What if...

…we loved everyone and judged no one?

…we continually gave thanks to God for the sacrifice of putting His son on the cross for our chance to live with Him in eternity?

…the only thing we prayed for was for His glory to be shown in every area of our life?

…the only time we asked God for something specific was when, like Joshua, we had direct instructions from God and we required His intervention to fulfill those instructions?

…everyday we laid our life down to Him, to be used the way He desires us to be used, therefore completely dying to our selfish ambitions?

My pondering for the day...

A Compass in My Heart

My sister in Christ, Christie Magera and her husband George run an amazing ministry in the Bombo village of Uganda. Ekubo "The Way" Ministries. We found each other on FaceBook and neither one of us understands how it happened. But it did. And through her and her work, I have daily reminders regarding the needs of His children and our responsibility to help. James 1:27 says "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." Christie and George live this out every day in their village.

My goal is to go and visit them someday. I'm actually hoping that "someday" will be summer of 2013 ;) But for now I press on and try to make a difference here, because anyone who looks around knows the hurt is everywhere.

I encourage you to read Christie's blog, Compass in My Heart, about their work in Bombo, Uganda (their amazing love story is thrown in as a bonus) and maybe you'll be inspired to help them, too. And if you donate at least $5 before Sunday August 14th you'll be entered to win a necklace beautifully designed for Ekubo Ministries.

But be careful, you too might find the compass in your heart, and your life will never be the same :)

I think I need to stay off the internet

…My heart is breaking. I feel it crack just a little more each night, as I sit pouring over new blogs I’ve discovered. I don’t believe I’ve found any of this by happenstance. I read scripture and verses jump out from the page like never before. Verses that tell me that my faith is not enough, that I must have deeds to accompany my faith. That I am to “look after orphans and widows in their distress…” Hands and Feet. I see it everywhere. I am to be His hands and feet. I need to leave the comfort of my home and get out and do something!

Uganda…Uganda…Uganda. Our church is partnered with a church in El Salvador. Why do I feel such a pull to Uganda? I can’t sleep at night, I toss and turn and think about what I’m supposed to do. How can I help? How can I use my hands and feet to be His hands and feet? As Katie Davis so eloquently put it, I want to see Jesus. I want to see Him as I reach out to the hungry, poor and oppressed. “As you did it for the least of these, you did it for ME.” 150 million orphans world wide. 150,000,000. And I am just one part of the solution. But my deepest desire is that I continually allow myself to be fully used by God, to be an effective part of the solution. Sometimes it scares me. Sometimes it keeps me up at night. But if being scared and awake is part of what we are called to do, then scared and awake it is. I don’t know what all of this is going to look like in the end, none of us really should. ‘Now listen you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.’ (James 4:13-14 niv)

May I live each day to the full glory of my Savior, sacrificing myself for others, as He so selflessly sacrificed Himself for me.

I find it rather sad.

Statistics. Numbers that you can’t ignore. I’ve really been bothered this week by statistics, simple statistics. Allow me to share. Hopefully they will bother you, too and as a result, we will all be changed a little.

The Pioneer Woman is one of my favorite blogs. I love her writing style, her humor, her recipes and her heart. She has give aways. Often. She gives away mixers, pans, knives and cameras on a regular basis. I typically leave my comment as an entry, with hopes to win the prize. But lately the odds have been brutal! This past week she gave away 2 sets of All Clad Stainless Steel cookware. We had 48 hours or so to enter. She received 38,590 comments, or entries. In the past few months she gave away 4 custom designed (for her) Kitchen Aid mixers. She received over 65,000 entries for each one!

Why is this an issue for me? Well it wouldn’t be if it weren’t for this week’s give away. She’s gave away quarters, as in $0.25. Let me explain. The “prize” was a $500 donation to the charity of your choice. All you had to do, as usual, is leave a comment to enter. The bonus was the quarter. For every comment she received, she pledged to donate a quarter to the recent tornado victims in the south. When I first read it I thought wow, with her average of about 45,000 entries that would be an $11,250 donation. Awesome. And the fact that she held this one open for a week, I thought wow, this could be something to watch!

And herein lies my issue. After 5 days, the contest ended with a mere 22,820 entries. At twice the length of her typical give aways, she received about 1/3 the entries than she does for a kitchen mixer!

Now I realize the “sell everything you have and give to the poor” philosophy is a little difficult sometimes, but this wouldn’t cost anyone, except the Pioneer Woman, one single cent! Even if you didn’t have a favorite charity, she had suggestions for you.

So there’s my statistical sadness for the day. I wonder if we all tried just a little bit harder, took one step closer, gave one percent more effort, how much of an effect we could have on the world….

My Latest Endeavor

I have had so many blog topics running through my head and have been remiss in getting them out of my head and into a blog :( One day, maybe…

But this I have to share. Because I need you to help me, help others. I have been working all evening trying to compose an email short enough that people will actually read the whole thing. But then thought, if I blog about it you’ll want to read the whole thing. That is why you come here, right? To read all of the millions of things that continually go on in my head. (Seriously, there’s a lot that goes on in there.)

So here goes…the long version…

I have recently started selling Mary Kay and will be giving ALL of the profit to charity.

You've read that correctly. I’m not crazy, or amazing (trust me), but in the past 6 months or so I have read through Francis Chan's "Crazy Love", David Platt's "Radical", Jen Hatmakers “Interrupted” and my all time favorite blog, kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com (all 4 years of posts). You can’t read these books and not feel called to do something! But then there was the reality of my budget, and the last instruction I received from God to have all of our debt paid off by 2014. So, while I felt quite strongly that I should be doing something, I wasn’t quite sure how exactly I was going to make that happen.

So my niece, Jen Tressler and I, both feeling called in the same way, put our heads together and came up with the idea of Hands & Feet (you know, like the hands & feet of Jesus). And until God fully reveals His plan for our ministry (we do have some idea, but that's for another post after most of the details are worked out), we will be focusing on other amazing ministries already in place who exemplify the character of Jesus, like we are hoping to do.

So where does Mary Kay and giving away our profit come in? Well, our website www.hands-and-feet.org will give more information and have a monthly ministry “focus” hi-lighting a different ministry each month. This will be the ministry that we will donate ALL of our monthly sales profits to.

Your purchase of Mary Kay products can help make a difference.

You can help by ordering trusted skin care and beauty products, and feel good knowing that ALL of the profit will be donated to help others, both locally and around the world. This is intended to be a way that we can all join together and be the Hands & Feet of Jesus.

Brilliant, don't you think? And I even thought of you :)

So, please pass this information on to anyone you can think of (internet ordering knows no boundaries), and let's all start making a difference in the lives of others!

The particulars...

The entire catalog can be viewed online at www.MaryKay.com/kajoiner. Order from anywhere in the continental US and have it shipped right to your door ($5.00 flat shipping fee for orders up to $100.00 / $8.75 for orders over $100.00). If you're not already familiar with the products and would prefer a personal consultation just email or give me a call! (Please, only in the metro Detroit area)

Make sure and “like” our page “Hands & Feet” on Facebook. We will update it monthly with the ministry in focus, which will be the ministry receiving our donations for that month.

Thanks for sticking with my thought process all the way to the end. Feel free to ask questions. You know I would….

Because He has called me,