I am very disheartened this fine Easter Sunday. I am not disheartened about Jesus but I’m sad for him. I am sad for what his people have become. As I sit here in church there is a hole in my heart for what our church has become. I feel the dissapointment like small child would.
The more we get involved with our community and the more we help those who need our kind of help the more exposed we are to the seedy underbelly of life, and I cannot understand it.
Brothers and sisters in life, but especially my fellow Christians WE CAN DO BETTER THAN THIS. we SHOULD do better than this.
I will start this with a quote from the pastor this morning:
“We are afraid to stand up for what is right because we are afraid of losing friends.”
Well I’m not because I know my friends, my real friends, deserve better than this. We need to stop focusing on the bottom line if it blinds us to the ability to do right. Period. In the past few weeks I have come upon the realization that several companies I support have been paying their people less than minimum wage, lying about products they are selling, and justifying it by claiming God favors them. Saying My heart is broken is an understatement.
C and I lay it out for you. We don’t hide things. We share our failures. We share our successes. We don’t hide the bad things to spare us the embarrassment of having to fess up to our mistakes. The most important thing is that I would rather close the farm then lie or cheat to be successful. Anyone who works for us will make at least $15 an hour, even if that means we have to work another job to pay our bills. If we cannot sustain our farm on our mission statement it will be us who will have to change, not our mission.
You can either humble yourself in the beginning and not live a lie or you can humble yourself later after the lies overcome you. It’s your choice but they will be brought to light. Whichever you chose DO NOT use God favoring you as a justification.
I will end with another quote from church this morning to remind you where your priorities should be:
“We aren’t trying to get ahead in this world. We are trying to get ahead in the next world”