I had worked on a post last night and planned to finish it today. We all have plans all the time.  We plan what we will do at work, what we will have for supper, what clothes we will wear.  We plan on our kids outliving us and being living proof that while we leave this earth – we go on, in our children and in the people we have affected while we are here.  We are not ever supposed to outlive our children.  This week not one but two sets of parents are having to experience what that is like and this is not a very big community.  The two kids who died, both in car wrecks, were both seniors in high school – one in each of the larger schools in town.  One was a band kid with ties to most of the debate kids that were at a tournament today. The other had just started speech and debate and worked at Braums.

Plans are made but in a blink, plans come to a halt and all the things that seem important aren’t even a blip on the radar.  I hugged kids today – and a couple of moms.  The debate tournament went on and the kids managed to pull it together and to love and support each other.

The kids at the other school collected money for the little girls funeral.   We see so much bad and worry about the world but in the last week I have been so proud of kids, and so heartbroken for them as well.  I don’t dare try to imagine what it is like to lose a child.  There is a part of me that thinks about my kids driving and I just want to take the keys and keep them home again like when they were small.  Then I had a little control – then I could protect them, or at least I had the facade that I could.  That facade has been gone for some time and I just keep coming back to prayer.  That is all we have left after a certain point.

That’s all I know to do tonight.  The older I get the more I believe that it’s ALL I know for sure.

The day is here, or in my case almost over. Bloggers all over are posting on poverty and I stayed busy and almost let it slip by.  I have been thinking today about spiritual poverty and how it goes hand in hand with physical and economic poverty.  In a nation that has boasted that it is the richest nation in the world we have poverty and how can that be?  How can so many have so much and some still go to bed hungry.

There is a story that I read about what heaven and hell are like.  A man goes on a tour of heaven and hell.  At his first stop, there is a group of people sitting around a pot.  Wonderful smells are coming from the pot and the people have spoons that are long enough to reach the pot, but so long that when they try to maneuver them to their mouths, the spoons tip and the stew spills out before they can eat.  They are all weeping and moaning from hunger.

The next stop the same wonderful smelling stew is cooking in the pot and people are sitting around the pot with the same long spoons but they are all happy and talking and no one is hungry.

The man is told that the first stop was hell – plenty to eat but everyone hungry.  The second stop is heaven and the only difference is that the second group has learned to feed each other.

It is spiritual poverty that has our country in the economic state it is in.  Everyone has plenty and big long spoons to eat it with, but we haven’t learned to feed each other.

We have been studying the minor prophets at church and in nearly every case of troubled times, a prophet would call for a time of fasting and praying.  Our pastor suggested we as a congregation call a fast.  They will have the church open at 6 in the morning so people can stop for prayer and worship before work, for a time at lunch, and again after work.  The fast is not a requirement for anyone – you are invited to participate if you want and are medically able.  You can just pray if you don’t feel led to fast.

There will be directed prayer as we pray for our country, our community, and our ministry as a congregation as well as quite worship time.
I thought it was a fitting way to look at blog action day – doing without food by choice as a reminder of those who go without so much and as a prayer for those who have so much.

If you know me then you know it will not hurt me to miss a meal.  I don’t know if I will make it the whole way, but whatever hunger I feel will be a reminder to me of how blessed I am to have the choice and to know that while I might choose to go without food, I can if I so choose, head for the refrigerator at 2 A.M. and eat my fill and so can my children.

I know that I can make the house note this month and the electric bill will be paid so I will be able to keep posting on this computer.  I have my choice of shoes and clothes to wear and they are all clean because I have a washer and dryer and water.

My hope and prayer for our nation is that we would be a people of heaven, that we would be filled by so much more than food, and that we would learn to feed each other and stop trying to fill ourselves with the junk of the world that leaves us with a yearning for something the world can’t give us.

If we want to cure poverty, we need to cure the spiritual poverty that has caused us to harden our hearts to the needs around us.  The change that would happen externally is going to have to start internally in our hearts.

I tried to watch the vice-presidential debate.  I realllllllly did.  I managed a half hour and then it just seemed like mouths moving and that blah blah sound coming out like a Charlie Brown cartoon and of course my face hurt from squinching up every time Governor Palin said Nukuler and Eye Rack.  I know that’s petty, but it just kept making me lose track of everything else that was being said.

None of it made me think either one of them has a clue when it comes to the day to day lives of the average American family.  None of this gives an answer to the parents of men killed in Iraq.  I REMEMBER Viet Nam.  Not just what it did to so many young men, but what it did to this country.  It tore us apart.  Generations seperated and the confusion in values that came next is still not repaired.
Now the bail out bill has passed and I am having a hard time (being math challenged) wrapping my mind around it. How you can find money to fix a problem that was caused by mishandled money.  Where does that money actually come from?  Will it actually “fix” anything?  Will people stop borrowing money they can’t pay back for things they don’t need as it looks to me like we are all going to have less money.  If we stop buying stuff will more people be unemployed because there is no need to make stuff that people can’t afford to buy because they are unemployed??  Will I have to pay for this?
Sarah, Joe, whoever ends up in office – can you help me make sense of this?  Translate all this down to how much will I be able to spend at the grocery store.  Will I be able to help my kids through college?  Will there be anything left in our little retirement fund when we actually need it or will I be limping up and down the halls at work on my walker?  That is if I don’t die because I can no longer afford health insurance.  That is if any of us are here since the polar ice cap is melting because I have used too many paper towels and took too long to switch to the energy efficient light bulbs. Sorry polar bears, I didn’t mean to kill you off.

The bible tells us that we are to “cast our cares on the Lord” – that we are literally not supposed worry.  He is big enough to handle it all.  I’m glad because it is too big of a mess for me.   Goodnight and good luck America. I love you and I’m praying for you.