Thursday, June 3, 2010

Stop Listening

It's so easy to listen like a lump and absorb like a sponge. It's hard to plan to change and stand up and do something.


Tonight I listened to a sermon that moved me to tears. The speaker's mother had lived with patched and threadbare clothes so she could send more money to gospel workers. She fasted often in her passion for those who hadn't heard. When she died her sons discovered she didn't have any money saved up of the amounts they had sent her each month for support. When the sermon was over a group of us discussed the message for a few minutes, talking about indigenous workers and their worth, the pastor's mother and her earnestness. Talking.

Then I came back to my apartment and sat down to read a wonderful book on cross-cultural ethics called "Strange Virtue" by Bernard Adeney. I read and read. So interesting, entertaining to my brain.

Lord, I read and listen about how to follow you year after year. When will I do? Bless me with the help of these other brothers and sisters to drop apathy and commit to action. I want (but don't want) to fast and pray, and to give money, to be a doer and not a hearer only, deceiving myself.

"Little children, let us not love in word and tongue, but in action and in deed."