our sunday school at church. he lives overseas a good bit of the time. and he was talking about the caste system that is in place where he is...

the majority of the population is in the lowest caste and many are even completely outside of the caste system all together...the outcastes. these people are pariahs of "civilized" society... considered to be nothing but"talking animals" by the upper castes.
their voices cannot be heard by people in the upper castes b/c it would "pollute" them...they cannot touch something at the same time as someone in the upper caste b/c it would be considered the same as physically touching them...something the upper castes consider disgusting. some of the outcastes are termed "unsee-ables" because they cannot even be seen by anyone in the upper castes. they travel the streets only at night under the cover of darkness to do things like sweeping the streets and removing garbage.

so.....these things have really stuck with me. it makes me physically sick to think about this kind of injustice. partly because its sad that only a few dedicated people are even attempting to do anything about this problem.
and partly because of a dream i've had.
i rarely rememember my dreams, usually just my nightmares (too bad its not the other way around). i'm not sure if this would qualify as a nightmare or not, but it certainly is disturbing to me. since i've had it about 4 or 5 separate times now, i figured it might be something i should think about.

anyway, in the dream i am driving on this particular road in charleston and i see this homeless guy standing by the side of the road. and he's looking at me...right at me in the eyes. and he's crying.

that's it. then i wake up.
and i've been looking for him ever since.

i've been thinking about our 'unsee-ables' in charleston. the people we try not to look at...or don't look at. we pretend we don't see the homeless people standing on the corners with signs, or in the market in wheelchairs asking for change.
but its not just them.
how often do we look at the clerk in the grocery store line? i mean, really look at them in the face and speak words to them other than the automatic response of "i'm doing good thanks"? do we treat them any differently than the automated machine in the u-scan line?
what about the people stranded on the side of the road by their broken down cars looking hot and tired?and do we treat the people at the drive through window with frustration as we snatch our food from them because we had to wait in line for 5 minutes?

i guess i've been thinking about how much we don't treat people like...people. really we are no better than those living by their castes. we treat people like talking animals sometimes too. and that needs to change. really we need to see people as Jesus saw them....as precious treasures...lost and in need of God's love.


Psalm 72:1-14
"Give the king your justice, O God,and your righteousness to the royal son!
May he judge your people with righteousness,and your poor with justice!
Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people,and the hills, in righteousness!
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,give deliverance to the children of the needy,and crush the oppressor!...
For he delivers the needy when he calls,the poor and him who has no helper.
He has pity on the weak and the needy,and saves the lives of the needy.
From oppression and violence he redeems their life,and precious is their blood in his sight."

thank goodness someone else can verbalize it

Article from Relevant:

"Lately, life has been overwhelming and incomprehensible, and it scares me. I’m afraid to even have a plan or a dream because I’m afraid of being wrong. I’ve been wrong so much lately it seems. I don’t know as much about what I want as I think.

My compassion occasionally grants people the right to walk all over me. My ambition sometimes chokes my relationships, because I forget to slow down and really see people. My goal of excellence pushes me too far, and before I know it I’m expecting perfection from others and myself. My optimism causes me to be hurt by life’s disappointments and failures. My feisty character sometimes causes me to say or do things I regret later. My thirst for knowledge often turns to arrogance. My desire to be known sometimes causes me to act self-important. My self-consciousness prompts me to hide. My independent spirit sometimes alienates people when I actually really need them.

It seems like lately I’ve been erring on the wrong side of my personality, like life is all leaning in one direction, like gravity is pulling me downward when I’d really like to learn how to fly. I’m discovering more and more flaws, more and more things I need to work through.

And I cry out to God to heal me, to give me wisdom in the complexities of life, to grant me the courage and humility to apologize, to allow me to see myself truthfully. Yet, I’m still wrong sometimes. I hurt other people. I hurt myself. I hurt God.

It’s never made sense to me that God would guide me to be wrong. So, I’m surprised at how often I muddle up the things I feel very strongly that God has led me to do. But, at the same time, I don’t regret any fumbled steps. I know God was there with me for each stagger. Maybe it’s possible for God to guide us to do things even though He knows we’re going to flounder and blunder our way through it. Maybe that’s what God’s grace looks like—it fills the gap between our bumpy, messy lives and His glory.

My faults, my failures, my fumbles and my messes … That is where the glory of God comes in and illuminates, not for the sake of my knowing or understanding life, but for my seeing the greatness of God.

Maybe my mistake is in thinking I have to look like porcelain in order for God’s glory to be evident. Maybe I actually have to allow myself to be seen as the mess I really am. Because in my weaknesses, in the cracks in the porcelain, others may see the power and goodness of God."

--Rebecca Mayer

must...stay...awake

so i'm killing time till i have to go back to relay for life at midnight for my graveyard shift for a few more hours.

here is a picture from me and barbara after our survivor lap....my first year as a survivor!

quote of the night: (as the survivors are standing in line to get our free banquet of food)

"well, we lose our hair...pay thousands of dollars in medical bills...but at least they repay us with a sash and a ton of really good free food! Haha......they probably think we are all still on steroids and have the munchies..."

other good ones from this weird week:

"This is my new cat. His name is Squish and he has one eye." (Older lady I went to visit).

"I know they say you are supposed to respect your elders, but it is getting harder and harder to find any!" (Old man at a health fair)

easter

was good this year.

partly because we made it through the weekend without any hospital visits.

partly because i purposefully guarded enough time to really try and reflect throughout the weekend about the incredible-ness that is the cross.
good friday served sufficiently to kick me in my face with the overwhelming amount of ugliness that comes way too naturally to me. JI Packer writes that,

"Still he shows his freedom and lordship by discriminating between sinners, causing some to hear the gospel while others do not hear it, and moving some of those who hear it to repentance while leaving others in their unbelief, thus teaching his saints that he owes mercy to none and that it is entirely of his grace, not at all through their own self effort, that they themselves have found life."

it surely is only by his grace that he has chosen me for some odd reason. but i am extremely thankful that he did.

the weekend was spent with my whole crazy southern family down at edisto...pretty much doing nothing but eating because it was too cold to go fishing. :) it also included some much needed time with mom and dad assuring me that no, i'm not crazy... that its okay that i don't have my whole career planned out yet...that 22 years old is much too young to "fail at life" (okay so i was being dramatic)...and that no, they don't mind that i still need taking care of and they actually enjoy helping me stumble forward into my future... because thats what parents do when they love their children.

oh. and i got to play with my dog.

but perhaps the highlight of the weekend was when in the middle of the church service on sunday morning (in a pretty conservative baptist church on the island), a little boy with down's syndrome stood up with his arms raised and yelled "YAY FOR EASTER!!!!!" and the whole church broke into loud applause and "amens". it sort of felt like a movie or something because the moment was almost too perfect to be real. really, we should all be that excited that jesus has risen that we want to yell about it...even after easter is over.

so...YAY FOR EASTER

on my desk calendar yesterday,

the quote for the day was "The love of a genuine, patient and true friend gives us one small glimpse of what it will be like to be with God for all eternity"

and strangely enough, God sent a dear friend out of the blue to refresh me yesterday in the middle of the week. she doesn't live here and i miss her. our friendship is....comfortable. honest. it feels sort of like coming back home. we have seen each other at our worst (when we are complaining or irritable... or worse) and we still love each other. she encourages me to be a better person...a more godly person.

and we had dinner and fell asleep talking about how weird it is that we are supposedly adults now.

it was wonderful. and i needed it to get through the week.

thanks for the visit...i love you! :)

better than a birthday

happy cancer-versary to me! :)

Bridge Run 2006 vs. Bridge Run 2007

so.....we are all still recovering from the bridge run on saturday. or at least i am. my body is apparently fairly angry at me for forcing it to run 6.2 miles. :)
but, i did manage to cut a few minutes off my time from last year so i was happy.

the only thing i could think of while i was running was where i was a year ago.

the day before the bridge run last year, i had my biopsy done on my thryoid. the doctor had told me that i could still run (as long as i "didn't try to beat the kenyans or anything"...ha). so i ran my very first bridge run last year...with a bandaid on my throbbing neck and wondering if i had cancer or not. two days later on april 3rd, i got a phone call telling me that yes, in fact, i did.

the weeks that followed leading into easter 2006 seem like a blur. i don't think we even celebrated easter at all actually....cancer surgeries, a death, and a heart attack hailstormed down on our family within the same week...so much so that we stayed on a constant sense of alert waiting for the next bad thing to happen throughout the rest of the year.

during this years bridge run i couldn't help but thank the Lord for bringing me and my family through all of that mess somehow. 2007 has been a lot better....not easy, but better.
i am cancer free.
it doesn't get old no matter how many times i say that. :)
The Lord does not promise that we never will go through rough times but he is faithful to bring us out of them.

"But now thus says the LORD,he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel:"Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you..." Isaiah 43: 1-4

cool poem

Written by Nate Millheim from ReIMAGINE:

"This bit of spoken word poetry was written as I walked through the diverse and beautiful Mission District of San Francisco, asking God to help me simply love …

My Thoughts

Sometimes they get all messed up,
they get all jacked up, all tripped up.

I see the tough guy with the tank-top under the double-x T-shirt,
gold chains hanging down
and a scowl on the brow,
and I feel threatened,
I feel offended, I feel defensive.

I see the hipster with the precocious smirk,
listening to some band he’s proud to know because other people don’t.
The T-shirt with the cute little graphic
New Balance shoes, Cool tattoos, the funky hat,
the ritual coffee cup and the road bike that makes him peg his right pant leg on his oh so tight jeans.

My thoughts get all messed up in my head,
I’d like to love but I’d rather not.
My own insecurities and my own peculiarities are calling.

The little boys hop the fence into the half finished Garfield Square.
Pipes and rocks are used instead of the baseball bats and balls that never came on Christmas morning.
Rocks are whizzing past my baby girl’s head.
Anger rises in my veins like a wave at Mavericks.

What feelings am I feeling now? What thoughts race through my tired brain?

When the man at the park scolds me, shaking his head, for not bringing him a bicycle .
While my family sits the drunken man knocks on the window of my car and complains that we will not give him food. He shakes his head in anger and disgust, scaring my two lovely ladies.

What now? Thoughts, feelings, thoughts, feelings, thoughts, feelings ...

I need to breathe.
I need to stop.
I need to rest.

My God says He loves, He cares, He sympathizes, He wishes well
He created ... In HIS IMAGE

He grieves when He sees the heroine needles.
He cries when He sees the lonely child.

Jesus spoke of a life abundant,
A life He came for us to have.

Echoes from my Sunday school childhood ring in my ear ...

Change my heart oh God, Make it ever true
Change my heart oh God, May I be like you

Let me be so in tune, like a head bopping to a Jay Z tune
My thoughts full of your thoughts

May my brain be full of good thoughts, full of generosity
May my heart be filled with a compassion it has never known
May my feelings find direction and inspiration from my Creator

Let me think YOUR thoughts and feel YOUR feelings for the people I see."