Closing Thoughts - the Hole in Our Gospel

How many bathrooms do you have in your house? In fact, are all of your bathrooms inside your house?

Do you have water in your house, or do you have to fetch it some distance away, carrying it, every time you desire to use water? Do you have running hot water in your house, on demand?

Do you have air conditioning?

Is your home more than one room, have dirt floors, have glass window panes covering your windows, or does it have plastic garbage bags covering your windows?  Is your home made out of wood planks and a tin roof, with no insulation?

Are you employed? And if so, do you earn more than one dollar per day?

Do you have a family doctor and dentist whom you can see regularly? Do you have a fully stocked pharmacy in your town?

Is the country in which you were born blessed with natural resources, or is it poor in natural resources with extended periods of drought?

Do you earn roughly $365 per year, or do you earn several thousands of dollars per year? 
According to the award winning book The Hole in Our Gospel by Rich Stearns (the former CEO of one of the most upscale china producing companies, and now the CEO of "World Vision"), if your family income is $25,000 or more then you are in the wealthiest top 3% of ALL the people of the world!

And, according to Stearns, if your family income is $50,000 or more, then you are among the wealthiest 1% of ALL the people of the world!

Among the two billion Christians worldwide, one-half of all of Christianity wealth resides in the United States. Yet, despite that wealth, over all Christians do little to support Christianity, or the poorest of the poor.

Christians give on average just 2.6% of their income to Christian causes, despite the Biblical standard of giving 10% of one's "first and finest" tithe to God's kingdom. On the whole, too often we keep what God has given to us, among ourselves, instead of sharing it with the poor, as Jesus constantly did in his ministry when he consistently focused upon the needs of the poor.

We do this, despite Jesus saying the following in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 25:

"Then he will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirtsy, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick and in prison, and you did not visit Me.' Then they themselves also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of you?' Then He will answer them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me. These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.'"

So, how about you? How do you compare to the people of Nicaragua?

The people of Nicaragua live in a country where they do not, for the most part, have bathrooms nor running hot water, or any running water, inside their homes.  50% of the country is unemployued, and those who can find work on average earn one dollar per day. They don't have air conditioning, nor family doctors nor dentists ... no local pharmacies in most villages, and most don't have vehicles, insurance, nor retirement assurances.

Yet, the costs of goods are just as expensive as in our country. When they can find work they work hard. They desire to work, but Nicaragua isn't as blessed in natural resources as in our country.

Despite their poverty, it seems that at all times they find joy! And rarely do they complain, no matter what comes!

What about you?

When we come to Nicaragua, we come to do a project, but instead the project remakes us. We come to serve, but by their joy we are served! We hope to bless, yet we are the ones blessed!

We have come to love the poorest of the poor in Nicaragua, just as we saw Jesus Christ do among the poor of Israel and Samaria.

In closing, let us sum it up as a seminary professor at Princeton Theological Seminary told his students in class one day:

"When you look at every human being, look at their nose and their eyes. When you do, you will see on their face, in their nose and eyes the shape of a T cross. It was a cross shaped in the form of a T, upon which Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. Thus, when you look at the face of another, you see the cross of Christ. And when you see upon the face of another the cross of Christ, you are looking at the face of God. So, treat all your brothers and sisters, no matter who they are or waht they have done, as children whom Their Creator God loves extremely much ... and love them, as God does, with all of your heart, all of your soul, and all of your mind"!

That is why we come, year after year, to Nicaragua.  If we don't take what God has blessed us with, and share it with the poorest of the poor, ... if you don't do something about it ... then we have a "hole in our gospel"!

So next year ... what about you???