social justice

When It’s Time to Love with Action and In Truth

September 20, 2017 By Michelle

The other night over dinner with friends I made a rather funny slip of the tongue. We were talking about sports injuries, and instead of referring to an “ACL tear,” I called it an “ACLU tear.” We all laughed at my slip, and I made a joke about clearly being in a much more activist frame of mind these days.

I thought about that statement for a long while afterwards. While it’s true that I’ve found myself in a more “activist frame of mind” in recent months, I’m also frustrated because it seems that’s exactly where my activism ends most days: in my mind. I am better-informed than ever before about the current political climate and ongoing social issues, and I have made small forays toward putting some action behind my thoughts and words (my husband and I are working on a racism awareness initiative with our denomination’s synod, for example), but most days, the truth is, I don’t do much more than stew.

And as I stew…

White supremacists carry torches in Charlottesville.

Nearly one million Dreamers who were brought to this country by their parents illegally as children stand to be deported as a result of Trump’s vow to end DACA.

Black men are imprisoned at six times the rate of white men.

More than 60,000 people don’t have enough to eat on a regular basis in Southeast Nebraska alone.

More than 30,000 people lost their homes in Houston as the result of hurricane Harvey’s wrath.

And our Yezidi friends who arrived as refugees here in Lincoln last December are still desperate to reunite with their beloved mother and grandmother, who has been waiting months for her visa to be approved by the United States, with no end to the deferral in sight.

I could go on and on. Endless problems. Endless heartache and suffering. And yet all I can say is that I am in an “activist frame of mind?” I’m beginning to realize that no matter what my frame of mind is, it makes no difference if I don’t follow it with boots-on-the-ground action. Or as John so pointedly advised: “Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”

Last week I attended a lecture by attorney and social justice advocate Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy, at a local college here in Lincoln. Stevenson talked at length about hopelessness, which he referred to as “the enemy of justice.” In fact, he had some choice words about hope and hopelessness. “You’re either hopeful or you’re the problem,” Stevenson said. “There is no in-between.”

That got my attention.

I was grateful that in addition to calling out the purposelessness of my hopelessness, Bryan Stevenson also offered some concrete tips for how to move from what I’m calling an “activist frame of mind” to loving with action and in truth.

Get proximate to the problems you see in society, Stevenson said. In other words, don’t just talk about the problems — the homeless, the hungry, the imprisoned, the displaced, the refugees and immigrants, the marginalized — from a distance. Get to know the problems — or rather, the people struggling with the problems — up close and personal. “We are required to get close to people who are suffering and struggling,” Stevenson said. “When we do this, we will see things we cannot see from a distance.”

Get uncomfortable. “We have to be willing to do uncomfortable things,” Stevenson also said. “It’s a choice.”

The same week I heard Bryan Stevenson’s lecture, I also had the opportunity to interview one of the new commanding officers at our local Salvation Army corps for an article I’m writing. After chatting for a few minutes about the many needs in our community, the corps commander said this:

“It’s not just about the check; it’s also about your influence, and it’s not just about your influence, it’s also about your involvement.”

In other words, get proximate and uncomfortable.

In other words, love with your actions and in truth.

Honestly, I’m not sure what my next steps are; I’m still grappling with exactly how to “get proximate.” There are a lot of options, a lot of opportunities, yet at the same time, “getting proximate” is surprisingly challenging when you live and work with people who are all socio-economically and ethnically similar to you. Clearly this is going to require stepping out and perhaps even getting uncomfortable.

Right now I do know this, though: an “activist frame of mind” isn’t enough. Yes, self-education is an important and necessary part of the process; we begin by being informed. And yes, financial support, if you have the means to offer it, is critical too. But I also think there comes a time, in the words of Bryan Stevenson, to get proximate and to get uncomfortable. And I’m beginning to think, for me at least, the time has come to step out in love with action and in truth.

My Dad Went to Haiti and Came Home Sick

May 8, 2013 By Michelle

“I still don’t know why I went,” he said, genuinely puzzled. “I know why you went,” I answered my dad. “You don’t just go to Haiti for fun. You go because the Holy Spirit tells you to go.”

My dad and my brother-in-law Matt recently traveled to Haiti with the Haitian Health Foundation, an organization that provides healthcare, education, food and shelter to more than 200,000 Haitians living in the city of Jeremie and in rural mountain villages. Matt and my dad went with a team of dentists from Connecticut. They helped pull rotten teeth and dispensed medicine and food for five days straight.

I admit, I was shocked when he announced earlier in the year that he had signed up to travel with the Foundation. Like me, my dad is a somewhat troubled believer. Traveling to Haiti at age 70 on a mission trip was unexpected, to say the least.

My dad came home sick. Not physically ill, but heart-sick. And a little bit spiritually sick, too. He talked for a long time, sitting on my red couch, tucked into our cozy living room with the lights burning bright and clean water from the faucet and cabinets stocked full of food. He described what he had seen in Haiti, what he kept seeing when he closed his eyes at night, comfortable in his king-sized bed.

Children scavenging for food amid garbage, playing in the stream of raw sewage that flowed by their shacks.

Orphans, their bellies grossly distended from malnutrition.

Families lined up at sunrise for the chance to see a dentist.

Mouths full of sores, swollen gums and rotting teeth.

Fathers selling bits of junk and charcoal on the street.

A mother who held out her sick infant, begging “Take, take.”

“No, no,” my dad had said, shaking his head at the woman who thrust her child at him. “No doctor, no, I’m not a doctor.” He stood outside of the orphanage in the blazing sun. “I just couldn’t do it,” he said. ‘I just couldn’t look at those kids for another second.”

I don’t know what the answers are. I don’t know about the solutions, or even whether there’s really hope for Haiti. But I do know this. The Holy Spirit sent my dad to Haiti. He doesn’t know why and neither do I. But there was a reason. That I know for sure.

How YOU Can Help:
More than 92 percent of funds collected by the Haitian Health Foundation go directly to services for the poor in Jeremie and the surrounding mountain villages. Relief programs include healthcare, Feed-A-Child, Save-A-Family, housing construction projects, latrine building projects, education sponsorships and more.

Please visit the Haitian Health Foundation for more information or to make a donation.

*Photos taken by my brother-in-law Matt (pictured in the black glasses and the baseball cap). I’m just so proud of my dad, who went on his very first mission trip at the age of 70 – what a leap!

Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Radical

January 21, 2013 By Michelle

Two weeks ago, while vacationing in the Florida Keys, I read Kisses from Katie, a memoir written by a woman who, when she graduated from high school, moved to Uganda, launched an education and hunger mission and adopted 14 orphan girls – all before she turned twenty.

That’s right, I read Kisses from Katie while lolling on the beach, eating Key Lime Pie and sipping margaritas. The gross irony was not lost on me.

Anyway, Katie made a number of hugely compelling statements in that book, including this:

“I believe that God totally, absolutely intentionally gives us more than we can handle. Because this is how we surrender to Him and He takes over, proving Himself by doing the impossible in our lives.”

Truthfully, I’ve always bought into the adage, “God never gives you more than you can handle.” But now, I’m beginning to wonder if Katie Davis is right.

With only a single cover-to-cover read-through of the Bible under my belt, I can tell you this with certainty: the Bible is radical. Jesus is super radical. And he expects us to be radical, too. Not necessarily move-to-Uganda-and-adopt-14-orphans radical. But radical nonetheless. There’s simply no getting around it. You can’t read the Bible without feeling compelled to do something for the least of these. And if you can, I say you need to go back and read it again.

I’ve been feeling something lately, a movement underfoot, a sense that God wants me to do something big. As Brad said, when I mentioned I’d been feeling a Holy Spirit push, “That’s a little scary.” I agree. It is scary. Because frankly, I don’t want the Holy Spirit to ask me to do something that makes me uncomfortable. I don’t want the Holy Spirit to give me more than I can handle. Sometimes just getting my people off to school with their backpacks and lunch bags and their shoes tied feels like more than I can handle. But I suspect the Holy Spirit has something bigger in mind.

I already wrote about the story in Luke 5 a couple of weeks ago, and it just so happens that we read that very story yesterday in church, which meant I had to write about it again for this post. I wasn’t sure I’d have anything else to say. But I was wrong. It seems that story – especially the part about Simon Peter, James and John dropping their nets, pulling their boats onto the beach and following Jesus – reminds me of Katie Davis, which reminds me that Holy Spirit has something big for me to do.

Leaving their entire livelihood to follow Jesus seems beyond what an ordinary person could handle. But that’s exactly what the ordinary disciples did. And it’s what ordinary Katie Davis did, too. I’m sure they were afraid. I’m sure they wondered if they were making the right decision. I’m sure they felt like the whole thing was a bit much. But they did it anyway.

I don’t know what my “something big” is yet. Honestly, I’ve been avoiding asking God about it. But I have a feeling he’s going to tell me anyway. And along with it, he has this to say:

“There is nothing to fear.” (Luke 5:10) So for now, I’m clinging to that.

Do you believe, like Katie Davis states, that God intentionally gives us more than we can handle? How does that make you feel?

Joining with Ann Voskamp for Her Walk with Him Wednesday series. She’s writing about Radical: Right Where You Are (and she wrote about Katie Davis and Kisses for Katie, too — how ’bout that?!)

Welcome to the “Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday” community, a place where we share what we are hearing from God and his Word.

If you’re here for the first time, click here for more information. Please include the Hear It, Use It button (grab the code below) or a link in your post, so your readers know where to find the community if they want to join in — thank you!

Please also try to visit and leave some friendly encouragement in the comment box of at least one other Hear It, Use It participant. And if you want to tweet about the community, please use the #HearItUseIt hashtag.

Thank you — I am so grateful that you are here!

Click here to get posts in your email in-box. Click here to “like” my Facebook Writer page. Thank you!

Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Cutting Straight to the Chase

January 7, 2013 By Michelle

I’ll tell you the truth. The first time I read the Gospel of Luke from the opening verse to the last I panicked. In fact, every time I read the Gospel of Luke I panic.

I panic because it’s always so clear that I am falling far short of Jesus’ expectations.

The problem, of course, is that Luke tells it straight. He cuts right to the chase, to the heart of the Gospel, which is simply this: love God; love your neighbor. And he tells us exactly how to do that, in verses like these:

“If you have two shirts, give one to the poor.” (Luke 3:11)

“If you have food, share it with those who are hungry.” (Luke 3:11)

He also tells us what will happen if we don’t heed his instructions. We’ll pay the price, that’s what. We’ll be like chaff, separated from the wheat with a winnowing fork and burned. (Luke 3:17) We’ll be like the tree that doesn’t produce good fruit: chopped down and thrown in the fire. (Luke 3:9)

I think sometimes I try to sugarcoat the Gospels – to gloss over the scary, intimidating parts, the verses about chaff and chopped wood and never-ending fire. I pretend I don’t see the tough-love parts, the parts where Jesus tells me he means business.

But the truth is, I can’t come away from the Gospel of Luke making any ifs, ands or buts for myself. If I read the words, all the words, there’s no space in that text for excuses. Luke doesn’t offer any wiggle room. He states the case, Jesus’ case, without any frills or fanfare, and he puts the burden on one person: me.

So here’s the question I’m asking myself these days – the same one the crowds asked John the Baptist when they came to the edge of the river.

What should I do?

The question feels complicated. Or perhaps I try to make it complicated.

But the answer is simple, right there in black and white:

If you have two shirts, give one to the poor.

If you have food, share it with those who are hungry.

What’s been your experience in reading the Gospel of Luke? Have you found his emphasis on serving the poor to be convicting in any way? What’s one small way you can give to the poor or share with the hungry this week?

: :

Welcome to the “Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday” community, a place where we share what we are hearing from God and his Word.

Thank you — I am so grateful that you are here!

Click here to get posts in your email in-box. Click here to “like” my Facebook Writer page. Thank you!

The Best and the Worst

December 12, 2012 By Michelle

I was recently asked to write a story in 200 words or less describing the best or the worst thing that happened to me that day. This is what I wrote – in some ways, it was both the best and the worst, all wrapped into one experience. {and yes, it’s less than 200 words – no small feat for me!}

“Mommy, look at these!” he says, holding out the package of unblemished mushrooms for me to admire. Such pristine vegetables are a rarity amid the withered lettuce, brown bananas and squishy cucumbers piled onto the table — food that’s past its prime, expired, rejected by those who have a choice.

“I’ll take those, young man.” Noah turns toward the man with the weathered, flushed face. The cuffs of his jeans are ragged, and he leans heavily on a cane, but his smile is kind. “They’re really fresh,” Noah says, gently placing the small container in the cart.

“Why do the people only get the yucky, wilty food?” Rowan asks as we drive home from the distribution center. “Well,” I pause. “Well, because that’s the food nobody else wants. People who have enough money buy the best vegetables in the store, so the ones we gave out tonight are the leftovers,” I answer.

Rowan is silent for a minute, staring into the darkness. “Do we get to buy the best?” he asks, leaning forward, the seat belt straining across his chest. “Yes, honey,” I answer, glancing at him in the rear view mirror. “We get to buy the best.”

: :

My Compassion blogger assignment this month is to write about what giving Biblically looks like in today’s culture. This story is an interesting answer to that question. On one hand, I am grateful to the Lincoln grocery stores for donating such huge quantities of food to our city’s poor. On the other hand, Rowan’s question is a perceptive and difficult one: why do poor people only get the leftovers that no one else wants? Why don’t we skim off the top of our resources to care for the least of these, instead of from the bottom, after every one of our own myriad needs is met?

Thanks to my seven-year-old, I’m struggling with the answers to those questions myself. In the meantime, though, I want to offer you a small but meaningful way you can positively impact a person who is desperately in need this season. Purchase a gift from a wide range of choices in Compassion’s Holiday Gift Catalog — a meal, medicine, seeds, a goat — and make a very real difference today.

Thank you!!

Click here to get posts in your email in-box. Click here to “like” my Facebook Writer page. Thank you!

social justice

Footer