whyismarko » hope

two more haiti videos: suffering and hope

marko — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:00:20 +0000

as our haiti team videographer, ian robertson, passed along two more videos from our trip, i was struck by how they captured the suffering/hope dynamic i’ve written about here so many times since the trip. they only take a few minutes to watch, so i’d encourage you to catch a more visual glimpse of this suffering resulting in hope reality than i can paint with words.

suffering:

hope:

i keep hearing from youth workers and other church leaders who are putting together trips to go. and that has me stoked. i’ve become firmly convinced, in the last decade or so, that our best missional living occurs when we find where god is already moving, and join up with that movement (rather than trying to create our own). one way you can do that is by checking out options with adventures in missions, here.

the relationship between suffering and hope (talking about haiti at my church)

marko — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:00:58 +0000

the church i attend was in a sermon series called “god-o-nomics” (a play on freak-o-nomics), really about what faith looks like in financially difficult times. days after i returned from haiti, i was chatting with our teaching pastor, ed noble (who i’ve known for more than 20 years, and was my boss in omaha a couple decades ago). after hearing some of my stories, he had this sense that what’s happening in haiti, and what i experienced there, was a hyper-version of the topic for the final sermon in the series, which was about “both struggling and being ok.”

so ed gave up 20 minutes of his sermon time to interview me about our trip, and how it connected with this topic.

people really connected with it, and i was pleased with how the whole thing connected with our own experience in tough times (even though the magnitude is clearly very different).

here’s a link to the mp3 of the sermon (my part is the first 20 minutes or so). and here’s ed’s blog post about it.

today, i am thankful

marko — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:09:26 +0000

today, i am thankful that i was laid off.

it’s a choice, more than a feeling.

i cannot, no matter how much effort i apply to the task, think of a single challenging, painful, or hurtful experience in my life, whether by my own doing or done to me, that i would now wish away. i cannot think of one of those that god didn’t use for growth or benefit or shift or some other good purpose.

i cannot believe that this current situation would be an exception to that rule.

so, today, i choose to be thankful that i was laid off, in the belief and hope (the christian kind of hope that is, more equal to confidence than wishing) that this is all very, very good. in 5 years, i won’t be willing to trade this for the world.

(looking forward to a houseful of 20 thanksgiving dinner guests today, also!)