Wake Up - It's 2010

Well, It's been quite a ride since my last post about getting involved in the community.  It seems my world has flipped upside down....in a good way. I have started a new job, which I am so grateful for. It allows for more time at home, less stress, and an emotionally warm work environment. I've started spending time on Monday nights with a group called People Loving Nashville, it's a small organization that fixes 150+ meals and feeds the homeless, both physically & spiritually. (www.peoplelovingnashville.com) Through spending time with these folks I have become much more aware of the needs of our community. My husband & I have also been blessed with an unbelievable small group that meets once a week. Through this group we have formed many new friends and have joined together to work as a team in showing the love of Christ in tangible ways to our community. I can't tell you how enriched my life has become since stepping out of my comfort zone and getting my hands dirty. I have asked God to burden my heart with the needs of people around me, and this has led to forming relationships with people I would have never otherwise known. God has had me knocking on doors of complete strangers, working New Year's Eve with friends rebuilding a bathroom & revamping a home for a family in need, and hugging new homeless friends on Blair Avenue after telling them how much love Jesus has for them.  My world has not changed, but my perspective has. These needs have been there all along but I'm acknowledging them for the first time.  I'm ashamed at the people I've walked by in the past and avoided eye contact, and the times I haven't cut someone slack and thought about what might be going on in their life.  The truth is - it doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter that I've wasted 23 years worrying about what outfit to wear or how much money I don't have to spend on something I probably didn't need in the first place. What matters is that I am still breathing and it's 2010.  My slate is clean, my eyes feel fresh, and my heart is ultimately vulnerable and burdened by the needs of our world....and our world essentially needs wholehearted unconditional love.  And whatever that entails, whatever route it takes to get it there, however much time it takes to create, I'm up for it.  


Deut. 15:7. If there is a poor man among you, one of your brothers, in any of the towns of the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand to your poor brother; but you shall freely open your hand to him, and generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks.

Is. 58:10. "And if you give yourself to the hungry, and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness, and your gloom will become like midday. And the LORD will continually guide you, and satisfy your desire in scorched places, and give strength to your bones; and you will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail."