The LiveDifferent Challenge

The buzz has mostly died down now, but there for awhile everyone sported their rubber wrist-bands. LiveStrong was the most popular one, in bright yellow support of Lance Armstrong’s battle against cancer. Our church in Corvallis had white ones with LivePure as a stand for sexual purity.

So this morning I was lying in bed listening to Dutch cry, as he was not happy about being put down for his nap. I lay on my bed, staring at my open closet. My full open closet. A year or so ago I read Blue Like Jazz. I remember really liking it, but can’t remember a ton about it now. Except for one thing. I remember Donald Miller had a friend at Reed College who decided to go a whole year without buying clothes. And she did it. Isn’t that funny? That’s the only thing that was burned into my mind from the book. Why? Because I remember thinking, Wow, I couldn’t do that. But I was totally challenged and encouraged by her–what a radical thing to do. She decided that rather than just give her leftover money to God, she would actually go without something, so that her giving to the church and to the poor actually cost her something. David said this is 2 Samuel 24:24 (for those of you who want to make sure this is biblical!), he insisted that he pay for the threshing floor and the oxen for 50 shekels of silver because he said “nor will I offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God with that which costs me nothing.” So what does that mean for us?. I guess what I’m challenged by is that we have so much. Even those of us who aren’t rich (raising my hand here), we still have so much, and we could give so much more.

I thought back to this week. Jeff brought home a box of food from church this week because somebody had dropped it off for the resource center, but the resource center has recently closed, so they sent it home with Jeff. I looked at the box of food. Two deeply dented cans of Chef Boyardee forkable food-like substance and four cans of some kind of beef stew stuff and a random box of pumpkin seeds. What? I admit the thought flashed through my mind, Who gives stuff like this? But it’s not that I wasn’t grateful for the gift, but that box of obviously unwanted leftover givaway food was like holding a mirror up in front of my face. I give like that. I give my leftover, dented cans of gross Chef Boyardee, so to speak. I don’t give my favorite Brianna’s all-natural salad dressing or my Go Lean cereal which is like precious gold, but don’t you think that hungry people in need probably like those kind of delicious things just as much as I do? I’ll never forget a story one of my teachers in school of ministry shared. He said that he wanted to give some clothes to charity and so he went into his closet to pick out a few sweaters. Which ones did he pick? Of course, his oldest ones, the ones he didn’t really like, the ones he never wore, right? Right. But as he reached for those, he heard God say, Why not that one, Jason? He looked up at his favorite sweater–the J. Crew one on the top; the new one that he loved. Why not that one, Jason? He looked at it again. Reluctantly but obediently, he pulled it from the top shelf, resolving in his heart “nor will I offer to the Lord my God that which costs me nothing.” That was seven years ago, and I still remember that story. Hm. Which sweater am I holding back from God?

Now living sacrificially isn’t even just about giving more. It isn’t about money. It’s about a change of perspective. Again, I refer to the passage from The Hawk and the Dove about holy poverty. Remember the passage? (from Amazing Grace (my chains are gone —click there to read) Here it is again:

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His friend says, “Moderation! You ask too much! Your self-imposed penury is not holy poverty. It is like the poverty of the world. It is …”

“Too must like the real thing, you mean?” Abbot Peregrine interjects wryly.

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When we actually go without we are choosing to experience a teeny taste of what Christ experienced, what others experience. We choose to let our fat flesh starve for one moment so that we can hear the voice of God. I’m not talking about asceticism, I’m not talking about becoming obsessed with self-denial. I love pleasure. I love the things God gave us for pleasure. Marriage, cookies, flowers, sunshine, running, fresh air–ahh! Drink deep of these pleasures, but we settle for too little. We are up to our eyeballs in luxury which has sated our spiritual hunger and left us lethargic and ready for a nap spiritually. I’m saying this to myself. Even though this year has been a struggle not having our own home, and I do believe God has a home in store for us, in fact I even believe that part of our ministry will be having a large home where we can have people stay and extend hospitality, but that’s another story and I’ve gotten off track here. Even though this year has been a struggle, it’s been a wake-up call to a realization on how little we can really live on.

So as I lay on my bed, I thought about a fabulous quote by Benjamin Franklin from my friend Caila’s website. It says, “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” Do something worth writing. What are we doing? Is there anything interesting going on in my life? That’s when the words LiveDifferent came into my mind. LiveDifferent. What if, once a week, we joined together to do something that challenged our American life of luxury mindset? What if a group of us girls (I say girls because for guys this wouldn’t be a sacrifice of any kind) did decide to not buy clothes for a year? What if, just for a week, we didn’t buy any groceries and just tried to live off what we have in our pantries (I know, not much of a challenge–we have to start somewhere!)? What if we took every Monday and instead of eating our lunch we fasted and gave our sack lunch to Jesse, the homeless guy on the I-205 off ramp? What if we went one whole month without eating out, and gave the money we save to Compassion International so that a kid in Rwanda could have shoes? What if we only rented movies from the library instead of Blockbuster and used that money to buy two chickens from Gospel for Asia for a family in need? What if we lived with our parents for a year? (ha ha, only threw that one in there to see if you were paying attention — no one should really do that!) So, every Friday, I’ll post a LiveDifferent challenge. Now this is being really vulnerable because you guys will see what a serious American sissy I am–because my LiveDifferent challenges probably won’t be that revolutionary to you. But, we have to start somewhere right? Now again, I’m not condemning people (myself included) who buy clothes, eat out, drive SUVs, or have cable tv. I’m just drawing a circle around myself and praying, God start a revolution here. Change my heart so that I’m willing to alter my lifestyle every so slightly for the sake of the gospel. Help me not to just do things for the sake of doing them, but to gain a different perspective, to ruffle my feathers enough that I look up and take notice of the suffering world around me. Please lead these LiveDifferent challenges so that they’re not just my own little ideas, but they’re YOUR ideas. And keep us always ever from pride, thinking we are in any way better than others who live different from us. Changes us, God. Give us creativity to LiveDifferent. Amen.

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