Poverty sucks.  It didn’t take me too long to determine that.  Bet you don’t disagree either, even if you’ve never touched it, tasted it, or smelled it for yourself.  As I walked the streets of Las Delicious, a small shanty-town community in La Ceiba, Honduras, the reality of what I knew existed was literally all around me.  It’s almost as if my brain instinctively compartmentalized, packaging up the things it could process and eliminating the pieces it didn’t know what to do with.  No one should live like this…dirt floors, cardboard box walls, scraping for food, families of six all sleeping in a room smaller than my master bedroom closet.  But it wasn’t the lack of money or resources that bothered me most.

Hope had left the building.  There was none.  Nowhere to be seen.  When these little kids…kids with names and faces and eyes I could stare deeply into…when they look into their future, they see nothing.  Nothing.  There is no vision of better circumstances, of greater opportunity.  There’s no encouragement to discover the fullness of the “Imago Deo,” or image of God that is imprinted into their very being.  Creativity is smothered by lack of vision, and the untapped creative potential in these little faces was the hardest thing for me to digest.  They live in the slums, they are the slums, and they will always be the slums.  That is a recipe for hopelessness.  And that, my friends, is the worst of injustices.

How do we make that right?  I guess that’s the million dollar question.  I think it starts somewhere inside of me, with the realization that I actually have something of value to offer.  Money?  Sure.  Resources are imperative to solving this crisis.  But perhaps the single greatest thing we can offer another human being is hope.  That obviously starts with Jesus Christ.  But encapsulated in that is an opportunity and responsibility for me to help someone else look into their future and see what God originally intended.  To pull back the weeds, clear a pathway, remove the rubble that keeps them from seeing God’s vision for their lives.  I can do that in Honduras.  And we will.  But I can also do that in the lives of those I encounter every single day.  Will we?

Hitting the sack here in Honduras after a long travel day.  Two short flights with one long layover.  For the record, if you have 5 hours to kill, I would strongly suggest you not do it in the San Pedro airport.

Tomorrow we head out early to help with a new Mission of Mercy mobile dental clinic.  In the afternoon we visit the first of three future sites for MoM childrens centers.  City Community Church is hoping to get in the mix literally from the ground up here in La Ceiba.  We’ll meet the local pastors, get a hands on view of the area, and spend time visiting the homes of the families and children that will be affected by the presence of this center.  It’s sure to be a wildly emotional day.

Please pray for us, that we see clearly what God is already doing here in La Ceiba and know what part we have to play in seeing it become reality.  More to come soon.

Packing up tonight for a short trip to La Ceiba, Honduras…only 2 full days with a travel day on each end.  Heading out with my wife Mandy and our co-pastors Nathan & Tricia LaGrange to connect with Jack Eans of Mission of Mercy.  We’ll be spending the rest of this week visiting Mercy Centers near La Ceiba, but more importantly traveling to communities that don’t have a center…yet.  That’s where we come in.

We’ll be spending a majority of our time in communities where centers are planned but not yet built, looking at future sites, talking to leaders, and even visiting families in their homes.  Our hope is that over the next few years, City Community Church can partner with MoM to literally transform the landscape of these communities.

Stay tuned for blogs, tweets, and maybe even a video post or two from Honduras.  And be thinking of ways you can potentially partner with us in bringing the reality of Jesus love to these beautiful people.

I was honored to be asked by my new friend, Curtis Honeycutt, to write a “guest blog” for his site Just Wallpaper.  The text is below, but check out his site as well (the formatting looks much cooler there anyway).  Amazing guy doing some amazing things.  Thanks for the opportunity to submit something to the dialog, Curtis.

Everyday Justice

What is justice anyway? Is it really the heart of God or is just the latest fad of the Western Evangelical subculture? You know, like pet rocks in the 70’s, hair bands in the 80’s, Saved By The Bell in the 90’s, and American Idol after the turn of the millennium? Is justice just the “in thing” for Christians to do, or is there something deeper? (Of course I know the answer to that question, I just wanted an excuse to reminisce about Zack Morris and Kelly Kapowski…those were the days).

If you read the Bible (I mean really read it for yourself, not just let others tell you what it says), there is an undeniable undercurrent of justice:

“For the righteous Lord loves justice. The virtuous will see his face.” (Psalm 11:7 NLT)

“You love justice and hate evil. Therefore, O God, your God has anointed you, pouring out the oil of joy on you more than on anyone else.” (Hebrews 1:9 NLT)

“You will bring justice to the orphans and the oppressed, so mere people can no longer terrify them.” (Psalm 10:18 NLT)

“He will give justice to the poor and make fair decisions for the exploited.” (Isaiah 11:4 NLT)

That’s just a small sampling from a one word search that literally turned up hundreds of scriptures. To ignore God’s call to justice is to be deaf, to avoid blatant instructions so clearly spelled out in His Word. But I’m plagued by practicality. Don’t just give me theories, concepts, or another Facebook cause to join. What does justice really look like lived out? And not by Bono, the UN, or the Red Cross…but in my life. In the mundane reality of my everyday.

It’s so easy to see injustice on a global scale – AIDS, poverty, the global sex trade to name a few. Awareness campaigns and causes are making a dent – Invisible Children, the ONE Campaign, even things like Idol Gives Back (yes, I’m a proud A.I. fan). Build a well, buy a mosquito net, sponsor a child. Global crises are easy to see, and lots of big names are rightly using their celebrity star power to focus our attention. But what about injustices right under our nose? Can we live justice in our own backyard?

Sometimes we don’t act out of ignorance, and we need to be educated. Sometimes we don’t act out of laziness, and we need a good butt kicking. But sometimes we don’t act because the size and scope of how we’ve defined “justice” just seems too overwhelming to undertake. It’s like our brains don’t have a place to file it, so we leave it to the “professionals.” What could I possibly have to offer?

I can’t solve world hunger, but I can help buy food for a neighbor family that’s struggling financially. I can’t fix global illiteracy, but I can teach one person in my community how to read. I can’t eradicate fatherlessness, but I can offer relationship, encouragement, and guidance to a kid who doesn’t get any of those things under his own roof. Injustice is a rampant behemoth. It’s intimidating. But we can’t allow the magnitude of the injustice fostered by our broken world to paralyze us, or worse yet, be our excuse.

Justice is really just service – the willingness to give something I have without regard to what I get in return so that someone else can become all God created them to be. It rights a wrong, fills a gap, raises the water level for everyone. But justice is personal, not trendy. Not only have we been commanded to live it, we really, truly, actually can. Not only across the globe, but right in our own backyard. In the reality of our everyday.

“For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.” (Mat. 25:35-36 NLT)