Dreamboat II

Let them gather all the food of these good years that are coming, and lay up grain under the authority of Pharaoh for food in the cities, and let them keep it. That food shall be a reserve for the land against the seven years of famine that are to befall the land of Egypt, so that the land may not perish through the famine. Genesis 41:35-36.

Joseph, sold by siblings in that early record of human trafficking, becomes the voice like the one in the Simon and Garfunkel song, "Sounds of Silence."
"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls..."

That's happened more than once in history. But you can have prophetic writings all over the place to no avail if the decision makers of society never go out to read them, never ponder them in their hearts.

Pharaoh had dreams. Joseph, the foreignor of the slave-worker class, had the key. "Seven fat years," Joseph told Pharaoh, "and then seven lean ones after that." Pharaoh built a safety net. At God's direction.

How about that? World superpower, construction giant. Inventors of paper and beer, metal smelters, irrigators, sculptors, artists, scholars, historians, medical rearchers and surgeons... That's who the Egyptians were. Their legacy is still world-renowned.

But God doesn't set them up for extinction by giving them seven fat years so that they over-build, over-spend and over-consume, only to die off when they are totally unprepared for the seven years of famine. God gives them the safety net through Pharaoh's dreams and Joseph's interpretation.

Pagan privilege or wisdom of the ages?

Mitt Romney says he's not concerned about the very poor because they have "the safety net." If it's in need of repair, he'll fix it. So he says.
If he becomes president of these Divided/United States of America (read 99:1), I intend to nail his unsoiled lapels to the wall holding him accountable.

"The" safety net. Boy, I'd give my last dollar to have him define that for me. "The" safety net is a monolithic, universal, one-size-fits-all glove that absolutely fixes everything for everybody in need?

Probably how he sees it from his perch. Goes around in $100 ironed blue jeans, pressed shirts and manicured hair trying to look like one of the rest of us. Sure.

Complains about needed defense budget cuts and troop reductions (gotta rein in that gov't spending, right?)... Wants to add 100,000 to the numbers of troops in uniform. Says nothing about dollars. Sure. Maybe he'll pay them out of interest earnings from his blind trusts and offshore accounts. Sure.

Just witnessed over a decade of war on two fronts, 85K American troops still in Afghanistan, complains about government spending without talking about how to finance wars, yet has five healthy sons, not ONE of whom has spent a single day in uniform in service of this country.

Yet there are thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines and their families who have seen two, three, four, five or more deployments. One deployment for every one of his kids...

Nice that these military familes without jobs have "the" safety net. Nice that he and his family have had these underlings to serve as the Romney family's safety net in a decade of having our nation at war on two fronts.
It ain't too late for any of 'em to enlist. The election doesn't happen for nine months yet.

I must confess disillusionment. For years, I've heard it again and again and again. All the business of wasteful spending on poor people. Wasteful spending on mental health services, treatment for addictions, housing, infrastructure that would help people without cars get to jobs--if they existed, wasteful spending on schools and such frills as arts and music, as if man could live by math and science alone. All the ways we cut off the hands and fingers of God... I've heard it. And I get it.

There are people who believe that every last dollar ever spent by government is a wasted dollar and that the way to fix any safety net is to so thoroughly cut holes in it that anything in the net falls completely through it and into the abyss.

Then, to use the succinct description of H. Ross Perot, "problem solved!"
COMMENT: H. Ross Perot would never advocate what I've just said; but many talking heads today would. And do. And in all fairness to them, I actually believe that Mitt Romney really is a moderate by comparison.
I suspect that wealth can blind us, though. I don't know for sure because I'm not wealthy. And God knows, I never will be. So I don't know. Just living out my own prejudices, I guess.

But this much I do know. If Pharaoh ran on the platform of a seven year safety net that included the people of Matthew 25:40, I'd vote for that dude. In a heartbeat.
He'd be my dreamboat.

Seven years of holidays, and all I see is the sea...

Father, give us leaders who can really see.
Father, give us leaders who haven't spent their whole lives in prosperity.
Father, rasie up for us prophets like Joseph and Jesus.
And, Father, give us leaders who can walk a cubit in Pharaoh's sandalprints. Amen.

Shalom,
Roger

Give Us Your Poor. . . For Lent or for good?

A couple of Minnesota pastors have taken on a new discipline for Lent: living for 40 days out of a suitcase packed in 10 minutes:


http://lentenrefugee.wordpress.com/

It's a good start. Jean and I lived out of very small suitcases for a month in 1973 after my overseas discharge. We had two meals a day and walked nearly everywhere. We came home to the U.S. very skinny.

On the blog post above, there is a photo of one suitcase that a youngster had crawled into. The bag is on nice, clean carpet in front of a coffee table. That living room photo made me see again just how much I take for granted. And how easily.

Take away the living room, coffee table, the carpet, the electric lights, heat we take for granted like the automatic thermostat. Take away the coffee maker, the fridge, the kitchen, the windows, the doors, the roof. Take away the bed, the shower, the toilet and the paper.

Take away the sink and the towels, the washer and dryer. Take away the closet and the clothes. Take away the car, the TV, the laptop and the phone. Take away the paycheck, the ATM and the health insurance card.

Take away the address where you can be reached. Take away home.

Take away the hugs and daily recognition we take for granted. Take away the reliable love of another human being. Now we're getting down to it.

Add darkness, the weather, the cold, the snow, the rain, the heat and the sun. Add the police. Add tired feet in wet shoes. Add recovering from a cold and the flu in these conditions. Add bedbugs, rats and body lice, sometimes. Add signs that several times a day warn, "FOR CUSTOMERS ONLY." Add signs that say, "No Loitering", "No Camping". "Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted."
Add a family history that likely includes violence, abuse, addictions, abandonment and maybe time spent in war. Add losing all your stuff several times a year to thieves or to the police. Mental illness.

Now live, not for 40 days but for the foreseeable future. And don't forget to smile because Jesus loves you although your community doesn't.

Some folks come to Operation Nightwatch worship with their stuffed backpacks. Sometimes it's a loaded roller bag weighing 115 pounds. One man has a Zoomer covered with a tarp. It's nearly as large as the Honda 600 sedan I used to drive.

The title of that CD in the photo? It evokes a line from Emma Lazarus' 1883 poem "The New Colossus":

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

For years we've heard that first line tossed about like a plastic shopping bag in the wind. Out of context, the emphasis always ends up on the adjectives: tired, poor, huddled masses, etc.

Sure. Name me a municipality or a neighborhood whose goal is not to make all those adjectives go somewhere else.

But in its entirety, in context, the poem has exactly the opposite emphasis. It paints a stark contrast between the aristocratic, closed societies of Europe where the few were wealthy and the many were under the feet of the few. With hopeful pride in the different way of doing things in America, the writer emphasizes the pronoun me.

"Send 'em to ME!" America says. "Send ME your human trash, your throw-aways, your worn out junk seen as way beyond salvage. Send ME your waste humanity--by the boatload."

Of this lot of refuse, America promises, "We will build something that outshines all your castles, kingly wealth and imperial vastness. We will build what human beings have always been envisioned by God to be. We will succeed where others have failed because it's different here. We are different."

Comes pretty close to being a working definition of Jesus' hallmark message about the good news of the kingdom of God. Do we still believe that?

Every journey can only begin with the first step, however small. If you're not sure what that is, dial up a link or two and purchase a music CD for 15 bucks, probably less than many of us spend on coffee in a week.

http://www.appleseedrec.com/
http://www.giveusyourpoor.org/
http://www.findinggracehomeless.org/

Journey safely and well these 40 days. Here's hoping that we all arrive somewhere that is not where we were before. And thanks.

Shalom,

Roger