So it’s 2 AM, and she still can’t fall asleep, because something about those sad eyes is stuck in her mind. It’s like every time she closes her eyes, she sees his tiny hands and jet black hair.

Is it possible to fall in love with someone you’ve never met?

She gets up and goes to the computer once more. “The last time tonight, I promise,” she thinks.

He’s bookmarked.

Her husband comes out of the bedroom and places his hand on her shoulder.

“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”

“About him?” She pauses even though she doesn’t need to think about it. “Yeah.”

“What’s his name?” He asks

“Adam.”

“Adam…” he says, testing out the name. “How old is he?”

“20 months, but the picture is maybe four months old”

“hmm…”

They pray. They pray because they know that they can’t stay still any longer. They pray because they have to do something, and they are scared to do it. They pray because they know they can’t do it alone.

“Where will he sleep?”

They pray again.

“Can we afford this?”

They pray again.

I don’t think these types of prayers often end with the heaves opening up and a dove flying down. I don’t think that the ones who pray are interrupted by a call from an anonymous donor who randomly picks seven digits and gives the recipient family whatever they need. Those stories are remarkable, but I think there’s a reason that it doesn’t usually happen that way.

There’s this period of faith, where a family has to say, “Yes, God. We are willing. We can’t do this in our own strength, but we believe that you wouldn’t have given us this fire in our hearts unless you had planned from the very beginning to walk with us through this.” And they cling to this faith when common sense tells them they are too weak and too poor to make it through.

But that’s only half the faith. That’s only half the miracle. I think that in the days of the prophets, we saw prayer answered in miracles. But nowadays, we don’t see a ton of water flowing from rocks and bread falling from the sky. So where do miracles come from today?

I think that they happen when God’s people listen to his calling. The other half of the miracle occurs when someone else hears this story and realizes that they cannot ignore it. When someone is prompted to partner with this family and do whatever it takes to make sure the child and his parents are united.

And then God brings these two halves together. The faith of the family and the faith of the sponsor are radically different, and yet in some crazy way, each one meets the spiritual needs of the other. The family is an example of God’s love, and the sponsor, an example of God’s faithfulness.

I guess it’s just crazy to think that one need can satisfy another. Two negatives shouldn’t add up to a positive, and yet somehow they do. That’s miraculous from where I stand.

I don’t know which part of this beautiful picture you fit into, but I suspect that since you’re here, you belong somewhere in the scene. I urge you to give in to that prompting, because what waits for you on the other end of it all is far more valuable than anything you’ll give up in the process.

What if it doesn’t all work out? What if what I thought was God’s voice was really just my own wishful thinking? What if my best efforts fall flat and I end up back at square one?

See, I think “What if?” must be the enemy’s favorite question. “What if?” propels us to inactivity. “What if?” tries to convince us that whatever we do couldn’t possibly be worth the risk. Fear of the unknown and fear of failure constantly convince us that the best course of action is to set quietly and make as few waves as possible just to stay afloat.
But what if you could have changed the world?

What if one Saturday of service brings a weary widow face to face with the love of God? What if her response to that is to cry out to her Savior for the first time? What if that check, even just those ten dollars, make a family’s dreams a reality? What if your gift, even though it felt insignificant at the time, is the reason that a child somewhere has a family?

When you look at it that way, isn’t the bigger risk staying at home? I’m learning that the potential for failure isn’t the same as failure. It’s worse. So then, to sit there and let the opportunities pass me by because the risks are too frightening is just a more subtle, more crippling form of failure.

On Friday I took a very small, very insignificant risk. I took my mentee Mario out to dinner. I committed to hang out with him once each week a while back, but lately, I’ve not been as… affluent as I would like to be, so I’ve had to tell him to hang on until I got my hands on some money. On Friday I spent half of my weekly food budget taking Mario to the Summer Palace Chinese Buffet, and I know that technically that’s pretty foolish, but it was right.

And I understand that my situation isn’t the same as everyone else’s. I get that my food budget for myself is different from a mother’s food budget for her own kids. I realize that as a college student, my time is far more flexible and in far greater supply than that of a husband and father who also holds down a full-time job. But I also think that for any of us, our risks start small.  I think that’s what Jesus’ parable about being faithful with little before we are entrusted with much means.

I just think that when God calls us to risk, that it isn’t really a risk at all. I’ll take his advice over any economist’s any day of the week.

James 1:27

I looked up the word Greek word, επισκεπτεσθαι, translated as “visit,” and one of the definitions offered is “to relieve.”

The unification of service and religion.

It’s beautiful, isn’t it?

Nowadays these two are more often than not, independent. Religion is seen as a list of chores, and the person who goes to Sunday church, listens to the Christian radio station, and forwards the chain emails warning against that Golden Compass movie is sufficiently religious. On the other hand, service might be seen as an attempt at significance, trading time and money for a good-person feeling. Certainly the two are not mutually exclusive, and some might argue that they are in some way related.

But that isn’t what the book of James says.

These two are one and the same. “Religion… IS this: to visit widows and orphans in their affliction.” And it is in bringing these two together that each becomes what it is truly meant to be. Religion becomes ACTION when service is added to the mix. An active relationship with Christ almost invariably stirs up compassion for others. Rob Bell helps pinpoint the cause of this when he boils much of Jesus’ ministry down to a single statement:

“People are worth dying for.”

And that makes sense, right? I mean, that’s WHY Jesus comes to earth. He takes on human flesh because people are worth dying for, and he intends to die for them.

So if we can easily see that people are worth dying for by examining Jesus’ life, then it’s a given that these people are valuable enough to deserve food and clothing. People are worth whatever effort it takes to place a meal in front of them and a roof over their heads.

Service flows directly out of an understanding of Jesus’ sacrifice.

The Christian who serves does not serve because they “should” or even because other people “need their help,” both of these are merely facets of the larger reason. The Christian who serves does so because it is hardwired into his or her identity. To serve is to live out an understanding of the Christian faith. To serve is to say, “I believe as Christ does, that all people are immeasurably valuable.”

This verse in James even goes a step further. We are told what service is as well as what it ought to look like. The verse specifies the recipients of the service. We are called to bring relief to orphans and widows in their time of need. Obviously, it’s not because widows and orphans are worth the most. It’s because these are the two most helpless and defenseless types of people.

There is a child with his entire life unlived and no parents there to walk with them through life. Where will he get their food and clothes? Who will hug him when they have bad days? What life awaits him when the government-provided care runs out?

There is a woman who has families to care for, and the man who promised to hold her hand through thick and thin was taken from her. How is she going to fix the leaky roof? Where will she get the money for next month’s groceries? To whom does she turn when “buy larger binder for extended to-do list” doesn’t fit on the to-do list?

What can I do to help these people?

Both Hands is an attempt to answer these questions.

So when dad told us that he was going to take on this Both Hands thing full-time, there were five different immediate reactions. Grace smiled and kept playing with her food. I’m pretty sure she understood that, as the only Chinese member of our family, she’s a big part of Both Hands.

Nick was angry. He didn’t get why dad would walk away from a “normal” job when we didn’t have a Playstation 3. He looked at the situation as the kiss of death for all those… things that we didn’t have yet. And in his defense, he was kind of correct. We still don’t have a PS3.

Daley was excited, if a little reserved. She was proud of my dad for his willingness to just go for it like that. I think she saw that it was dangerous, that from a worldly perspective, the job change made very little sense, but what’s neat is that she recognized this as faith in action. I know that parents set examples for their kids in everything they do, but we kids don’t always see the lesson we are learning right away. I know it had to be good for my dad to hear that she understood the fact that a job as a source of income wasn’t point of it all.

Max broke out into tears. He was terrified, because in his mind, the move to a nonprofit meant that we would have to move out of our house and into a cardboard box. Poor guy was trying to take all of the stress of a father of five on his then 12-year-old shoulders.

I don’t think it’s completely fair to put my reaction in the same boat as those of the rest of my siblings, because really, I stood the least risk. I’d already moved out to Baylor University, and my bedroom had been commandeered, so the possibility of my parents moving wasn’t as jarring for me as it was for my siblings. But when my dad told me that he was going to devote his time and energy to widows and orphans, it was like the world snapped back into place. For years I had been struggling with and wrestling with the whole idea of careers and money and the purpose of it all. I had been asking questions like “what’s the point of getting a job?” and “how can I eat these $7 chicken fingers when there are kids in Africa whose stomachs are eating themselves from the inside out.” I was trying to reconcile American luxury with the life of service that I felt called to, and I couldn’t seem to make the pieces fit.

I had no idea that I was really just dying for an example.

And since that summer, it’s been incredible, because God has provided for us. See, we still have our house. My siblings still get plenty to eat, and while we may not have a PS3, we haven’t had to have a garage sale to pay our electricity bills.

I also feel like it’s important to say that while Max was terrified at first, he’s come around. In fact, if you watch some of the videos of the Both Hands projects, He’s the Olson child you’re most likely to see. It’s cool how God has used Both Hands to do more than help widows and orphans. It has grown my family in more ways than one.

I shall try not to think about what you think about my writing because after all, this is about widows and orphans.  It’s about families who have taken a step of faith and all the people and friends who have rallied around them, not to mention all the other people who didn’t even know the immediate family but sent in money so they could be a part of something big!  So far, it has been an amazing journey for me and my family.

Over the years I have had a chance to get to know people who have been in ministry of some kind or have chosen missionary work.  When I would walk away from a conversation with one of them, I would always envy their faith.  It made me ask; am I really doing what serves God?  Is this how He would have me spend my time?  Does my work honor Him like that? Am I doing something that totally depends on God answering my prayers in order to be successful?

The exciting thing for me about Both Hands is that I don’t ask myself those questions anymore. There is nothing in me that questions whether or not this is where we should be and what we should be doing.  It feels good! I understand that not everyone is going to go through the same things I’ve gone through to get here and I certainly don’t think that everyone needs to go into the non-profit world, but that’s the cliff we chose and now is when chose to jump!

Hang on!!