As we all know, I made a transition from working in a strictly non-religious non-profit organization to working in a program and ministry-based position at my church. I went to a Christian college and have grown up within church, but am fairly clueless how to do ministry. But I have love and passion, so we're running with that.
I picked up The Gutter from the library last week. Grabbed it yesterday to begin reading. Got to chapter 3 and decided that I cannot read it without taking notes and highlighting pages, so invested in a copy from Amazon. Bought Pastor Tim a copy too. It's wonderful and insightful and causes me to think deeply, hence the blog because thinking = writing = blogging.
There's a line that JUMPED from the pages into my head. I immediately had to share it with Jamie, who then posted it on facebook, beating me to the status update...It is so simple, yet so true:
"Don't blame the dark for being dark. Blame the light for not shining on the dark."
Whoa. Okay. Stop right there! Stop scrolling. Center this image and the text on your page and read it again. Slowly. And once more.....do you feel that? The feeling of responsibility? I feel it...
There we are, asking why things are going on in the world around us. We each have our metaphorical gutter, and yet, we sit in our cushy church and hang out with our cushy friends and never get our hands dirty. And by saying "we," I really mean Christians as a whole. Not like me and you (my reader), although if you feel a twinge of guilt, GOOD. (I feel that twinge too...) So, like my old pastor used to say, "So what?" What good does it do to recognize a fact, a statistic, a truth if we have no intention of doing anything about it.
Step 1: Find my gutter(s) and reach them. I know some of them: dads in jail, poverty, crappy fathers, alcoholism, single mothers, marital affairs, self esteem issues in young women, self mutilation in teens. I have lived through these things. Some of these, I still fight with myself. But these are issues that I get my feathers ruffled about. These are the things that make my heart pump quicker and that make my soul cry out.
Step 2: Figure out what to do. This is where I am now. I can find the statistics:
- In 2007, an estimated 744,200 state and federal prisoners in the United States were fathers to 1,599,200 children under the age of 18.
- In my dear city, 12.5% of the population and 9.6% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 17.5% of those under the age of 18.
- Nearly 22% of American children are in fatherless homes. There are numerous statistics including suicide rates, behavioral disorders, substance abuse rates, and criminal rates attached to these children.
- The World Health Organization estimates that there are 140 million alcoholics worldwide.
- In 2006, 12.9 million families in the U.S. were headed by a single-parent, 80% of which were headed by a female. Since 1994, the percentage of US households headed by a single parent has remained steady at around nine percent, although it has nearly doubled since 1970.
- Durex's Global Sex Survey has found that worldwide 22% of people surveyed have had extramarital sex.
- 92% of the young women in the USA want to change some aspect of their physical appearance.
- Self-mutilation affects nearly one percent of people in the U.S. Teenagers are particularly susceptible to self-mutilation, with girls being four times more likely to self harm than boys. Over ten percent of teenagers are thought to have at least experimented with self-mutilation.
This I know for sure: I want to fear shining my light. I know that if I am in the darkness, shining my light bright, and Satan poofs it out, God is standing at my side with the zippo already open. Before the flame is even gone, he has it lit again. And I want to share that light with those people who do not get to see it because they are in their darkness. Don't you?
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