Revolution

Two days ago I began reading a book called Irresistable Revolution by Shane Clayborne. For those of you who have read the book you will know what I am talking about when I say it shakes the foundation the church has come to rest on, the reality I have come to rest on. In the book it talks about how as Christians we complicate the reading of the Bible because if we read it and understood it we would then be responsible to live it out. Since I struggle with reading my Bible, not because I can't read, but because I excuse my problem with "I don't have time" or the thought that it is going to take too much effort and time to read what is there, this hit home.
Christ is a walking contradiction to the flesh and if you read the word being a Christ follower becomes a death to everything that is comfortable and a challenge to not live in complacency and apathy. For example, a friend of mine was instructed by God to do a program that is two years long, involves traveling and not many visits home, and an extremely busy schedule. Sounds fantastic, right, and yet she has a man at home, one that she loves very much and he loves her very much. During this two year period he will not be able to travel with her or come and visit, but God is asking for her time and effort. How do you give up the one you love and are going to marry for two years in order to fulfill what God has asked you to do? Marriage is not wrong and I know God will bless her if she chooses to stay at home, but He is asking death to her dream of marriage, for the time being, and to move from a place of comfort and home to live a life dedicated to Him. Would I be willing?
Following in that trend, this morning we had a time of prayer with our class. The leaders have produced a booklet called "Voice for the Voiceless" which is a 30 day prayer book with justice issues from all over the world and today we prayed for child trafficking. This is an excerpt from the prayer book

"Her family needed food and Prema's father had few other options. She was the eldest daughter, beautiful, and at eleven years old, more useful to the family away in the city of Mumbai. One less mouth to feed. One less body to clothe. Prema's mother, with tears in her eyes, promised they would see her again. Promised they would buy her back with the money Prema made every month--money her new guardian would send to the family. A promise made to Prema two and a half years ago.
In the city, Prema is not chained to a desk or forced to hunch over menial work for hours each day like thousands of other children throughout the developing world. Prema dances at a pole, bats her eyelashes at adults who have come from all over the world to watch her. She spreads her legs and moves her body to music, the way the other girls showed her. Girls kidnapped from their homes when they were younger or sold by their parents to the brothel. As Prema waits to return to her family, other promises are kept. Her guardian makes good on the promise he made to her parents that she would be well looked after. Men, some older than her father, foreigners with unusual accents, take great delight in watching her dance on the stage. Then they pay to suffocate her under their heavy bodies. The guardian fulfills his promise that Prema would not be denied an education. He, along with his clients, tutor her in a while new language with it's own, intricate vocabulary. Along with the other girls in the brothel, Prema has learned to once-foreign words: HIV, unwanted pregnancy, rape.
Prema dances at her pole, learning a new language. Day after day she tries to remember the sound of her mother's voice, and wait to see if her parents will make good on their promise."



And my heart cries out. Am I being the Revolution the world needs? Or am I comfortably sitting in my church pew seeing the world and allowing it to be far removed from my life and my circumstances and who I am and what I do?
God, that I would be the Revolution the world is looking for and so desperately needs!
"Give me your eyes for just one second give me your eyes so I can see, everything that I keep missing give me your love for humanity. Give me your arms for the broken hearted, ones that are far beyond my reach. Give me your heart for the one's forgotten. Give me your eyes so I can see." --Brandon Heath