Desolation of Generations

Desolation of Generations

How do you rise above a poverty culture “when you’re born with it hanging around your neck?”

generation of disrepairIn the recent bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, author J.D. Vance recounts the story of his chaotic family and the crises in poor working-class communities. From Appalachia, his people migrated to southern Ohio to find jobs. After securing work, they bought houses and enrolled their kids in public schools.

They were offered a chance at the American Dream.

But sadly, their poverty culture came with them. Continue reading

The Price of Grumbling

The Price of Grumbling

 

she resisted grumblingWhen I was young, my sister and I used to play “Anne Frank.” We created a trapdoor that led to the third level of our house on Kenwood Avenue. We’d creep down to the kitchen for food and supplies—Cheerios, raisins, water, Band-Aids, flashlights, books, paper and pencils—hauling it all up to our Secret Annex. When others could be heard in the house, we remained absolutely silent, quieting our dolls if they cried. We never touched the curtains of the two small windows up there. It was a rule, especially when any German sirens sounded.

Anne Frank was a young Jewish girl living with her family in Amsterdam when Nazis seized the Netherlands. Within two years the persecution of Jews escalated. Her family and four others went into hiding, living in a makeshift area of her father’s office building. The “Secret Annex” was only 75 square meters of space for eight people. Employees and friends provided food and information. There, they hid in silence, never going outside for two years.Continue reading

Empty Pockets

Empty Pockets

Mystify, arouse, and confuse me

Shatter all my plans and illusions

That I might lose my way

Don’t let me see the path or the light

Until I am ready to be led

To the harbor of the poor and willing heart

When there seems to be no remedy for darkness

Don’t fear to sink into it

Let God reveal Himself in all things, thru faith

And trust is my gift back to you, God…

 –Kevin Prosch, from “Every Ray,” Palaquin

Wendy Alec

Wendy Alec

In, Visions From Heaven, Wendy Alec recounts her conversations with God following a devastating two-year illness, which led to her husband’s abandonment.

Wendy and her former husband, Rory, started GOD TV, Europe’s first Christian television network. They had just signed on to work with Mark Ordesky, executive producer of Lord of The Rings, to make an A-grade secular blockbuster film from her end-times book series called, Chronicles of Brothers.

A week after she started working on the screenplay, she was hit with gastroperisis, a virus that damages the vagus nerve and causes intense and unending nausea. The condition was so rare that medical treatment had only been experimental.

iStock_000039953360SmallFeeling nauseous from morning until night, she began losing weight at an alarming rate. She sought healing prayer, medical advice, specialists, naturopathic help, experimental treatment ideas and drugs, but nothing abated the distress of being chronically sick every day and not knowing if it would ever end.

Her children and husband were bewildered and angry.

They lived out of their suitcases.

Their pets were kenneled for an entire year.

They abandoned their home for an entire year.

Her ministry with GOD TV seemed all but over.

The movie production came to a screeching halt.

And eventually her husband left her for another woman.

Trapped in a debilitating illness, she had lost everything.

She wanted her life to be over.

God had been her all in all, but now she was reeling with abandonment. That was the hardest part.

GodYet God was there the whole time. As the grip of her disease began to loosen, she had vivid conversations with Him in the night. God talked to her about the great sifting of His people, beginning with Job and Peter. That faith is proved genuine and strengthened beyond measure in these times. Or not. That people who come through it are prepared for a weighty “mantle” of responsibility and authority for the end-time season that is upon us. He answered her questions with tenderness and compassion.

Still, the trauma of her experience remained like a deep scar. She feared she would never feel safe again. How could such a bad thing happen to her when she had set her love on God?Continue reading