"...You can have all this world,..."

Caught:  Reading God's Word!

"Give me Jesus, Give me Jesus, Give me Jesus.
You can have all this world,
Just give me Jesus."  (Jeremy Camp)

Some cultures just don't want the world.  This is a baffling concept for the affluent Western and European culture to grasp.  "Blessed" can travel two different have and have-not paths:   



Their Culture:                                                        Our Culture:

• They feel blessed when their kids can afford school while we feel blessed when our kids make the LaCrosse team.
• They feel blessed when all the tin stays on their home during a storm while we feel blessed when our kitchen pipes don't freeze.
• They feel blessed when they have a black kettle in their lean-to kitchen while we feel blessed when we have a state-of-the-art outdoor kitchen.                                Ouch!  Why is it that we measure what we have only after seeing what we perceive to be"the lacking" in others' lives?   Through our Mission Corps assignments, we have seen severe poverty;  yet, we have not seen abject poverty.  We have seen cultures without; yet, with!  We have seen people exactly poor; yet, with perfect hope.  We have been in cultures that don't know they lack.   We (probably not you) are guilty of placing our comparative grid of everything over their grid of nothing. And, our heart has opened our ears to Jeremy Camp's song, "Give Me Jesus."  The churches we visit in the jungle bush are true definitions of New Testament churches: the people! 

February 11, 2018

February 11, 2018

Poles bound together for slatted seating,  woven mats on the floor for overflow, and not a hint of a breeze. 
Yet the people gather, welcome us, sing familiar songs, and preach the Word. 

February 18, 2018

The pastor and his sweet wife

Tin building, crushed coral floor, backless benches, and sorted chairs exclaim their open invitation, "You can have all this world, just give me Jesus."

Most of the pastors and their families don't have cars.  They don't make fashion statements.
Amazon Prime can't deliver their dreams.  These pastors attend our English classes.  Indeed, their heads are in the sky, far from what the world offers.  We love it.  We love being engulfed and submerged inside a culture that just doesn't want the world.  They teach us with such gentleness and humility, "...just give me Jesus."

One pastor recently told us that he had taken all the English classes that he could take at a local college.  He went on to say, "I prayed and asked God, 'Send me an English teacher.' " 
His prayer had bumped into our culture, and we were so grateful that we had said, "We
are going to Vanuatu!" 








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J:m and L:nda