A Bake Sale?! Really....

So today as I was just on FB, checking out what was going on... ya know.. the usual.. And the ever so inspiring Esther Gualtieri had posted a link to a news article from ABC News.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/portland-emerges-hub-child-sex-trafficking/story?id=11690544&page=1

I read the article. My heart broke. My mind was racing... how can I make a difference? What can I do to help? And why can't the police get this thing under control? I don't understand...

I then decided to watch the video, actually meeting "Katie" from the article. She got tangled up and trapped in prostitution when she was 13... 13 years old! She still sounded so young in the interview, because she is so young. Incredibly too young for a life of working strip clubs and the streets.

But what I'm more fired up about right now is the last few statements of the video. The news anchor spoke of how few shelters there are in Portland and how expensive they are... And then the anchor said that Katie's church had a bake sale to help pay for her to be in a shelter...

A BAKE SALE?!?!?!???!?!?!!! REALLY!??!?! ok. I'm sorry, but where are we church? Why does the world think that all we can come up with to help a beautiful, precious girl get out of prostitution is a bake sale? Where are our ideas? Where are our resources going? And why can't we do more than a bake sale?!?

A few weeks ago I was reading in Daniel, and just so impressed about how intelligent he was. This dude and his friends, they were the cream of the crop. God has created us to be the cream of the crop people. We are made in HIS image and He is the creator of the stinkin universe! I am so tired of cheesy Christian bake sales and stealing the world's ideas and adding God or Jesus to it and calling it our own. Ask God for ideas. He will give them to you. Let's get out of the box, stop putting God in a box and CREATE something original!

I do know there are great churches out there, that are coming up with incredible ideas and reaching the world in relevant and creative ways. But it just kinda stinks that ABC News has to tell the world that Katie's church did a bake sale to get her into a shelter. Why wasn't someone from the church bringing Katie into their home? She needs real love, not a shelter to tell her that no one wants her and there's no other place for her.

So in conclusion... I feel as if I have rambled quite a bit. I should work on organizing my thoughts a little better when I'm so fired up. But I'm sorry. There's my rant for the day. My heart is aching. Let's break the bake sale mold of Christianity and start restoring value into people out there who are hurting and searching for something more.

God is BIG

Well first off... it's been incredibly too long since I've written a blog. Coming up on a year. Wow. I'm a blog slacker. So life has been crazy, awesome and epic in the past 11 months... lots of change... lots and lots of change, but epic.

So back to my actual title... God is BIG.

I was driving home from babysitting tonight and the stars were absolutely incredible! And so i drove out to my favorite place in my neighborhood... the dock/boat landing area into a creek. And the sky seems ginormous and I can see the milky way and a zillion constellations and i just smile. :)

God is so incredibly BIG! And I think we forget that too easily... we get caught up in the day to day stuff and forget how big our God is! I'm such a "sucker for the sky". As I've said time and time again... but I'm so thankful for the sky and how God uses it to remind me how big He is! He is bigger than our finances, our insecurities, our failures, or any mountain we face.

I hope I'm not the only sucker for the sky that looks up on a clear night and smiles and tries to fathom just how big our God really is...