against all hope

{11.19.2010}

Do you remember the holocaust of WWII? I remember freaking out in history class, that it took us (america) so long to intervene and stop such corrupt twisted behavior. How can so many people be killed and it go unnoticed? You can't pretend that kinda stuff is not happening and look the other way.

For so long I also maintained the assumption that Nazi Germany and their concentration camps were a one time tragic event against one people group... such an ignorant thought. Holocausts and genocide still plague our world. Struggles against severe cultural prejudice still leave bodies in heaps and piles, or worse, surviving people are subject to prisoners of the most dehumanizing acts.

Genocide in Burma has left hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee to jungles and across borders to Thailand and other neighboring countries (some even to America with the help of World Vision, my parents even adopted a Burmese family).

Hope keeps these desperate people alive. Aid from struggling organizations and missions might sustain them a little longer. The people that are not eliminated are sold as commodities, many of them as factory and field workers, and many, many more into the sex industries of Thailand, Cambodia, and elsewhere.

I have such a hopeless feeling myself, but the relentless smiles and struggle for survival that these people possess draw me toward their redemption. Not to mention, what kind of people are we if we just look away?

Against all hope,

Abraham believed...

Deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do.

But on what God said he would do.

romans 4:8 (NIV & The Message).

I am going in January, I want to be a voice for the people that have none...

**these photos are not mine

you are my microphone

{6.3.2010}

I might over-examine things. Actually I do. Not in a bad way, more in a soaking wet with curiosity kind of way. For instance, I know we have this thing called culture. Its just how we do things. But how do we simply walk into it and adapt to its waters and never question it?

So, I'm talking to my friend Twohill yesterday and we were laughing at how people will dish out millions of dollars for little animals (we love animals too bear with me haters). Like there was an animal rescue org in CA that had this huge campaign to nurture some little seal. They raised millions of dollars to concoct the creature a specific comfortable aquatic sanctuary, nurse it and harbor it. After some time, the organization sponsored an enormous local event where they were going to launch this million dollar stock investment back into the wild. Animal obsessive enthusiasts came from all over to cheer this little blubber nugget on its way out into the vast primeval oceanic jungle. Not five minutes after the beastie gyrated its ways through the Pacific layers, a monstrous killer whale swooped in outta no where and intercepted the seal into its destined killer jaw cage. All of the hard earned "American Dream" dollars lobbied for the support of this animal chunk were swallowed into oblivion without so much as a drop of ketchup.

All that extensive tale to question, what is wrongggg with people in our culture that we are so quick to pump extra cash into the unnecessary care of wild animals while at the same time there are people that are desperately fighting to barely survive life in this world.

We feel so accomplished when we support a child by donating a few bucks a month or tossing some change in the orphan bucket on our way through the grocery line, but how is our culture NOT in a state of EMERGENCY based on the catastrophic imbalance of life, love, and the pursuit of happiness (fahget about prosperity!). Our culture is so egocentric, how do we even sleep at night on our perfect tempurpedic mattresses (where a chick can jump up and down on it and the dude's glass of wine doesn't spill) when there are places in the world where 30 kids sleep on a floor in a one bedroom house with no mother to tuck them in or no promise of breakfast in the morning and the constant fear of being trafficked because their life has little to no value. WHAT kind of a culture are we living in? Who do we think we are?

I know that people are drowning in our culture. I know that people are numb. I know that my emotion might not jump off this screen into your heart or soul. I know that these paragraphs might even be too long to even hold your short attention span. But if nothing else, please examine our culture... your reality, and expand your perspective outside your excessive comfort and feel a little less comfortable knowing that there are cycles of unnecessary evil in the world and you can do something to end their perpetuation.