America, Who Are You? God's People, Where Are You?

America who are you? Underneath the red, blue, and white? America who are you? I wonder who you are tonight. America who are you? Is God still on your side? I want to see a nation rise above the fear and fight that haunts these streets tonight. 

- "Looking for America" by Switchfoot and Lecrae

Brace yourself. This post will be long and it will contain controversial views and you probably will not agree with everything I have to say. I ask that as I share my thoughts and my heart that you listen openly and then respond as you will. I want to share with you what I did today and why. I spent the first part of my day attending classes that teach me all about God and what it means for me to be His, just as I do everyday. My day continued with conversations, homework, chapel, and attending a protest in Minneapolis. I attended this protest because I want to stand with my brothers and sisters who are refugees. From what I know about God, who I am, and who my refugee brothers and sisters are, I believe this was right. I will tackle why I did so. Then I will address why I chose to take action through protesting. Finally, I will address what the protest itself was like and finish with a few concluding thoughts.

I stand with my brothers and sisters first and foremost as a citizen of the kingdom of God. Didn't see that one coming, did you? As a citizen of the kingdom of God, I see my first priority to be to follow the wonderful ways of my good and wise King. Throughout the Old and New Testaments my King has not merely suggested but commanded His people to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, stand up for the oppressed, give a voice to the voiceless, and welcome the stranger in. (If you doubt this, see the following samplings of Scripture: Leviticus 19:33-34, Deuteronomy 10:18-19, Exodus 23:9, Job 31:32, Isaiah 1:17, Isaiah 58:10, Matthew 25:31-46, Philippians 2:3-4, Malachi 3:5, Hebrews 13:2) And if you don't think refugees are suffering or in need in any way, I would humbly ask you to open your eyes wider. As a citizen of a greater kingdom, I know that each person is made in the image of God and thus has immeasurable value. So much value that in fact the value of the life of a refugee from Syria or Somalia or anywhere else is actually the exact same as your own. Imagine that. There is no hierarchy in this kingdom. Inconvenient for you? It is sometimes for me too because it means I have to look beyond myself and recognize that maybe I am not any more important than everyone else.

The second role I come from this is that of an American citizen. I only have two notes on this point. One is the obvious fact that it is quite ironic for a bunch of fairly recent immigrants to push away a newer batch, especially when they are in a very critical position. I myself am just a third generation American born girl whose family came here from Sweden. Second, I want to address this safety (or as it is probably more properly labeled - fear) driven side. I acknowledge our need for having security as a nation. However, the argument that our vetting process needs work is extremely weak. You can read up on our very thorough vetting process for refugees as it stands here. Also, there has not been one American killed by a terrorist from any of the countries that have had the ban placed on them.

Third, I come looking at this issue as simply a human being. I know it is very easy to dehumanize refugees, especially when you don't always see pictures or hear personal stories or know any. However, I have. I have seen pictures, read stories, and known refugees. Nothing will turn your heart so quickly towards these people like truly knowing a few of them.

So that is why I am for the refugees. Now with the list of things I can do to support this cause, why choose to protest? I will be the first to admit I have never protested anything and I did not really think I ever would. I am not a huge fan of crowds, especially angry crowds like the media often shows. And at the end of the day, I do not think protesting alone will change everything we want to have changed. But I do believe it is a strong start. It causes people watching the news and government to recognize the thousands standing together to fight an issue. These protests serve as conversation starters and can lead to great change in thoughts and actions.

Finally, if you are still with me I hope to share what it was actually like to protest today. I went with two of my fellow local outreach leaders from the university I attend who lead a ministry that reaches out to the international community (I get the great privilege of being a tutor through the ministry to a sweet Somali family) as well as a friend who is heavily involved in our multicultural group on campus. We rode in to Minneapolis on the light rail. One of my fellow students and I sat by an older woman. She asked the woman how her day was and where she was headed. Much to my surprise she was going to the protest. When asked to explain her heart for the cause she explained that she is a retired social worker. At the conclusion of this conversation we met a couple of other college kids going to protest. Then we saw dozens more protesters flock onto the light rail over the course of the next few stops. When we arrived at government plaza we then encountered thousands of protesters. We shuffled our way through the crowd and took our places. We held our signs displaying history, current data, quotes from the statue of liberty, and Bible verses & shouted in unison both our grievances and supports. Everyone else did the same. I was shocked to see the immense diversity of people there. Literally everyone was there. Young moms. College kids. Retired people. Singles. Couples. Families. Friends. Natural born citizens. Immigrants. Asians. Hispanics. African Americans. Scandinavians. Introverts. Extroverts. Politically-minded. Non-political. Christians. Muslims. Atheists. It was an incredible thing to see people stand up. Not just for themselves but for their brothers and sisters. I reflected upon that as we stood there in the cold. What would it be like to be preparing to come to America after a long waiting process & have one man and his bandwagon tell you that after all that time you actually cannot but then have thousands of people you have never met fighting for you? The whole protest was peaceful. It was filled with compassion and a desire to see justice. 

I hope that in this next season we truly do see people stand up for one another like I saw today. What if we actually lived like this - like we were our brother's keeper? What could that look like in your household, neighborhood, city, state, country, or world? I hope we see Americans set aside their "America first" attitude long enough to look into the eyes of the people they are trying to turn away. I hope the church thinks twice before deciding to "not get involved in political matters" and truly be the Church that Christ would ask us to be. I hope we all make choices we are proud of. I hope that when your children or your grandchildren ask you about this some day you will be able to tell them you fought for the refugees. This is my hope and these are my prayers.

Seeing Your Schedule as Your Life's Script

Fall is a busy time of year. Schedules are packed. And it got me thinking about the value of our time. So I decided to write about it.

A while back I heard a message by Bill Hybels, senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church. Okay, well in reality I listen to his messages all the time but I am going to talk about a specific one I heard last fall. He said some things that struck me. One of the statements he made is that when you plan your schedule you plan your life's script. It isn't a profound or groundbreaking statement but it felt like it was because I had never seen my schedule in that light before. Another thing that struck me during his sermon was a question he posed. If God were in control of your schedule would it look different? That message got me thinking about my life and where I put my priorities.

Then Friday afternoon when I was doing some reading for a reflection assignment for Introduction to Ministry I was asked a similar question. It got me thinking about how important our schedule is. What it contains, who is in it, and how much is in it are all very important things. I would like to look at each of those pieces a little closer.

What Our Schedule Contains

Where are we investing out time? What kinds of things fill our lives? Is it filled with things that focus on others or ourselves? God or idols? Serving or being served? It is often not until we truly look at our calendars that we can find the answers. We need to balance the "what" in our schedules. We should look at our calendars and easily find family, work, friends, volunteering, and God (and whatever else we truly value). One easy way to see what truly matters to us is to color code our schedules. I know I do. It allows me to see what my life is really filled with. Lately when I look at my schedule all I see is work. Now work is good but we can't work 24/7 and have a perfectly fulfilled life. We need relationships and we need to prioritize them (I'll talk about this more in the next section). So what activity dominates our time? If it is hard to recognize one of those pieces that we say are one of our core values then maybe we should make some changes.

Who Is In Our Schedule

What kind of people have priority in our schedules? People who help us grow or people who make us less like the kind of person God is calling us to be? No matter what people say who we spend our time with truly does determine who we become. So who are your top 5 people you spend the most time with. Are they the kind of people you hope to become? Because you become more and more like them all the time without even realizing it. Another thing we should do when it comes to the "who" in our schedule is that we should invest in others. We should mentor and guide those who aren't as experienced as us in whatever way we can wherever we can. We can help the new guy at work or the freshman at college or a younger family member. It isn't always easy but it is worth it. So do we invest enough in people who need us? Also, do we spend enough time with our families? Everyone's family is different. Every one has struggles but they vary in kind and how big they are so I can understand why many may cringe at the thought of spending time with one of their family members. I am pretty lucky to have the family I do. Families at their best are there for one another. They provide a support system but you can't be your part of the system if you never spend time with your family. It can be easy to put family on the schedule last. Especially when work or school or other things get busy but family isn't something we should tack onto the calendar if we have time. It should have priority. If it doesn't then maybe your should get out your pencil and eraser. So what kind of changes do we need to make to our schedules so that the right people are in our schedules?

How Much Is In Our Schedule

We must not just focus on who is in our schedule or what is in our schedule. We must also take a look at how much we put in our schedule. If our calendars are bare then we may not be reaching the potential we were meant to. When we have things on our calendars it means that we have things to do. We have responsibilities and responsibilities in themselves are not a bad thing. It is a very good thing. We are meant to work. Our lives are very dull without work. However there is such a thing as a schedule that is too full. I think that the average reader is probably more likely to have this issue. These days people are always on the move. That is why we have fast food. People don't have time for sit-down meals. Why else would we need a drive-thru? This is why we order things for pick-up. We don't have the time. We have planners because if we didn't we would never remember all of our responsibilities. People are always on the move and on the go. Being active is good... up to a point. Many people, however, push themselves way too much. Some think that is good but I tend to think differently. I think when we are SO busy we never give anything our full attention. When we are in church and we spend the whole service thinking about how we are going to fit in all of the things we are doing that day then that isn't good. We need to have a schedule full of meaningful things but we don't need that schedule to be overflowing. That benefits no one. We need our schedule to allow us to listen to God and do as He says. If our schedule is maxed out we don't have time to do the things God is prompting us to do like sit down and have dinner with a friend who is down or spend some extra time with Him.

There is truly a lot more to our schedules than most of us think. I hope this post made you think a little bit and I hope you truly reflect on what your schedule might look like in God's eyes. If you don't have time to do that then maybe you have already found what you need to change.

Reflection and Application

I know I already touched on this a bit but I want to condense it down to a few questions to reflect on...

1. What are your core values? Does your schedule show that?

2. Who are the most important people in your life? Does your schedule show that they are a priority?

3. Who are the top 5 people you spend your time with? Do you want to become like them (because you will)?

4. Is your schedule too full for you to listen to God's promptings and enjoy life or is it not full enough that you are wasting potential God put in you?

Why Your Children Should Read Harry Potter: The Valuable Lessons Of An Incredible Series

First things first *SPOILERS * SPOILERS *SPOILERS

Now that that is taken care of it's time to get to the post...

It is surprising to me the number of parents who still disapprove of the Harry Potter series. I understand that they don't want to promote witchcraft and sorcery and the like but Harry Potter isn't made to promote it and I have never met a person yet who got into sorcery because they read Harry Potter. What I have seen though is people who fell in love with reading and learned valuable lessons because of it. The Harry Potter series made me personally fall back in love with reading. While I could discuss that point more, I won't because that isn't part of my purpose today. My purpose today is to convince you of this: the Harry Potter series has infinite value. Here is why...

Judging Others: Harry was wrong
about every one of these

Teamwork
Harry, Hermione, Ron, Fred, and George were just a few of the many characters who showed us true teamwork. In my mind, Fred and George are the ultimate team. They work together on everything and they show us that two can be a whole lot better than one. Also in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the famous trio (Harry, Hermione, and Ron) need the strengths and expertise of each of them to keep going. They have to cooperate and work together to stay alive. They have to trust each person to lead them in the right direction and to keep them safe. In the final book there is a battle at Hogwarts and it takes everyone working together to defeat Voldemort and the Death Eaters. The "good guys" work together and come out victorious while the Death Eaters don't because while they are working for one cause they don't cooperate very well. They are constantly struggling for power and when it comes down to it they are not at all willing to make sacrifices for one another. So not only does the series show us the qualities of a good team but it shows us what will make a team fail in the end. For a large part of my life I have been one to always try to do everything on my own, but Harry Potter and his friends taught me that you cannot master everything and sometimes you need someone with a different skill than you to do something. For more about HP and teamwork, read this.

Judging Others
When I think about the series and the topic of judgement I jump right to Harry and Snape. Harry made judgments about Snape throughout the entire series and yet in the end we learn that all we thought about Snape was completely false. Snape was a hero in many ways but we don't understand this until he is dying. Snape is not really how we viewed him for most of the series. I think many of us can learn from this because I think all of us do what Harry did. We make judgments about someone and later learn something about them that completely changes how we view them. This one truth will stick with me forever mainly because of Harry Potter: things are not always as they seem. This is clearly illustrated by the photo on the left. Harry was ridiculously wrong on all of those assumptions yet he still kept making them. We look at Harry and say 'get it together'. Then we often go and make our own wrong assumptions about others.

Lightness and Goodness
In many books and movies we are told or shown who is "good" and who is "bad". I think the Harry Potter series does an excellent job at showing us that people are very complex and cannot be accurately described as good or bad. Sirius Black once told Harry, "the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters. We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are." In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Dumbledore says that we must choose between what is right and what is easy. I think that this ties into choosing what side of us we will act on. What is easy is often not what is good. It is often much harder to do the right thing, which is why we make so many mistakes in life. Another wise quote from Dumbledore relates to the topic of lightness and darkness is this one: "Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, when one only remembers to turn on the light." The series teaches us to act on what is good and right.

Friendship and Loyalty
Those who know me know I am not really a crier. I don't tend to cry at movies or songs or even books. It's rare for me. But nothing makes me want to cry more than Dobby's final words. "What a beautiful place to be with friends. Dobby is happy to be with his friend...Harry Potter." Dobby is probably the most loyal friend one could ever have. He shows us what a true friend is and in the end, he dies saving his friends. Dobby is not the only character that shows us the true value of friendship and loyalty. Hermione put a lot of emphasis on doing well in school but she always showed us that friendship comes first. In the very first book Hermione said this: "Books! And cleverness! There are more important things -- friendship and bravery." The Harry Potter series made me (and probably many others) want to have friends like Harry, Ron, and Hermione so in many ways the series encourages to make new friends and keep them central in our lives.

Love
Harry Potter proves that love is the closest thing we have to magic. Nothing can stop it. Lily's love protected Harry even after she died. Hermione, Ron, and Harry took risks for one another out of love. Dobby risked his life for the trio out of love. Snape protected Harry out of love for Lily. Love is shown by so many characters throughout the series it would be impossible to list them all. Many characters show love for others to their deaths. The series does make this clear though: the ones that love us never really leave us. The series helps us cope. It shows us how to move on but it also shows us to treasure the love we are shown and also, to show love back.

Life

Life can be incredibly hard. The HP series does not shy away from conflict or death. It embraces them head on. There are over 20 major deaths in the series. Harry grows up as an orphan living with his unloving and uncaring relatives. Snape loses the love of his life to the man who bullied him in school. Tonks and Remus died just when their lives together were beginning and Teddy grew up an orphan. Arthur and Molly Weasley lose a son. Hogwarts loses Dumbledore. Harry loses Sirius, the one family member not lost to him already. Neville's parents lose their sanity. There is so much reality in this series about a fictional world. The Harry Potter series teaches us that life isn't fair, people we love will die, and things will never be happily ever after. But that doesn't mean life isn't a wonderful thing.

Other Good Lessons

A. Our words have power - “Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it.”
B. Live in the present - “It does not do to dwell on dreams, Harry, and forget to live.”
C. We are the same in many ways - "Though we may come from different countries and speak in different tongues, our hearts beat as one"
D. Watch how someone treats their inferiors - "If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."
E. Living without love is more pitiful than death - “Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all those who live without love.”

The Harry Potter series is seen by many as simply a series about witchcraft and wizardry but it is not just that. It is a series that promotes teamwork, shows the importance of not judging others, tells us that there is no such thing as good people and bad people, gives us a picture of true friendship and loyalty, demonstrates the importance of love, and gives us a realistic perspective on life. If you haven't read the series, then do yourself a favor and read it. You won't regret it.