Our friends from LiNK (Libery in North Korea) have launched a new campaign called TheHundred. LiNK has been doing great work on behalf of the oppressed in North Korea, and they’re inviting you to join in the rescue of one hundred refugees.
Watch this great video below:
I’m always humbled and amazed at my daughter’s love & generosity. She recently won a gift certificate for a free In-N-Out burger from our local library for completing a reading program. The first thing she wanted to do with her certificate was give it to a homeless person who was hungry.
Unfortunately, the fine print on the certificate specifies that she must be the one to use it (and be accompanied by us, her parents). So, I asked her what she thought of using the money we would have spent on a burger and put it toward something special our church community will be doing this Advent.
This year, our church will be participating in the Advent Conspiracy (AC). My daughter and I talked about what Advent is (the four week season of repentance, reflection and preparation leading up to Christmas) and why our church is participating in the AC this year.
We talked about how close to 1 billion people around the world don’t have access to clean water (more global water facts here from charity: water) and how our little community’s AC offering would be able to help people finally get the clean water we all need. My daughter thought about this for a minute and then said:
We’re lucky. We have a place to live and we have clean water.
We’re really lucky.
She agreed that we would put her offering together with ours to make a difference for people without clean water. I feel like the lucky one, privileged to watch my daughter grow in the love, grace & compassion of Jesus everyday.
Risky Business
I have been extremely blessed to volunteer for Justice Ventures International for the last year. I’m excited to see where this partnership leads and how I can continue to contribute to the great work JVI is doing around the world. As my friend Charles Lee says, “Compassion must be more than just a re-tweet.” I want to work towards compassion & justice around the world in tangible, even sacrificial, ways — to venture, to risk, in becoming a better expression of God’s love.
I brought my car in for an oil change this morning and, after blocking the usual upsell attempts (No, I’m not interested in adding $300 in unnecessary services, even if they’re ‘highly recommended’), I was thinking a bit about cars and car culture during my drive down to the office.
Now, I’ve never been much of a car guy — twin cam, dual overhead, shift on the fly combustible edison, vin diesel car-speak has never really spoken to me. However, being a Southern Californian for going on five years now, it’s virtually impossible to ignore the car culture here. Maybe it’s because we spend so much time in our cars, or perhaps it’s their unnaturally long car-lives (for real, on the East Coast, cars don’t live forever the way they do out here), but folks out here have a strong attachment to their automobiles.
My friend Dave Ingland, who I met at the first Idea Camp back in February in Irvine, California, just wrote a great piece about The Idea Camp. Since the next Idea Camp is coming up soon — August 28-29, 2009 in Washington, DC — I’d like to share a few of my thoughts as well.
Here’s a quick summary of the ethos behind the Idea Camp (you can read more here):
headsparks* 