Offertory Invitations

A Different Colombia

The other day at breakfast a Maryland child, deeply engrossed in the back of the Cheerios box, somehow heard the radio say that there was an earthquake in Colombia.

"There was an earthquake in Columbia, Dad," he said, still reading. And then, casually, "Did it wreck the mall?"

"It probably would have wrecked the mall. But it was a different Colombia. It was in South America and not here in Maryland."

"Oh, good."

We tend to care more about what we can know and see. It's tougher to care about the other Colombias . . . until someone helps us see them, too.

That is what the Week of Compassion does. It helps us see what would otherwise be just a story on the page or a voice on the radio. Then, once we realize that there were probably malls and preschools and grandmas in the other Colombia, Week of Compassion gives us a way to help.

For a people like us, sometimes preoccupied by little more than what's on the back of the cereal box, we need this ministry.

We are relieved when disaster strikes elsewhere. We need people to remind us that God isn't.

I Wouldn't Drink It!

Yesterday we went to a branch of the Little Patuxent River that flows through our neighborhood and got this jar of water. That is how a great many people in the world get their watercarrying it from the nearest (or possibly the only) source. It looks OK, doesn't it? Pretty innocuous, right? I mean, we can't see anything swimming, or floating, or multiplying in it.

I wouldn't DREAM of drinking it, though! Untreated water from an unprotected source? No way! I wouldn't even consider it, would you?

Yet, an awful lot of people have no choice. This, or something worse, is all they've got to

survive.

However, WE do have a choice. We can do something about it through Week of Compassion. Week of Compassion supports relief and developmental projects in more than eighty countries around the world, including Canada and the United States. It responds to a disaster somewhere around the world on the average of once every 2-3 days.

The estimated costs of achieving universal access to health care, education, adequate food, water, and sanitation is $28 billion per year. The potable water and sanitation part of that total is approximately $9 million, an incredible amount of money, until you find out that the money spent on ice cream just in Europe alone for one year is $11 billion, or $2 billion more than the cost of water. Sort of gives it a new perspective, doesn't it?

By the way, Week of Compassion receives no money from Basic Mission Finance; its resources come from what we (and others like us) put in our Week of Compassion envelopes.

And that brings us to those envelopes in our bulletins. When you consider what to put in them, I hope you'll remember the many things Week of Compassion can do with our help. And I hope you'll remember this jar of water and others filled with water like it.

I wouldn't drink it.

You wouldn't drink it.

Why should anyone anywhere be forced to drink it?

Cooked Food Has No Owner

The people of Haiti are known for their proverbssimple but poignant sayings that often convey enormous wisdom and truth and sometimes teach powerful lessons of life and faith.

One of the more unusual Haitian proverbs is: "Cooked food has no owner." It is unusual, because for most Haitian people every day in this desperately impoverished country is a struggle just to find enough food to feed one's family and oneself. It is unusual, because in the midst of simply trying to survive, Haitian people do not

fail to remember "from whom all blessings flow."

Cooked food has no owner. In other words, what we have, meager though it may be, is not really ours. We don't own it. Rather, all we have is from God and is entrusted to us by God to share with whoever is in need.

Today we will sit at tablesin our dining rooms, in restaurantstables overflowing with foodmore food than we need or want. How we understand the true ownership of that food will speak volumes about who we are. Is it ours to eat as we please? To waste? To share with family and friends? Did we earn this bread? Do we deserve it? Or rather is the bread on our dinner plates, like the bread in our wallets, like everything else we claim to own, ultimately a gift entrusted to us to share with othersa gift of grace given to us by the God who has owned us as His very own in Jesus Christ?

We make now our offerings to the Week of Compassionour church's response to people in the world who struggle daily for bread and peace in which to eat that bread. What will our offering say about us? About what we "have"? About God?

Livings Waters and a Dead Sea

"My people have committed two evils," God complained through the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah. "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water."

Jeremiah's contrast between fresh water and stale waterbetween a God who gives life and gods who give deathdrew on the daily experiences of the people of his day. Yet he could easily have substituted for the cisterns of Jerusalem the Dead Sea, just a short 20 miles away.

Separated by only 70 miles as the crow flies, the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea are as different as night and day. Or perhaps we should say: They are as different as life and death.

The Sea of Galilee to the north is fed by fresh water from melting snows and spring-fed rivers. In Bible times it was a major population center supported in part by fishing in the fresh-water lake. The source of its vitality was not only that it

received fresh water but that the water passed through it. The water of the Sea of Galilee empties into the Jordan River where it continues its life giving journey.

The Dead Sea, by contrast, has no outlet. Everything it receives it keeps for itself. As a result, it is so filled with salts and other materials that it is incapable of sustaining life.

The difference between living waters and a Dead Sea is the difference between compassionate people and people who are closed in on themselves. The one receives and gives, and as a result it creates and gives life. The other receives and keeps. As a result it is dead.

To stay alive, it would seem, lakes and people must give as well as receive.