Hi.
My name is Calvin Friend and I sometimes get weird looks from the people around me. (Everyone say, “Hi, Calvin!”)
I currently serve as the pastor of Bethel Church in Princeton, MN. Prior to moving here with my family in 2001, I served as an associate pastor at Immanuel Christian Reformed Church in Ripon, CA. Brenda (my wife of 19+ years) and I have four beautiful children. Between the five of them, they account for at least 50% of the weird looks I get from people.
This blog is the result of my desire to journal my experience during Lent, 2010. It is, in some ways, a rather delayed response to my own sermons back in January of 2009. The sermon series was called Evergreens in Winter. The idea was that Christians are called to be like evergreens in a winter landscape – signs of life in the cold hard world in which we live. We looked at hunger, persecution and other cheery topics to remind ourselves that this is a cold, hard world for many people. My suggestion at the time regarding hunger was that we needed to do something to help us understand what others experience and to bind ourselves to their plight.
In my research, I came across a website dedicated to the refugees in Darfur, StopTheGenocideNow. Jeremiah Forest and Eric Angel participated in a month-long fast – which I came to call the Darfur Diet. They blogged their way through it. And I thought, “I fella’ could do something like that.” But I didn’t…until now.
Our Youth Director, Jason Ruis, and I have decided to undertake this journey as well as the water-only fast described at Blood:Water Mission. You might be asking what my daughter also asked: “Why?” There are a lot of reasons. I want to raise awareness (and a little money) for people in Africa who don’t have clean water. I also want to raise awareness in my congregation for the people of Darfur and their continuing struggle to survive. More than these, though, I want to better understand what it is to love as Isaiah described:
“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.” (Isaiah 58:9-11)
and to love as Jesus modeled and taught:
Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)
This fast, then, is just a beginning. I hunger so that I can become. And I pray that this Lenten journey would be one that would not only raise awareness and funds today for people in need, but that it would be one that changes me so that I will be one who spends myself in behalf of the hungry and loves others by laying down his life.
My “regular” blog can be found at my website, pastorcal.com.
Update: I just received my Daily Verse. Coincidence? Ironic? Funny? Confirmation?
Thursday, February 18, 2010
“For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? ” – Luke 9:25
Consider your choices and the motivation behind them.
