What Goes Around

Today I will be leading a session on brokenness with the girls  I work with.  I thought I would share it with you too. Show my broken mug with the handle missing.  Ask if the mug is still usable.   We could glue the handle back on and use it, but it might break again.  Would you give it to a guest to use?  What could you use it for?   Then take a hammer and pretend to break it.   Now what can we use it for?  It is just a bunch of broken pieces.  We have to be careful with the pieces because they could cut us.  We usually just throw the pieces away. We are all broken.  Some of us have  just have one big break in our  life, like the handle of the mug.  We  may still be usable like we are or easy to fix.  But there will always be a crack in us that is weaker because of the break. Brokenness usually comes from other people.  Tear up a paper doll cut out of a magazine.   Not many mugs j...

Today is India's Independence Day.  We are celebrating 67 years of freedom from British rule.  Many lives were lost in our struggle for independence.  In fact, the area we live in is called Freedom Fighters because there are graves here for those who gave their lives for freedom. Yesterday the girls at the home I work at had a celebration for Independence Day.  They sang songs, did skits, danced, and read poems.  It was a very touching celebration.  They weren't just celebrating the freedom of India, but they were celebrating another kind of freedom.  The freedom they experienced being rescued out of sex trafficking.  And it was beautiful! One of the skits they performed had a girl that was illiterate crying on the street for someone to help her.  Then someone came along to give her freedom by teaching her to read.  Another example was a 12 year old girl whose mother wanted to marry her off.  But someone came and told the mothe...

Today's newspaper made me sad as I read it.  I read an article about a gang-rape court case that the accused were released.  It made me really sad and a bit mad.  The incident happened in December.  Five law students were accused of holding a sixteen year old girl and raping her over several weeks.  She had at one point been able to identify them, but at the hearing she said she didn't recognize them, so they were released. This makes me mad because the judicial system sucks.  There should be enough evidence that the guys would be held responsible.  If they had killed her they couldn't rely on her testimony, so why if she now refuses to identify them would they let them off. I am sad because I imagine the girl and her family were threatened.  I imagine that the boys had a lot of power on their side.  And I am angry that these guys could in the future be lawyers or even judges.  They are corrupt and the system failed this girl....

We have been reading Proverbs in the morning at breakfast time.  It has been really good to read with Micah as he has started back to school.  The first few chapters talk about wisdom and understanding and how important they are to get. So I was thinking just now about the fear of the Lord and what it means.  I guess there is a sense of fear in breaking God's laws or doing something that you know is against what God says is good.  I was thinking especially of kids who leave home for college and rebel against the faith they have been taught.  Could the fear of the Lord keep them from rebelling?  For sure there is a sense of wisdom involved in that.  I mean, you want your child to grow in his faith and choose the path that is good for him, which means following Jesus.  So if your child decides that partying and sleeping around and trying to get away with cheating is an okay thing to do, then they are lacking wisdom.  The passage says that th...