Pray for Those in Kenya

I want to ask you to pray for Kenya. I thought about attaching a news link here, but they are all so disturbing. It’s not Rwanda yet, but it is going that direction. It’s the basic story of the Monsters of the Midsection. Someone is greedy, someone is jealous, someone is angry. Somebody is in power who is wrong to someone else, and all of the sudden you have people roaming through the streets looking for people from that tribe to kill. It’s no different than our country will look for the next few months during the elections, except that somehow we have all figured out that it’s not worth killing over. I think for the most part our country has learned its lesson about Civil War and now we just have political ads and late night talk shows to deal with our differences.

The problem is magnified in Kenya by the hopelessness. The young men don’t have jobs – they have nothing to do – so if someone says “I hate the _______, let’s go kill them,” they have no reason not to. And many of them have AIDS and are dying anyway.

There is my cheery blog for the day.

Actually I want you to pray for them. And so far, all of our contacts and missions people are safe. But it is hard to get anything productive done. However, here are some pictures of the toilet that is being built right in the worst slums.

If you remember, they didn’t have anything and it was so very unsanitary. So this is a toilet with a church building above it. I know, I know. But if you know these people you will know that their worship is a beautiful sweet offering up to God and somehow smells better to God than anything!

So in my personal reading I had Psalm 133.
1 How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity! 2 It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron's beard, down upon the collar of his robes. 3 It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the LORD bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.

i can’t take time to fully explain the symbolism, but the precious oil and the picture of the dew falling from Mt. Zion is a beautiful picture of God’s favor and of dedication and a baptism like experience.

There is not much of this in Kenya.

Honestly, there is not much of this in some churches I know. Please pray for them. I have one on my heart right now that’s close to me. They are not good and pleasant.

And if you are a part of this church. Dang. Good and Pleasant with oil on the beard! Count yourself fortunate and pray that God will allow it to continue. It’s so amazing here. I mean, it’s not perfect, but we do dwell together in God’s grace.

Dwelling with you,
Tim

Attached is my Day 25 TRAIN and the new TRAIN for Feb 3 through Feb. 16.
Download train_day_25.doc
Download train_day_25.pdf
Download TRAIN-Feb-3-16.pdf

Comments

[We Are...Penn State email list]

Those photos are an amazing contrast to the artist renditions of Parkview's latest building campaign.

"The problem is magnified in Kenya by the hopelessness."

Wow, what an incredibly powerful and heartbreaking image. And yet we struggle with hopelessness in our own back yard, though without the accompanying abject poverty.

In some ways the hopelessness around us is harder to see because it's hidden behind a veneer of material things. But we know "stuff" can buy happiness and--more importantly--it can't buy salvation.

Tim, I'm glad we're helping the people of Kenya, while continuing to offer a message of hope to the people of the Southwest Suburbs.

[We Are...Penn State email list]

>> But we know "stuff" can buy happiness... <<

That should read "But we know 'stuff' CAN'T buy happiness..."

[Eric]

It is a tremendous blessing to be part of Parkview. I like how you describe it, we live together in God's grace. It is also quite a blessing to live in America with the relative peace and order we do have. When just a handful of people are gunned down it is a sad shock to us. Because we value each individual life so much, after birth that is.

I hope we don't think America has really got it together when it comes to valuing human life and overcoming the injustice in killing people. I don't know how many people typically die for a tragedy to be labeled genocide, but over 40 million babies have been killed legally in America since Roe v. Wade. This is an injustice we are doing. There are countries in which aborting pre-birth babies is illegal and America is not one of them. Yet somehow these daily killings don't make the headlines. I guess it's just not convenient to address it. Particularly as Christians, isn't truth something we should be very concerned about, not to mention how Jesus feels about harming the youngest of all? It seems "An Inconvenient Truth" would have been a title better served by addressing this issue.

I hope you don't mind if I say, Pray for those in America who are killing and being killed along with those in Kenya.