My Christmas List

Last year for Christmas I got a llama, a sheep, ducks, water, a loan, meaningful work and dignity, and food.  None of this was really for me but rather these things helped give food, other basic necesities, and a chance for hope and a better future to people around the world. 

This year, all I want for Christmas is mosquito bed nets.  Lots of them, please.    

The stats and facts:

A child dies every 60 seconds from malaria.

Nearly 700,000 people die each year from malaria, most of them children and pregnant women.

These stats break my heart, but here’s the best fact of all: malaria is completely preventable and treatable! 

So for Christmas, rather than making up a list of things I want, I’m asking for my friends and family to give me mosquito bed nets by making a donation to the Lutheran Malaria Initiative.

As part of a worldwide effort, the Lutheran Malaria Initiative has this goal: to end malaria deaths in Africa by 2015.  That’s a pretty audacious goal, but it’s a goal that is achievable. 

Here's some information from LMI’s website:

“The most effective methods currently being used to control malaria include proper diagnosis and prompt medical treatment, proper use of insecticide-treated bed nets and indoor residual spraying. To be successful these strategies require education about malaria and how to prevent and treat it. The Lutheran Malaria Initiative works through local partners to educate families on malaria, increase access to treatment, and provide prevention tools such as bed nets.”

Education: LMI educates families on the causes, symptoms, treatment and prevention of malaria.

Treatment: Increasing access to affordable medical care and resources for malaria prevention.

Prevention: LMI provides treated bed nets to families and trains them on their proper use.

"We work in communities where we already have strong relationships, such as those with our Lutheran partner churches and other local, community organizations. These long-standing partnerships make the ideal platform for introducing malaria programming. Already, the work of the Lutheran Malaria Initiative is making an impact. To date, LMI has reached 2.4 million people through malaria projects in Tanzania, Mali, Uganda, and Kenya. With increased funding, LMI will expand to Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Nigeria, Guinea, Niger and Ghana."

The Lutheran Malaria Initiative is doing some incredible work in preventing and treating malaria!  I invite you to be a part of this work- whether you want to give me a Christmas present of a bed net or maybe you want to add a bed net to your Christmas list.

Stoplights

On my way to work at Feed My Starving Children, there are 27 stoplights (Yes, I counted them. There are 27.).  That’s a lot of stoplights.  It’s especially a lot of stoplights on the occasions when I hit them when they are red.  You know how it goes… patiently waiting for the light to turn green, trying to increase or decrease your speed so you don’t have to stop at a red light, inching forward toward the line to try to trip or trick the light timer, waiting for the irresponsible drivers in front of you to stop texting and pay attention when the light does turn green.

There is this one street near Augustana College where there is a stoplight every single block or two, about 6 of them in a row.  The timing on these lights is such that you hit every single light when it’s red or you hit the lights and they are all green.  You can imagine the fury when you hit each of them when they are red.  But when you hit those lights at exactly the right time, you can just sail through them all. 

It’s one of the best feelings in the world.

One time in my small group we were talking about prayer and someone brought up the idea of praying for green lights.  Well, it had never occurred to me to pray for green lights.  There are a lot of theological questions packed up in this idea: Does God have the power to make stoplights turn green?  What if two people coming to a light from perpendicular directions both pray for a green light?  Does God have time to deal with such seemingly insignificant things?  Is this something we should even bother God with?  Aren’t there more important things to pray about?

I will say that I may have prayed for some stoplights to turn green and prayed for some lights to stay green recently.  And God has answered this prayer a few times…

However, I’ve had some difficulty with metaphorical red and green lights in life.  Green lights are those things that God puts in my life and says, “Ok, Melissa, this is a good thing for you to do.  Do it.”  And red lights are those things in life that God tells me, “Melissa, this isn’t a good thing for you to do.  Don’t do it.”   I really really wish God would do this audibly, but God hasn’t yet.  It usually happens in the form of “nudges” or things that do or don’t come into my life.  And I’m ok with this.

But sometimes I feel like God is messing with me.  He puts things in my path, things that I get really excited about, he gives me green lights, and I’m more than ready to go through these intersections.  But then, all the sudden the light turns yellow.  God tells me to slow down when going through the intersection, or take a different direction when going through the intersection, or to wait a while before going through the intersection.  But the worst is when I feel like God has given me a green light and I’m about ready to drive through an intersection at full speed and then the light abruptly turns red.  No yellow light to warn me.  Just a big, bright, red light telling me that what I thought were signs of a green light weren’t.

Super frustrating and discouraging and disappointing.  And it leaves me upset and stressed and confused.

But there are also red lights or lights I don’t even know are there that all the sudden turn green.  A red light I have been praying about for a while turns green.  Something completely unexpected opens up.  A green light shines brightly.

It’s one of the best feelings in the world.

Treadmills

Treadmills are a great invention.  You can still run when you don’t want to run outside when the temperature is negative 20 or it’s raining cats and dogs.  You don’t have to worry about cars hitting you or about tripping on uneven sidewalks.  And running on a treadmill allows you to train at the precise speed, time intervals, and incline you want to train at.

But treadmills aren’t perfect.

Treadmills can be very dangerous.  Perhaps you have seen video clips of people falling off treadmills or young people doing stupid things on treadmills.  If you haven’t seen these clips (or if you just need some comic relief) you can check out this video on YouTube.  Funny, but I know some serious injuries have happened on treadmills.

Imagine you are running along on a treadmill at a comfortable pace.  However, you soon realize that the treadmill speed has been slowly increasing to the point where you can barely keep up.  You are running on the end of the treadmill desperately trying to stay on the treadmill, you take each step with resolve and apprehension hoping to stay on but knowing the edge is right there…

This situation can end one of three ways.

You fall off the treadmill. 

You manage to reach the controls and slow the treadmill to a speed you can handle.  

Or you reach the controls and you turn the treadmill off because you realize that despite all your effort and desperation you haven’t even been going anywhere, at least not anywhere where you want to go. 

Many of us in the U.S. are on a treadmill, a treadmill of trying to acquire “stuff.”  Some call it “affluenza.”  We work and work and work so we can buy more and more and more stuff.  We neglect family and friends.  We devote our time to work so we can have more money to spend on more stuff that in reality we don’t even need.  We can’t break the cycle and we don’t dare jump off the treadmill for fear of failure and embarrassment.  And in the end we come to realize that we are even less satisfied with life than when we got on this treadmill.  It’s exhausting.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.  The insanity and obscenity of Black Friday (and now Thanksgiving night) and Cyber Monday doesn’t have to be the norm.  We don’t have to continue running at rapid speeds exerting energy we don’t even have anymore.

This Tuesday we all have the opportunity to celebrate a new holiday: Giving Tuesday.  According to #GivingTuesday’s website, #GivingTuesday is “a campaign to create a national day of giving at the start of the annual holiday season. It celebrates and encourages charitable activities that support nonprofit organizations.”  Hundreds of businesses, non-profits, other organizations, and individuals are joining together for this campaign, and I’m super excited to see the results.

I encourage you to participate in #GivingTuesday: give your time, give your resources, give what you can.

But one day isn’t going to change the culture of the affluenza treadmill.  It’s going to take 365 days a year of people rejecting our consumerist society.  It’s going to take millions of people choosing to do things differently.  It’s going to take people making choices that are hard but choices that affirm that there are things in life that are more important than getting that doorbuster deal on the latest electronic gadget. 

It’s going to take you and me making choices that affirm that we have already been given much, we have more than enough, and we can do so much by giving to others.  We are going to have stop buying what “they” say will make us happy and start giving what we know will create positive change in our lives, in our families, in our communities, and in our world.

May you find the strength to reach for the controls of the treadmill you are on, to take a look at where you are going, to recognize when you are about to fall off, and to slow the speed or turn off that treadmill you are on.  Then may you find the satisfaction of traveling along a new path of living life without the burden of consumerism or “stuff” and find far more than you ever thought you would have.  

Is Thanksgiving all about the Mashed Potatoes?

On Thursday, millions of people around the U.S. will gather with friends and family to celebrate Thanksgiving.  There will be 40 million green bean casseroles, more than 46 million turkeys will be eaten (those poor little turkeys), and about 141 million pounds of cranberries will be consumed.  I’m most looking forward to the mashed potatoes and pie.

But we all know Thanksgiving is about more than the food.

It’s about being thankful. 

We spend time thinking about our blessings and we say a prayer of thanks to God.  Perhaps you observe the tradition of going around the Thanksgiving table and saying one thing you are thankful for.   We feel genuinely thankful for what we have and what we have been given.

However, it seems like a more appropriate name for this day that we call Thanksgiving is becoming “Thanks-feeling.” 

We don’t honor the “giving” part of Thanksgiving.

But even more importantly we have lost the “giving” part of giving thanks throughout the year.  God has blessed us with so much and the way God asks us to thank Him is to bless others in return.  Yes, it is good to tell God we are thankful for what we have been given, but God expects us to pass on the blessings we have received.  We show God we are thankful by doing God’s work, by sharing our blessings with others.

There are so many ways we can GIVE thanks to God.  We can give our time.  We can give our resources.  We can put our skills and talents to use in a way that serves God through serving our neighbors.  We can give hope and love to those most desperately in need. 

One day each year is set aside as the official Thanksgiving, but the ending of the word “thanksgiving” is significant.  The “ing” ending means it is something that is on-going, something that continues, something that we must always be a part of.  For our entire lives we should never stop giving thanks because we will never stop being blessed.

So may you use this Thanksgiving to determine how you want to GIVE thanks.  What are you going to GIVE in response to all you have been given?  How are you going to GIVE your time?  Where are you going to GIVE your resources? 

May you find your niche in giving where your heart, resources, and gifts meet a need.  And may you come to see that through giving you will receive far more than you give away.