This Saturday a bunch of us are going to be heading downtown to the Water Street Rescue Mission for FLOWING, a morning of community service - both in the sense that we will be serving the community of Lancaster and in the sense that we will be serving in community with each other. We’re really excited about it.

We plan to spend a few hours serving breakfast to residents at the mission, sorting donations in their warehouse, and spreading out around the mission grounds and into the surrounding neighborhood, picking up trash. If you’re in town Saturday morning, look for a bunch of smiling people with trash bags, wearing black t-shirts with the word FLOWING in yellowish/greenish neon across the front. Better yet, join us.

We made the t-shirts not because it seems to be some unwritten rule that you need to have shirts for Christian events, but we’re doing it as a way of intentionally rounding out the day. As we serve the community right here we don’t want to forget about those on the other side of the world, so we decided to include a shirt in the deal, with all the proceeds going to provide clean water to people in Africa through the terrific work of Blood:Water Mission. As we spread the word about this idea a couple of weeks ago, much to our delight someone surprised us by graciously offering to cover the cost of production so the entire ten dollars for each shirt will go to BWM. A one dollar donation to BWM is enough to provide one African with clean water for one whole year, and the World Health Organization estimates that 80% of disease in the world is attributed to lack of access to clean drinking water, so this is a really strategic way to be involved.

So let’s put this in perspective: we’re serving for a few hours together on a Saturday morning and we’re all pitching in ten bucks. At noon, several blocks of southeast Lancaster will hopefully be a little bit cleaner. Through the money we raise, close to one thousand Africans will have access to clean water for a year. And all of us who participate will have devoted a few hours to serving others, which really has a way of helping us grow in our walk with Christ.

But let’s be honest. By Monday morning, there will once again be trash on the sidewalks and in the parks (hopefully there will be less, but we won’t take care of the littering problem in a single morning). And yes, we can be excited that hundreds and hundreds of folks in Africa will have access to clean water, but there will still be 1.8 million people who die this year as a result of water-borne disease.

Faced with these truths, I envision a few possible reactions. We can choose to ignore the needs in our city and focus our time and attention elsewhere. We can choose to act as if the lives of millions did not hang in the balance every day. We can choose to pretend that it’s okay to live a comfortable Christian life. Or we can view this day - these few hours and ten dollars - as a catalyst. Having been stretched and shown a little bit of the world we might not have known about before, we can prayerfully consider how God might have specifically equipped each of us to uniquely invest our lives - as people being changed from the inside out - on behalf of the last, the lost, and the least.

If FLOWING ends on Saturday at noon, we have failed. But if what we are seeking to do this Saturday is still being worked out in our lives ten years from now, we might just be onto something.

President Bush recently returned from a whirlwind tour of Africa, where he visited projects that are succeeding, met with presidents and national leaders, and committed once again to US investment in African development.

Once Bush leaves office next year, the dust will slowly settle, and some sort of general consensus will likely begin to form regarding his ‘legacy.’ The equation will be a complex one, considering 9/11 and Iraq and everything else, but any rendering of his legacy will have to factor in Africa if it is to be at all accurate. Bob Geldof, longtime advocate for the poor in Africa, has surprised some by recently saying that Bush has arguably done more for Africa than any other US President. You can read more here or in Geldof’s op-ed in the current issue of TIME. Heck, Brian McLaren has even voiced his praise.

The One Campaign sent representatives with Bush throughout Africa, and reported on the news here. Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s piece, addressed to our next president, is of particular note as we anticipate heading to the polls this November (and, in states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas, in spring primaries still ahead). Not too long ago I linked to ONE’s effort to pressure presidential candidates to go on the record with their plans for fighting poverty and preventable disease. They have now responded. Further, Obama, Clinton, McCain and Huckabee have all responded that, if elected, they will commit to visit Africa during their first term in office. This is good news, but we need to keep reminding (potential) powers that be that our concern with Africa is not peripheral, but will have a real, tangible effect on who we’ll vote for. Let’s not let any candidate off the hook too easily, people.

This is not the end. If anything, it is the starting line. Let’s prioritize the “least of these”, and take help wherever we can find it.

May God bless you with discomfort
at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships
so that you may live deep within your heart

May God bless you with anger
at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people
so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace

May God bless you with tears
to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war
so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and
to turn their pain into joy

And may God bless you with enough foolishness
to believe that you can make a difference in the world
so that you can do what others claim cannot be done
to bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.
- A Franciscan Benediction

This morning I read an essay by Elizabeth Berg in which she shares her resolution for 2008: to read more. It’s a really great essay, and I commend it to you.

Interestingly, though, my resolution is to read less. Sort of.

If I can still do math, which is not to be taken for granted, over the past four years (2004-2007) I have read, on average, 61.25 books per year. That is 245 books over the course of 1461 days (’04 was a leap year), or one book every 5.9632653 days.

After consecutive 50-book years in ‘04 and ‘05, I decided that in ‘06 I would cut back and read 40. Instead I read 70. So take my new resolution with a grain of salt. But here is my plan.

A couple of days before the new year I composed on a yellow legal pad what I titled “Daunting Books for 2008.” On the list are about fifteen scary books that had sat on my shelf for years in some cases, daring me into reading them - books with lots of pages and really small print. Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky (704 pages), Paradise Lost by Milton (512), and Christopher Ricks’ Dylan’s Visions of Sin (528), for starters. Or, for example, the book I am currently plodding through: The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman (672).

C.S. Lewis once advised readers that for every contemporary book we read, we’d do well to also read a book by a dead guy, as a way of exposing our own blind spots. I think I could do a better job at that than I do. But I also wonder if Lewis, were he alive today in our increasingly globalized world, might expand that advice. Recognizing that as a Protestant white North American male I read a lot of books by Protestant white North American males, I’m also trying to be more intentional about reading books from people who might see things from a different vantage point, including an assassinated archbishop from El Salvador and an evangelist from Sri Lanka and others as I come across them.

Finally, I’ve decided to follow the Book of Common Prayer lectionary for my daily Bible readings, complimented by readings in the African Bible Commentary, featuring the insights of 70 African pastors and theologians.

I hope you’ll find a rich and rewarding literary journey of your own this year, and I hope we can learn from each other. It’ll be exciting to see the previously uncharted territory into which this year’s readings will lead.

I recently received a forwarded email asking me to write to the chairman of GAP and tell him I was angry that he had taken Christ out of Christmas completely in his clothing stores, and all but twice on the company website.

Rather, I wrote him to say that while as a follower of Jesus Christ I identify strongly with many of those who are inundating him with emails these days, I apparently differ from them in that I see no mention of shopping for cool clothes in the biblical account of Christmas. I told him it is my understanding that Jesus came for individual people and for communities and even for humankind as a whole, to love and serve and heal and teach and forgive sin and ultimately to die and rise again and in all of it to show us who God is. And I said I’m not sure God is losing sleep over the fact that fewer corporations are invoking Jesus’ name in order to boost sales this time of year.

I went on to suggest that Jesus’ life and teaching indicate that he is much more concerned with how a man runs his business – that as the boss he leads with integrity, that he honors decent, honest, hard work and that he values justice and equity for all involved, from sweatshops in Cambodia to cash registers in retail stores in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to leather chairs in corporate offices in San Francisco.

So I ask this: if we’re struggling to find Christ this Christmastime, is it possible that we’ve been looking in all the wrong places? Could it be that if Christ is to be found at all in the shopping mall, it’s not in the flashing neon sign overhead but in the wrinkled faces and watery eyes of those outside, in the cold, with the ringing bells?

Could it be that we – Christians , rather than evil secular executives – have long since taken Christ out of Christmas by hijacking this holiday (“holy day”) on behalf of commercialism and greed? And could it be that the way to put Christ back on the throne in our hearts is by taking seriously his teaching that whatever we do for the least of these among us, we have done to him?

If you’re inclined to answer yes to any of these questions, World Relief and Advent Conspiracy can give you practical ways to truly begin celebrating Christmas.

“We cannot do it alone. We need good allies such as you. We need … the faith community to help be a voice to the voiceless people. Your engagement can push governments to push through on their commitments. Do not underestimate your power. With faith and the will, we can make a difference.” - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, speaking to a group of evangelicals recently.

Full article here.

I recently had the chance to write an article on Beth Good, who heads up the AIDS response for Eastern Mennonite Missions. The article was published in The Mennonite.

Yesterday, as it happens, was World AIDS Day, marked by thousands of events around the world stressing the urgency of the situation.

I urge you to learn more about the AIDS pandemic here.

Dear Seventeen-year-old Self,

1. You don’t need to freak out about “God’s will for your life.” Do your best to ignore those who cause you to lose sleep over that. Just read 1 Thessalonians 4:3-7 and get on with it already. God’s will for your life is your sanctification. When you are sanctified you love God and love people and that’s all there is, really. You didn’t come across Frederick Buechner until far too late in life (24!), but hold on to this quote: “The place God calls you to is where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Narrow in on that place and don’t compromise. That’s God’s will for your life. Picking a major in college, and picking a career, and finding a wife and everything else you’ll get bogged down doing should help you love God and love people in a way that is uniquely you; but it should never be what paralyzes you.

2. Don’t wait for those around you to do things, because maybe God has things for you to do that those around you cannot or will not ever do, or maybe they will only do them once you’ve taken that first step forward. And you don’t want to miss out, so don’t just wait to follow their lead. This goes for big things and small. Next year you’ll whimsically decide to become a DJ on the Millersville radio station. And after a couple semesters you’ll get really sick of it and will never want to be a DJ again, but that whimsical decision, like other decisions you’ve made and will go on to make, will be turning points. Put yourself in situations in which you experience new things. This will require initiative. You will travel. You’ll need to make a habit of talking to strangers. It will even eventually have you reading a lot of books (yes, I know you never read). It might not make sense. But it is necessary if you’re serious about finding your place in the world.

3. Satan is prowling. He really is. Don’t give him an inch.

4. God is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving, and completely faithful. You’re in good hands.

4. You’ll wonder why you thought leaving high school was such a bad thing. Enjoy each day and love people. You’ll stay in touch with those you choose to stay in touch with, and losing track of people you only sort of knew is not the end of the world.

4.5. But while we’re at it… do you really want to skip your senior prom and instead go to a metal concert in a church gym??

5. Take the time to stop and stare. You live in a really big world and you have a lot to learn and laugh at and ponder and a lot to appreciate God for. Certain people will enter your life and will make that clear to you without even trying. I’ll spare you the details.

6. Don’t eat Taco Bell Express at the Houston Airport right before boarding the plane.

7. Right now you are numb. You’ll go to a couple of funerals next year for people you know. There will be tears and snotty tissues all around. You won’t cry, and that will bother you. You will eventually trace this at least in part to growing up where friends come and go and a coping mechanism is to refuse to allow anyone to get too close. Slowly you’ll learn to open yourself up to feeling things. Sure, it will hurt like hell sometimes, but it is good, and healthy, and you’ll never want to return to numbness.

8. There are some hard times ahead. Rather than trying to avoid painful times, search the Scriptures for the promises of God. You’ll need them when the storms come. If I told you about the hard times in detail you’d do everything you could to avoid them because you hate pain, but I think they are probably necessary, and you won’t do much good in a cave. On the other hand, there are some unspeakably wonderful times ahead too, and if I told you about them you’d try to orchestrate them and even if you could pull it off, it wouldn’t be the same, because one of the coolest things about God is that he dazzles his children all the time with unexpected infusions of grace and mercy and goodness and love. It’s really better if these things catch you off-guard.

9. I’ll finish with something else Buechner says, which is pretty good advice. Remember that one of life’s great mercies is that it’s not given us to know the might-have-been of things.

10. Oh, and come to terms with the fact that as long as you live, you’ll be building the airplane midflight.

DOOR: Being an evangelist, you must have heard of the four spiritual laws?

BUECHNER: I can’t say that I have.

DOOR: And you call yourself an evangelist? Bill Bright would not be happy.

BUECHNER: Who is Bill Bright?

DOOR: Seriously? You have never heard of the founder and president of Campus Crusade, an evangelical organization committed to reaching the world by 1984? An organization in the process of raising one billion dollars to reach the world for Christ?

BUECHNER: He hasn’t reached me.

DOOR: Your religious books don’t seem very religious, which is a compliment, by the way.

BUECHNER: Well, I’ve never learned to talk about the Christian faith in the accustomed way. I’ve talked about it the only way I can. In some ways it has created a dilemma for me as a writer, because my religious books are too colloquial and too secular for church people, yet too churchy for secular people.

DOOR: So are you primarily a writer who happens to be a minister, or a minister who happens to be a writer?

BUECHNER: People sometimes say to me, “Why did you get out of the ministry?” I find that deeply upsetting, because I don’t, in any sense, think of myself as giving up the ministry. But I do think of writing as a ministry.

An excerpt from The Door interview with Frederick Buechner, by Mike Yaconelli. Read the complete interview here.

If you’re like me and have traveled very much at all, you’ve likely stumbled upon instances in time, generally between the stubborn language barrier and the annoyance of pushy tuk tuk drivers, when all that is right in the world coalesces for just a moment, and you’re left breathless, wide-eyed, dying to know if anyone else is noticing the magic. In these moments you experience - you taste - something of perfection.

Of course, while traveling you also experience moments of aching loneliness, if you’re anything like me, because those who wander off the beaten path in life must be prepared to go it alone, perhaps for only a season, we can hope, but alone nonetheless. In these times, more than anything, more than a million dollars, all you want is to all of a sudden find yourself in the company of those you love, who also remarkably love you.

Maybe it isn’t surprising that on journeys travelers experience both magic and loneliness, but it can be perplexing to discover that these moments are often one and the same. But one and the same they are, because when you happen upon something inherently and unequivocally good, something in you demands that it be shared with those you love.

Last year in October, I went to the beach in Cambodia by myself for the weekend. By night I slept in a simple bungalow with a bed and a bare light bulb, and by day I sat in the open-air beachside bar, reading, writing, staring out at the Gulf of Thailand, sipping on a banana and coconut milkshake. As Day said hello to Dusk, who then ushered Evening into our midst, the staff at the bar set candles out on the tables and my milkshake was replaced with white wine. I sat there in the beachside bar with the seabreeze swirling lightly around, sipping on my Chardonnay - surrounded by strangers from Europe and Australia I would never talk to, who would also never talk to me, along with the Asian waiters and waitresses who had lived all their days in this lazy beach town. In this moment, all was well; all was right. And yet there was the emptiness. It was the same emptiness I had felt in other magical places in other parts of the world. If only, I kept thinking, if only. This is too good. It shouldn’t be kept to myself.

But of course you don’t need to travel to know what I mean. God in his grace is always slipping bits of goodness into the tedium of our days and the darkness of our nights, and these graces are ours for the taking, for the enjoying, if we’ll only reach out and accept them, not as rights, but as undeserved gifts. And it’s not entirely uncommon, even among otherwise self-seeking creatures like you and I, to respond to the receiving of an undeserved gift not by hoarding or devouring but in some unexplainable way by turning around and extending to others an undeserved gift of their own, and to do so with next to no rational thought and yet with all the firm resolve in the world.

I don’t think it’s an accident that God has placed us in real places to live our lives among real people, just as I don’t think it’s an accident he slipped a bit of goodness into my life on the beach that night in Sihanoukville. And I certainly don’t think it’s an accident that he has slipped bits and pieces of goodness into your life here and there, amidst the tedium and chaos and darkness and distraction and unknowns of it all, and I’m guessing that these bits of goodness in your life have in all likelihood at least occasionally been accompanied by aches of loneliness, reminders that gifts are not to be enjoyed alone.

May we heed the reminders, friends. And as we delve deeper and deeper into the mutual enjoyment of these God-given bits of goodness, may we not forget those for whom these doses of goodness might at least appear to be fewer and farther between, for whom the communal enjoyment of God’s goodness is not yet a reality.