Disturbed?

Are you disturbed?

I'm not talking about the kind of disturbed that occurs when your satellite reception has gone out and your kids have been without the cartoon network for two days. Or the kind of disturbed you get when you realize that the drive thru barista at Starbucks forgot to swap skim milk for soy in your latté. I'm talking about the kind of disturbed that keeps you up at night thinking and pushes you towards action instead of just talk.

My cousin, Michelle, is a thirty-three year old housewife. She's a mother to four kids, spanning the ages of two to ten, and a wife to the senior pastor of a small congregation in Pennsylvania. And she's also convinced that she can help end the sex trade of children in Cambodia. She's been to Cambodia twice in the last year to check on the freshwater village wells that she helped build, talked the band Ten Shekel Shirt into putting on a concert in her town to raise money for child slavery survivors via the group Love146, and has been diligently educating her church and friends on this dynamic social cause.

She's disturbed.

Really, she's no different than you or me except that when I take stock of the blessings in my life and respond with a simple "thank you, God", Michelle takes things one-step further. She asks why. As in Why was I born in America? Why have you blessed me with resources that ninety percent of the world will work for all their lives and never attain? Why are my kids able to go the school of my choice when children in Cambodia live with the risk of being forced into a life of slavery as a child prostitute?

And she doesn't stop there. She asks the second question that all of us hear whispered in the back of our minds but refuse to face. She asks, what can I do to help, God? And then she acts. With great power comes great responsibility. That's my favorite quote from the movie Spiderman, but before Michelle, I'd never realized that sentiment applied to ordinary people. You see, Michelle isn't a superhero, she doesn't have much money, and she didn't go to Berkley to learn how to become a social activist. But she's disturbed and disturbed people make things happen. Disturbed people refuse to acknowledge the resources God has given them with just a thank you.

Disturbed people act.

What if we had a bunch of people like Michelle? A gathering full of disturbed people who challenged the status quo and refused to believe that the problems confronting their community were unsolvable. What would we call this group of disturbed people?

How about a church?

- Don

· What disturbs you? We've all marveled at our good fortune to be born in this country, but have you ever asked God why? Better yet, are you brave enough to ask him "what do you want me to do?"

1 What would happen if the doors of Lifepoint Vineyard closed tomorrow for good? What would change for the worse in our community? In our world? If you can't answer to these questions, does it disturb you? It should.
2 Which of these two bullets reflect how you talk to God and what does that tell you about yourself?
· "God help me. God bless me. God protect me."
1 "God send me. God use me. God spend me."