To me it is a very good thing that the U.S. remembers Martin Luther King, Jr. on the 3rd Monday of January each year. It seems good that it launches us into a time in February called Black History Month.

A very special church service at Willow Creek Community Church on Martin Luther King weekend is something you may want to see. The interview with James Meeks from Chicago’s famous Salem Baptist Church of Chicago is fantasic.

May we learn more about this people group with whom we share our path. And in the learning, may it hopefully result in deeper understanding, compassion, and action.

Here is a good piece from a blog that I follow called, Tip of the Iceberg. Has anyone seen my old friend Martin?

I would love to have you share good articles with me that move us to understanding and about what it means to be black in a majority white culture in America.

In my humble opinion there are 3 of the best  Christian conferences created just for college students in these winter months. I still have a keen interest in college kids that dates back to my roots with Cru back in the 70’s. College kids are the future. My own kids were affected by these conferences.

There is nothing like challenging a college kid to give his/her life to something big. God uses these getaways to transform lives and He has great things for these kids to do in this world. I’m sure we all know students who we can encourage to attend or even check out the wealth of incredible talks given at these conferences, either by attending or listening online.

Urbana (over this post-Christmas break, which just concluded in St. Louis) and Passion (happening right now) ( one that you can watch Jan. 2nd and 3rd), which is streamed live and then a conference in February called  Jubilee in Pittsburg. Each one speaks to college kids in its own style. These three are my favorites.

Check out what’s happening with these conferences in the lives of thousands of our university and liberal arts college kids online. Don’t take it from me….check out their websites.

Urbana – InterVarsity’s tri-ennial Conference begun at Champaign/Urbana U of IL campus and now held in St. Louis…a place where students were and are challenged to commit everything to the Lord and follow Jesus anywhere. Exploring hundreds of mission organizations’ opportunities is a highlight. It was my first conference in 1967 and God used it mightily. Check out the speakers. 

Passion – is described like this, “20 million college students across the globe awaken to the reality of an omnipotent and glorious Creator. For the past 19 years, Passion (begun by Lou Giglio in Atlanta) has hosted over 50 gatherings in more than 16 countries, and millions of students have united across ministry and denominational lines to seek the face of God in worship and prayer. Passion’s core Bible verse, Isaiah 26:8 states, “Yes, LORD, walking in the way of your truth, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our souls.”

Jubilee – a Pittsburg linked conference put on by the Coalition for Christian Outreach (CCO). This ministry reaches particularly mid-Atlantic campuses and this conference challenges students to consider their marketplace futures as a place of great potential ministry. Jim and I have done a workshop a few years ago at Jubilee when our daughter and son-in-law were on their staff. The roster of speakers was exceptional.

This controversy has been around a long time. The recent Wheaton College professor debate has brought it the front this month. Here is a very good article by Ravi Zacharias associate. Click here.

How do I begin to share the impact that Elisabeth Elliot had on my life. Her influence will live on in me though she is now in heaven, as she entered the gates yesterday morning. She inspired my youth, my middle years and to this day. 

It seems that I can’t remember ever not being influenced by her story, her writing, her speaking…her life.  Since I can remember I have known her story…of her husband and fellow Wheaton College buddies all pursuing their call to missions by joining a team to reach an unreached people group called the Auca Indians in the jungles of Ecuador, who though seeming to accept their friendship ended up killing all of these 5 young men. The story emerged into my childhood reality in the mid-50’s when it happened. 

When I was in high school in the late 60’s, I heard talks given by many of the 5 martyrs’ friends at Youth for Christ camps and rallies…that story of their sacrifice and their desire to reach out to stone-aged people to bring them the love of God, did more to influence my desire to give my life to missionary work, than anything else. God used their commitment to challenge me and helped me give myself to be available to God, whatever the cost. There is no age too young that God can’t speak powerfully to our hearts.

I read Through Gates of Splendor one high school summer and it inspired me to follow Jesus and be obey His call. It continues to be my favorite missionary story and it was my introduction to Elisabeth, not only as one of the wives of the 5 martyrs, but a significant writer and thinker. Please enjoy the CT article about Elisabeth Elliot.

 I could hardly believe that I would be my home church’s first short term missionary and spend a summer in Quito, Ecuador. We flew to a neighboring group of Ecuadorian Indians landing on a dirt air strip and met those who were kin to the Auca Indians. I was able to visit Shell Mera and see the room where the martyred women and children, including Elisabeth Elliot and daughter Valerie, sat when they received the news that their husbands were taken from them and their children. Two of the Saint children would live in my hometown during high school and become friends. God allowed me to be drawn into this story physically.

 When I started my college education, I entered Moody Bible Institute as a Foreign Missions major, most surely because of the influence of this story and how God used it in my life. I found a copy of Elliot’s book, My Savage, My Kinsman which was my next eye-opening story of living with the Aucas after she was widowed by them, stretching my  mind that the savage killers of her husband would eventually become her kin, her family in Christ. Amazing. I was at Moody Church when Elisabeth brought one of her Auca “sisters” to the U.S. and shared the story of their friendship and new faith in Jesus Christ. God pressed Elisabeth’s story and her commitment onto my heart.

The next mind-bender was another of Elliot’s strong books called No Graven Image, a gutsy, honest novel with a challenge to not allow ourselves to make missionaries into idols, as a “graven image”.  As missionaries are human beings with flaws and weaknesses,  it should be acknowledged that like all of us, people need grace. The honesty with which Elisabeth expressed her thoughts and convictions sealed my allegiance to this woman and what she stood for. I relished everything she wrote. Click here to read some famous quotes. She challenged the conventions of our Christian culture in many new ways. 

As John Piper wrote yesterday, ‘she called young people to come and die. Sacrifice and suffering were woven through her writing and speaking like a scarlet thread. She was not a romantic about missions. She disliked very much the sentimentalizing of discipleship.

She said, “We all know that missionaries don’t go, they “go forth,” they don’t walk, they “tread the burning sands,” they don’t die, they “lay down their lives.” But the work gets done even if it is sentimentalized! (The Gatekeeper)

In 1976 my new husband and I would hear her speak at InterVarsity’s Urbana Missionary Conference. She was the first woman to speak at Urbana in 1973 and again in our year. That crowd of 25,000 college students loved her. Her inspiration and influence is impossible to comprehend. We were challenged in new ways to give ourselves to God and not consider taking our lives back, as they were far safer with Him. I saved the cassette tape of that talk and listened to it many times. It is still in my collections. Take a look in a google images search for Elisabeth Elliot quotes. You will be ministered to by her.

I wish I could put my finger on some old journals from those days, But as her home-going was yesterday, I want to post my memories now. I may revisit her influence on my life again, but I will share that my youngest daughter has this icon’s name as her middle name, spelled as her parents named her, “Elisabeth”. I wanted her influence to be remembered in my family.

Elisabeth’s mark on many young womens’ lives could be summarized by her beginnings, that a young graduate of Wheaton College committed her life, her talents and marvelous intellect to go and serve an unreached people group in Ecuador as a single women. The courage and commitment raced into the hearts of those of us who heard her story. A few years later she married one of the most incredible, singularly focused young men, Jim Elliot, her equal in every way. Through Gates of Splendor and Shadow of the Almighty were her accounts of their short life together. Her later book about her husband, The Journals of Jim Elliot, inspires all who read it, and especially affected my husband, Jim in his early years as a believer.

The most amazing thing happened as she aged. As she challenged women in her later years, she suggested that we live lives of godly femininity instead of lives influenced by a version of feminism,…some of us smiled. She had already set such a high bar for women to step up to live abandoned for God and sacrifice for His cause, giving of ourselves for the gospel in the most independent ways. It seemed to me that her message didn’t need an addendum. Her legacy was already established. She had given us freedom and wings that the world could not define by a label. Her example pushed us to be women who identify our God-given giftedness and in obedience to Him, develop our gifts so that He could use us for His purposes and His glory. Hopefully we have passed that along to our daughters and the next generation of women desiring to follow Jesus. 

We watched her life. She lived many lives as a woman in the spotlight…a wife of three incredible men, (losing two of them to premature death). She was a mother of one, eventually a grandmother to eight. She was linguist, jungle missionary, prolific writer, powerful speaker, and eventually radio personality. The diversity and impact of her life seems overwhelming to me. Her impact was felt in her generation, my generation, and many younger generations to come. May her death allow us to rewind the messages now available online and read the books on our shelves…for a the gift of a fresh challenge from Elisabeth. 

Normal

It did not take long for our initiation into “life overseas” to begin, starting with the realization, about the fourth night we were there, that we were not the only ones residing in our house. We definitely had guests. It was insomnia that led me to this discovery.

Usually I am not subject to any difficulty sleeping; in fact, most of the time I am one of those people who fall asleep within minutes of my head hitting the pillow. Cindy, on the other hand, tends to just get going around ten o’clock at night, finding bedtime the perfect setting for discussing the deep and arcane mysteries of our relationship. At first, I was convinced there had to be a strategy in this somewhere,  that this was a deliberate, subversive, Chinese-water-torture-type technique all women are taught at an early age. (Clearly, when they separated us during those junior-high puberty talks, this is what the girls were laughing about in the other room.) Although there are times when I still have my suspicions, I eventually came to attribute this to nothing more sinister than differing biorhythms.

In Kenya, though, something odd happened—Cindy and I traded places. She seemed to be able to fall asleep immediately, while I often laid in bed for hours, hard at work trying to determine the exact nature of every strange sound I heard, and then resolve myself to whatever fate that sound might be heralding. Whether it be robbers or revolution, at least I was not going to be taken unaware; for every possibility, I would lie there and devise a plan. There are two essential elements to a father’s job description—provide and protect, and I guess being in such a strange place pushed the protect thing into serious overdrive. I was deeply engaged in this useless activity when I first heard it. Something in the ceiling directly over my head. Something scurrying and furtive. Something undeniably rodent in quality. Have you ever noticed how the more you pay attention to a sound in the night, the louder it becomes? My high-alert listening soon had me convinced that whatever was tromping back and forth over my head had to be about the size of a small dog. This led to visions of some “rodent of unusual size” suddenly dropping through the ceiling tiles overhead and landing on my face. As I listened even more carefully, I was soon sure there had to be a whole team of them up there, running back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, engaged in some demented version of a rat soccer game. Just when I was thinking how glad I was Cindy was asleep and missing all this, she rolled over, pounded her pillow and muttered in an exasperated tone, “What are they wearing? Wingtips?” There was one brief moment of silence, then we both burst out laughing, one of those great, huge laughs energized by the sudden realization of a shared anxiety. We laid there, and between eruptions of laughter, hatched Plan-A calling for the use of our secret weapon.

Being the neurotic suburbanite I am, I of course anticipated vermin-oriented problems long before our departure. One afternoon back home, while Cindy was shopping, I was wasting time in Brookstone, the mall equivalent of childcare for bored husbands. Here, among the vibrating chairs and ultimate nasal-hair trimmers, I found something truly useful. It was one of those ultrasonic devices that emits sounds humans can’t hear, but rodents can….

…and even though I listened for them every night thereafter, anticipating a sneak attack, they never did come back. The mystery of where they went was only solved months later when we told our neighbors about our cleverness. They looked at each other with one of those “Ah ha” kind of looks and said that explained teh line of little furry refugees they had seen that first week, bags in hand, cotton jammed in their ears, fleeing from our home, straight for theirs.

The rest of the story is Judge family history…those mice were gone in a day…and the neighbors weren’t too happy about it…we’re still sorry, Bob and Bobbi…sort of. More stories to come on Thursdays.

Judge, James (2001-09-10). Unfamiliar Territory (Kindle Locations 665-674). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Racism is a sensitive subject whenever and wherever it is approached. As an American Christian I am disappointed once again that we have not moved enough toward equality and understanding between races in this country. Since Ferguson and other racially complex events in the last few months, we should be asking if Christians are making a differnce in society? I ask myself the difficult question, Am I a racist?

Every February during Black History Month, we baby-boomers relive some of our own history as we watch it portrayed on television. For me it is important to be reminded that I lived in Chicago during the riots after Martin Luther King was murdered. I lived through the marches and Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition.  I worked with homeless mothers and children during my MBI years in the neighborhood that I now pass every visit to Chicago. These events sparked my own high school level social conscience and grew it into a more mature social awareness…just moving my awareness in incremental ways. I don’t want to ever stop growing in that understanding.

I will add that this morning, in a classroom of 30-somethings at our church, we heard some honest reflection about discerning our social and spiritual conscience about racism. First, just to bring up the subject for open discussion is a very worthy effort. Second, the honesty of these GenX’ers is always refreshing, as statements were made like, “I didn’t know my parents were racists until my sister married an African.” and  “I don’t know why but it doesn’t seem  that this subject is as important to me as it is to others”.

It was also shared that the level of our own personal racist attitudes are often hard to recognize since we live with such “white privilege”.  We can be blind to where we are on the racist spectrum unless we unpack it and analyze it honestly and continue to educate ourselves with God’s perspective.

The subject quickly moved to the importance of knowing what and how to talk about these sensitive subjects with children, (and as we realized, our grandchildren). It is true that conversations about race are important to initiate and so is what we don’t say…after all, we know as much is caught as taught.

All of this great discussion with this class prompted a conversation afterward between my husband and I.  Our own efforts back in the day with our daughters were around exposing them to the real world. Minorities were not far away.  And though we did live in Africa for months at a time during their formative years, the dialogue still needed to happen.  How to treat immigrants and refugees around us in our suburb and our schools was a subject to talk about. The city of Chicago afforded us ways to educate and experience life in black communities. We tried to instill the value of reaching out in Jesus’ name.

This morning our church also reminded us of how we can help welcome refugee families into our area. Being intentional is the key.

from today’s bulletin

Granted, one great divide is race, but it should be acknowledged that a greater divide is often based on the economic divide caused by poverty. Our prejudice is often aimed at those who are poor or under-resourced more than actual racial differences alone.  Our resources can separate us more than the color of our skin. The solution starts with understanding, which usually moves us to compassion. Understanding comes by getting involved with someone who is from another race and/or lives in poverty.  There are many who would say that there is NO other way.  It is Jesus’ example.  It changes our minds and our hearts.

The most important foundational truth is that we are ALL made in God’s image.  Imago Deo. We are all valued equally in God’s sight. We must treat each other as equals in every situation.  This is God’s design for how we are to live as His followers.

Since I returned from Tanzania and Kenya in early November, I have been bursting with things I have experienced, learned and want to share. I can say I have been again profoundly moved by seeing God’s love for His children around the world.

As I reflected on these last months, I became more and more motivated to share what God is doing around the world. I want to share with you, my friends, what you may not find elsewhere…a quick read about some incredible things that are happening around our world that will grow your heart for God.

I have wanted to start a blog aimed at expanding hearts. Once a friend told me that missions-minded people are intimidating. I think that comment could have come from an honest curiosity about how you can begin to learn about this huge world of ours. I hope this blog will grow your interest and your heart.

Blogs are about passions. When thinking about a name for this blog, I racked my brain. One idea that came to me was a simple phrase, Ever Devoted. However the concept is far from simple. As long as I can remember I have had a passion for the commission that we have been given by Jesus to go and make disciples of all nations. I pray that I continue to be ever devoted to reaching across boundaries and cultures with the good news of Jesus’ redemption. May it be so.

Some of you may recall an album by the name, Ever Devoted.  It is a CD that Willow Creek Community Church, (So. Barrington, IL)  released in 1989. When we were members there in the 1990’s, we sang these worship songs every week. When we brought this CD home, my kids devoured it. So those two words mean a lot of things to me. We knew the singers and we knew the lyrics…God used that music to shape our lives.

Last Thursday something amazing happened when I visited my daughter’s home. Her husband was going to help me set up this blog that day and as I walked in the door, the wonderful music from that very CD was filling the house. I had not heard it in years. It was a confirmation of sorts to me…as it moved my heart immensely.

This blog will be a simple one. I plan to use lyrics, quotes from some of my favorite authors and bloggers, and things to ponder that come from greater minds than mine. I hope you will be challenged in your daily walk to stretch past your comfort zone and enlarge your heart for the world. Who knows how God can use us.

[Much of the photography I will use from East Africa is compliments of  Juli Watt Photography & Kelly Lemon Photography] www.kellylemonphotography.com