Question & Thought for October 15th, 2016!!!

Question & Thought for October 15th, 2016!!!
Good Saturday Morning and continued from yesterday!
1. Question – Money fixes poverty – doesn’t it?
2. Thought – The first time I (Peter) encountered the ugly secret was while managing a microfinance program in Rwanda. Jean-Paul was one of the first people I helped to kick-start a small business.
Early in our relationship, I visited Jean-Paul. His home stood in a dilapidated state of disrepair. His children didn’t attend school. His household was a portrait of poverty. And my job was to invest in people like him.
I helped Jean-Paul start a small market stand business selling garments and soap and gave him the basic business training and capital he needed to get the business up and running. And Jean-Paul took off. His income surged and his business expanded.
After he achieved business success, I visited him again. As I walked the dusty road to his home, I expected to see a renovated house. I anticipated meeting joyful kids, textbooks in hand.
But there was no change. His kids weren’t in school. His home showed no improvements. He was making money, but his home and family still communicated an image of poverty.
Later, I learned that Jean-Paul used his increased profits on prostitutes and alcohol. His business success and increased income did not improve his life and did not make life better for his family. Having dedicated the last several years of my life to economic development, I experienced incredible disappointment.
I moved to Africa to serve the Lord and try to make a lasting impact. But I was simply helping Jean-Paul consume more liquor and abuse more women in prostitution. Talk about a sobering realization. It forced me to question everything, and it reinforced Kristof’s ugly secret. I realized that he was correct: “If we’re going to make more progress…we need to look unflinchingly at uncomfortable truths.” Jean-Paul’s life presented an uncomfortable truth indeed.
Apart from Christ, we might simply introduce the problems of prosperity while we solve the problems of poverty. Jean-Paul’s increased wealth made his conditions even worse. (Mission Drift by Peter Greer and Chris Horst)
“It doesn’t take such a great man to be a Christian, it just takes all there is of him.” (Seth Wilson)
rem – “I’ve never let my schooling interfere with my education.” (Mark Twain)
Question & Thought & ANDs.

Question & Thought for October 14th, 2016!!!

Question & Thought for October 14th, 2016!!!
Good Friday Morning!
1. Question – What is the ugly secret of poverty no-one wants to talk about?
2. Thought – In 2010, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof visited the Republic of Congo. Traveling around the country, he captured inspiring signs of hope. However, he also unearthed a reality few are able to verbalize:
There’s an ugly secret of global poverty, one rarely acknowledged by aid groups or U.N. reports. It’s blunt truth that is politically incorrect, heartbreaking, frustrating and ubiquitous: It’s that if the poorest families spent as much money educating their children as they do on wine, cigarettes and prostitutes, their children’s prospects would be transformed.
We work in Congo. We know some of the complexities of poverty. And we know poverty cannot  be solved merely by shipments of food, pioneering malaria treatments, or the construction of new homes. To achieve lasting change, people in poverty need work. They need jobs. We recognize many suffer primarily because of lack of opportunities. We committed our careers to providing men and women the financial tools and training they need to lift themselves out of poverty.
But as Krisof laments, the ugly secret of poverty remains. Jobs and increased incomes are not solutions in themselves. Prosperity can actually contribute to more brokenness. (Mission Drift by Peter Greer and Chris Horst) [Continued tomorrow]
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” (Aristotle)
rem – “I’ve never let my schooling interfere with my education.” (Mark Twain)
Question & Thought & ANDs.

Question & Thought for October 13th, 2106!!!

Question & Thought for October 13th, 2106!!!
Good Thursday Morning and continued from Tuesday!
1. Question – Is that what life is all about?
2. Thought – Uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation, Dave quickly changed the subject. But his sense that he ought to “help people” was correct; he just had no way of justifying it. Why did he think he should “help people”? Where did he get such an idea? And why do you and I, deep down, agree with him?
Stop and marinate on that point for a minute: Aren’t you just like Dave? Don’t you have this deep-seated sense of obligation that we all ought to “help people”? We all do. Why? And why do most human beings seem to have that same intuitive sense that they ought to do good and shun evil?
Behind the answers to those questions is more evidence for the theistic God. This evidence is not scientific – but moral in nature. Like the laws of logic and mathematics, this evidence is nonmaterial but it’s just as real. The reason we believe we ought to do good rather than evil – the reason we, like Dave, believe we should “help people” – is because there’s a Moral Law that has been written on our hearts. In other words, there is a “prescription” to do good that has been given to all humanity.
Some call this moral prescription “conscience”; others call it “Natural Law”; still others (like our Founding Fathers) refer to it as “Nature’s Law.” We refer to it as “The Moral Law.” But what ever you call it, the fact that a moral standard has been prescribed on the minds of all human beings points to a Moral Law Prescriber. Every prescription has a prescriber. The Moral Law is no different. Someone must have given us these moral obligations. (I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist by Frank Turek and Norman Geisler)
“Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kind to him. You might as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five.” (C.S. Lewis)
rem – “I’ve never let my schooling interfere with my education.” (Mark Twain)
Question & Thought & ANDs.

Question & Thought for October 12th, 2016!

Question & Thought for October 12th, 2016!
Good Wednesday Morning!
1. Question – Have you given consideration to repealing Amendment XVII and allowing the state legislatures to elect their U.S. Senators?
2. Thought – Each state has two Senators, according to the terms of the Great Compromise, each serves a six year term. Senators were first elected by state legislatures to represent state governments in the national government. Since the passage of Amendment XVII in 1913, Senators have been elected directly by the people. (American Government by Tim Keesee)
“The time has come that Christians must vote for honest men and take consistent ground in politics….God cannot sustain this free and blessed country which we love and pray for unless the Church will take right ground….It seems sometimes as if the foundations of the nation are becoming rotten, and Christians seem to act as if they think God does not see what they do in politics.” (Charles Finney [1792-1875], a Presbyterian minister and powerful leader in America’s Second Great Awakening)
rem – “I’ve never let my schooling interfere with my education.” (Mark Twain)
Question & Thought & ANDs.