It's Been 2 Weeks!!
[posted August 14, 2007 • 09:23AM • Bill Gibson]

It's been two weeks!!! I woke this morning with great anxiety as I said to myself, "It's been 2 weeks since I have posted a blog!" To be honest, I can't believe that. Time has been flying. Exciting things are going on and we are having a blast preparing for the re-launch of FaithWalk. I am so excited that it has been hard for me to sleep at night. And to be honest, I am having the most fun than I have had in a long, long time. So... who needs sleep?

The journey here at FaithWalk has been an interesting time as we face a clean slate and a God that is on the move in ways I have never experienced before. I have met more new people in the last 2 weeks than I have met in the last year, and that alone is enough to keep you up at night, like a child who is desperately waiting for Christmas morning to arrive. For me, lately, Christmas morning has been coming every day.

That's pretty cool.

And yet there have been some gut-wrenching reality checks too. Last week I attended the 2007 Leadership Summit of the Willow Creek Association. This was an amazing event with some amazing communicators (I am now even more of a fan of Colin Powell, after hearing him). But along with all the good that has been going on in my world, there was a gut check. A stark reminder of the continued needs in the world hit me like a runaway dump truck as I heard grave details about the battle against HIV/AIDS in Africa. The number of orphan children is staggering and continues to rise. This led my mind to the genocide going on in DARFUR and the minute to minute suffering of children who live and die in the middle of the atrocities taking place.

Sometimes we — you and I — can be dancing around, eatin' chocolate cake, and feeling the phrase, "life is good!"

Yet life is not good in some places...

Our celebratory bubble gets burst with the needle of reality, and we drop our cake in the floor. And as our bottom lip begins to quiver over the loss of chocolate cake, we are humbled by the reality of suffering going on in the world. Humbled so much it hurts.

I don't know yet what I am personally going to do about those feelings, but I am going to take action.

These words of Jesus have been stuck, running over and over in my head ever since last week. The Gospel of Mark records, "When Jesus saw what was happening, he was angry with his disciples. He said to them, 'Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children.'" (Mark 10:14, NLT)

What are we doing to let the children come to Christ? In our communities? In our cities? In our state? Nation? World? How are we making life "good" for others? And how are we teaching our own children to reach out to those in need?

We have a responsibility. Maybe it's time to stop eating so much cake, and take action to improve the quality of life for others in the world. Especially the children.

What will you do?

Since February 2003, the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the government-sponsored Janjaweed militia have used rape, displacement, organized starvation and mass murder to kill more than 400,000 and displace 2.5 million in DARFUR. Violence, disease and displacement continue to kill thousands of innocent Darfurians every month. Among those are children.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, in 2005, the daily death toll reached 13,000 people with nearly 5 million AIDS deaths in that year alone. More than 22 million adults and 1 million children are currently living with HIV. Everyday, 11,000 additional people are infected. One every 8 seconds...

It's been 2 weeks!!!!