sometimes i struggle with guilt...

like when i see things like this: an add for Paris Fashion Week on the side of a New York Times article about the horrible situation in South Africa.

and then i feel twice as guilty about my own life, like i should be on a plane headed to feed starving orphans rather than whatever i happen to be doing at the moment.

i care about starving orphans. i really do. but more recently that 'guilt' seems to be blocked by one thing: actual HOPE.

remember the Oklahoma City bombing? i remember thinking that was simply CRAZY. isn't it sad how small that seems now in comparison with everything else? 

our world is so sad. i'm becoming more and more convinced that there's nothing or no one but Jesus Christ that can offer ACTUAL HOPE. maybe that's why i've yet to get on a plane headed to Africa, because it's no longer easy to overlook the desperate and lost in all places. 

Jesus said, "The [devil] comes only to STEAL and KILL and DESTROY; I have come that they may have LIFE, and have it to the FULL." 

 


i think it's a lot more about reality than it is about compassion [i learned that word in kindergarden in the context of being nice to people on the school bus. ha.] my point is that in reality, i can be on the same level as someone dieing in africa, or someone diamond studded in downtown minneapolis. i either have TRUE, ACTUAL, REAL hope and life, or i don't. 

i want young people in czech to have true hope. i want you to have true hope. i want to remember more often that i have true hope.