What is comfort?

"Among the wealthy we can find the most terrible poverty of all - loneliness."
How many of my friends are lonely people? How many people that I am acquaintances with cry out for someone to love them. The funny thing with wealth is that it can create an illusion as to why people care about you. Do people like you for you or what you can do for them? This question can arise in the mind and create a blockade of mistrust that prevents one person from getting to close to another. But when you have noting and are in poverty - all you have to offer to others is yourself and it is a beautiful thing.
My family is pretty well off- more then we like to let people know. We have been raised to feel slightly uncomfortable when discussing money with people outside of our family and most people have no idea about the money that my parents bring in. We have also been raised to give and give a lot. I started tithing when I was six years old and things just grew from there. The rest of my family is the same way. Money goes to missions, money goes to the church, money goes to people around us in need. And in giving we realize that wealth isn't ours, it's God's and we are giving it back to him to go to other people in his family.
We've also been raised to give of ourselves. My family contains some of the most self-less people I've ever met. Gram is probably the prime example. She gives all she has of herself to those around her, and I would venture to guess that she is not a lonely person. In fact I know she isn't. We've talked before about how being alone with God isn't the same as being lonely. Loneliness is the death of the human soul. How can we stop so many people from dying?

"They cared for people and put stagnant nominal Christianity to shame. They took tremendous risk to invite people to experience love, grace, and community."
"The temptation we face is to compromise the cost of discipleship, and in the process, the Christian identity can get lost."
This is how I want to be. While reading this book I came across a few sentences that just shattered my perception of myself. It was like God's gentle push for me to become someone above who I am. This is one of those sentences. I've been thinking about what the average persons conception of a Christian is - the stereotypes - and how I either fit into those descriptions or just shatter them. I want to shatter them. In thinking about Pittsburgh, I sometimes wish that I could go back and do things over again. Maybe said a little more or said a little less about faith. But then I think about the reaction of a few people after I left and some of the things that were said to me about how I live my faith out and call people forward in their own faith. In these words I know because I invited people to experience an uncontainable love their lives have been changed. Isn't that what life is really about anyway? Just experiencing the hallmarks of God - love, grace, and community. What would happen if more Christians lived out what they paid lip-service too? What would the world look like? Would people around us fall in love with Love again? Would Christians themselves fall in love again? I think the Christians around me are in the same desperate need for nominal perceptions of Christianity to be shattered as non-Christians are. What is the Christian identity and what should it be?

"Jesus never said to the poor, 'Come find the church' but he said to the church, 'Go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned', Jesus in his disguises." - Tony Campolo
Since when do we think that inviting people to church is the cure all? I'm not going to lie, the Bride of Christ struggles sometimes and is definitely less then perfect. But someday when her bride returns she will be as white as snow. But until that time I think it is foolish to go up to someone who is starving, broken, homeless, etc and say "Come to church." If we don't meet people immediate needs first and go to them where they are at and love them and provide for them, why would they ever go to church? If we as Christians don't think that the Church can fix everything why tell someone that who is worse off then we are? The church doesn't exist to be a closed in group of people who invite other people to come to them. This is one of the dangers of church buildings - we become confined to four walls. When really the church is supposed to be a moving group of people who go out into the community around them and touch lives. Because really I feel that touching someones life is more important then handing them a track. We shouldn't say "Meet Jesus - Come Here" we should say "I AM the hands and feet of Jesus - Welcome".

"Do not worry about your career. Concern yourself with your vocation and that is to lovers of Jesus."
I'm pretty sure I know where I'm supposed to go next in life - to get my MDiv or maybe my MDiv/MSW. But the next step after that is unknown - college ministry? local church? church planting? And really I'm okay not knowing. Because of this realization - I'm just called to be faithful in loving those around me. If I'm giving of myself and touching those around me in love then the rest will be taken care of. I am called to be nothing less then a lover of God and people. Yes, there are ways that I can do that better and I should explore what those ways are. I should be responsible in laying myself at God's feet and asking what is the best way for me to serve him and his children, but if I cannot love in that career then it is the wrong one. Agape.

"It made sense to be single, and many of the people I had grown to admire had lived beautiful lives of singleness."
I'm almost 21 years old and I have never dated. By culture's standards I am nothing short of a freak. Another sad fact is that I think I can count on one hand the guys whom I have truly like over the years. I think its because in seventh and eighth grade -while other girls were starting to think about kissing and where your hands should go and how to please their boyfriends I was thinking about what I want in a husband. I actually have a list of qualities written down and have prayed over them. I am secure in the fact that if God wants me to be married he will provide a man with these qualities. I won't compromise. I know I shouldn't compromise.
However, singleness still scared me. I had this idea that as a woman in ministry I should really have a husband there to support me. But over the past two weeks I've been smacked in the face with how wrong that is. There are five people whom I truly treasure and admire who have done so much for God as a single person - Mother Theresa, Chris Tomlin, my local pastor, a good pastor friend of mine from my district, and Shane Claiborne. I see the benefits of being single. And I'm not frightened anymore. This doesn't mean that I don't still desire a husband - but I'm not going to go looking. I'm just going to chase after God with my whole heart. That is my primary reason for living. Because according to Shane Claiborne, "Life is a romance with the divine."