Trying to follow

So I’m sitting at Starbucks with my 2% chai
and this lady comes walking and people stare as she goes by.
She’s about 5 foot 2 and she’s wearing a big coat,
and everybody looks up from their computers and forget what they wrote.

She walks to the counter with her bundle of sacks,
as we sit here rich and white on our new shiny macs.
She’s visibly frozen from the outside right in,
and nobody wants eye contact with her, is this a great sin?

She buys a coffee for here and digs through her pockets
and everyone’s eyes jump nearly out of their sockets.
Could she be paying for her coffee with those filthy worn hands?
her hair matted down under her hood coming out it knotted strands.

She walks to the creamer and adds some to her drink,
and as she does so people are perplexed and sit to think.
So the silence goes on as people just sit and stare,
it’s visibly disturbing just to see her sit there.

She is another soul and I am so distraught,
just thinking about the chai that I just walked in and bought,
without thinking about if I’d have enough for another time,
and still I sit here comfortable and uncomfortable…

I have so much to think about, so much going on in my life.
And I just settled in for a warm drink and started to write,
but now I can’t focus on my qualitative essay due tomorrow,
because here I am seeing a woman being ignored in her sorrow.

And I have to ask myself,..
when I see a brother or sister in need,
am I going to go on in my selfishness in greed?
not thinking about her soul, not having pity on her?
because how can the love of GOD be in me if my insides don’t just stir?

-By Mindy

A friend, I think it was Sam, hooked me up with a neat link to a site that discusses green technology. I noticed a post about something I’d read about previously, and that was the impact that the color of websites has on the amount of energy we use while surfing the internet.
Rising Phoenix put together a pretty simple and sweet designed page to explain the problem. I’m an advocate for reducing the amount of energy we use, especially since we in the United States consume an ungodly amount already. Therefore, I feel some responsibility to change the way I’m currently consuming energy. Here’s my two step process.

1. Downloaded Stylish for Firefox and then chose a black style theme for Google.
2. I’d like to change my theme so it’s a darker background color with white text. I’d like to keep the current theme so it’s not too much of a change for my readers. But I need some CSS help from someone. The other option is to change to this theme.

Anyone else want to join me in the small choices matter energy saving campaign?

Abba Macacrius, while he was in Egypt, discovered a man who own a beast of burden engaged in plundering Macarius’ goods. So he came up to the thief as if he was a stranger and he helped him to load the animal. He saw him off in great peace of soul saying, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21) -From Geez Magazine

Okay, so most folks would say he’s nuts. Yet, we also say God uses all things and everything, and if he can use a donkey he can use a thief. We don’t say the rich young ruler who decided not to give everything to follow Jesus was nuts, we usually just say he was in a tough spot, had to make a hard decision. My take, the monk has got a whole lot more sense then the nutty ruler.

And so I want to bring myself to this view of possessions. I don’t think it’s a bad place to be in. In fact I think if we are really going to be in a place that we are ready to leave everything and follow Christ, then we all better start working on this letting go of our possessions now.

Note: Okay, so I’m going through my old drafts of posts I started but never finished. I feel like I’m so removed from when I first wrote them that it wouldn’t make sense to complete them, but they are interesting enough that they might create some conversation, so I’m putting them up.

Financial clarification #1: It’s not about the money
I felt like it is important for me to address two points that were brought up by readers as to what they understood me to be advocating for: the pursuit of not having money and Poverty as righteousness.
I realize that I might come across as advocating for these two things because what I AM advocating for is so radically different then what are culture presents to us. In a culture that is so focused on the accumulation of wealth a statement like “give freely” comes across as odd and as an extreme. In a culture that says your lifestyle should be grand regardless of income level a statement about living on what you need rather then what you want seems rather backwards.
I know we are trying to talk about finances here, but do me a favor for a moment and forget money exist at all. No such thing as money. My points are still the same. Going to a college like Wheaton makes it difficult for you to question that type of lifestyle since you and so many other “Christians” at the college are living it. Hoarding your possessions is not what Christ calls us to, rather to give freely.

On Clothes.
I never felt too poor to afford something, but I knew somethings where just too expensive. Let’s use the example of clothes. You might find this funny, but in middle school and half of high school I was all about name brands. I wanted the nike swoosh on my shoes and my t-shirt. Here’s how my mom handled clothes. We would look in the closet at the beginning of the school year and decided if and how many jeans, shirts, and shorts I needed. Then she would allot me some money for each item (it was about $15 for jeans, $5 for a shirt, and $10 for shorts). If I wanted something that cost more then that I had to dig out my allowance, babysitting and lawn mowing money and pay for the additional cost.

Jesus does say the Poor are blessed with the Kingdom, that’s at least worth pondering.

There was some interesting thoughts and issues brought up in the comments on two previous post: Your Problem with Giving is Probably you, and A Major Flaw of Wheaton College.

I felt these two thoughts where important to address in our Finance lessons so here is…
Financial Lesson #3: Money is simply a mean’s of trade

One thing my parent’s did a good job instilling in me just by example, was that money wasn’t really a big deal. My dad has switched jobs a lot, and my mom has worked varying amounts (sometimes full-time other times half-time) throughout my life. Never did I feel like there was a correlation between their work and how much money they working making and how well off we were. I never felt poor, I never felt rich. You see, money wasn’t that important, what dictated our lifestyle was our values. My first real job was at Pizza Hut. Before that I had picked up bunches of odd jobs through my dad (he owned a temporary employment service), and I enjoyed that cause they were simple jobs and they usually paid well. But the summer after my sophomore year my dad told me I had to go out and get a job myself. Why? It wasn’t to make more money, it was to learn to go out on my own, it was about values. Money isn’t that important, what should dictate our lives is our values. If God had “blessed” my parent’s as billionaires my dad would have still made me go out and find a job on my own.

I don’t know if that helps to give a little perspective of where I think some of my mindset comes from. The two comments I want to address are: “a person’s goal becomes to not have money” and “poverty is righteousness”
I am NOT advocating for either of these. I think the reason both of these commenters have come to these interpretations of what I have been saying is because money was misinterpreted as being a high priority. Here’s what I mean.
When I talk about Wheaton College and how expensive everything is I don’t mean to focus on the money. I mean to say we are like the Rich Man with the beggar Lazarus outside our gate. It is not about the money it is about our value that God does not call us to store up wealth, he calls us to care for the needs of others.

I would be silly to advocate for “poverty is righteousness.”

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