Volunteer Missionary Movement - USA

October 11^th

Today, October 10, is Thanksgiving Day in Canada. What a great day to thank God for special people!

 

Archbishop Desmond Tutu celebrated his 80th birthday on Friday. This event is noted in today's weekly column by Craig and Marc Kielburger: "Lessons learned from a super-laureate: What Archbishop Desmond Tutu taught two eager young teens.

 

When Craig and Marc, co-founders of Free the Children and Me to We, met Tutu for the first time in 1998 in the Netherlands for Tutu's reception of the Roosevelt Institute Freedom Award, they learned an important lesson. A red carpet and a line of international dignitaries stood by as his limousine rolled up. The door opened, Tutu emerged and promptly turned his back to everyone. Moving to the front door of the limo, he rapped on the window. Concerned, the driver rolled down the window to see what the problem was. The Archbishop took him by the hand and thanked him. Still ignoring the carpet and the VIPs, he thanked the members of his police escort and the rest of his entourage before turning his attention to the waiting crowds.

 

When the pair of stammering, awestruck teenagers were introduced to the archbishop, they squeaked out, "What do we call you?" Tutu smiled, laid gentle hands on their shoulders, and said, "My friends call me "the Arch." When Craig was in university, he mentioned to "the Arch" that he had stopped reading newspapers. They were catalogues of everything wrong with the world and he did not want to start his day facing violence and poverty.

 

"College boy!" Tutu replied, "You are looking at this the wrong way. The newspaper is God's to-do list, delivered to our front door." Every morning, Tutu brings in the paper and lays it out on the table. His children, and now his grandchildren, are invited to sit with him and read. He does not see a catalogue of ills, rather a menu of problems he can choose from to solve. The lesson? To change the world, you have to look at life through different eyes. Still not teenagers, Craig and Marc read of children their age and younger taken from their families, enslaved, to weave carpets in India and decided to do something about it.  Since then they have chosen many more items on God's menu of problems.

 

God's to-do list is long. Where will you start today?