1,000,000,000 People

During our recent trip to Franschhoek (see my last post "The Winelands") Robin and I enjoyed some of the best meals we have had in a long time. Franschhoek is considered the gourmet capital of South Africa and 8 0r 10 of the 100 best restaurants in the country are in this one small village and the surrounding wineries.

Robin and I have always enjoyed good food and one nice thing about living in South Africa is that eating out is quite reasonable. Even at the best restaurants the prices are a lot cheaper than equivalent restaurants in the US or Europe. And now with the dollar-Rand exchange rate at something over 10 it is a great deal. So we were able to enjoy some wonderful meals at several excellent restaurants during our 3 days in Franschhoek.

Part of the purpose of our trip was to get away from the realities and seemingly never ending needs associated with the work we are doing here in South Africa. Getting away from time to time is quite necessary if one is going to be able to sustain this type of work. In this regard the trip was a success as we were able to get away from phone, internet, emails, people begging at the gate and all the other daily demands that are a regular part of our life here.

However, even as we were enjoying our escape and especially several wonderful restaurants there was one thing I couldn't seem to get away from. It was the title of this post which was also the headline on the second section of the Sunday Independent newspaper on January 4th this year. I couldn't seem to get the number one billion out of my mind. You see as the article explained, that is the number of people that will go hungry in 2009. And this has nothing, or at least very little to do with the worlds current economic crisis.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organizations makes annual estimates of the number of people who will go hungry and is predicting the number to go over one billion for the first time in history. This is despite a second record worldwide harvest in as many years and contradicts the undertaking of world leaders in 2000 to cut in half the number of hungry by the year 2015. The biggest factor in the increasing rates of hunger is the increase in food prices so that more and more of the worlds poor are unable to afford adequate nutrition even if it is available. The Sunday Independent article points out that although "At a special summit in June last year, rich governments pledged $12.3 billion to tackle the food crisis, but so far they have handed over only $1 billion of it, as they have scrambled to provide trillions to bail out failing banks."

I am thankful that I am one of the privileged and becoming few that can afford food. Certainly I am among the privileged elite who can afford to eat in a restaurant. I am not saying that I should have to give up eating as much or even eating out (as I said it is not really a food shortage). But I am convicted that I need to be more intentional about helping in some way to meet the growing hunger in the world.

Robin serving meals to children after school

Two Tunics name comes from Luke 3:11 where John the baptist says "let him who has two tunics share with him who has none and let him who has food do likewise". One of the things we are doing as Two Tunics is giving nutritional support to vulnerable and hungry children. We have established a partnership with Food 4 Africa through which we are providing a nutritional porridge food supplement daily to over 500 children at community based day care and after school feeding projects. We also provide healthy daily snacks (peanut butter, brown bread, milk, fruit etc.) to children at several of the creches (pre-schools) we support. Two Tunics is about sharing and I am proud to a part of this work that is doing something small in the area of the world's hungry children.

Robin feeding Food 4 Africa porridge at a creche

999,999,500 to go. Can any of you take on a few more?

The Winelands

This past week Robin and I enjoyed a visit to Franschhoek in the Cape Winelands. It is a beautiful area as well as being the gourmet capital of South Africa. Needless to say we are a little more plump now. The week before going I started reading "The True Vine" by Andrew Murray. Murray was an 19th century South African pastor and prolific writer who grew up in Wellington, not far from Franschhoek (read anything and everything by him). Being surrounded by wineries as I was reading his study of Jesus' parable of the vineyard from John 15 really brought it home to me in a new and special way.

The first 3 verses of John 15 give us some very important truths:

• Jesus is the true vine


• God is the gardener


• I am a branch


• The purpose is fruit


• God's word is what prunes (cleans) me

Then in verse 4 the instruction comes. "Abide in me, and I in you." This is where the potential trap comes over which I stumble easily. I tend to see abiding as the fruit (goal). Abiding becomes the work I need to accomplish rather than producing fruit. I worry about what it means to abide an how do I live out abiding every day. Abiding becomes my religion. And then I wonder why I don't experience the "and I in you". And why don't I see more fruit being produced?

Murray points out that this is "Because the attention was turned to the abiding as a work we have to do, instead of to the living Christ, in whom we were to be kept abiding, who Himself was to hold and keep us." The secret to this mystery is found in verse 5 where Christ repeats the opening statement of the parable. "I am the vine." If we really see Christ as the true vine the abiding will come of itself. "..Souls who have never been especially concerned with the thought of abiding are abiding all the time, because they are occupied with Christ".

As I said in the Desiring God post on 1 January, I want 2009 to be about a return to my first love. I want to continually see Jesus as the true vine. I want Jesus to overwhlem me with a deeper understanding of who he is. Lord help me to focus on Jesus this year, today and not on the fruit or even the abiding, but only Him.

Redeeming the Time

Today I went to make clinical rounds at the Genesis Care Centre as I do almost every Monday. The Care Centre is a 40 bed inpatient HIV/AIDS palliative care unit that is operated by Genesis, a ministry of Norwegian Settlers Church. Each time I am there I am so thankful for the opportunity to be a part of this work to lovingly care for patients with advanced AIDS. At the same time I am often frustrated by the fact that so many of the patients come to us with such advanced disease with very little hope of recovery. Today one of the male patients died while I was making rounds. What's frustrating is that effective HIV treatment with ARV medications is readily available in South Africa. Almost all of the patients that come to Genesis Care Centre could have avoided being in the situation if they had made the decision to seek help a year or even 6 months ago. Yet largely because of the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS they chose ignorance and denial over testing and treatment. Now often they are ready to make a different decision but the opportunity is gone. Despite good treatment many of these young men and women will die.

The Genesis Care Centre

My visit to the Care Centre brought to mind something I have been thinking a lot about during this New Year period - time. Time: a year, a day, a moment. Time: past, future, present. Time: 2008, 2009, today.

Jonathan Edwards said (in 1734) "There is nothing more precious than time and nothing of which men are more wasteful". I think he was right. Time is the most precious thing we have in life. What makes something precious is its importance together with its scarcity. Edwards describes 4 aspects of time that make it precious.

Time is important because our welfare depends on it. Our welfare in this world and more importantly our welfare for eternity. Time is short. This truth becomes more self-evident with each year I grow older. James 4:14 says "For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away". Time is uncertain. We know that time is short but we don't know how short. Will today be my last day? Time is irrecoverable. 2008 is past and the time I failed to use wisely is gone forever. My youth is gone no matter how hard I try to recover it.

As I thought about this last point I realized something else important about time. It is precious in inverse proportion to its duration.

A year is precious,
but how much more a day
and of this moment
I cannot begin to say.

If I didn't appreciate the preciousness of time in 2008, I can in 2009. And what I don't do in January I can still do in February (or probably more likely, March). If I let this morning slip by without telling my wife I loved her, I can still tell her this evening (and I better do it today). But this moment that is now gone forever cannot be recovered. It can only be redeemed. Lets commit to redeeming every moment this year, or at least today.

Be very careful, then, how you live - not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity ("redeeming the time" in KJV), because the days are evil. Ephesians 5:15-16

Desiring God

The title of this post is also the title of a book by John Piper. If you're pressed and don't have time to read this blog post, it's OK. Just go out and get the book, read it, and enjoy it!

Hopefully some of you are still with me. I shared in the last post ("A 2008 Report Card") that as I look back on 2008 I am convicted that I have failed an important test this past year. Along with the Ephesian church I have often forsaken my first love (Revelation 2). Like them I have been busy for God, doing good things and even enduring hardships at times. But often during this past year my relationship with Christ has been dry and felt empty more than stale. At times I have sat wishing I felt closer to God, struggling to pray, distracted by the work and the needs as well as by my own concerns.

In his book Piper describes and promotes what he calls "Christian Hedonism" as he addresses what Psalm 73:25 is talking about. What does it really mean and look like in my life to agree with the Psalmist that "the earth has nothing I desire besides you (God)", to make and keep Jesus my first love.

As I was beginning to draft this post including the reference to John Piper's "Desiring God", I went to his web site of that title. There I read his article "I Love Jesus Christ" dated 31 Dec 2008. In it he is expressing almost exactly what I wanted to express in this post. He describes how those words impacted his life and what it means to love Jesus. It's nobody's surprise that John Piper can express it better than I, but it surprised me that God moved John Piper to pray for 2009 exactly what He moved my heart to pray.

Would you pray with me that in 2009 we would love Jesus Christ more than we ever have? And may our Lord Jesus grant that from time to time we would deliver quietly and naturally a thunderclap into the hearts of others with the simple words, “I love Jesus Christ.”

So I will just ask you to click on the title of this post to go to the Desiring God website. Then click on This Weeks Taste and See entry for December 31, 2008. I want to invite you to join John and I in making this prayer a reality in 2009 in each of our lives. Let's desire God Himself and not only His blessings this year