Charity...go the distance

Worried that this might be another way to 'make you feel guilty' about your charitable giving?  Not.

I recently heard a TED talk about the potential for social change through charitable giving.  You can watch it here:     http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong.  It's about 18 minutes long and worth the time, but here is what I took away from it:

People are weary of being asked to do the least

instead of being asked to measure the full distance of their potential 

for the issues and people they care deeply about.

There are two parts to this I would like to raise up.  

One, people want to be asked to do more.  To walk further, to work more hours, to recruit more team members, to give more money even.  They want to be pressed to the 'full distance of their potential'. They want to discover what the full measure of their potential is.  They want to be deeply involved.

Two, this only applies to issues and people they care deeply about.

Start at number two.  Find an issue or group of people that you can care deeply about.  Not half-heartedly ($10 here and there) but with your whole heart.   These are the people who, if you had all the money and power in the world, you would improve their lives.  You would fix it.  You might come up with 3 or 4 issues but choose one.

                        Then put every skill, talent and ounce of energy you have into that.  

Along the way you can give small measures of support to the many other issues and people for which you care.  (Really, what's $10 to many of us?)  But choose one and go all out for it.  

Expendable, invisible, outside the gate

Wow!  I wouldn't want to be that person.

Luke 16 tells a parable about an impoverished man named Lazarus (the Lazarus who was raised from the dead is in the gospel of John) who sits outside the gate of a great mansion.  Every day rich and influential people are invited through the gate for a great feast.  Every day Lazarus sits outside, clothed in sores and hungering for the leftover crumbs from the feast.  Crumbs never come his way, even though the rich man knows him enough to know his name and recognize his face. Lazarus was, in fact, the rich man's neighbor.

We as a society have a thousand ways of making that person know just how unwanted they are.  We pass them by without a glance or nod....or in the case of Lazarus, a crumb of bread.  We never bother to learn their names; they are never really people to us.  They are urban furniture; landscape anomalies; obstacles to avoid.  Even though they sit right outside our door day after day.

What would it take for us to see them as lost sheep?  As beloved children of God?  As the very persons we are sent to give care to?  What would it take for us to conceive of our wealth as a tool in our hands to ease the suffering of at least this one person?  We cannot fix it all - but do we get a free pass on fixing any of it?

What does the good news of Jesus look like when you encounter one of the expendables?  When you are one of the expendables?  How loudly would you cry for justice then?