But I don’t think God calls us to contentment. I don’t think He promises balance. There are too many Biblical examples of God interrupting His people’s lives, calling us away from balanced lives to serve, and to do something amazing for Him and His glory.

Does that mean we should give in to chaos though? I don’t think so – God may call us to something to difficult, but He promises to take care of us. In Psalm 30, the Bible says that, “weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning.” We will face suffering, but we will also rejoice in His providence at the healing of that pain. We shouldn’t be discouraged by disorder.

God gives us ups and downs in our lives, and I feel like we should embrace them. The choice between the boredom of balance and the craziness of chaos is a false dichotomy. We shouldn’t let work or pleasure take over our lives, but we also shouldn’t seek sameness. I think we should strive for rhythm: a life rhythm that allows for tempo changes, lulls and crescendos. I believe we need to order our lives without trying to exert a level of control that rejects God’s great disruptions. We should seek a four-to-the-floor beat, knowing that He may shift the time signature. And that change only makes our lives more musical.

TOMS Shoes does something easy to describe, and yet the impact of the company’s work is so powerful. As the name suggests, TOMS makes and sells shoes. But the business does more than that. Any time a customer buys a pair of shoes, TOMS gives a pair to a child in need. This sort of business-benevolence is what TOMS calls the One for One movement.

Blake Mycoskie started TOMS after visiting Argentina in 2006 and meeting children there who didn’t own any shoes. Without shoes, Mycoskie realized, the children were more susceptible to injury, disease, and infection. He wanted to help them so he founded TOMS with the vision of giving one new pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair purchased by a customer (one for one). It’s gone pretty well – a year later Mycoskie returned to Argentina with family, friends, and 10,000 pairs of shoes.

Over the past four years, TOMS employees have gone on a lot of “shoe drops” just like the first one. In fact every TOMS employee gets to go on a drop at some point, travelling to one of the twenty countries TOMS serves, and handing out shoes to kids who need them. These are kids who, otherwise, might have suffered cuts and wounds on their feet that would have become infected and eventually debilitating. But now they can live healthier lives. These are children who, without shoes, wouldn’t have been allowed to attend school because of uniform requirements. But now they have more opportunities for education.

The power of TOMS Shoes and its One for One mission is that you can participate simply by buying a pair of shoes. And a lot of people have. To celebrate their one millionth sale this past September, Mycoskie and his friends returned once again to Argentina where they gave away the matching pairs.

Learn more at toms.com

Will somebody wear me to the fair?
Will a lady pin me in her hair?
Will a child find me by a stream?
Kiss my petals and weave me through a dream?

This is more than floral poetry. It’s the words of a Flower that wants to be loved. Minnie switches to third person for the next part:

For all of these simple things and much more a flower was born.
It blooms to spread love and joy, faith and hope to people forlorn.

Now we understand this Flower is something more; it inspires in us love for each other, and hope for a new future. She then sings:

Inside every man lives the seed of a flower.
If he looks within he finds beauty and power.

Inside all of us is the spirit of this Flower. This kind of love, this spirit, may seem hard to find in our selves. But as the music swells we hear a chorus that answers the first verse, telling us our hopefullness has been fulfilled. Here, in this world, the flower has come.

Ring all the bells, sing and tell the people everywhere that the flower has come.
Light up the sky with your prayers of gladness and rejoice for the darkness is gone.
Throw off your fears; let your heart beat freely at the sign that a new time is born.

Amazing.

For example, many of us say that poor people are poor because of their own bad choices, so they don’t deserve our help. Now, first of all, this largely isn’t true. But secondly, and more importantly, God calls us to love the poor no matter what. He doesn’t say “love the poor unless they made bad decisions.”

Similarly, he calls us to love immigrants. He doesn’t say love the immigrant, but only if he has his paperwork in order.

Leviticus 19:33-34 (The Message) says:

When a foreigner lives with you in your land, don’t take advantage of him. Treat the foreigner the same as a native. Love him like one of your own. Remember that you were once foreigners in Egypt. I am God, your God.

Why do we struggle with that? Why do we make our love conditional?

“Universal Love” is the name of a classic Jungle track by 4hero, and it has one verse:

Every star in the sky
tells us how and shows us why
we must all give a Universal Love…

We must all give a universal love including everyone, and without discrimination for anyone.

Related:
The Great Commandment (part one)

Just imagine if the Great Commandment was your life’s mission statement, and you evaluated everything you did, all your major life-decisions, on these verses:

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

How would you live? If you knew that the most important things you could do today were loving God and loving your neighbor, what would you do? It’s deeper than it seems, right? I really like how the senior pastor at my church paraphrases that commandment, “Love God, and love like God.” Maybe you already do this. I know I fall short. But I want to put that commandment at the center of my life.

One of my favorite songs from last year is by Jazzanova, with Phonte on vocals, and it’s called, “Look What You’re Doin’ to Me.” Towards the end of the song, Phonte sings:

There is love for all God’s children
We all breathe in the same sun
We all sleep under the stars at night
We know that we are one
And you’re the one for me

Maybe Phonte’s interpretation of the Great Commandment is, “love God, and love God’s children.” And maybe he’s saying in the last line, “I’m going to display this love most in how I love you (my wife).” I like that.

The Great Commandment seems simple, but I think it’s really huge. And I’m no theologian, but I think that placing these verses at the centers of our lives would be life-changing. Are you already doing this? If so, I’d really like to hear from you…

I’m a big fan of Kiva. Kiva is a web site that allows you to make small loans to entrepreneurs in parts of the world that really need your help. For example, I just gave $25 to a man selling food in Palestine. It’s a small amount of money to me, but it goes further there. And when multiple people give, it really adds up.

It’s important to note that this is not a donation in the traditional sense – it’s a loan. So the money will be paid back eventually. And this is the power of Kiva.

You’re familiar with the idea of compounded interest, right? You deposit money into a savings account that earns interest, and as you do so, you gain interest on the interest you’ve already earned. So you can save an amount of money, and that amount will keep working for you. Well, Kiva works similarly in that you can give a small amount of money, and keep that money working.

Let’s take the example of my Palestinian grocer. I loaned $25 to him, and eventually he’ll pay that $25 back. I could ask Kiva to send me a check for that amount, or I could choose to “re-loan” that money. Clearly, re-loaning the money would ensure that it goes much further than it would if I just asked for it back. So I re-loan it to another business in a poverty-stricken part of the world. Now my $25 has helped two businesses. See how it “compounds?” I’m not earning interest exactly, but my small loan is continuing to work.

I’m just beginning to realize the power of this concept. I’ve only given a couple hundred dollars, but it’s turned into more than $700 because I keep re-loaning. Again, this is a small amount of money, but I think it goes a long way to help small businesses that may not have many funding sources. And can you think of a better return on investment?

God calls us to serve the poor, and Kiva is one of many ways you can do that. If you’d like to learn more about Kiva, you can do that here. And if you’d like to see who I’ve loaned to, you can see a list here.

That word received new meaning to me when Kirk Franklin released “Imagine Me.” In the song, he says:

This song is dedicated to people like me, those that struggle with insecurities, acceptance and even self esteem. You never felt good enough; you never felt pretty enough, but imagine God whispering in your ear letting you know that everything that has happened is now… gone.

Imagine that – every sin, every mistake – all gone. God is so compassionate that when you go to Him for forgiveness, He clears away all those things. Gone. We don’t have to deserve that forgiveness; we can’t earn it. But He gives it to us anyway. This is His renewing and transforming grace.

God calls us to have leisure. In Psalm 46:10 He says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” In his book, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper says this can also be interpreted to mean, “Have leisure, and know that I am God.” For those of us who work fifty or sixty hours a week, this is a welcomed message.

But how do we define leisure? Pieper describes it as:

…a form of silence, of that silence which is the prerequisite of the apprehension of reality: only the silent hear and those who do not remain silent do not hear. Silence, as it is used in this context, does not mean “dumbness” or “noiselessness”; it means more nearly that the soul’s power to “answer” to the reality of the world is left undisturbed. For leisure is a receptive attitude of mind, a contemplative attitude, and it is not only the occasion but also the capacity for steeping oneself in the whole of creation.”

So leisure, in this sense, doesn’t mean mindlessly chilling in front of the TV. It means being still, listening for God’s word for you, and meditating on it. Pieper says, “It is in these silent and receptive moments that the soul of man is sometimes visited by an awareness of what holds the world together.”

Take a break from work; take time away from the world, and listen for what God has to say to you.

Read more about Giano at Leisure Lab.