Chorus:
God walks the dark hills
To guide my footsteps
He walks everywhere
By night and by day
He walks in the silence
On down the highway
God walks the dark hills
To show me the way.

God walks in the storm
The rain and the sunshine
He walks on the billows
On through glimmering light
Helps us walk up the mountain so high
Cross our rivers through valleys
God walks the dark hills
‘Cause he loves you and me

-An old Gospel song

Caution, objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

In Genesis, Joseph’s family made the long arduous journey to the Egyptian empire, seeking to find reprieve from the famine which threatened to devastate the people of Israel.  They submitted themselves to a ruthless Egyptian Prime minister, not knowing if they would even be allowed to return home alive.  God’s providence was made perfect in the revelation of Joseph’s identify.  Through this act, the brothers were both redeemed from the famine and restored to their brother.  The sin that brought destruction, eventually led to deliverance and restoration.  In similar vein, the Canaanite woman, also outside of God’s mercy, laid out her faith in from of Jesus, and found the redemption and healing she needed.

The psalmist cries out for God’s grace  and blessing and proclaims His reign.  We too, cry out in the dark times.  We may not see the hope before us, but it is often around the corner.  Romans reminds us that God has not rejected his people, but that God’s gifts and mercy are irrevocable.  The path of disobedience ultimately leads to mercy and reconciliation.

The readings remind us that we are closer to the Kingdom of God than it appears.  We find ourselves in dark times, often through our sins against others.  However, today’s message reminds us that redemption is closer than we think.  Like Joseph’s brothers, we rarely see deliverance at our doorstep.  By faith, we wait on the deliverance and restoration that come through the Kingdom of Light.  The old gospel song reminds us that “God walks the dark hills, because he loves you and me.”

Today, we find ourselves in the dark valley, looking to the hills, and wondering from where our help will come.  But we rejoice, though we do not see it, for restoration is coming.  We pray for the restoration of all things, so that God may be all in all.

Redemption is closer that it appears.

- Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place

Our culture has been slowly undermining a philosophy of work.   I blame capitalism, in spite of its many benefits.  The entrepreneurial spirit leads one to succeed and provides ample motivation to find satisfaction in work.  But beyond innovation and creativity, many of us find ourselves as simply a cog in the machine.  And for the majority of citizens, there is little motivation to succeed.

Sure we all want a nice paycheck, and we are incentivized to do what we can to earn a paycheck.  But there is a certain level of slack we can give without destroying that incentive.  There is a certain amount of acceptable laziness and incompetence within most jobs that will not lead to deteriorated incentives.  And we become a society that accepts some level of mediocrity, because frankly, work is just a means to earn money to do the things we want.

We have little satisfaction in work, beyond money, largely because we’re disconnected from the fruit of our labor.  We’re just a cog doing the minimum a cog needs to do in order to avoid replacement.   And yet work should be something that leads to some level of satisfaction.  For some, that satisfaction may come through helping others improve their experience in life.  But for many of us, watching numbers or words float across our eyes does not produce anything beyond a mere spark of temporal happiness.

When someone can find a work that is fulfilling and meaningful, it’s impossible to be mediocre.

“We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.”
— Wendell Berry

Our culture has a destructive love-affair with technology.  Many of us are consumed by the advertising which leads us to believe that the technological products we buy will make our lives better.  And these products do have a significant effect on our lives.  It’s hard to argue that in some respects, things are easier or better with technology.  If I had to do all of the crap I do at work without technology, it would stink.  However, maybe that implies something about the type of “unproductive” work I engage in as well.

However, I do see the downsides to technology, though some (ahem! Wendell Berry) would suggest a very stringent standard for technology.  The biggest problem I see is that technology supersedes relationships with people.  I find myself waiting on coworkers who have to finish something on a computer before I can talk to them.  And honestly, I rarely ever feel that need to do the same with others.  If a person is standing in front of me, I’ll drop whatever I’m doing, because I know the computer is going to be sitting there unchanged when I get back.  This is simply a small example, but I’m sure most of us have been in meetings or conversations where one of us is keeping an eye on some tech device — whether it is a watch, phone, smartphone, or computer.

Most eastern cultures, still value people foremost, whereas in the West, productivity is king.  Because we value productivity, we value technology, which makes us more productive.  However, I’m still not sure productivity is such a great value to have.  By monetizing our time, what have we really gained?  Free time? What are we freeing ourselves up to do?  We’re still going to attach a monetary value to that free time, which simply creates an endless cycle of monetizing everything we do and then feeling guilty about how we spend our time.  It’s clear we’ve monetized time, because every word we use in relation to it has to do with money.

So maybe we don’t need so much technology.  Maybe technology just leads to an endless chasing after what we could already have if we simply gave up technology.  If I feel my job is dependent on a significant amount of technology, then maybe my job is a pretty nebulous web of bullhonkery for a societal justification that a product was created.  And maybe we should do more to re-focus our efforts on people and simply be consumed by a little less technology.

Here is a good thought provoking reading about Christians and technology.

E-mail me your thoughts while I hopelessly cling to my iPhone.

On a bright note, a Presbyterian minister has written a beautiful hymn regarding this tragedy.

O God, the Great White Seas Our Yours (Sung to the tune of Eternal Father, Strong to Save).

Please see the song here.

Her challenge is simple, yet daunting: live a whole year off of the land, with only minimal outside resources.  Her family leaves Tucson, AZ (a dry and unforgiving land where almost every aspect of food, even water, is outsourced) to  Appalachia (a very generous land and climate).

This book is more than a journal.  It is a mix of personal accounts, nature-based humor, practical farming technique, food philosophy, and fact about our food system.  She employs her husband and eldest daughter in her writings, which give multiple voices to the concept of food philosophy.

Our culture has lost a philosophy of food.  Food rarely is an art form anymore.  It’s simply a means of filling ourselves with calories as we hurry on with our busy lives.  We are led to believe we save time with this efficiency, but Kingsolver suggests that we will be repaying that time later in life.

Kingsolver does not write from a Christian perspective.  However, her words ring spiritual for those of us who follow a God who formed us from the soil and gave us a primary task of caretaker.  Reviving our attachment to the land not only humbles us, but it leads us into the natural rhythms of God’s creation.  It leads us back to the task which God set up for man in the Garden of Eden — to be its caretaker.

In this book, you will find some sickening (literally) facts about our food system.  But you will find so much more.  You will find a way of life, re-envisioning a love for fresh food and a communal philosophy about meals.  Camille, the eldest daughter and away at college, even provides recipes and advice for those who cannot do what her family is doing on a full-scale.  Some might view this family’s way of life as extreme, yet the Kingsolver’s don’t expect everyone to follow suit.  They advocate in small ways for us to become more attached to our food production, for those who are not willing or able.

For those of us with a fast-paced life who cram one meal in after another, while rushing off to the next activity, this book will allow one to slow down and reflect on our way of life, and the food we eat.

We recently collected data that proves this program works, and is in line with other national data.  About 150 clients are enrolled in the program, and 50 have been in it for 12 months.

• Clients spent an average of 6.4 days in jail the year before they entered.  In the year after, they entered, they only spent 1.5 days in jail.
• 44% were using illegal drugs at intake, after one year, only 13% were using.  56% were using alcohol, after one year only 29% were.
• 19% were employed at intake, 42% were employed after 1 year.
• 63% had stable housing at intake, and 85% had stable housing after one year.
• 89% had an arrest in the previous 30 days. That number dropped to 3% after one year.

Keeping people with mental health/substance abuse problems out of jail WORKS.  If receiving the right services, they will reduce their recidivism, be more likely to abstain from drug/alcohol abuse, have increased employment, and housing stability.

Jail is a very costly expense to government.  A state spends anywhere from $20,000-$40,000 a year to keep an inmate housed.  Keeping people out of prison, helping them address the factors that led them to cause the crime, and helping them continue to be independent/self-sufficient is a lot cheaper than locking them up and throwing away the key.

Unfortunately, it’s politically expedient to throw “bad people” in jail.

Take turns looking at each label on the clothing everyone is wearing.  As you read each label, read the country of origin.  See how many different countries your clothing comes from.  Have someone keep a tally of all of the countries.  Then add up your score, and check it against the World Oppression Scale:

As American Christians, we always cross this sin off the list, because we claim we work in a free market, which leads to a fair wage.  We do not personally abuse those around us, and so we become blind to the abuses we do commit.  Rapid globalization has put our “field workers” halfway across the world — out of sight, and out of mind.  When we purchase goods, we rarely thing about the supply chain full of people which brought that product to our doorstep.  We blindly shop at our low-priced stores, enjoying the cheap goods we buy, while pocketing the rest as entertainment or wealth.  And we justify this system, because we do not see exploitation.

We try to ignore it, but we are guilty, as a society, of mass exploitation, both at home and abroad.  We hide behind capitalism and our middle class lifestyles, so we rarely see the abuses of our purchasing power at work.  We purchase from corporations who are squeezing every penny out of the world to maximize profits and reduce our costs.  So we support a company that runs a factory with incredibly poor working conditions.  But of course those workers have a “choice” of whether or not to work there — so we tell ourselves.  When the company is finally forced to begin providing acceptable wages and working conditions, the costs become too great, and they move next door to the next “banana republic.”

As Western Christians, we often feel that we are poor when looking through the lens of our own society — yet, we must see that in the context of globalization, we are the rich young ruler, the rich exploitative landlord who is paying the workers unfair wages.  We do this when we buy from corporations who support these practices.  We collude with these corporations to exploit the people of the world, while growing rich from their blood and labor.

So beyond advocacy for systemic change to these practices, we must find everyday, practical ways of changing these abuses.  The first is to accept that we often must pay more for these things — which means less discretionary money, and less savings.  Some of this could be by purchasing from the right companies, who are open about these practices.

But more realistically, we must redevelop the local economy — one in which we interact with the suppliers of our goods.  One in which we are aware of where and how our products are made.  Beyond the numerous negative effects of our food chain (including our own health), growing our own food and supporting local farmers/ranchers is imperative.  Clothing, the industry most notorious for worker abuses, can be bought secondhand (as well as other household goods).  By taking these actions, we effectively reduce the demand for these products, and hopefully, the abusive practices they create.

In our house/community, we strongly challenge one another to buy things secondhand/used.  This is because we know that when we purchase new items, we are almost invariably supporting some type of abusive labor practices or environmental degradation.  So while we are often powerless to change this system, though we must attempt, we also seek to live more simply and accept and reuse the items that society has thrown away and rejected.

We must realize that we are the rich oppressors James warned against.  We’ve done a good job blinding ourselves to these problems.  However, we’ve discovered that at the judgment scene, ignorance will not be an acceptable plea.  Jesus told us in Matthew 25, that claiming ignorance to the suffering of those around us will still result in conviction.  If we are to live the call of the gospel, we must accept that it involves letting go of our money, and especially our convenience and free time.