It is well with my soul!

I am overwhelmed with so much joy. God has answered my prayers after years and has planted one idea inside my brain that can bring people together and help those who are in need.

Yesterday, a truly mind-altering experience struck me with such deliberation that I knew it couldn't be false. Sunday morning, I woke up. I took a shower, I brushed my teeth, and I sat down with a cup of coffee and a piece of zucchini bread from Fresh Market. The fireplace was blazing and the flat-screen TV was turned to some network station that I did not intend to watch.

I tend to avoid the news. I find it depressing. I know now, though, that the only thing that the only two sentiments that will ever change the world are love and broken-heartedness. I think both tend to be present when really magnificent things occur.

The remote was sitting on the other side of the room and I was already comfortable, so I humored the white-haired man and his interviewees by listening to what they had to say.

Haiti. It was a man in a suit talking to three correspondents in Haiti. I watched as he inquired, "What things are you seeing there?"

A female doctor began to speak in that way reporters often do - little remorse for the subject matter evident in her voice, but something in her eyes that said very much otherwise.

I watched as people were pulled from beneath poorly-built walls that had crumbled to the ground like gingerbread cottages. People's frail limbs were crushed and lost to the horror of the tragedy. Parent-less little boys sat with broken bodies, lonely and scared.

I sat on a suede couch with a cup of coffee, watching all this happen on a flat-screen TV, having dispatched my gourmet zucchini bread without thought.

It was time to go to church and I was silent. I tried to express to my parents how I felt so removed from that situation, how it was so easy to forget that it actually happened. I felt so distant that I think even seeing it in person would have registered only as a horrible nightmare. "What kind of place is this?" I might ask. "What kind of place has no hospitals that can withstand an earthquake, no one to help, no medicine to heal the horror of the circumstances?" What kind of place could be so unlike my comfortable, luxurious home?

I said little else on our way to church.

The sermon can be found here - its title is "broke" on January 17th. http://www.hispcc.com/site/sermons.php

I strongly encourage you to listen to it. It is the most honest and truthful sermon on giving that I've ever heard. It's a little lengthy, but it is so worth it. I promise.

Upon hearing of the subject matter, I felt that dealing with money would have little to do with Haiti. I had anticipated something more along the lines of a worship service dedicated entirely to the people, lots of prayer, lots of tears, lots of anguish and a mission to provide strength and healing to those who sought it.

Instead, it was a logical display of what Christ had to say about gifts and how God is not only directly related, but the sole bearer.

Matthew 25:14-30 was the scripture that I had read so often without truly understanding it. It became clear, as the senior pastor so eloquently explained it, that not a thing on this planet belongs to a single one of us. God has placed everything we have in our care "according to our ability" and He expects us to use it to glorify Him - to not hoard it for ourselves - to help His suffering people.

He then explained that God has absolutely no need for what we "give" him. Psalm 50:9-15
It is all His in the first place. How ignorant and selfish and proud of us to think that what we have is our doing. As if we mean more to God than those impoverished people in Haiti! God has TRUSTED us with what He has given us, and we have hoarded it all for ourselves, instead of working it and using it to glorify Him - to have something real and true to give back to God. "Here, Lord - see what I have done. I have loved and I have given to charity and I have gone to other countries where there is no physical comfort and I have made someone else's life better with what you have let me borrow. Here is what is yours, and more! It is all for your glory, Lord - you are the one who trusted me with this incredible responsibility and I realize that it is not mine to keep."

We are all God's children and he wants us to share with one another. He wants us all to love each other and get along so that he, the Father, can be glorified and honored by what we have done with the wealth He has given us.

I was so rocked by this realization that I never wanted to stop speaking about it. I wanted to tell everyone. So what did I do at the end of the service? I dropped some cash I had into the baskets at the front of the congregation on my way out - cash that would help someone in need.

It felt so empty, though. I know every little bit counts. But what happens when all you ever give is a little? What could happen if you gave more? That money meant nothing to me. I could have done so many meaningless things with it - it was no great sacrifice at all! I did it to make myself feel better, but the realization of that hit me so hard that I started to feel terrible. Who am I to think that giving a little cash is some great deed? I have such an unbelievably blessed life that I should be using everything I have to serve God.

"I'm not that kind of person," I told myself. "That is for other people to think about - not me." And I went on with my day, like I would any other.

Yesterday, I sat around and watched a whole bunch of TV and not much else until a little after noon. I cruised around on facebook and saw that I had been invited to a group that encouraged people to wear red shirts to show support of the people in Haiti. I think, based on my last post, you can imagine what happened next. I was simply irate. "How dare those people think that they are accomplishing anything by wearing a red shirt! This is an insult to charity - it is an insult to this community and to the people of Haiti!"

How dare they? How dare I. I began to think how little that money meant to me, how it wasn't really a sacrifice at all. And I began to think that God had put me here for some greater purpose than to judge other people and to put a little cash into a basket at church for everyone to see - for God to see. Did I think that would impress Him? Did I think I could ever really impress Him?

I do not want to say that I have come upon this myself. I know that every single thought that has crossed my mind since Sunday morning has been God's way of chipping away at the final layers to make me a stronger person. I know that He has planted every good thought that has popped into my head and that He has supplied me with such good friends and such strong support for what I am trying to do.

I know that, if we sell one ticket or a hundred tickets to this concert, it will be a victory in the name of God, and if no one else can see that but me, so be it - it is God's money and those are God's people. He wants anything but for us to use money and time on ourselves instead of helping His people, even the slightest bit.

I am so overwhelmed with joy. I truly am. My only regret is that it took such a devastating event such as the one in Haiti to make me feel this way. I intend to make up for lost time if I can, and I intend to enjoy myself along the way.

Praise God. It is well with my soul!

END.