Some of you may have known that I visited PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti in August of last year. I was shocked last night to read the reports of the earth quake devastation in specifics that I am now personally acquainted with. I cannot begin to describe how devastating this natural disaster must be to a people already in so much need. The attached image shows the completely collapsed capital building, what must be a fitting metaphor for the now completely disheveled infrastructure of the already struggling 5th world country.

Attention, aid, and relief will surely be directed to Haiti in this moment. Please pray for the salvation of these people from this calamity and the chaos that is sure to follow. Thousands have died, years of work and investment has evaporated… it is a moment of hope disintegrating. Pray for all those committed to their work in Haiti to be sustained through this flash of suffering and the years of recovery that are sure to follow.

The following link is a news story and interview from Mallery Thurlow, I met her on my visit in August. She is a woman of incredible hope, faith, and dedicated charity… in her voice you can hear the full test of this moment for her and everyone like her who has weaved their hearts into the Haitian people, their history, and their land.

http://www.wnem.com/video/22223731/index.html

Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,582877,00.html

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Categories: Haiti, Prayer
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“But if God is so good as you represent Him, and if he knows all that we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be necessary to ask Him for anything?”

I answer, What if he knows Prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God’s idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need–the need of Himself?… Hunger may drive the runaway child home, and he may or may not be fed at once, but he needs his mother more than his dinner. Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need: prayer is the beginning of that communion, and some need is the motive of that prayer… So begins a communion, a taking with God, a coming-to-one with Him, which is the sole end of prayer, yea, of existence itself in its infinite phases. We must ask that we may receive: but hat we should receive what we ask in respect of our lower needs, is not God’s end in making us pray, for He could give us everything without that: to bring His child to his knee, God withholds that man may ask.

~George MacDonald, Why Should It Be Necessary #91

• 
  George MacDonald
  Author: C. S. Lewis

Categories: George MacDonald, Prayer
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Today we listen to stories told by strangers from New York, Nashville, and Los Angeles and we tell our stories to the police and psychiatrists.

~Wendell Berry, The Work of Local Culture

• 
  What Are People For?: Essays
  Author: Wendell Berry

Over the past 6 years I have had the good fortune of living in the same suburban neighborhood of Livonia Michigan; some call it Clements Circle, others “the hood”, and to a few its known as “the SuperHood”.

Looking back its hard to measure the value of living in a neighborhood where you can know your neighbors. I am especially fortunate seeing as a good handful of my neighborhood relationships trace their roots back to college, almost 10 years ago now.

Getting to know people takes time. The pace of today’s scattered life activity hardly encourages the slow process of becoming known and knowing your neighbors. Fortunately I have some very hospitable neighbors, and a dog that likes to get around the neighborhood… so I have been able to meet a few over the past 5 years.

Joe Chapp helped me (I watched mostly, note the difference in shirt soiling above) pull out a couple of especially stubborn bushes back in 2005 and since then I have been invited out to a regular evening bonfire complete with pizza and box wine. In these evenings of casual neighborhood discussion and story telling I have learned much about the Chapp family history, struggles, and whimsical life enjoyments. There is a strange sort of comfort that comes from this activity of simply sharing, life just makes a lot of sense when presented in this context.

And aside from the general feelings of comfortableness there are specific encouragements and challenges. I learned that the Chapp family prays for the neighborhood regularly, including the success of my business; what a humbling honor. I also learned that the bus comes at 7:50 and it would mean a lot to the Chapps’ if I would look out for their daughter and make sure she makes it onto the bus without incident. Talk about tangible community responsibility and a reason to get up on time.

People used to practice what they called “sitting till bedtime”, where neighbors used to walk across the fields to sit in someone else’s home until dark and then go home and they would tell stories about themselves and people who had died and the children would hear the stories.

~Ken Myers on “The Work of Local Culture”

• Mars Hill Audio Journal

Categories: Community, Encouragement, Prayer, Relationships, Compliments
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The proper application of technology holds much promise for mankind.

Somewhere along the way we have dropped the “proper” qualification and have begun to believe the promise unsubstantiated. Such a subtle shift in expectation yields an unconscious hope in technology as our universal savior.

For years I have waited impatiently as each of life’s everyday annoyances were met by the elegant solutions of instantaneous web 2.0 gratification. Almost daily I would uncover some new facet of my life that had not yet been converted to its online equivalent giving me yet another opportunity to lament the frustration of paperwork, phone calls, waiting lines, and meetings that ought to be satiated by the e-solutions waiting behind the now ubiquitous username and password prompt of every website.

It can be difficult to discern just how far adrift our culture currently is on the promises of the information age when there are so few guideposts or markers to delineate boundaries of known limitation. The dot.com bust of the late 90’s at least brought with it the sobering reality that not everything was better online (regardless of how much venture capital you had to throw at it); remember that silly sock puppet guy that was somehow related to pet supplies or something?

Well, here we are again, 10 years later, and everything seems possible. All the old failures are given fresh hope powered by faster CPU cycles and more plentiful memory reserves…

Finding any idea that is truly ridiculous offers a possible boundary marker for consideration… and for that I am thankful for this website, even if it is a hoax. Explaining the mechanics of the service is one thing, but should anyone have to critique why this is a bad idea?

• http://www.informationageprayer.com

Clarity via the absurd…

Categories: Prayer, Technology, Theology
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