Passport
Read Psalm 50:9-15
GHAN
We are about to embark on an adventure of a lifetime. Do you love to travel? Do you love discovering parts of the world that are unfamiliar to you? Do you love going to places that are off the normal tourist route and experiencing things for the first time? To travel overseas, you need to be prepared. Firstly, you need a passport. It recognises who you are and declares your credibility as a traveller. It identifies you as a citizen of your own country and gives you confidence in presenting yourself at the entry gates to a foreign country.
With your Self Denial Passport, we invite you to come with us on this adventure. This is not a holiday
like a normal tourist. It is a pilgrimage – a journey of discovery and personal growth. You will see parts of God’s creation that you have only read about, or perhaps seen on television. With our passport, our Self Denial pilgrimage will take us to the major continents of the world, to the very corners of God’s vast creation. We will discover people who live very different lives to our own; people who have greater needs than us, who struggle for daily survival, who contend with significant disabilities yet somehow find the courage to keep facing each new day.
We will discover what Jesus meant when he said to his disciples, “Go” (Mark 16:15). When Jesus said this to his disciples, he wanted us to realise that the world is bigger than the town or city in which we live. He wanted us to know that “neighbour” means more than the people we see next door or those we see in our regular lives from day to day. Through the Self Denial Appeal we can do just that. Get your passport and let’s “go”. As we do, l et us also start praying for the people we are about to visit and how we can help them through our generous giving to the Self Denial Appeal.
Read Mark 3:1-5 When you travel overseas, it is essential to pay for travel insurance. It is part of the cost of travel. It ensures our financial security in case we succumb to illness or injury while we are travelling in a country other than our own. It costs, but we are prepared to pay knowing that it ensures both medical and financial security. We too often take medical care for granted. In Jesus’ day this was minimal if it existed at all. Jesus healed the sick as he went from place to place. He even cured people of otherwise incurable diseases and disabilities. As we enter Ghana this week with our Self Denial Passport, we too meet people with disabilities. These
are young people, children in fact, who have been brought under the care of The Salvation Army. Our passport gives us access to their lives. Unlike us, they may never have the privilege to travel anywhere much past their village for their entire lives. However, our Self Denial Passport gives them access to us from another part of God’s creation. How does it make us feel when we arrive in their world and see life through their eyes? We have the privilege to journey, and the assurance of health, but they have little and need much. In Mark 16:15, Jesus compels us to, “Go into all the world and preach the good news”. We can go with our words or we can go in ways that have much more meaning. As we look into the eyes of African children
with disabilities under the love, care and nurture of an Australian Salvationist, we can ensure that they too have access to medical and rehabilitative care, just as we do. As we consider Ghana this week, and Jesus’ call to “preach the good news to all creation”, pray sincerely as to how you can live more simply in order to give more sacrificially for the disabled children of Ghana under Salvation Army care.
GHANA Read John 4:4-14 Did you get your visa - a permit to allow you entry into certain countries in the world? This week our pilgrimage takes us to a country that for a long time was closed off to people like us from Western countries. Like Jesus when he entered Samaria, we find ourselves entering Russia, where the work of The Salvation Army was denied to us for over half a century. What a privilege it is to visit and share in the Salvation Army’s work once again. When Jesus told his followers to “go”, there were no limits to our going. People who have lived behind a curtain of mystery for such a long time deserve to hear the Good News of Jesus. They need to
experience his love in simple and practical ways. This week our passport and Russian visa take us there. Like the woman of Samaria, some people may be surprised to see The Salvation Army at work in this former communist country, as in other parts of God’s creation. The people of Russia are as equally important to God as any other people of his creation. Through the Self Denial Appeal, The Salvation Army is going “into all the world”. Like Jesus in Samaria, the Army reaches beyond borders with simple yet practical expressions of the message of the Gospel. Our pilgrimage stretches us - we can see that the
world’s needs are even greater than previously imagined – drug affected families, poverty, and children living with the effects of HIV/AIDS in their parents and even themselves. Travel is a joy. But in order to become a pilgrim, we need to be prepared to be transformed in order to engage with the world
that confronts us as we journey. How are you confronted with children living with HIV/AIDS? How are you confronted by the sight of the poor in the ice-covered streets, the aged with basic accommodation, or struggling families with little food to offer their children? As your pilgrimage takes you through the back streets of urban Russia, pray about your gift to the Self Denial Appeal this year. Your journey will soon conclude, but those who serve on your behalf continue to minister through the generosity of your gift.
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Read Psalm 46:1-11 This psalm gives us confidence in God, in whom we can trust and find assurance and stability when our lives are rocked and turned upside down. This week our passport continues our pilgrimage into the country of Chile. You might never have been in an earthquake or had your entire life’s possessions and loved ones washed away. Our Chilean brothers and sisters endured both. As a pilgrim from a relatively safe and secure country, how do you feel as you walk the muddy lanes of what was once a lovely seaside village? What are your emotions as you hear the stories of people who have lost husbands to the giant waves or whose houses have been completely demolished by the power of raging water?
Our Salvation Army in Chile is there every day. They are listening to the stories of loss, the cries of emotional pain, the desires for restored hope and support for those now living in a vast wasteland of lost livelihood. Through the eyes of our pilgrimage, we see the need for people to be helped with food, clothing and housing, and to hear the good news of the security found in God alone. Travel expands our horizons, but a pilgrimage grows and matures us. Pilgrims become part of the lives of those with whom they encounter along the way. As we engage with the earthquake-affected families of
Chile and gaze into the eyes of children with dirty faces, how can we not but be drawn to continue to be part of their lives? Our Salvation Army in Chile is doing this every day. We return to our homes, but they return to the streets. Our Chilean Salvation Army provides stability and brings confidence and a sense of “stillness� to the lives of those whose world has been shaken and destroyed.
As you consider your gift to the Self Denial Appeal, have confidence that in a unique way you are part of that great work in Chile bringing stability and restoring hope in people’s lives. Your gift and your generosity will also send a message of confidence to those serving on your behalf that they can indeed continue to say “Just where He needs me, my Lord has placed me”.
Read Exodus 15:1-21 Our pilgrimage in recent weeks has taken us to various parts of the world. Our passport has opened up access to places that have introduced us to people and the challenges they face from day to day. One of the important things about a pilgrimage is reflection. Travellers look at their photos, but pilgrims reflect on how their experiences have changed them. In our Bible reading this week, Moses and the children of Israel have just come through a series of life-changing events. They had come out of captivity; they had faced the apparent barrier of the Red Sea; they watched in horror as Pharaoh’s army closed in on them; but they then watched in wonder as the power of God opened up the sea, enabled them
to pass through, and then watched in amazement as the Lord closed the sea over the pursuing army. Moses and the people sang joyously to the Lord. The song was a colourful reflection of the power of God and all He had done and all they were yet expecting Him to do. The Israelites were pilgrims. Their song was a reflection on how their experiences of God’s power had changed their lives.
Our own pilgrimage to the world turns to reflection this week. It is opportunity now to reflect upon that which we have seen God doing in the lives we have encountered. Think back to Ghana. Can you see the powerful arm of God at work through those Salvationists working with the children with disabilities? Were their lives not facing defeat until they came under the care of our fellow Salvationists? Did you see the eyes of the children who are living with the effects of HIV/AIDS? Did you see the divine arm of comfort in the form of a Salvation Army worker?
In your reflections, have you realised just how powerful and life-changing is the Gospel in that great country of Russia that was once oppressed by a tyrannous rule? Do you see a parallel between the parting of the vast Red Sea and the lifting of a curtain of iron? How else can our Army of Salvation once again enter and bring Good News of the Saviour but for God’s omnipotent arm? How has this changed your life? Can you sing with Moses: “The Lord will reign for ever and ever”? (Exodus 15:18) As a pilgrim, how has your life been changed, having engaged with The Salvation Army ministering in practical ways to families whose worlds have been
shaken apart and then washed away in Chile? As you consider your gift to the Self Denial Appeal next week, may your prayerful decision be encouraged by knowing your gift is the means by which other Salvationists are able to “go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation� (Mark 16:15).
Read Mark 10:46-52 Jesus was on a pilgrimage. He was headed for Jerusalem for the last time. Like any pilgrim, Jesus engaged with people and circumstances as he travelled. As Jesus was leaving Jericho he was so perceptive that he could even hear a lonely beggar crying out over the tumult of the boisterous crowd.
GHA
Being the pilgrim that he was, he responded to the cry of the needy. “Call him,” Jesus said to his disciples, referring to the pitifully blind beggar at the side of the road. Jesus’ next utterance was probably one of the most pertinent questions of his entire ministry. “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him. Blind Bartimaeus simply and
profoundly replied, “Rabbi, I want to see�. I wonder whether you have ever thought like me. Too often we have vision, yet we fail to see. In our extravagant Western lifestyle, we are too often blinded to the enormous needs of those in worlds afar. We have food aplenty. We have money in the bank, a house in which to live, clean streets, medical care down the road, a shopping centre with a vast array of affordable food at our disposal. Yet too often we fail to see the real needs of those beyond our horizons. However, our pilgrimage to Ghana, Russia and Chile has altered our thinking, at least a little. My question to each of you this week, as we bring our
six-week pilgrimage to a climax is this – “Do you want to see”? Too often in our lives we can be as blind as Bartimaeus – unable to see – yet sense deep down a burning desire to be changed. If Jesus stood before you today and asked, “What do you want me to do for you?”, how would you respond? I pray you might just say, “Lord, I want to see … I want to see injustice and oppression in the world defeated by your love; I want to see people angry at exploitation of innocent and harmless
people; I want to see people work for freedom and justice; I want to see our tears being shed when people suffer pain, starvation and war. I want to see peoples’ pain turn to joy”. May your prayer this week be, “Lord, let me see how to be generous so that my gift makes a difference to your world”. May God bless you and enrich you as you consider your sacrificial gift at the altar this week.
Franciscan Benediction May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers and half-truths May God bless us with discomfort at superficial relationships So that we may live deep within our hearts So that we may live deep within our hearts May God bless us with anger at injustice and oppression May God bless us with anger at exploitation of all people So that we may work for justice and freedom So that we may work for freedom and peace So that we may work for justice
May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, starvation and war So that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and turn their pain, their pain, into joy And may God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world So that He can do what others claim cannot be done So that He can do what others claim cannot be done Amen Song by Josh Spier based on a traditional Franciscan benediction by an unknown author.
Special thanks to Major Dr Kelvin Alley (National Secretary, Canberra) for writing the weekly devotions.
Also thanks to: Peter March, producer (below centre), David Scarborough, editor and photographer (below right) and Richard Cause, cinematographer (below left), of the video series. Rod Allen: children’s material James Gardner and Kem Pobjie: graphic design
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