I met a guy named Alvero this past week. Alvero stood in my office telling me about how he has spent the last years feeding hungry orphans in Zimbabwe. He\u2019s having to leave there, now, however because he is white, and where he lives, any black man can come and take any of his possessions that they want at any time they want. Alvero would stay, if it was just himself, and might even with just his wife, but he has a young son and daughter living there, too. In the neighborhood, the black boys taunt his son by saying, \u201cMy dad can come take your dad\u2019s house anytime he wants!\u201d The spirit behind it seems to run a little deeper than the \u201cmy dad can beat up your dad,\u201d thing we threw around when I was a kid in Houston, TX. <\/p>\n
Alvero must leave, but there are still hungry orphans there. We aren\u2019t talking about a hungry that results from missing a meal, we are talking about hungry that results from not having any food, any day. My pantry is full of luxuries, and there is a child starving. I\u2019m hurting over this today. <\/p>\n
And the racism\u2026we aren\u2019t talking about a community immaturity that results in insulting someone of another race (although this is also horrific). We are talking about a government initiative to run off people of a different race. I\u2019m hurting over this today. <\/p>\n
And the suffering of Alvero from relocation…we aren\u2019t talking about the \u201csuffering\u201d I did by having to leave an incredible community of faith in Houston in order to join another incredible community of faith in Amarillo. We are talking about the heart-tearing that must come with a decision between helping with the suffering of hungry kids and helping with the imminent danger of his own kids. I\u2019m hurting over this today. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s just not supposed to be like this. And I am supposed to be doing something about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I met a guy named Alvero this past week. Alvero stood in my office telling me about how he has spent the last years feeding hungry orphans in Zimbabwe. He\u2019s having to leave there, now, however because he is white, and where he lives, any black man can come and take any of his possessions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pO6nf-8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}