This past weekend was our high school ministry's 30 Hour Famine. Our goal was to raise $9,000 for World Vision's work in Burundi. The middle schoolers will do their famine this upcoming weekend. So far, we've raised a little over $5800! You can go here to see our team's page where you can make a donation and track our progress. It doesn't show donations that we've not mailed in.
I have been a fan of the 30 Hour Famine for years, since my days @ Emmanuel Christian Seminary. It's a fun, practical way for American teenagers to learn more about the world around them and make a very real difference. The first year our youth group in Bristol, TN participated around 34,000 kids were dying each day of 100% preventable hunger related illnesses. Today that number is 22,000. One every 12 seconds or so. Ridiculously high in a world that produces and discards more than enough food to feed the planet multiple times. Heck, we're even finding ways to use food to propel our cars! But - 22,000 is a great improvement over 34,000, and World Vision and the 30 Hour Famine have been an important part of this effort.
There are many things about the Famine that inspire me - working alongside students during service projects; seeing them pour their hearts out, praising God in song and praying for people on the other side of the world who they will never meet; watching God raise amounts of $ that I used to wonder at.
Perhaps the most inspiring thing this year was what didn't happen.
No one complained. Not. One. Single. Time. Not about being hungry. Not about being tired. Not about the work they were asked to do (even when it included serving lunch at a shelter about 24 hours into their fast).
I've done the Famine with hundreds of students. Many of them incredible people who I love deeply.
But, I've never done the Famine with a group of students that I never heard complain.
When they got tired, they simply napped.
When they got hungry, they diverted their attention with prayer or playing a game or working or watching UK beat Florida.
When their friends didn't show up or left early for one reason or another, they pressed on, cheerfully saying 'goodbye,' glad to be where they were.
It reminds a person why they are doing student ministry in the first place.
Because the students are, more often than not, the best teachers.
I hope to carry this over to my life.
To my training for the Flying Pig. You can still, by the way, support my effort to raise awareness and funds for Not For Sale's campaign against modern day slavery :) Most often, I don't complain about my training. But, there are days when I grow weary of stiff knees, hours away from doing other things I enjoy, unpleasant weather conditions, disappointing times, and the simple monotony of taking one more step on a road I've run hundreds of times. Truth is - running is a gift that brings so much good to my life that I can't even begin to describe it.
To my job. While I try not to, I probably complain, at least to myself, more often about this. The constant returning of things to their proper place in the Journey room, the lack of communication with youth praise band leaders, the feeling that sometimes I'm speaking to the wind or that I'm a mute speaking to a room full of the deaf. Truth is - student ministry is a gift that brings so much good to my life that I can't even begin to describe it.
To every day things like laundry, doing dishes, putting gas in the car. Truth is - I am blessed to have so many clothes to wash and a machine in which to do it! To have dishes on which to eat the amazing food my girls prepare! To have 3 cars - all paid for in full, reliable - the funds to fill them with underpriced gasoline (compared to prices paid everywhere else on earth) and wide, paved roads on which to drive them.
I literally have absolutely nothing to complain about.
And, yet, I know that I do complain. About these things and more.
So, I hope I learn from my students. Learn that small inconveniences are, really, sources of undeniable blessing. Remember that I am one of the .97% of wealthiest people on the planet. Know that God has allowed me the joy of living with an incomparable wife and being 'dad' to two unbelievably talented and kindhearted young adults. Be sure that, as good as this is, some day - when the two realities become one - it's going to be even better.
I think I will keep running.
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