The following email was written by a HOPE staff member to encourage her brothers and sisters serving with HOPE around the world.

A few weeks ago my husband and I attended a class on Tim Keller’s book, The Prodigal God. (Keller defines “prodigal” as “recklessly extravagant” or “having spent everything”—so true of our God who runs after us and sent His only Son to die for us.) Keller argues that both sons in the Luke 15 story of the prodigal are lost—not just the younger, irresponsible brother. He goes further, though, and says that the older brother is actually in a more spiritually dangerous position. Keller writes:

Although the sons are both wrong and both loved, the story does not end on the same note for each. Why does Jesus construct the story so that one of them is saved, restored to a right relationship with the father, and one of them is not? (At least, not before the story ends.) It may be that Jesus is trying to say that while both forms of the self-salvation project are equally wrong, each one is not equally dangerous. One of the ironies of the parable is now revealed. The younger son’s flight from the father was crashingly obvious. He left the father literally, physically, and morally. Though the older son stayed at home, he was actually more distant and alienated from the father than his brother, because he was blind to his true condition. He would have been horribly offended by the suggestion that he was rebelling against the father’s authority and love, but he was, deeply.  Continue Reading…

HELPING WITHOUT HURTING

I would like to share three caveats before coming back to these stories.
First, there are times when the only option is to give things away. In cases of war and famine, in refugee camps, for children who are on the brink of death—what these individuals need is food and medical assistance—and they need it fast, or they will die. I recognize that sometimes the best solution is to help by freely distributing stuff. What I’d like to encourage us all to do is to examine what the correct response could be and should be in situations where there are opportunities for long-term involvement and partnership.

Second, we need to examine our own hearts in how we view the poor. We need to abandon our tendencies to view ourselves as the great healers of the world and the poor as the sick who need us to heal them. We need to replicate what we saw in Christ, who came to earth as God incarnate to live among us, His creation. Not only did He choose to come to earth, but while here he purposefully chose to live around, party with, and minister to those in need. There is so much we can learn about ministering to the poor in his incarnation alone. Pastor, civil rights leader, and community developer John Perkins says it this way:

Without living among the [poor], without actually becoming one of the people, it is impossible to accurately identify the needs…an outsider can seldom know the needs of the community well enough to know how to best respond to them. Churches that respond most compassionately to the needy are those that have sent out from their own congregations people to live and walk and eat and breathe among the poor. Continue Reading…

GOOD INTENTIONS ARE NO LONGER ENOUGH

A friend and colleague of mine lived three years in Rwanda. There he became friends with a young man named Jano. Jano was vibrant and innovative and recognized there was an opportunity for him to start a business selling eggs in his community. So he bought chickens and began selling eggs. His business was successful and began growing rapidly. Jano also was growing in prominence and sought positive change in his community.

At the same time, a church in Georgia was in the midst of exploring helping the poor globally. They recognized they had a tremendous abundance of resources and wanted to help those in need. They knew of the hardships the country of Rwanda had endured in the late ‘90s, so they sent a church team to visit an orphanage there. While there, the church members got an up-close look at some devastating poverty. Their hearts broke for the children who were dying in the orphanage. They recognized there was a huge protein shortage in the orphanage, so they brought the stories of the children back to the church and asked the church to support a plan to help the country of Rwanda. Continue Reading…

A few months ago, HOPE staff member Chris Horst had the opportunity to preach a sermon to his Lancaster City church. The following excerpt is Part 1 of a three-part series on The Challenge of Helping.

The word of God from Matthew 25:
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’ Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’
Continue Reading…