Happy birthday Irene...

So very, very much to be said tonight, so few words.

I went hunting for the passage the speaker was talking about tonight, its in 1 John 3. Looked a little broader in this chapter by 'accident' and it's hit home pretty deeply, and beautifully...

1 John 3:11 'This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.'

1 John 3:17-20 '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. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.'

I suppose tonight my heart condemned me a little.

To fill you guys in, it was a really moving service at XS tonight, guy from compassion spoke to us about goodness and how true goodness is using the unique thing that God made you brilliant at, to make a difference in a world where three quarters of the worlds food is eaten by one quarter of its population, and the amount that quarter wastes is more than the other three quarters actually eat. In this world where 25,000 children under the age of five will dive of starvation and preventable disease tonight, as I sleep in my warm cosy bed. And as I get up tomorrow morning, whinging about umpiring netball in the cold, I'll earn in an hours easy work what they would earn and live on in a week and a half.

We think we are stuck in a rutt? As we complain about school, work, issues with our relationships etc, feeling that we are walking the same road again and again, going over the same cycles, the cycles of poverty perpetuate too. Twenty five thousand. Thats twice the adelaide entertainment centre. Every. Single. Day. One child every three seconds. Watch a clock. Count.

Personally, I can't do it because it's simply too painful. I'll start crying within a minute of starting. So maybe that's a good challenge for you, find an analogue clock and count for a bit. one, two, three. Make a list of people you know, anyone who matters to you, and watch a clock. Every three seconds, cross one off. See how many people you loved would have died in two or three minutes.

Every time I hear a sermon like that, or watch the videos, I can't help but cry. I prayed in a song once, asking God to 'break my heart for what breaks yours' and sometimes I wish I hadn't. But I know that this pain that sometimes overwhelms me, to the point where I cry myself to sleep, it will motivate me to use the gifts God has given me. Holy discontent style.

So yeah, I cried a lot tonight haha, that just kinda seems to happen to me, I'm an emotional person I guess. The thing was, I got home and my sister said I had a letter from compassion. I didn't leap with joy or anything, because often they are appeals for more money, which as much as I would love to give it to them, I truly and sadly do not have. But tonight was one of those magic nights, a letter from Sharon, my sponsor child in Uganda.

And the most special thing about it? She signed her name herself, for the first time ever. She's five, turning six in february and she makes my heart sing. Sponsoring her is one of the most active things I can actually do in the world right now, that and advocacy and prayer, of course.

But yeah, then I got home and found that verse and it was like 'woah, awesome'.

So yet again, I lay my big fat questions of 'OHMYGOODNESSBLARGHWHATAMIGOINGTODOWITHMYLIIIFEEEEE' at the foot of the cross and leave them there. Because really, what am I going to do with those questions anyway? Nothing useful, that's for sure.

So even though I feel much better, and very hopeful about God's plans for my life, I have to remember that the pain of the world is still there...

So, to todays twenty five thousand...
I am so, so sorry. I wish I knew your names...

No poem or song could put right what I got wrong

Titanic.

Widely known as the cheeriest movie ever.

-cough-

The first time I watched the titanic, I did not cry.

I did not cry when he dies, when they are freezing and dying and there seems to be no hope.

I did not cry when those left are saved.

I did not cry when it ends.

I am not even crying now, I am shuddering.

My poor affluent, spoiled, individualist little heart breaks, as that irish mother tells her children 'they'll get the first class people in the boats first and when it's our turn we'll be ready'

As the stone hearted first class mother says

'Will the lifeboats be seated according to class? I hope they aren't too crowded.
'Oh mother, shut up! Don't you understand? The water is freezing and there aren't enough boats. Not enough by half. Half the people on this ship are going to die.

'Not the better half.'

As the man hesitates, hesitates and then jumps into one of so few lifeboats and he sits there, trembling, he knows full well what he does. He knows that he has sacrificed their lives for his.

And I am sitting here, watching Jack freeze and Rose cry, as those in the boats flail around and listen to the cries for help slowly getting quieter, slowly fading away and my heart is breaking. Not because Kate Winslett just did her 'I'll never let go' bit.

Because I am Cal Hockley, pretending I am a childs last hope, to save myself, pretending to be good to save my own sorry skin.

I am Molly Brown, speaking up to little and too late, and sitting down.

I am saving my own skin.

Fifteen-hundred people went into the sea, when Titanic sank from under us. There were twenty boats floating nearby... and only one came back. One. Six were saved from the water, myself included. Six... out of fifteen-hundred. Afterward, the seven-hundred people in the boats had nothing to do but wait... wait to die... wait to live... wait for an absolution... that would never come.

I am the first class of the titanic, but goddamnit, I'm going back.

I'm going back to the scene of my crime and I'm going to make a difference.

But am I really?

Life is comfortable, poverty is far away...

I am too human.

But if I have to watch Titanic once a week and feel this agony all the time...

It's better than the regret of following the alternative.

I will not be those people...

Please god... help me to be better than I am, better than human.

take my heart, take my heart, kindle it with your heart.

take my heart, rekindle my heart.

I'm not calming down, another mothers child laid in the ground

cynics.

they're fun.

i always fall for the cynics, but i guess ive already un-fallen for this one and if I hadn't already, I would have just then...

I mean, it's one thing to not share somebody's passion, but to be so anti-effort, so anti-action.

I just don't get it, I simply don't understand.

'i find this interesting right, at an assembly the poverty guy talked about how only 3% of the world had internet and we are extremely rich. But i went away and the statistics are more like 60% not including internet cafes and africa as a whole isnt in poverty. sure u have problem countries like i dont knowwww sierra leone? but thats caused by war and governments ******* up. so we as individuals cant do anything apart from give money, which we have no idea where it goes and probably fuels war anyway, cause when u think about it, when u give a poor man a few bucks, u know hes gonna spend it on alcohol'

Ok, so let me get this straight, just because its not the entire of africa (or the world for that matter) thats in poverty, that makes it ok?

Just because issues in Sierra Leone are caused by war (which is dumbing it down to say the least) that makes it alright for those people to be living in fear and hunger??

Just because those issues are 'governments stuffing up' (to phrase it nicely) means we should sit back and do nothing???

'So we as individuals can't do anything', you're saying one person can't make a change. Well it's not just one person, it's lots, and thats the point.

And one person certainly isn't going to make an impact if they choose not to.

And way to stereotype the poor, just by the way.

You don't know the individual, you don't know the situation, so don't pass judgement, k?

I don't know about it either, but I know it's not right for the world to be this way, and I know I'm going to do my best to change it, even if my impact is so miniscule that the world won't notice if I become suddenly unemployed and unable to pay my monthly sponsorship stuff.

But sharon would notice.

<3glitter

wakeup,canipinchyouplease?