“What I did on my summer vacation…”  Well, it wasn’t really a “summer vacation” – it was a sabbatical.  A what?  A sabbatical.  “Originally from the Greek sabbatikós.  Noun: Any extended period of leave from one’s customary work, especially for rest, to acquire new skills or training, etc.”  Yikes!  Rest?  New skills?  Training?  This definition definitely appeals to my high-achiever instincts and my compulsive need to “do”.  But then there’s that part about rest.  I can do this.  7 weeks with no schedule, no plan – I’ll wing it.  I will make a holy space in my life.  God will speak to me in big ways.  It will be great!     Hmmmm…

I began preparation for my sabbatical in April to make sure that I could actually walk away from work with a clear mind.  I wanted to enjoy 7 weeks without a schedule or a plan.   I didn’t want to be thinking about work or what I was going to have to jump into as soon as I returned.  I would be free like a bird! By the time I left, I was able to put everything in order and walk away feeling good.  Off to a great start, right?  Again, hmmmm…

Here’s how this period of “rest, new skills and training” started out for me: Friday, Saturday and Sunday I packed up my house on Balboa Island and prepared to move.  Monday, I finished my degree at Vanguard University after four years of study.  Tuesday I packed suitcases for a wedding and a honeymoon.  Wednesday, we left for Hawaii.  Thursday we tracked down a wedding license.  Friday we got married.  Phew!  My two teenage boys were with us for the first part but then we put them on a plane and had a week by ourselves to honeymoon.  On our way home we picked up an 8 week old puppy…we didn’t think it would be that much more work.  Yet again, hmmmm…

Upon our return we moved into our new house and unpacked boxes for a week.  I started to feel like rest was right around the corner!  Oh, wait…my relatives were all coming in for the reception party I was planning for 140 people.  I was excited but not rested…something was blocking my restful sabbatical!  Fun.  Family.  Puppies.  Blessings.  I started to think that I was not doing it right.  I’m all about doing things right.  I was failing.  I was NOT a free bird – I was lost and floundering!  This realization was not helping put me in a restful place either!  I needed help!

My new husband, Jeff sat me down for a meeting.  Seriously…paper, pencils, lists – the whole nine yards.  It worked.  We figured out what I needed to feel rested.  We made a plan.  We made a schedule.  Who knew that I actually needed a plan to rest?  Suddenly, with my new sabbatical schedule I began to fit in all the things I had dreamed about before I started.  I read books.  I looked at art and nature.   I listened to music.  I watched movies.  I went to the beach.  I “lunched” with friends.  I cooked.  I did yoga.  I napped.  I also waited for God to speak to me in a big way.  But the more I tried to hear from Him, the harder it was to hear…I was running out of time and started to panic.

Then it hit me.  I needed to stop trying.  God was already there.  God was in ALL of it – from the beginning to the end.  He was there at the wedding, the honeymoon, the move, the party, the art and music and cooking.  He was there as I read and napped and watched movies.  Now THAT is big!  God showed me once again that He reveals Himself wherever and however we need to experience Him.  He is in our doing and in our resting.  There is not one place where He is not!  It took me about 5 weeks into it to figure it out, but I did figure it out.  I’m not someone who can wing it.  I do better with a plan.  This is important.  I need to hold on to this truth until my next sabbatical in 2018.  In the end, I didn’t fail!  I rested.  I acquired new skills.  I trained.  And through it all – God did speak to me.  He was there…as He always is – in a big way!

Make art, of course! That was the reason we collected it in the first place. Over Spring Break we ran a three day program talking about Respect, Justice and Beautification – values that our neighbors have decided are important in our community. We talked about why we need to keep our community trash free. We talked about the importance of reusing, recycling, conservation and sustainability. Armed with paper bags and rubber gloves we all picked up trash and counted the large items that had been dumped in our neighborhood alleys. We made tall sculptures out of garbage – creations made of newspaper, milk jugs, tin foil, cereal boxes, bottle caps and toilet paper rolls. They were amazing! We also made useful boxes from egg cartons to hold our treasures. They were colorful and sparkly.

Finally, we set out with shovels, hoes, rakes and trowels and planted flats of flowers to brighten our centers. Thirty kids in dirt and water can be a challenge but in the end, it looked incredible! We did it for ourselves, we did it for our community, we did it for God. Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to Him.” We wanted to please God by showing Him that we are grateful for His creation and that we can be responsible for caring for it too. If you ask our students, they would tell you that Spring Break 2011 was a success! If you stop by and see our gardens, you will probably agree!

Another great joy of mine is seeing my 14-year old son, David interacting with the kids and making connections. I would never have known that he could tutor or teach unless we had come to Maple. Volunteering gives people the opportunity to discover their God-given gifts, and what better place to do it than in your own community!

About 5 years ago, I was thinking to myself, “Some day I’m going to sink a bunch of money into Costa Mesa.” Well, then about 2 years later, I started attending The Crossing and heard about the Maple Learning Center. I quickly learned that developing relationships was more important than just sinking money into a project. I’m so excited to continue to get to know the Maple families, and if I ever come into money, well you can bet I’ll give some of that to Maple too!

Janice and her son David volunteer weekly at the Maple Learning Center

I’ve always been competitive. Growing up I used enormous amounts of energy trying to beat my older brother at arm wrestling, chess, arguments, and anything else I thought I had a chance of winning. My competitiveness during these developmental years prepared me well for the business world I entered as an adult. The name of the game was winning, and I thrived on it.

My competitiveness reached its peak one day in my twenty-sixth year. I was flying door-gunner on a helicopter in Vietnam, and we were on a search-and destroy- mission. Suddenly the ground beneath us came alive with enemy fire. The intense battle that followed demanded the ultimate in combat strategy, skill, and commitment. The stakes were never higher and victory was never more exhilarating. I accepted with pride a medal for heroism in aerial combat.

It was only later, while still in Vietnam, that I began to understand the implications of my competitiveness, as I flew back from another “successful” mission, I realized that the emotions I experienced were the same I once felt while wrestling or debating. They were more intense because the stakes were higher, but they were unmistakably the same emotions. I was taking human life and feeling the thrill of victory. This thrill was inversely proportional to the agony of defeat—in this case death and maiming.

I began to suspect there was something wrong with a system in which my winning was building upon the defeat of another human being. When I returned to the United States I was unable to put this new insight behind me. I began working with disadvantaged people who were losers in a competitive economy. I saw young men, broken men, crippled by too many years of defeat. They could not find the inner strength to try competing again for jobs in the marketplace. I saw their children compete for education and job training, and weaken in the heat of the struggle because their bodies were poorly nourished and their spirits short on dreams.  And although I felt unpatriotic for thinking such thoughts, I wondered if all was well with an economic system where winning meant defeating another human being. Could it be that among human beings cooperation was a better way than competition?

I pray that one day God will bring in a new order in which human beings will rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Perhaps on that day we will refuse the gains made at the expense of others and our success will be measured by the quality of our servanthood to humanity.

For two years, Mika participated in the National Healthy Marriage Initiative through Futuro Now and taught classes for youth, single adults, and married couples on healthy relationships.  A year after the classes ended several couples from Mika’s target neighborhoods decided they wanted to continue encouraging healthy marriages and took it upon themselves to make it happen.

One example is Luis and Lydia, a married couple who, a few months ago, decided that it was time for Luis to give up his second job and join his wife in mentoring young couples in the Baker neighborhood. Luis and Lydia demonstrate what it means to prioritize family and to serve one’s neighbors.

When the planning team came together there was talk of retreats and weekend seminars, but quickly it was brought up that the couples they know simply needed a night together – away from the kids, away from the house, and a time to have fun.  So a date night was planned!

Pictures of each couple were taken as they arrived to the romantic setting and servers were dressed and ready to work.  One of our neighborhood leaders catered an Italian dinner and couples had the opportunity to enjoy each other’s company.  There was a brief time of sharing from Pastor Christian Parra and his wife Olga and then the couples were asked to face their partners and share things they love and appreciate about each other.  It was a powerful and special time of connecting for each couple.

This is the just the first of many events for our Marriage Initiative team!  They recognize how important it is to spend time with one another and feel passionate about encouraging the couples around them.

He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Marker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God. –PROVERBS 14:31

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. –PSALM 68:5

These two verses teach us two important truths about God. First, He considers injury done to the poor a personal affront, and kindness done to the needy as personal service. That’s the point of Proverbs 14:31 (and of Proverbs 17:5 and Proverbs 19:17). Jesus explains the same truth in the parable of the sheep and the goats in Mathew 25. There, He commends the righteous who “saw him hungry and gave him something to eat, and saw him thirsty and gave him something to drink.” What the righteous did to “the least of these,” they did unto Christ. What the unrighteous failed to do to the least of these, Jesus says, they failed to do to Him.

Second, God often chooses to identify Himself with his loving saving actions on behalf of the poor. God holds numerous titles: Jehovah – Shalom (God our peace), the Almighty, the Sovereign Lord, the Creator, Jehovah – Jireh (God our provider), and more. But repeatedly throughout the Psalms, we see that God also wants to be known for the way He loves the needy. Psalms 68:5 teaches that God titles Himself, “father to the fatherless, and defender of widows.” Similarly, in Psalm 9:9, we see God named as “a refuge to the oppressed.” In Psalm 12:5, God declares, “Because of the oppression of the weal and the groaning of the needy, I will now arise. I will protect them from those who malign them.” He is described in Psalm 35:10 as the One who “rescues the poor who rob from those too strong for them, the poor and needy from those who rob them;” in Psalm 103:6 as One who “works righteousness and justice and for all the oppressed;” and in Psalm 146:7-9 as the One who watches over the needy, gives food to the hungry, lifts up those bowed down, and considers the ways of the fatherless, the alien, and the widow. And Psalm 72, which speaks of Jesus the King, describes Him similarly: “He will defend the afflicted among the people, and save the children of the needy; he will crush the oppressor. For he will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help. He will take pity on the weak and needy and save the needy form death. He will rescue them from oppression and violence, for precious is their blood in his sight.”

God requires us to worship Him as He describes Himself. We don’t have the right to construct our own picture of Him. We must take Him as He is. And He clearly wants us to know that a central, irreducible component of His self-identity is His love for the poor.

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For further thought…

How could your worship of God be enriched by meditating on His character as “a father to the fatherless and defender of widows?” what new insights do you gain about God from such reflections?

There is a common misconception about the “hoods” I live and work in with Mika. Apartments may have more than one family living in them, there may be loud parties on the weekends with lots of people, and there may even be lots of little kids running around on the street, but that doesn’t always mean we know each other or treat each other like neighbors. I was listening to Facia, one of our neighborhood leaders share her story again yesterday and even though I’ve heard her tell it several times the part that stuck out to me this time was that although she had lived on Center St. for 12 years previous to her involvement with Mika, she didn’t know her neighbors. Everyone stayed in their own little world. Over the last 4 years she has now become the woman everyone knows. When neighbors know one another and care for one another your hood isn’t just where you live it becomes where you’re friends are, where you systems of care and support are, and where you know you are loved. The first “I” in Mika’s VISION stands for Interdependent Relationships with God and with Each Other so we care that neighbors who never talked before now say hello as they walk down the street. We care that more neighbors get invited to Quinceaneras, first baptism parties, and birthday celebrations. We care that neighbors know they can rely on one another in the good and the bad.

At the risk of sounding cheesy and somewhat cliché…which isn’t really a new thing for me – I’d like to think the work of Mika is helping put the neighbor back into the hood

Keturah Kennedy is Mika’s Director of Operations and lives in the Shalimar neighborhood.

Gray hair bushing out beneath her knit cap, she appeared to be her late fifties. With one hand she tightly held a large purse that looked like a shopping bag; with the other she knocked persistently on the church door. She was visible through the security glass as the pastor and I walked down the hall, our early morning meeting on homelessness still fresh on our minds.

The pastor greeted her with as much compassion as possible for a busy urban leader running late for his next meeting. “Are you her for clo–?”

“No, no!” the woman interrupted him before he finished his sentence. Her countenance fell. “I’m here to help sort clothes.” But the damage was already done. The spirit that moved this woman to spend her energy helping to clothe other was wounded. A simple error. Understandable. Unwitting. Irreversible.

“It is more blessed to give that to receive,” said Jesus. But for this woman the blessedness of rising early to give others was marred by her identification as a recipient. Her face reflected the hurt of lost self-esteem.

Receiving is a humbling matter. It implies neediness. It categorizes one as being worse off that the giver. Perhaps this is why we tend to reserve ourselves the more blessed position.

It recent months I have been troubled by the lack of authentic reconciliation between the haves and the have-nots in our inner-city congregation. The woman in the knit cap may be showing me where our difficulty lies.

I came to the city to serve those in need. I have resources and abilities to clothe the ill-clad, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless. These are good works that our Lord requires us. And there is blessedness in this kind of giving. But there is also power that allows me to retain control. My position as a helper protects me from the humiliation of appearing to the permanent role of recipient.

When my goal is to change people, I subtly communicate: something is wrong with you; I am okay. You are ignorant; I am enlightened. You are wrong; I am right. If our relationship is defined as healer to patient, I must remain strong and you must remain sick for our interaction to continue. People don’t go to doctors when they are well.

The process of “curing,” then, cannot serve long as the basis for a relationship that is life producing for both parties. Small wonder that we who have come to the city to “save” the poor find it difficult to enter into true community with those we think needy.

“It takes every one of us to make His body complete, for we each have a different work to do. So we belong to each other, and each needs all the others” (Romans 12:4-5).

I need the poor? For what? The question exposes my blindness. I see them as weak ones to be rescued, not as bearers of the treasures of the kingdom. The dominance of my giving over shadow and stifles the rich endowments the Creator has invested in those I consider destitute. I overlook what our Lord say clearly when he proclaimed the poor to be especially blessed because theirs is the kingdom of God (Luck 6:20). I selectively ignore the truth that monied, empowered, and learned ones enter his kingdom with enormous difficulty.

The community into which Christ invites us is one of interdependence. We are called to mutual sharing and the discovery of gifts Christ has concealed in the unlikeliest among us. And to those who consider themselves leaders, our Lord offers humility—the salvation of the proud that comes from learning to receive form the least, who are the greatest in the kingdom.