Bamboo: A Lesson of Humility

Proverbs 25:9
He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way.


This article inspired me today and I would like to share it as I have had very little time to write any original material. This story is one of those public domain author unknown stories. I would like to cultivate that kind of humility that relies on trust and faith in God which is so needed in these perilous times. Pray for me. Let's pray for each other. -J.T.


Once upon a time, in the heart of the Western Kingdom, lay a beautiful garden. And there, in the cool of the day, the Master of the garden was wont to walk. Of all the denizens of the garden, the most beautiful and most beloved was gracious and noble bamboo. Year after year, bamboo grew yet more noble and gracious, conscious of his Master’s love and watchful delight, but modest and gentle withal. And often when the wind came to revel in the garden, Bamboo would cast aside his grave stateliness, to dance and play right merrily, tossing and swaying and leaping and bowing in joyous abandon, leading the Great Dance of the garden, Which most delighted the Master’s heart.
Now, once upon a day, the Master himself drew near to contemplate his Bamboo with eyes of curious expectancy. And Bamboo, in a passion of adoration, bowed his great head to the ground in loving greeting.
The Master spoke: “Bamboo, Bamboo, I would use you.”
Bamboo flung his head to the sky in utter delight. The day of days had come, the day for which he had been made, the day to which he had been growing hour by hour, the day in which he would find his completion and his destiny.
His voice came low: “Master, I’m ready. Use me as Thou wilt.”
“Bamboo,” – The Master’s voice was grave --- “I would have to take you and cut you down!”
A trembling of great horror shook Bamboo…”Cut …me… down ? Me.. who thou, Master, has made the most beautiful in all thy Garden…cut me down! Ah, not that. Not that. Use me for the joy, use me for the glory, oh master, but cut me not down!”
Beloved Bamboo,”—The Master’s voice grew graver still—“If I cut you not down, I cannot use you.”
The garden grew still. Wind held his breath. Bamboo slowly bent his proud and glorious head. There was a whisper:
“Master, if thou cannot use me other than to cut me down.. then do thy will and cut”.
“Bamboo, beloved Bamboo, I would cut your leaves and branches from you also”.
“Master, spare me. Cut me down and lay my beauty in the dust; but would thou also have to take from me, my leaves and branches too?”
“Bamboo, if I cut them not away, I cannot use you.”
The Sun hid his face. A listening butterfly glided fearfully away. And Bamboo shivered in terrible expectancy, whispering low: “Master, cut away”
“Bamboo, Bamboo, I would yet… split you in two and cut out your heart, for if I cut not so, I cannot use you.”
Then Bamboo bowed to the ground: “Master, Master… then cut and split.”
So did the Master of the garden took Bamboo…
and cut him down…
and hacked off his branches…
and stripped off his leaves…
and split him in two…
and cut out his heart.
And lifting him gently, carried him to where there was a spring of fresh sparkling water in the midst of his dry fields. Then putting one end of the broken Bamboo in the spring and the other end into the water channel in His field, the Master laid down gently his beloved Bamboo… And the spring sang welcome, and the clear sparkling waters raced joyously down the channel of bamboo’s torn body into the waiting fields. Then the rice was planted, and the days went by, and the shoots grew and the harvest came.
In that day Bamboo, once so glorious in his stately beauty, was yet more glorious in his brokenness and humility. For in his beauty he was life abundant, but in his brokenness he became a channel of abundant life to his Master’s world.
Author Unknown


Proverbs 22:4
Humility and the fear of the LORD bring wealth and honor and life

God is No Respecter of Persons

This article was written and submitted by a brother.  

Could it be true that some chistians and select groups do not really understand this profound truth? The bible could'nt be more explicit and clear on this matter than what it teaches in Acts 10 and primarily verse 34.

    As a boy growing up in a christian home and for many years later I failed to grasp this truth as taught in the bible. My intellect told me different, but deep in my heart there was a certain partiality within me that could'nt grasp this wonderful profound truth.

    Thanks be to God he has a way to open our eyes to his love and truth in his own good time and circunstances and that happened to me in a most unusual and unexepected way.

     We spent 10 years in Albuq. N.M. as missionaries and met many kinds of people, some living in the deep gutter of sin and it was our resolve to do what we could to lead them to Christ and assure them that there was deliverance in store for them, but this lack of vision of Gods unpartial love hindered me to be as effevtive as I could really be.

     We had an extensive jail ministry going and here you indeed meet the results of sin and It's consequences. It happened one Sunday afternoon where we had a service scheduled on the womens pod. A group of us sang with them together and then we had a bible lesson. We were about to close with a prayer when a woman stepped up named Sandy. What a sight to behold, her hair disheveled and knotted up, her eye watering, her nose running and a look of utter dispair all over her face. Would you all please have a prayer for me before you leave, I'm a heroin addict and I'm going thru withdrawals and I feel like I'm in hell. That is indeed the experience those feel when they are in a cold turkey withdrawal. She also lived a life of prostitution to support her habit.

    Well here I was facing a gutter filled life and reaping what she had sown and rightfully so, at least I thot in my heart. So what now? To refuse her request for prayer was not an option, and yet to pray for a cause I didn't think would happen. We had that prayer and asked God to deliver her from her agony and touch her.

We left faithless but at least we had done our duty.

    Thursday was our day to come back to the jail and distribute christian literature, writting paper, pencils, etc. We came to the womens pod walked in and instantly there was Sandy. Oh thank you, thank you she exclaimed. You no more than got out the door Sunday and Jesus touched me and I was totally delivered from my withdrawals. Her hair was combed so nice and a glow on her face that told a miracle had happened to her.

    Imagine how I felt,so thankful but so very reproved that I had been faithless and limited Gods great unbiased love. The scales fell from my eyes at that moment and I recieved a new vision of Gods tender love for every human on this earth, regardless of their sin and rejection of him.

     Sad to say when Sandy got out she fell back into her old life and about a year later I read in the paper she was killed for drug reasons.

    God knew she would fall away that Sunday, but his tender love reached out to her in spite of her future life. When someone calls out to him in desperation he responds with his love and says, hereI am, I love you. If she is lost she will forever remember Gods beautiful response to her that Sunday and know God loved her.

    The world is full of people like Sandy who need Jesus, and right here in our own home land, right in your local town and vicinity. Do we have the vision of Gods love to me personally and let that love motivate me at home?

World wide mission is a great work and we are comissioned to do it but pehaps the greater work is on our door steps. May God give the vision we need while time remains.

Confidence Health Clinic Update by Keith Toews

Clinique Confiance En Dieu, de Oriani, Haiti

                                    

A BIG hello to all our dear friends, family and supporters. It has been a very busy month and so much has happened! Remember the lady I told you about that had her foot ground up in the spokes of a motorcycle? Well, she is improving and will regain the full use of her foot!  A couple weeks ago another lady came to us with internal bleeding (she had had a bad C section 4 months ago). We took her down the mountain to a hospital ASAP. She died yesterday. Pray for her 21yr old husband. He is very poor and now has a 4 month old baby to look after and next to no money to survive on. A real success story is a little girl named Ketli. She is 5 yrs old and was burned on her leg and stomach so badly that she probably would have died, but with some TLC from Kim, that little girl is walking and is almost completely restored now in the last month. Praise God. 

Today we had a tiny preemie baby brought in. The mother had (and has) high blood pressure, and maybe that is what caused the baby to come early. The babe is tiny, maybe 3 lbs, and is all blue lipped from insufficient oxygen and wrinkled like a prune from dehydration. The amazing thing is that this little girl has survived 23 days already! We warned the mom of what the likely outcome of this could be, and that the babe could very easily die. (she almost died in our clinic today when Kim tried to change her dirty wet clothing). These situations are tough, because this mom has no resources to draw from, she has 7 other children (one barely weaned), and there is virtually no place to send a mom and baby here for 2-3 months of intensive care in incubators with oxygen to carry her through. You can pray for her too. She has had 3 other children die of different problems and this could very easily turn out to be #4.

As Candace and I were walking one of the back trails last week we met a lady, named Fifi, who says she is too poor to look after all 6 of her children. She wants to give 4 of them up to a Christian family or orphanage someplace. She wondered if we can take them? Wow. Our hearts go out to Fifi. She obviously loves them dearly but just cant bear to watch them grow up hungry and running wild. We are looking into the children`s father and birth certificate status to see what we can do to help them all. Life is so hard on some people! Makes me cry sometimes.

I must tell you a little about the finances. We are unable to get enough in from the patients to maintain the level of care that is needed here. Its just not nearly possible. We are thrilled with the support we have felt and seen from you all who live in the land of low or no cost health insurance. J

Please consider these expenses….

1.       We have almost 900 patients a month and since we don’t charge for followup visits, only about 2/3rds are paying patients. We are grateful to Christian Aid Ministries as they help with some meds, but our medicine costs are still very high.
2.       Vehicle fuel and repairs are costly.  (We have a 2000 Ford Excursion which doubles as ambulance and family transportation)
3.       We have and will continue to have to spend money on clinic building upgrades and repairs. I can see that a new storage building for the clinic is needed soon. The storage building we have is dirt floor, has a leaky roof and board walls that you can reach an arm in through the holes.  
4.       We have 5 Haitian paid employees now.
·         Dauphney at the gate screening people for signs of Cholera, (the funniest girl you ever have met)
·         Docter Ozias, (18 yrs experience in the area)
·         SeWilly, as nurses aid (and learning fast from Kim)
·         Jakot,  receptionist
·         SeDieuFo, cleaner (she is the best and hardest worker ever!)
5.       And last but not least, even though we try to be frugal, it is a fact that keeping us foreign workers and family going here is not cheap. Fortunately our house building and etc that we have done has been paid mostly from a sole private source, so very little donated money has been needed there.

We can’t project the exact future of this clinic or what will all happen, but check this out…. At aprox 900 patients a month x 12 months, that is almost 11,000 patients a yr. Now if all the above mentioned expenses together would cost $14 dollars a person… then 11 thousand patients could cost $154,000 US dollars for operating costs per yr. That’s only $14 dollars a patient!

But… we are expecting the number of patients to increase, because we hear that the local Catholic clinic is closing soon. These remote mountain people here need help. Every day I heard local people telling me they are thankful for the clinic and that they pray for it daily. So, please, help us actively pray that the funds will be available to continue this work. We have had great support in the past, but right now our bank accounts are down to less than one month reserve. Is God trying to teach us dependency on Him?

Nurse Kim has had her nurse friend “Sunshine” (real name, and it fits her personality J ) come in from Bonners Ferry Idaho for a couple weeks. Sunshine has truly been a huge help. She is a RN and has been working with us organizing, doing IVs and just giving lots of good advice.   We have a nurse named Ashley Dirks from Kansas coming here for 3 months starting May 10.  We extend a special invitation to any Creole speaking RNs to give us a call if you are interesting in working here. We have also had 3 young men come in from Canada to help us with some building projects. First they worked on the house, then the clinic, and now they are helping build a new  church building  to replace the one which we have outgrown. The old Oriani Mennonite church building was 20x 25 ft and often holds between 130-160 people inside. Now the new church will be 30x70 and at that same density…. It could hold… 600?

The house is quiet and all the family is sleeping. We have breakfast at 6:30 usually and school for the kiddos starts at 7:30. Lacey Toews from Pincher Creek Alberta is doing a great job in teaching our children! We asked her to come back next year and she has agreed to do that, so we feel secure knowing that is now in good hands. Tomorrow morn at 6am Candace, Lacey, Kim and Sunshine will ride our 4 horses to the top of a cliff to overlook a 1200 ft deep ravine. It’s a favorite spot to watch the sun come up.  A year ago this idea of going to Haiti and doing this was only a far off secret idea. What kind of changes will this next year bring for us? What will it bring for you? Where will you be in a yr from now? Where will we all be a million years from now?

Wishing you all the blessings of God,

Keith, Candace, Trev, Zack, Cam, Chase and Christina

Oriani, Haiti

Tuscaloosa Tornado on Google Earth

Tuscaloosa news photo

Tuscaloosa is our town were we go shopping and now it is hard to believe how much of it is leveled.  We have not been able to see any of the damage up close or have been able to help there because a couple of deadly tornadoes have hit even closer to home.

I have Google Earth and seen the tornado path KLM downloads. I clicked on my "Layers" on my tool bar "places" and unchecked all the other layers except roads and then zoomed in on Tuscaloosa on my map. You will see a blue twister emblem on the map that says Southern Tornadoes.
It will box out an area and you can clearly see the path through town. It also shows the Birmingham, AL twister which is in Jefferson County.
The big building below the path is the University Mall. The big building to the North of the path is DCH hospital. Both are on McFarland in Tuscaloosa. The intersection of McFarland and 15th Street is the one you see in quite a few pictures of the destruction. It was definitely one of the most busy commercial intersections in town. To see how the area looked before the tornado be sure to drag the street view man icon to that intersection and other areas for 360 views. To see a load of images of the destruction google Tuscaloosa News and go the McFarland albums to see this area.


Mat God be with all the people that lost loved ones, homes and jobs.

Alabama Tornados April 27, 2011

About a week and a half before we had spent a Sunday clearing debris and trees from a neighborhood north of Greensboro AL. Then we were warned that Wednesday was ideal conditions for major tornado activity on a broad front. Schools were let out and we watched fast moving clouds come from the S.W. In the super cells you could see constant sheet lightining that increased as it got to eight and nine o'clock. Around six or so I was in Demopolis doing errands and checking up on our ice cream shop. I was in Radio Shack when I heard a tornado had been spotted 5 miles north and was heading towards Greensboro in my county called Hale. I phoned my wife and took off for home. We eventually had to go to our neighbors house to vacate our mobile home when someone later warned us of a tornado coming more from the south. In fact that tornado did not do much damage, but a number of our church people saw that funnel as it tracked across our area.
The tornado to the north that I had heard about in town hit a hamlet called Sawyerville and killed a number of people. Two of my fellow employees the next day gave us a report. A lot of our church brethren were volunteer firemen so they helped locate survivors and bodies between 6-12pm. If I have it right to tornadoes passed along nearly the same track because the rescue unit had to wait for the second tornado to pass. Not to mention this was five miles or less from the other week's two path tornado. Absolutely crazy. The next day   they called for thirty volunteers to search for some more bodies. Our work crew returned to help even though we were nearly two hours from home. By the time we arrived it was done, so we focused on clearing a area for Red Cross,  and help people clear their yards and drive ways,etc. Basically it was walking up the road house to house. Since Tuscaloosa happened at the same time thirty minutes to the north mainly the  locals know about the Sawyerville tornado. Hard to keep track which all towns got hit. I think just in this one local tornado I heard  say twenty three to thirty homes were heavily damaged to destroyed. A lot of places the trailer frames were wrapped around trees. Debris was spread across timber ground. Trees were snapped off about ten feet from the ground giving the area a clear cut look. Wreckage was everywhere. Cars were flung into the mauled timber,etc. Your eyes got tired of devastation. So many trees were down that it took rescuers three hours to reach the worst hit area about three or two miles from the main road. At least one man bled to death because there was simply no way out or in until the roads were clear. It rained a little but not as much as usual.
My wife's family was out from CA and feel like Alabama is quite a dangerous place to live. 

Beijing Cracks Down on House Church in China

160 members of the  Shouwang house church were detained for worshiping in a public area after the government refused them right to worship in the Shouwang's  church building. They have a 1,ooo membership roll and purchased 4 million building for a Church last year. After becoming evicted this month from their building they chose to worship outdoors.
 There has been reported 3,343 instances in which house church members or leaders were detained or beaten in 2010 as the Chinese government is stepping up its program to discourage worship outside the state sponsored Churches.  Read the complete story at 


http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/religion/article_ed2ded48-695e-11e0-8c66-001a4bcf6878.html


There are estimates that two-thirds of China’s estimated 60 million Protestants worship at unregistered churches.

Tasting My Jesus Email

y

---

Each year at the University of Chicago Divinity School they have what is called 'Baptist Day.' On this day each one is to bring a lunch to be eaten outdoors in a grassy picnic area. Every 'Baptist Day' the school would invite one of the greatest minds to lecture in the theological education center. 

One year they invited Dr. Paul Tillich. Dr.Tillich spoke for two and one-half hours, proving that the resurrection of Jesus was false. He quoted scholar after scholar and book after book. He concluded that since there was no such thing as the historical resurrection, the religious tradition of the church was groundless, emotional mumbo-jumbo, because it was based on a relationship with a risen Jesus, who, in fact, never rose from the dead in any literal sense. He then asked if there were any questions. 

After about 30 seconds, an old, dark-skinned preacher with a head of short-cropped, woolly, white hair stood up in the back of the auditorium. 'Docta Tillich, I got one question,' he said as all eyes turned toward him. 

He reached into his sack lunch and pulled out an apple and began eating it. 'Docta Tillich. (CRUNCH, MUNCH) My question is a simple question.
(CRUNCH, MUNCH...) Now, I ain't never read them books you read (CRUNCH, MUNCH), and I can't recite the Scriptures in the original Greek. (CRUNCH, MUNCH...) I don't know nothin' about Niebuhr and Heidegger. (CRUNCH, MUNCH...) 

He finished the apple. 'All I wanna know is: This apple I just ate... Was it bitter or sweet?' 

Dr Tillich paused for a moment and answered in exemplary scholarly fashion: 'I cannot possibly answer that question, for I haven't tasted your apple.' 

The white-haired preacher dropped the core of his apple into his crumpled paper bag, looked up at Dr. Tillich and said calmly, 'Neither have you tasted my Jesus.' 

The 1,000 plus in attendance could not contain themselves. The auditorium erupted with applause and cheers. 

Dr. Tillich thanked his audience and promptly left the platform. 

Have you tasted Jesus? 

Please pass this on, saints! Jesus has risen...and He's coming back one day soon. 

'Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. If you have, rejoice in the hope of the resurrection that your faith in Him brings.' Psalm 34:8

Quote From Menno Simons

It avails nothing, that Christ died, and that we are called by His name, if we do not possess a sincere, regenerating, vigorous faith in Jesus Christ; pure, unfeigned love; willing obedience; and a pious and irreproachable life.

-Menno Simons, in Sincere and True Repentance


-a brother submitted this quote

A Glimpse of the World

I am usually hesitant to show any kind of film material on this site, however this little mosaic of images and verses impressed me somewhat. We do not want to only be stimulated by emotions, but rather by the Spirit and Word of God. I will give into my weakness and share this this one time.

The Great Commission Statistics

 


6.75 billion people live on Earth


 that consists of 16,595 people groups


41.5% are unreached by the Gospel


which is 2.8 billion with little or no access to Gospel


that consists of  6,872 people groups


About 90% of all missionary work and missions giving goes to parts of the world that already have access to the Good News


And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come Matt.24:14






A people group is
 For strategic purposes, a people group is the largest group through which the gospel can flow without encountering significant barriers of understanding and acceptance.


An Unreached People Group is a people group in which less than 2% of the population are Evangelical Christians.


10/40 Window is the rectangle area of North Africa to Japan that includes Central Asia between the 10 and 40 degrees latitudes. 61 % of these 4.45 billion people are considered unreached.




Check out the Joshua Project at http://www.joshuaproject.net/joshua-project.php




This information was provided by The International Mission Board - Global Research, Month 20XX, name of publication, http://www.imb.org/globalresearch/.