Yucatan Outreach & Early Childhood Development

This Month, the focus for the Outreach & Early Childhood Development training was on 2 year olds.

This is an excerpt I found from an America development site on 2 year olds.
"Your preschooler's brain is a beehive of activity as it forms countless new neural connections that help him understand the whats, whys, and hows of the world. To encourage an eager learner:

• Introduce him to a wide variety of playthings: big toys to push or ride, wind-up toys or jack-in-the-boxes (which show cause and effect), play sets and blocks that can be handled and stacked, puzzles, dress-up clothes, puppets, and art supplies. Rotate them to keep them fresh, storing some and bringing others out each week.
• Don't stop him from exploring things around the house.
• Stimulate all his senses. Include tactile toys (such as clay and sand) and musical toys (like a xylophone or maracas).
• Expose him to new places and experiences: a pool, a zoo, the airport.
• Always keep books around. Visit your local library often to restock."

Reality Check
Most of the Mom's we are involved with here in the Yucatan do not have the money to buy puzzles, art supplies, books, all the items listed above. They may not have a vehicle or the money to take there kids to the zoo, airport, etc.,  I think sometimes in America we take for granted what we have available for our children.

Marina, one of our good friends, is the mother of Andrew pictured above. I recently asked her about what kinds of toys she has for Andrew to play with. She looked at me very matter-of-factly and said that he played with pots and pans, tupperware and spoons. Toys are more expensive here than they are in the United States. This includes Wal Mart. Therefore, Marina spends money on diapers & food. She lives in the Yucatan without any air conditioning and in the months of May it can heat up to 110 degrees or more. Yet, she always has a smile on her face and will be the first to tell you of her love for the Lord and his provision in their lives. And when she does she is very sincere about it.

This month's Childhood Development Training was to support these Mom's in their desire to raise healthy children. We began with a time of worship together with Marina's gift of song and guitar. These ladies have a close bond with each other and you will see 3 generations of families in the meeings. Daughter, Mother & Grandmother all worshipping side by side.

Luz once again started the training with a power point presentation on the milestones and needs of a 2 year old, including eating, potty training, play time and discipline. Luz is a trained Childhood Developement Teacher and does a great job with her presentations. I watch these new mom's soaking in the information like they have never seen it before and the light bulb is going on. They are very excited about learning new information as they love there children and want the best for them.

We welcomed new baby "Diego" at the meeting, pictured here with his Grandma.  We always enjoy these 3 hour meetings together. Everyone brings a drink or food item so we can share a meal together and catch up with each others lives. I am very much an accepted member of this ladies group. Some of the younger moms now come to me for advice. We are now like family to some of them and will be babysitting for a few of these moms also to give them a break once in awhile.

One of the biggest Joys for me is when it is time to give these moms a gift. They have so little, so it is a huge present for them to receive for their children. I made these Winnie The Pooh bags that were stuffed with crayons and coloring books to keep those 2 year old hands busy. Tammy does a great job organizing and administrating the meetings. Honestly, the 3 hours goes by quick as we are all having so much fun. My spanish is still very limited, but I get by the best I can and there are several ladies that speak english & are happy to interpret for me.

Our next Outreach & Early Childhood Development will be 3-4 year olds. If you would like to support our efforts & help us reach these moms and their children you can either refer people to our Small Sprouts shop or make a donation by clicking on the yellow "Donate" button on the side bar of this blog.

God Bless,
Christine

.04%......A Ministry Update

This may be hard for you to believe, but in our city of roughly 1.2 million people there are only about 500 Christians... maybe. It's a rough guess on my part. We only have 3 churches in our entire city...Iglesia Bautista Norte, Calvary Chapel, and a home church here for the deaf that is led by Christian missionaries from the U.S. I am unaware of any other Christian groups in our city. We regularly attend IBN. I have visited Calvary Chapel and we have talked on the phone with the American missionaries that run the church for the deaf to confirm that they have 30 attendees. In all of this I count about 500 Christians, give or take a hundred. If I am correct that means that, of our cities population, only about .04% of the people in Merida are Christians. That is less than one-half of one-tenth of one percent. Those are some pretty dismal numbers brethren.  It's hard to be alone in the crowd!

Based on the US population of 300 million people, this would be like having only 125,000 Christians in all of the United States. The US currently has 3,141 counties among it's 50 states. This would be like you having only 40 Christians in the entire county in which you live....Parker, Bexar, Collin, Dallas, Tarrant just to name a few. Can you imagine that? Imagine in your entire county if you had only 40 Christians. WOW! Kind of puts it into perspective doesn't it? That is what it is like for us here in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. We have found ourselves swimming in a sea of unbelief.

We find a similar story in 1 Kings 19. Here the prophet Elijah is hiding in a cave on Mount Horeb, having fled from Jezebel as she sought to kill him for God's judgment on the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel. Things had gotten so bad for Elijah that he no longer had the discernment to notice even a remanant in Israel. Based on the number of fighting men recorded in the days of David in 2 Samuel 24, I think that it is safe to assume that in all of the twelve tribes there were probably around 8 to ten million people living in all of it's territories. And out of all of those people, Elijah could not discern the existence of faith in the hearts of anyone in the entire country. Yet in 1 Kings 19 we find the Lord reminding him that there in all of that sea of unbelief was a hidden remnant of believers.

"Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel - all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him." 1 Kings 19:8

When you study Israel's history you find that the inevitable result of idolatry (turning away from God) was that the family unit always broke apart. When either an individual person or an entire culture turns away from the Lord you have the invetiable consequence of the breakdown of families. When our vertical relationship with God is compromised our horizontal relationships with the people that God has set around us always suffers. First is the vertical, second is the horizontal. When the first suffers, the second always falls apart. Marriages break down, relationships between parents and their children suffer, relationships between siblings become strained.......we could just keep going.

"See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse." Malachi 4:5,6

The purpose and intent of God is to restore relationships. First, vertically. Second, horizontally. God's Spirit is a reconciling Spirit.

"All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he committed to us the ministry of reconcilition......We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God." 2 Corinthians 5:18-20

God's intent is to reconcile us to himself, knowing that in the course of time this will lead not only to our restoration with him but with the entire family of God as a whole. God knows that as we reconnect progressively with him it will open our hearts to others and form bonds that become eternal. As we continue to read the book of 2 Corinthians we see this play out.

"We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you. We are not withholding our affection from you, but you are withholding yours from us. As a fair exchange - I speak as to my children - open wide your hearts also." 2 Corinthians 6:11-13


"Make room for us in your hearts.... I have said before that you have such a place in our hearts that we would live or die with you." 2 Corinthains 7:2,3

First comes vertical reconciliation with God, then as we do our horizontal relatiohsips with one another open up as we make room in our hearts for each other. According to the prophet Malachi it would start with the man who would come in the spirit and power of Elijah, that is John the Baptist (Matthew 11:14), then proceed through Jesus himself, then continue through the apostles and subsequently through successive generations of Christians down through all of history. God's attempt at reconciliation continues on. But when men break off from God, people break off from each other. It's a proven historical fact. And the ones that end up suffering the most are women and children.

Inevitably, when you have the absence of God's reconciling Spirit, what you have is an impending breakdown of social order that extends right through the family unit. As a consequence, many women becomed widowed, both physically and spiritually, and children become orpans, both physically and spiritually. When I say widowed, I am not just referring to the death of the husband and/or father. I am referring to the abandonment of women and children by their husbands and fathers.

The word used for widow in the old testament was almanah. It comes from the the Hebrew word alman. Alman means bereavement, a divorced person discarded by their spouse, someone forsaken by another person. The Greek word for widow is Chera. It means deficiency, someone who lacks a husband either physically or figurativelly. (Note the word "figuratively.") Chera comes from the Greek word Chasma or Chasm. It means vacancy or gulf and is related to the Greek word Chao from which we get the English word Chaos.

What we see in both definitions is that in the pre-exilic Hebrew culture a woman could be considered "widowed" in situations where they were discarded by a spouse through divorce. In the Post-Exilic Hebrew/Roman culture a woman may be considered widowed even if her husband was alive simply by the husband not fulfilling his duties as a husband as both provider and protector of the family, even if he was still physically around. The impending result of such a condition was familial and societal chaos in various aspects of the culture. I believe very much that this was a major problem throughout Israel in the days of Elijah. Consider that Jesus said the following:

"I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years....." Luke 4:25

There were many widows in Elijah's time. And Why? Some through death, but many through divorce and abandonment. Consider the fact that a Hebrew man could divorce his wife simply for not liking something about her. That's right. If you were a Hebrew man and you didn't like something about your wife you could just divorce her, period.

"Why then," they asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?" Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning." Matthew 19:7,8

"If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, and if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man, and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he dies, then her first husband who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled." Deuteronomy 24:1-4

Just for clarity sake, here is Deuteronomy 24 in the King James Version.

"When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her; then let him write her a bill of divorcement, an give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man's wife. And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and giveth it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his house;....." (KJV)

I underlined the word uncleanness in the KJV of Deut 24:1-4. The Hebrew word is Ervah. It means nudity, blemish, shame or uncleanness. Ervah comes from the Hebrew root word Arah. Arah means to make bare, to pour out, to discover, to uncover.

What I think the verses were intended to mean is that if an Israelite man found out, after being married to his wife for a period of time, after he got her home and she let her guard down and stopped putting her best foot forward, that she was a gossiper, slanderer, refused to have children, was an idolater at heart, something that God himself didn't like, that he could then divorce his wife, even if she wasn't cheating on him. I think it was meant to have spiritual applications. What I think some Israelite men wanted this verse to say was that when a man married a woman and got her home and began to learn all about her personality, her quirks, habits, beliefs, tendencies, what she looked like with no clothes on, .....and he found something that he didn't like about her, regardless if she was a righteous woman or not, that he could just send her away with divorce papers in hand.  I personally believe the verse was meant for spiritual application, not for personal gratification of the man. Remember that under some situations a man couldn't divorce his wife. See Deuteronomy 22:13-19. In God's eyes I believe a man had to have a good reason spiritually to issue the divorce papers. Remember, God hates divorce. He always has.

"Another thing you do: You flood the Lord's altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask, 'Why?' It is because the Lord is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant. Has not the Lord made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. 'I hate divorce,' says the Lord God of Israel, ....Malachi 2:13-16

When men divorce their wives, without reason and approval from the Lord, they are in effect making social widows of them and orphaning their kids.

So what does all of this have to do with Merida, Yucatan, Mexico? As a family we have now been here for almost 4 1/2 months. We have met people very quickly and befriended many, both inside and outstide the church. We have been to more parties, get togethers, lunches and social gatherings than I think we went to in the previous 5 years in the states. And the one thing we keep seeing over and over and over again is this.......Sexual promiscuity, infedility, men abandoning their families and divorcing their wives and leaving their kids behind can be a common thing down here. It's very, very common.

I told you earlier that we regularly attend Iglesia Bautista Norte. This is where the Lord has placed us for now and we are grateful for that. And I can tell that we have seen instance after instance where women and their siblings were abandoned by their fathers as little girls or where women and their children have been abandoned by their husbands today. It is also very, very common for husbands to cheat on their wives. It's almost socially expected. The way it was explained to us by Tammy Aldred is that some little girls are told from the time that they are young that when they get married they can expect their husbands to be unfaithful. The shame and dishonor that sometimes goes with being a wife in this culture can at times be beyond words. The courts in Mexico don't enforce child abandonment laws or alimony and child support laws. Those things don't exist here. Men just leave if they feel like it with no legal consequences. And most of the time they don't come back. So far we have not heard of one instance of reconciliation where a man returned to his wife and kids. Not one.

About a month ago I was having lunch with a man from IBN who I am starting to become good friends with. We will call him Roger. Christine and I just love Roger and his wife and daughter. They seem very committed to the Lord.  At lunch Roger was telling me that his father-in-law abandoned his wife, all of her siblings and his mother-in-law when the children were very young. He said it was very traumatic for them as one can imagine. His wife's father moved away to another city and hooked up with another woman and never came back.

A few weeks ago Christine was talking to another lady in our church. We will call this woman Renee (not her real name). Renee and her husband just had a beautiful little girl. They are a really sweet family. Renee is bilingual. She and her husband are both school teachers. While Renee and Christine were talking Christine commented on how much Renee's daughter looked like Renee. Renee looked at her and said, "You know, people always tell me that I look like my dad. But I don't remember him. He left us when we were young and I have not seen him since."

One Saturday a month Christine attends a woman's outreach at IBN. I will go into the purpose of these meetings a little more in a minute. This last Saturday, while at the November meeting, the ladies of IBN were studying about living a holy life before the Lord and fleeing from sexual immorality. All of the sudden, one of the ladies started crying and started pouring her heart out about how lonely she was. We will call this lady Lynn. Lynn is now a single mother of five children with a few of them being teenagers. She has to work full time to support her kids and is concerned for their protection. Lynn's husband had an affair and has left them completely. No child support. No help. No visits. Nothing. (And just so you know....minimum wage in Mexico is $50 pesos a day for 8 hours of work. That's .50 cents an hour USD or basically $4.00 USD per day.) Some of these women are trying to raise kids by themselves on $20 USD per week.

Then after Lynn shared, one of older women spoke up and started consoling Lynn. This woman had been through the same thing years before, raising and supporting her kids by herself. She was trying to let Lynn know that she had been through it and that Lynn would make it. Then, two young women who happened to be sisters began to interject and share. One of the sisters had been through the same thing. Got married, got pregnant, husband had an affair, husband left her and the child. She is now a single mother of one. Then another lady sitting directly next to Christine started crying. This lady had also been through the same cycle. Got married, had kids, husband left and hasn't seen him since.

After this, another elderly lady started to encourage Lynn. As she was doing so she started breaking down in tears and started sharing how this whole pattern had happened to her when she was younger. Marriage. Kids. Divorce. Husband left. Women raising kids on their own. Our culture here in Merida is full of orphans and widows. This is a re-ocurring them here. We see it over and over and over again. When this meeting started the agenda was set on other things. This meeting was not intended to center around Women and Children Who Have Been Abandoned by their Husbands. That was not the plan. It just happened. Folks, women and children are wounded in this culture. The hearts of fathers in many instances have turned away from their kids and wives. And the ladies are caught in the middle, just trying to pick up the pieces.

It's very common. Very common. The scriptures say the following:

"My eye affecteth my heart." Lamentations 3:51

What people see with their eyes affects what is inside of their hearts. Here, in Mexico, there is no such thing as a Family Plan on your cable package. At around 8 or 9PM everynight and especially on the weekends, many of the basic cable channels show nudity and soft porn. Some of the commercials for movies have nudity. I was at the gym with my son Joseph about 2 months ago, swimming and running while having some father/son time. And when I looked up at the TV screens around the gym there was a Mexican music video with naked men and women running around on the T.V. screens. Total nudity. In the middle of the day on T.V. I couldn't believe it. I was floored. I looked around the room and no one looked embarrased except for me. Needless to say we don't go to the gym anymore.

In the U.S. you always have an option to get a cable T.V. package that has all the curse words cut out of semi-clean movies. Not here. Four letter words, F-bombs, whatever was in the original cut of a movie is what you get. The people of Mexico don't invest themselves into keeping their culture free of demonic influence. They have no problems risking exposing themselves to such things or their children. Do you know why so many men are wayward here? Pornography. This is a porn culture. Porn breeds adultery. The US is the porn manufacturing capital of the world. I have written on this in the past. But the Christians in America are more diligent to demand and to set up filters in the systems of entertainment to try and block that out from their kids. It's a more organized effort with corporate and technological support. You don't go to Gold's Gym or 24 Hour Fitness and see porn on the T.V. screens around the room. In the US a good deal of this garbage is filtered out of the main stream. Not here brethren.

So how are we participating in ministry? Well, so far the Lord has opened a door for Christine. As I told you before, IBN is having monthly meetings to try and help these mommies with early child-hood development. The pregnant moms, babies and single moms need help.

Last month the ladies of IBN gathered for a 2 1/2 hour workshop and ministry time to the pregnant moms, moms wanting to be pregnant and new mothers. The wealthy class and the growing middle class here are becoming educated about the importance of good eating, vitamins and healthy living before, during and after pregnancy. They are also learning about the importance of the parents role in childhood development. The poorer class does not have access to this information or the products needed to carry this out.


So in response we are trying to help with supplies and education. To start October's meeting, Michelle, one of the IBN ladies, made a game for the ladies that created a baby shower atmosphere. Michelle is super creative and put some hours into a really fun game for everyone to play. About 35 ladies attended.

Llana, a member of IBN, led the meeting the rest of the way with a power point presentation she produced about the importance of taking care of yourself before, during and after pregnancy along with step by step development expectations for new babies. Llana is a native Meridian with a degree in childhood development that she earned at one of the Universities here in Merida. Llana explained the importance of taking vitamins before you are pregnant, especially Folic acid.




Llana's presentation.

 

Baby Bib



Tammy Allred presenting a gift basket.

The ladies had a wonderful time of prayer, teaching, sharing and fellowship. They ended the afternoon with 6 special gift baskets to give away. 3 baskets were filled with items for ladies and the other 3 were made just for the 3 pregnant mom's in the group. The baskets were filled with lots of products a mom-to-be would need, like vitamins, ointment for sore nipples, some diapers and wipes, baby lotion. Christine wanted to make these ladies something extra special, so she whipped out her sewing machine and put together some adorable bibs with matching burp cloths for each Mom. One is pictured above on the right. They were so excited!!

Stay tuned for our next update as we will have another outreach at the end of November for the Mom's with new babies. We have 4 new Mom's so far that are coming and possibly more. We are preparing more gift baskets and Christine will be creating something very special for each mom.

Many Yucatecans who were born here never leave. One of the few exceptions to this would be some of the upper class Yucatecans heading to the United States or other countries for advanced levels of education. This minority of folks usually come back to utilize their education and provide services here. Examples of this would be various fields of medicine or architectural practice. There is also a small weathly class of people that gained generational wealth from Henequen production. You also have a growing middle class among the educated. However, that still leaves the majority of Yucatecans largely uneducated and often impoverished. Many of them have stayed that way from generation to generation. This is primarily a Catholic society which historically has cherished having children but that has incresingly suffered from many of the social breakups we discussed earlier.

Some of the wealthy and middle class have learned through education how to take care of themselves before, during and after pregnancy, but the lower class here is not educated about the importance of diet and vitamins before, during and after pregnancy. For generations, they have learned that you just have a child, feed them and protect them, but they do not understand the importance of early childhood developement as no one has taught them. They are often too poor to buy these necessary items. They hold there babies almost all the time, crawling is not really encouraged and necessary stimulation does not happen. What you see in their children as they grow is a lethargy and a lack of necessary development

This lower class that we speak of is growing in receptivity however. Again, we have teamed up with Tammy Allred of Inglesia Baptista Church to provide early childhood development information and supplies like vitamins, books to read to their children, baby rattles, developmental toys. Llana, as previously mentioned, helps with her education in early childhood development to help us teach these moms and moms-to-be about the importance of taking care of themselves and their new babies to bring them to full development potential.

This is were you can help. Mexico typically does not produce alot of these items we have been talking about, so they import them which really drives the price up, almost double in some cases in comparison to the States. We can purchase most of these items here at Wal-Mart as they are the least expensive even here. Please consider a donation for us to provide pre-natal vitamins, developmental toys and other necessary items. We cannot receive care packages as the mail system here can sometimes be unreliable. Many packages are stolen or looted before they arrive.

Please help us break the cycle here for these Mom's with education and supplies!!

Folks, remember, only .04% of our city knows the Lord. We have very few Christians in our city. Because this vertical relationship is broken, horizontal relationships within families suffer. We have a culture here where pornography is unrestrained in many settings. This leads to father's being pulled away from their wives and kids. The evidence is all around us. Orphans and widows are everywhere. Please pray for us to have a spiritual impact on our city and those around us. Please pray for the orphans and widows of Merida. Pray that the message of the Lord would spread rapidly through our city and be honored, that the Lord would work with us and confirm his word by signs that accompany it. We need your help. Pray for us. Let us know if you want to be involved. We do not ask for ourselves. We ask for others.

In  Christ,

JEB

jayblackshear@yahoo.com

http://www.miraclesinmerida.blogspot.com/.

The First Shall be Last...The Last Shall be First

Last week, I, Jay, took a 5 day trip back to the states to tie up some loose ends from our move to Merida and to visit with friends and family along the way. On the first day of my trip on August 3rd the Lord spoke the same thing to me on three seperate occasions in the same day. Each time it was through a different set of circumstances but all of them tied in together and all of them together had one meaning. Here is the story.

My flight out of Merida left at 7 AM via Continental Airlines. I had to be at the airport at 5 AM. After getting my boarding passes and getting through security, while sitting at the gate watching the rest of the passengers arrive, an American couple came and sat down next to me. We were on the same flight to Houston Airport to catch different connecting flights. I struck up a conversation with them and found out that they were a Christian couple, that he was actually a pastor of a church in South Carolina and they had taken a trip here to check on a Christian Seminary in Merida that they were affiliated with. As the conversation continued I asked them how long their layover was in Houston before catching their next flight. They told me they had an hour and a half. I knew this could be a problem for them because it usually takes a minimum of one hour in the Houston airport to deboard your plane, get through customs, claim your bags, go through immigration, go through the baggage security check for domestic flights, catch a rail train to an adjoining terminal, recheck any bags at the gate and then board your plane. I know this first hand. I endured this back in May coming back from Merida on my first trip down, trying to catching my adjoining flight to San Antonio, RUNNING through parts of the airport. It was very stressful and I almost missed my adjoining fight.

Needless to say I was concerned about this couple making it so I offered to help them through the process. I had a 3 hour layover before my adjoining flight to Shreveport so I offered to take some of that time to help them with guidance, carrying bags.....whatever. As we got into Houston our first obstacle presented itself right away. This couple and I were both seated in the back three rows of the plane. There were over 150 people seated on this plane. It was packed. It took us at least 15 minutes to deboard. Then we got to immigration and there was a very long line. We processed through immigration and then got to the baggage terminal. The stewardesses had announced to us that our luggage would be on carousel #8. It wasn't. I got to the baggage carousel ahead of them and figured out that the luggage was on carousel #7. So when they got there behind me I redirected them to the right carousel. They grabbed their bags. We headed to the security checkpoint to get our scanned through for our next flight and found ourselves in a very, very long line. I looked at this couple and told them not to panic, that the line would move quickly for us. And boy did it ever. God saw to it. Right at that moment a security agent walked right up to me and this couple and said, "Right this way." They took us an opened up a new security screener and placed us in the front of that new line. A smile came over my face and a passage of scripture came to my heart.

Matthew 19:30 "But many who are first shall be last, and many who are last will be first."

I remember hearing that in my heart and feeling a sense of peace and joy for this couple. God was helping them in their time of need. You could see they were stressed. They were an older graying couple and they needed help. God took them out of last place in line and put them right through the screening process, helping them to make their adjoining flight on time. And as an added bonus I got to go with them....because I was helping them by being in the back of the line with them. The thing that I understand about this, even as I write this, is that if I had left the weak to themselves and gone on and only been concerned with myself, I would have ended up farther towards the front of that long line at the baggage screening. But it would have taken me longer to actually get through that checkpoint because I wouldn't have been standing in the very back of the line with that couple when we ALL got promoted to the front.

The Father blesses us when we hang out with the weak and serve them in humility. He promotes us in due season....to the front of the line. The world has pushed the weak and the less fortunate to the back of the line with no concern for their welfare. But God in his sovereignty raises us up at certain points in time with resources to help each other. The resources I had to give these two members of the Body of Christ was extra time, physical strength and a knowledge of the airport in Houston to help them while they were in a tight spot. The Father offered me an opportunity to give out of my abundance and in the process all of us were blessed.

And the story doesn't end there. I then ended up on my adjoining flight to Shreveport....and I can tell you I have never flown on such a small plane in my life. It only sat 33 people and it had the propellers on both sides, not the jet engines you see on most planes. I ended up sitting in the very back of the plane, seat 16A. I was in Last Place on this plane. After all the passengers boarded the lone stewardess walked to the very back of the plane, looked right at me and said, "We need two people to come sit in the very front row of the plane....right now!" She looked at me as if I didn't have a choice. So I got up along with another lady and we went and sat right in the very front row. The obvious reason for this was to balance the weight of the aircraft for take-off. But God was reaffirming something to me for the second time in as many hours. The stewardess looks at me and the other lady that was moved to the front with me and explained to both of us that being in the seats we were know sitting in came with a particular set of responsibilities. We would now be expected to help the other passengers off of the plane in the event of an emergency. We were now "Deputized." We both agreed and the plane took off.

So here I am again for the second time in the same day going from being in the back of the line to the very front of the line in a matter of seconds. And both instances are happening because I was either serving the Lord by helping the weak and needy or.... being positioned to help others in case of emergency. 

And it doesn't end there. Jesus likes to clinch the nail. Let everything be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses (2 Cor 13:1).  So I finally get to Shreveport around 2PM. My former pastor who I was staying with had to leave town unexpectedly because of a death in the family. So I ended up staying with two of his grandsons in his home who were house-sitting for him. One was his grandson Josh (20 years old) and the other was Matthew (11). I had known Josh since he was seven years old but had never met Matthew prior to this trip. I ended up taking them out to dinner at Chile's as a thank you for picking me up at the airport. As we were at the restaurant, getting reaquainted and talking about all sorts of things, Matthew looks at me and says;

"The First Shall be Last.....and the Last Shall be First."

I'm not kidding. God was speaking to me through an eleven year old boy who was eating a grilled cheese sandwich and french fries. And at this point I was slowly starting to realize that the voice of the Lord was echoing through a multitude of circumstances. In Romans 1:28 it says the following:

"Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind...."

I italicized and underlined the word "retain." In the Greek that word means "echo." What Paul is saying in this verse is that people get in trouble when they don't allow the voice of the Lord to "echo" in their hearts. God speaks with an echo by saying the same things over and over to cause truth to settle into us. The Lord speaks through the mouth of babes and he speaks through the symbolism of our physical circumstances...among other things. He speaks in dreams, visions, through the mouths of prophets.....

For God does speak -  now one way, now another - though man may not perceive it." Job 33:14

The Lord speaks to us in a multitude of ways and with and echoing voice. His voice echoes. What was happeing to me that day was an echoing of his voice in circumstances, through people, and within my own heart. His voice was echoing.

And what was he saying to me? The conclusion of the matter is this: We live in a time where God is sitting in judgment on his people, our communities, our circles of fellowship and the world itself. This is an hour of judgment at all levels. And what we will see him doing as we go forward is promoting many members of the Body into more and more of the fullness of their callings. We are going to see people who are Last becoming First.....and we are more and more going to see people who are spending their lives in fleshly self-promotion going to the back of the line. God is humbling the wicked, publicly and privately. He is blessing the righteous who are willing to serve the Body in humility, but he is humbling members of the body of Christ who have been living in self-promotion, not living lives fully dedicated to him.

The counsel I am going to walk away with from the events of August 3rd are this: Be were God has placed you, endure hardship like a good soldier, be among the weak as God positions you in the Body and among non-believers. He will empower us. He will equip us. He will provide for us. He will provide for each one of us in differnet ways and at different times, often through each other. Be humble. Be meek. Be gentle. Serve one another in Humility. The Lord will see your willingness and your humility and he will promote you in due season. He will make the First Last and the Last......God will make First. He promoted Joseph. He promoted David. And he will promote us in small ways and in large IF, IF we are humble. Let God assign you to the back of the line, the back of the plane, so that he can promote you.

Be Blessed
The Blackshears