Acholi Beads

There are a few things in life that I am truly passionate about, that I will talk your ear off about. One of them is Acholi Beads.
If you do not know the story of Acholi Beads, please take the time to read about this amazing initiative. James Pearson is a family friend and his heart for the people of Uganda is enormous. It touches everyone he meets, I being one of those people.

If you're looking for a Christmas gift that will make a tangible difference in someone's life, go check out the handiwork of some lovely women who are escaping poverty, lack and hopelessness because you are wearing their beads and sharing their story.

The School of Prayer

So I got behind in blogging and now you're just getting a whole slew (isn't "slew" a great word!) of blogs that have been sitting in my edit post pile for a while. 

Pastor Art on Wednesday night does what he calls The School of Prayer. It's a time of teaching devoted solely to prayer. Now some people might say, "Well, it's just prayer. I mean no one has to teach me what to do. I just talk to God." That's what I thought too. Until Wednesday night. Here are some quotes that blew me away:

-James 1: 5-8 If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. 6But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; 8he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.

-Maybe the reason your prayers never get answered is because you are a "double-minded man". 

-Stop asking God without believing He can do it! You must ask with faith! Many of us still pray "double-minded" prayers.

-God has asked us to come to Him with all our mind, spirit, soul, and strength. When one of those parts of us is not focused on God, we are double-minded.

-If someone watched you pray without hearing your words, would they know you were praying? Does your body posture match your prayers?  

-The reason God's people criticize God's church and its leaders is because their prayers aren't getting answered so they turn to people to meet their spiritual needs. 

-Jesus' number one command to us was to love God with your WHOLE being.

-You've been bought by blood, not rented.

-You're not your own anymore. You can't just say what you want. You can't just do what you want anymore.

-If you're living by the Spirit, you crave the Word.

-A lot of times we say to God, "Love yah, mean it, bye!" and then wonder why are prayers aren't answered.

-Prayer is not a holy grenade thrown at the last minute. 

Getting the whole picture

I was reminded in a big way today that we only see half the picture. No, not even half. We see 1/200th of the picture when it comes to the reality of other people's lives. 

Because I'm the advanced ESL teacher at school, I get the opportunity to help students edit their personal essays for college applications. So I sat down tonight to go over one student's essay and I just about cried. Her life was so much different than I had imagined. I knew she came from a poor country. I knew that she was a motivated young woman. But I had missed everything in between, the whole picture of her life, the whole, completely devastating picture of her everyday existence. 

It reminded me of how we tend to make judgements about people even thought we do not know the whole picture. A co-worker is snippy to us and we automatically tag them as a mean, spiteful person. A family member forgets to do something for us and we assume they don't really love or care for us. 

We're not seeing the full picture. We're not seeing that the co-worker just came out of the boss's office discovering her workload had just increased 10 fold with no extra compensation. We're not seeing how someone belittled our family member so on the drive home all they thought about was the negative words said to them, not the list of to-dos.

But as you well may know we can't simply withhold judgement from anyone. That's impossible. But we can ask for the whole picture, ask the One who sees everything to give us His eyes and His ears. Something amazing happens when we ask for this...life becomes less about us and our feelings and becomes more about serving and loving and speaking life into the lives of those around us.

Lord, today I'm asking for the whole picture. I want to see with Your eyes and hear with Your ears.