we will go

Days I once worked to creatively fill have, as you said they would, become easily overflowing. This past week, especially, was already quite full before it started, but then brought forth an unexpected emotionally and mentally heavy challenge and we burned out the candle at both ends.

But we had told Ruth that this morning was the morning our family would show up in inner-city Jackson at 8 am to help with a community garden that will eventually feed lots of hungry and broken neighbors...and turned out to be a day that we needed, that really fed US.

What I'm always trying to articulate that Haiti truly engrained in us is NOT hospitality, per say.  It is that EVERY neighbor is OUR neighbor, and that the Word makes it really clear what we're supposed to do when someone is hungry, when someone is in need, when someone doesn't know Him, when someone is lonely. 

So joining up with "We Will Go" this morning, whose mission is to "Be neighbors willingly to engage our community with the love of Christ", was a privilege.  It is obviously not just something they talk about about, nor just something they do. It is a lifestyle thing, and I loved how the founders were continually encouraging those helping today to find creative ways to have serious TIME with your neighbors, wherever you are...and then use that time to actually get to know them and naturally integrate into their lives...to bring light shining into dark places.  To touch untouchables, to wash feet, to bring healing, to give all that you have and watch God make it enough.

I loved watching the kids fan out and GO, I loved them hearing the Gospel again and again from someone other than mom and dad, other than Sunday-Morning-Church, and I loved just working alongside because-of-Jesus neighbor-loving people. I loved hearing stories of lives changed, and meeting them.

I loved having a day with our family that wasn't about our family...something that's been harder to cultivate in this country than it was in our last. 

We got home late and rested for a bit, and then we walked a few blocks to a greek place for dinner.  On our way home we got chatting with a few neighbors, and soon Matt had a bag of crawfish in hand.  Still chatting, a different neighbor pulled up in his car, and we immediately started asking about his wife, the dear sister still brutally fighting esophageal cancer.

When we asked where he was heading, he said he was going to dinner and out for groceries.  Spending all day at the hospital every day has left him wiped, 20 lbs. lighter and all the household chores way behind. A moment later, the crawfish bag was in my hand and Matt was in the passenger seat, off to sit with Henry so that he didn't have to eat yet another meal alone.

The day reminded me that the list of what Light looks like in our neighborhoods is endless, endless.  Sharing crawfish, planting tomatoes, giving new socks--good gifts--cooking a meal, playing with children, sending a note, noticing, asking, sitting at dinner, flowers, checking in, sharing our lives, living wide open, living our faith wide open.  

Sometimes, it is big and crazy things...this afternoon while I was cleaning out and vacuuming our van, I was thanking the Lord again for the people who GAVE it to us a year ago, bread new, when we had nothing. How MANY times that vehicle has reminded me of His overwhelming faithfulness.

But most often, it is all the little things, and I'm remembering again how much they matter.

being neighbors

willingly engaging 

in community

with Christ's love