Sunday Morning Ponderings...

I was just going through my morning emails, glancing at the zulily add that I get daily.  One of the photos caught my eye.  The style of the clothes were super cute, it was a bunch of happy kiddos dressed well and smiling from ear to ear.  I read the caption and it said, "Luxury starts young."

Enter pit in my stomach...

I thought the clothes were cute.  I even glanced to see what percentage they were offering off for them. Then I realized it was the word 'luxury' that was caught in my throat.  I have the luxury of being dry.  I was dry all night.  I slept fairly well.  I wasn't worrying about my belongings staying dry or my children staying dry or even the food that I was planning to eat the next day staying dry.  I had the luxury, even amidst the absence of that luxury all around me, of being 'safe' from the rain.

Do you know how many times the question, "Why were we born where we were born?" goes through my mind on a weekly basis?

I don't understand...it is so many days really hard to stomach.  How do I relate to the people I live among?  I have NO IDEA what it is like to be in want...to know my children are in want and will probably forever be in want.

But I can be obedient.  I can be gracious.  I can be generous.  I can smile and I can love.  And I can do something with the knowledge that I have...knowledge is power right?  Then why, more often than not, do we not let the knowledge that we have change us?

I have come to include that there are things that we can see in magazines and on TV, things we can hear at church and from others...and then there are things that we see with our own eyes, little hearts that we feel beat against ours when we embrace them, smells that we experience, the sounds of chaos that we hear with our ears.  These experiences are written on our hearts.  Things we see with our hearts, those are the things that are hard for us to forget.  Hard for us to not act on.  Hard for us not to be changed by.

  

If you can't visit these areas-both a few streets down from where you live or an ocean away, how are you allowing your hearts to be changed by the power of the gospel and God's call to us as Christians?  How are you making yourself and what you have less to bring someone who has less or nothing at all out of the pit?  How are you responding to the promptings of your heart?  What luxuries surround you? How do you let them define you?  How would you handle the it if God stripped everything away?  Would  you survive?  Would you still be you?  Would you still be blessed?

Know my heart here...this is not a condemnation, but rather me sharing the questions in my head with you this morning and hopefully one of those 'iron sharpening iron' moments.  Let's "Go" together...lets respond...lets love out of the luxuries we have been given.  Let us call ourselves blessed and embrace all that that means!