[please excuse me, but this morning I'm writing more for myself than for my readership...sometimes blogging can be more therapeutic than informational :) ]
This morning I actually woke up at 4:30am. It’s amazing how still the world seems at this early hour. Generally I find myself awake at 4:30am, but fighting to keep my eyes open and trying to force my mind to slowdown and sleep causes me to see 4:30am differently than I do when I have just slept 6 hours and am now beginning my day. Instead of my mind racing, yet never seeming to be really productive, today I experienced a sense of peace. I awoke to a sink full of dishes and a starving tummy, yet proceeded to wash what I needed, cut and prepare the food that would eventually become my breakfast. I turned on the tv, but found myself in the kitchen for an hour. As busy as I was washing, chopping, frying, and brewing coffee it was so restful. Being alone with the world at peace was so soothing. My usual 4:30am routine causes me to miss the beauty and tranquility of a world at rest.
After an hour I sit down with coffee and breakfast at hand just in time to catch Paula White speaking with Jesse Duplantis. For the next 20 minutes I hear Jesse Duplantis talking about how we should all be rich and we should not be ashamed of wealth. Yes, he is talking in the sense of being monetarily and materially wealthy. Paula talks about how since she has been successful in ministry because (in essence) she conducts her ministry like a hard working, secular CEO, that secular business people respect her and relate to why her ministry is so successful. Duplantis then says that if we aren’t supposed to have material wealth, then why do we spend so much time trying to get ourselves out of poverty? Why do we spend so much time working at a job in order to make money? Without getting into (theological & personal philosophical) details, I am just disgusted by this conversation. However, this popped into my devotional time this morning.
As I thought and prayed and reflected on my responsibilities this week, something really hit me like a ton of bricks. Knowing that I have a lot of website updating to do, I was a little upset that my Powerbook keyboard has dysfunctional “e” and “r” keys. Sometimes they don’t work at all and I have to repeatedly beat on them in frustration and sometimes one touch causes the letters to be replicated several times, which I then have to go back and delete. This really tries my patience! However, as I’m trying to figure out to workaround this without having to buy a new keyboard (which costs around $285 used) or a new Macbook Pro to replace it (which costs around $1,800!) I am struck with the thought of people that don’t have food to eat or a roof over their heads. Here I am mentally complaining about my keyboard and how I can’t afford to fix it, yet there are people starving and dying of malnutrition and people displaced from their homes due to flooding and hurricanes. Wow! I’m almost bordering on feeling guilty. What are my priorities? What should be my priorities?
I now have a lot to think about and some soul searching to do. As a minister of the gospel should I be compelled to keep all things technological at my fingertips so I can relate to others in ways I know, or should I look to more meager means and start putting more action into my faith and love of others?
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