hunger

Never Tire of Doing Good

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Today we woke up to news that several tornadoes touched down near Dayton.

Sunday, we talked about flooding in Oklahoma and I asked our congregation to consider donating toward the construction and operation of a new high school in Harrisburg, Liberia.  Before that, there was flooding in Iowa and Nebraska and we were raising money for a Habitat for Humanity house here in Alliance, Ohio.  Before that, it was something else, and there was something else before that, and so on.

There seems to be a never-ending stream of need.

There is always someone, or some organization, asking for our money or our time.  And, after a while, we can be tempted to shut it all out, to numb ourselves to the needs of the people around us, and just live quietly in our own world while we pretend that the rest of the world will be okay without our help or participation.  This is not uncommon.  In fact, there’s even a scientific name for it.

It’s called “compassion fatigue.”

The constant demand for our attention, for our money, for our time, and for our effort can wear us down.  We get tired of helping and we grow weary of even being asked.

But this isn’t new to the twenty first century.

In Paul’s second letter to the church in Thessalonica, he writes about people, inside the church, who won’t do their share of the work but still show up to get food and other help from the rest of the church.  It was bad enough that they even instituted an official policy, “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”  But even so, some of the idle non-workers were spending their time gossiping about everyone else and it was disrupting the entire church.  People were frustrated.  They were tired.  They felt as if they were being taken advantage of.

They had compassion fatigue.

But after Paul calls out the busybodies and urges them to earn the food that they were eating, he sends this message to the rest of the church who were already doing more than their fair share:

And as for you, brothers and sisters, never tire of doing what is good. (2 Thessalonians 3:13)

Never tire of doing good.

I know that someone always seems to be asking for something.  I know that sometimes it feels like someone is trying to take advantage of us.  I know that the pleas for disasters and calls to alleviate poverty and suffering from across the country and around the world seem to be almost constant and never-ending.

But it has always been that way and it will almost certainly continue as long as we draw breath.

Three out of the four gospel writers record Jesus words, “You will always have the poor among you…”  (Matthew 26:11, Mark 14:7, John 12:8).  And these words remind us that until the world is remade at the end of time, there will always be people in need.

But, as the followers of Jesus Christ we have been called to do something about it.  We can’t do everything, but we can do something.  John Wesley put it this way:

Do all the good you can.

By all the means you can.

In all the ways you can.

In all the places you can.

At all the times you can.

To all the people you can.

As long as ever you can.

 

We have been both blessed and called by God to be his agents in the world.  We are the only Jesus that most people will ever see.  We are his hands and his feet in a hurting, suffering, hungry world.

May we never tire of doing good.

 

Blessings,

Pastor John

A Dream So Big

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    My wife, Patti, and another member of our church first met Steve Peifer during a trip to visit Keith and Jamie Weaver, missionaries sent by our church to the people of Kenya.  There, Patti met Steve and worked with this beautiful wife Nancy in the library at Rift Valley Academy.  I first met Steve at my home church when we invited him to come and tell us about his efforts to feed hungry school children that he describes in A Dream So Big.  Since then Patti and I have answered a call to pastoral ministry and have not only followed Steve’s adventures through his regular emails, but have, on several occasions, invited him to speak in the churches where we were serving.  I don’t think that his story has ever failed to astound his listeners. 

     
    Steve is an average, middle class guy whose life was turned upside down and who, through no particular plan of his own, ended up in Kenya, Africa seeing things that most of us cannot imagine, and doing things that we would be afraid to do.  Throughout this story, Steve insists that he is not an amazing man, just a man through whom, God is doing amazing things. 
 
    In A Dream So Big, we meet Steve, Nancy, and their family before the adventure began, at home, in Texas.  We walk with them through one of the most difficult times that a parent can imagine, the loss of their child, Steven, and then follow them as they head to Africa.  At first, their African adventure is intended to be just a year away to sort things out and to process the pain and the trauma of losing a child, a time for their family to be together and to heal.  But, as Steve often points out, Africa changes a person.  After a year in Kenya, the Peifers feel called, if not compelled, to return on a more permanent basis, and it is then that the real adventure begins.  
    Not content to see children lying in the dirt at school because they are weak from hunger, Steve sets out to change the world, or at least his little corner of it.  Steve asks, and with the help of his friends and supporters in the United States, begins to provide lunches for two schools nearby.  Two schools become four, and then ten, and by the end of the book become a truly extraordinary number.  Providing food not only allows the children to be free from hunger, but gives them the strength to get an education and an incentive to stay in school.  Even with these successes, Steve is not content.  Building on the feeding program, Steve and his friends begin to build solar powered computer centers.
    Just because I said the word computer, do not be tempted to think that this is just another story about wealthy, white Americans swooping in to “rescue” Africa.  Those stories are old and they often are the picture of “Ugly Americans” with all the cultural insensitivity that you might expect.  That is not Steve’s story.  Steve builds a program in which the villages take ownership of their schools and their computer centers.  The parents know that when these children finish school and head into the city to find work, as most of them do, that they will find good paying, skilled jobs instead of living in the slums fighting with untold thousands of others for a handful of unskilled jobs.  The school children, their parents, and many others have seen Steve’s vision, and it is a vision that can break the back of poverty in Africa.  It is a vision that can change the world.
    I highly recommend A Dream So Big.  As you follow Steve, Nancy and their family on this amazing adventure, you will laugh out loud at the ridiculous situations in which Steve finds himself.  But you will also weep at the poverty and hopelessness that he sees all around him.  A Dream So Big invites you, not only to follow along, but to be a part of this incredible adventure.  I have no doubt that Steve Peifer is changing the world, one child at a time.  When you read this book, you will discover that you can too.
Steve’s book, A Dream So Big will be released next week and can be found on Amazon here: A Dream So Big.