Art*Music*Justice

How do you love God? Or what does it even mean to love God? I'll address that later.

I mentioned in my last post that I would blog about the concert that was held as part of Greg Christy's inaguration as the new president at Northwestern College in Orange City, IA, a couple of weekends ago. I had meant to blog about it right away, but man, sometimes it is hard to find time to do it. And this post has taken a little more thought than usual.

The concert was the Art*Music*Justice tour and it was on campus Saturday night. The AMJ tour features 5 recording artists: Sara Groves, Charlie Peacock, Brandon Heath, Derek Webb, and his (pregnant) wife Sandra McCracken. You can follow the AMJ link to learn more about these musicians. There is a press release here.

The cost of admission to the concert was food items for the local food pantry.



I've been a fan of Sara's for awhile now. I love her songwriting. A couple of years ago we and the Christy's saw Sara in concert in a coffee house in Sioux Falls. It was a great venue where we could really be up-close with her. Since the Christy's were organizing the whole inauguration weekend, they were able to get us backstage to meet the artists.



Michelle Christy started the evening by explaining what Art*Music*Justice is all about. It is about proximate justice. Knowing that someday, Jesus will bring ultimate justice, and finally deal with evil. But in the meantime, we are to help bring justice to people and society, even if the victims don't truly perceive Christ's hand in it or understand our motivations. We do it regardless, because it is the right thing to do. Because God demands it. Stand up for the weak. Defend the widows and fatherless. We don't merely say be warm, be filled. We act. When God's people mobilize out of love, we bear witness to His love and mercy, and ultimately, He receives the glory. Backstage, Charlie Peacock and Michelle were talking, and he mentioned that he was surprised to hear her bring up proximate justice. The term is not real well known outside of theological circles. See for example here and here.



I was happy to hear Michelle's introduction mention this blog. She noted how we are adopting from Ukraine and that she saw my post from last April with Sara Grove's I Saw What I Saw video. How adopting orphans is a way of helping to bring justice to the world. I didn't know it until this concert that the video came out of an International Justice Mission (IJM) trip that Sara took to Kenya. IJM is an organization of volunteers that uses legal means to help bring social justice to the opressed. They showed a couple of IJM videos during the concert, one where slaves in a Banglesheshi brick factory had been freed and now one of them was starting his own brick factory, and another where a young Cambodian girl held captive as a sex slave was rescued. By the way, have you ever taken a look at Tony and Kimberly's blog that we link to? They are working on a Ukrainian adoption and they have posted about IJM topics here and here. Tony is on a trip to Asia now doing something related to IJM.

At one point in the concert, Sara's husband Troy came out to tell the audience that if they would commit to sponsoring a child that evening, they would get a free Sara Groves CD on the spot. They also brought two of their young sons out, but my camera batteries died so I didn't get a picture of them.



Surprisingly to me, the only time everyone was together on stage was at the very beginning and end of the concert. The majority of the time it was the individual artists performing their own material.

Here are Charlie, Brandon, and Sara.



Here are Sandra and Derek. Derek played a 12-string Taylor, which I was very interested in. During the last song of the night, he a broke a G string. On the guitar that is! I play guitar as well, and if you have to break a string, the last song is a great one to do it on.



At one point, Charlie Peacock gave a long message, even a sermon if you want to call it that, about following after God. You know, when you listen to a sermon, or a speech, or a presidential debate, even if it is a very good one, maybe only one thing sticks with you. I call that the take-away. What do I take away with me afterward? What is the most memorable? For me, it was something Charlie said. This is where I will answer the question at the top of the post. He said,

"What does it mean to love God? It means to love the things that God loves. Be interested in the things that He is interested in. And if you don't know what that is, you need to spend the rest of your life finding out."

He had the Bible open and quoted a lot of verses. I don't remember if he mentioned this one, but I think of Micah 6:8,

He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the LORD require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?

The evening closed out with a time of worship. They had the words on the screen so everyone could sing along. It was a great way to finish off a great evening.



If the Art*Music*Justice tour comes to your area, I recommend that you go see it, but not with small children. There is a tour schedule here.

It's the Time of Year When...

...a grasshopper's thoughts turn to love! I was out walking Sparkle today and these grasshoppers on "dates" were all over the place. I guess I find nature interesting. Proverbs 25:2 says "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." I suppose this can mean alot of different things, one of which is it's OK and honorable to be a scientist. And I guess that makes me a king today. But I digress.

It's also the time to... send our dossier over to Kiev again. That is - IF WE CAN EVER FINISH GETTING IT UPDATED. This has been like a slow motion wheel that just keeps on turning and never stops.

I mentioned in that LifeLight post that I had news to share with you from our facilitator. On August 3 we had gotten an email from him that we should update our dossier. You may recall that we had let most of our dossier expire, as there hadn't seemed to be any reason to keep it fresh due to having no chance of getting it submitted this year. So when he sent us an email to get it updated, I set to work on it.

Unfortunately, you can't just do it overnight. For example, this was the time that Sergey was with us and we were gone alot. When I called the clinic to get another physical it was 3 weeks before I could get in. Then of course, the lab work took another 2 weeks or so to come back. Then there was a comedy of errors getting the medical reports put together correctly (like last time). We just got the completed ones yesterday.

The news I wanted to share was that Oleg told us that the SDA wants 8-9 months of life on the dossier when it gets submitted. Yikes! This means that the papers need to be updated every 3-4 months. That is terribly inconvenient.

Anyway, I was thinking we could send our dossier out for apostilles, but we had our home study and employment verification documents updated last June (but not sent over). Now with this new requirement they are already too old. I contacted our social worker to get us the third HS update. I hope to have that next week along with the employment forms. It is crazy.

On the positive side, Oleg has hopes that we can get submitted this year yet. From his email:

I have hope submit your dossier in October - November, SDA says that will accept dossiers in this time frame under general line, I think will come a lot facilitators for submit dossiers, and will be very difficult to submit, but I have hope.

Fatherless Days

"...his name is
the Lord,
a Father to
the fatherless
a defender of widows."

Psalm 68:5

There's a family in our neighbor-hood going through a divorce right now. Their son is one of Mark's friends. It was a surprise to us, we never saw any obvious signs of trouble in their marriage. The wife is in the process of moving out right now. This is a new dynamic for Mark to experience. As far as I know, this is the first time Mark has seen one of his friends go through a divorce. We'll have to help him work through his feelings about it.

This brought to mind a song by the Newsboys, a popular Christian band. They have this song called Always. I found a video of it on the internet, which I've included here. It's from their Step Up to the Microphone tour, which I saw in Sioux Falls a few years back with our youth group. On the concert DVD, Peter Furler makes an introduction to the song, which is missing from this clip. He said, "Seems like these days, more than any before, we run into a lot of people that go through this life without a father, and without a father figure. The Bible says that God is the father to the fatherless, and he is the defender of widows."

These are some of the lyrics from the song.

It's always the same
You're always to blame
Is there any way around this
I can't see
You walked out on her
You planned to be free
I'm trying not to point the finger
But it's killing me

Take these pieces
Thrown away
Put them together from
Night 'n' day
Washed by the sun
Dried by the rain
To be my father
In the fatherless days

You'll see the words to Psalm 68:5 on the screen behind them.

Check out this video: Newsboys - Always



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Tastes Like Chicken

One of the nice things about living in rural South Dakota is the nearness of nature. Thursday, before work, I happened to look out our bedroom window and saw this hawk in the Ponderosa pinetree we have. We see all kinds of birds in there, but this is the first time I've seen a hawk in it. So I went and grabbed the camera and snapped a quick picture (sorry it's not very clear, it doesn't zoom the greatest).

But then - after I got the picture on the computer, I noticed a blackbird laying on its back, with a wound on his breast. He was surely dead. I would have noticed him had he moved. Apparently, he was to be breakfast. I felt kind of sorry for him, though I generally don't think too highly of blackbirds.

There is so much bad news coming out of Ukraine lately, this vignette helps me keep things in perspective.

"for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength."

Phil. 4:11-13 NLT

Have a nice weekend everyone. It's been fun seeing the hit map where all of our visitors are coming from.

Fingers Crossed

Heard from our facilitator, Oleg, yesterday. Says he got the money I wired, plus the dossier is in good shape. So that's good news, I guess.

Also says that he and his team are keeping their "fingers crossed" that the situation with the SDA will improve soon.

He said that we should be keeping in touch with the other 7 families he is holding dossiers for right now. Guess it's time to hit the forum again soon, since we don't know who they all are.

We are 8 families, then, that have completed dossiers that haven't even been submitted to the Ukrainian government, and there is NO indication that they ever will be. It is very disappointing.

Ps. 121 says,

I lift my eyes up to the mountains,
Where does my help come from?
My help comes from You, Maker of Heaven,
Creator of the earth.
O how I need You Lord, You are my only hope;
You are my only prayer.