echoes of redemption

What do you see?

What story does her face tell?

Do you believe there is a God who has a plan for her life?

Here’s her caption from the NYT Photo Blog: Indian sex workers held candles as they celebrated International Sex Workers Rights Day organized by the Dubar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, in the eastern Indian city of Calcutta. The International Sex Worker Rights Day began in 2001 when more than 25,000 sex workers gathered in India for a sex worker festival.

Now what do you see?

Living in a culture of excess numbs me to the God who provides needs.

Which makes me want to live a new way… a way that would lead myself and those around me into deeper relationship with this God who meets needs.

And I’m starting to figure out what that looks like.

Donating to Haiti, providing shelter to those who have none.

Pouring my life into providing clean drinking water to the 1 billion people who lack access to it.

Partnering with Tom’s shoes to give children shoes that will prevent disease and death.

Altering my life drastically (like living with one car) so I can afford to do all this.

The best way to know this God who meets needs is by actively working as his image to the world – meeting every need I can meet.  And maybe that’s why we keep talking about changing the world. Because if Jesus’ followers got together and met needs like he would meet them, everything would change.

And it would be incredible.

I have trouble understanding a God who meets the needs of his people because the entire context of my life is built upon excess.

Having access only to what I need feels insufficient because I’m used to having so much more.

How about you?

Could you live with shelter that was simply sufficient? (The UN says a cover with four walls and a floor made of anything other than dirt.)

Or one cup to drink out of – washing it each time you use it rather than grabbing another one out of the counter? What if you didn’t have a cup, just access to clean water?

How about one set of clothing? One pair of shoes?

One car?

For me, all of these things are drastically less than I have – major compromises in my standard of living. But they’re enough.

And though my needs would be met, I would be ungrateful and dissatisfied to the core of my being.

So how do I understand – how do I know – the God that meets the needs of his people?