Dace is a twenty-three-year-old red-head with a freckled, white face that hasn’t seen much direct sunlight, even in the summer, like most northeastern Europeans. Her eyes are greenish-blue and sparkling so full of life they beg you into conversation; her wide, toothy smile never seems to end. She is truly one of the happiest, most genuine, sensitive and caring people I’ve ever met. She desperately wants to quit her teaching job and work for Buckner in Latvia, ministering to orphans; there just isn’t enough money for her in the budget. She served as one of our translators on our trip to Latvia both this summer and last.

Each night, when we returned to the Hotel Jelgava to shower off the day’s sweat (did I tell you it was HOT! there?) so the evening sweat could have its turn, we would gather outside. Since the hotel had no air-conditioning, the coolest place we could find after dinner for our evening devotionals was outside in front of the hotel in the shade where we seemed most likely to catch a gentle breeze. Toward the end of the week, Dace asked if she could share her testimony one evening.

What she wanted to tell us about was something that had happened the day before after our team had left for the day. That afternoon, the children had gone about their daily routine, which included walking thirty minutes to the closest place for swimming, a nearby river. That day, Dace had stayed and gone swimming with them.

On the way back, Dace struck up a conversation with a little orphan boy about ten years old, Ivars. Ivars, like most of those little boys, enjoyed the company of a mother figure, especially when it was Dace. Her eyes and smile could wrap you up like a warm blanket and make you enjoy it even on the hottest day.

The conversation they were having was about smoking. Ivars made the mistake of admitting to Dace that he had already started smoking, even at his tender young age. The hypocritical public relations commercials run on television by the tobacco companies in the United States belie the fact that they could lose every smoking customer in the United States for the profits they are scoring off of the rest of the world, especially among children and youth. And, before I go any further, it’s important to know that Dace was wearing a cross that our own Stephenie Cheshier made. We took about 40 of them with us and gave them to the orphans.

Dace went on to explain the hazards of smoking and somehow or another, what she said got through to Ivars. She had said things like, "Smoking is something only a stupid boy would do." Of course, if it’s your doctor or your dad saying that, "stupid" means one thing, something that can make you defensive and angry and make you want to smoke even more. If it’s an attractive young lady saying it, "stupid" is a word that carries the kind of weight that can even make a ten-year-old want to quit cold-turkey.

Walking along, Ivars pointed up to Dace’s cross and said, "Maybe that cross can help me stop smoking." Then, with all the skill of Philip extrapolating the meaning of the gospel from Isaiah’s ancient prophecy to the Ethiopian eunuch while they sat in chariot on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza (Acts 8:26-38), Dace took Ivars’ question and, running with it, "told him the good news about Jesus" (v. 35, NIV).

The good news about Jesus, remember. Ivars had asked if the cross could help him stop smoking. With grace and compassion, Dace said, "No. The cross cannot help you do anything. But, the Jesus who died on the cross can give you eternal life if you will ask him into your heart." At that, very much like the Ethiopian had done with Philip, Ivars asked Dace if he could ask Jesus into his heart right then and there. Dace said Ivars then turned to sky and with a very silly tone of voice yelled out loud, "Come into my heart, Jesus!" Dace then told Ivars, "You have to really mean it. Jesus will come into your heart, but you have to be serious and not just playing a game." Then, with a very sincere tone of voice, little Ivars turned his head toward heaven, threw his arms open wide and said, "Jesus, come into my heart!"

Have you ever had that conversation? Not with Dace. Have you ever had that conversation with Jesus? If not, who are you talking with about your loneliness, depression, addictions, "stupid" sins, the stuff that makes you an emotional and spiritual orphan when you were meant to be a part of God’s family? Is it possible that the balance of eternity hangs on just having a simple conversation?

Last Sunday, we sang the words from the beautiful old hymn, "My faith has found a resting place, not in device or creed . . . It is enough for me that Jesus died and that he died for me" (My Faith Has Found a Resting Place, Eliza E. Hewitt, 1891). Is that your confession? If not, in what or in whom or you placing your trust to help you find your way in this world?

It’s been some week, hasn’t it? It’s been so hot that hundred year old oak trees are dropping in their tracks. No relief in sight either, from heat or dryness. 100+ degree temps as far as the eye can see to the humid horizon! But, no matter how hot or humid it is, at least we can go to work or the grocery store without worrying about a rocket dropping on our heads.

In Israel and Lebanon, they’re still fighting a war no one has ever or ever will win. More orphans were made just this week, as the parents of innocent children were slaughtered just trying to make a living in a place where you can’t quit working just because bombs are dropping. And, stateside, 3,000 so-called evangelicals met in Washington, D.C., at the behest of a San Antonio Baptist pastor, to encourage Israel that war in their country is a good thing because it will hasten second coming of Jesus. As though we can reach into heaven and push God’s clock further along by dropping bombs on our neighbors or as though Jesus would ever have anything to do with a war that would make more widows and orphans and threaten to draw the world into nuclear holocaust because he needs a highly radiated site to return to earth! What stupidity! All in the name of the Jesus who died for all that all might live!

Just for the record, if the only way I can ever be called an evangelical is not by calling people to Jesus but by blessing war in the name of Jesus, then count me out.

I take great risk being misunderstood in saying that. Some may take that to mean I’m bringing politics into the pulpit. Some may take it to mean that I have no appreciation for those who have served our country in the military during times of conflict. Hear me clearly, neither of those is true. I have nothing but the most profound respect for those who have, like my nephew just now returning from Iraq and unlike many in the current war-prone government, been willing to serve their nation in uniform. If you have been willing to lay down your life so that others might live, I salute you. It’s just that I have no interest in being associated with a so-called evangelical movement that takes no shame whatsoever in using their spiritual resources to bless killing in the name of God.

I will never forget what Bill Curry asked of me a few years ago, just about a year before he died. Bill had served his country faithfully and patriotically in the Marines in World War II and fought in the horror that was Iwo Jima. Here this brave old soldier was, well into his 80’s, grasping my hand as he left worship one day and, with tears in his eyes, asking me, "Pastor, do you think God will ever forgive me for all those men I killed?" Some sixty years after he fired his weapon for the last time, old memories still haunted him. Many who served their nation in combat for good reasons sometimes come to hate what war made of them. Will we someday hate ourselves for what we’re doing now to protect our right to our middle American lifestyle in the name of God?

Of course, all of this on the heels of the news that Iraq may well be slipping into civil war. A civil war that will never end in our lifetime, or in the short lifetimes of young American men and women who will give their lives. Give their lives because a very small group of people thought that, when we are afraid of what might happen to us, and encouraged by pastors calling for just war from the pulpits of Jesus, we ought to start the war before someone else gets a chance to. You know, when in doubt, shoot and kill first, let the historians ask questions later!

Then, like a lot of people who have too much to drink, Mel Gibson said some really stupid things, about Jews, among other things. Some are saying that, not because he got drunk but because he chose the wrong race to curse, his career can never be rehabilitated even after he gets out of rehab.

Whatever you think about Mel Gibson, it was hard not to sit up and pay attention when an interview of him discussing his addiction to alcohol was replayed this week. He was talking about how helpless he feels in the grip of it all. A man with enough money to finance his own $200 million films, helpless? That’s what he said. Like, maybe the money we all seek really isn’t the end-all-be-all we’ve been led to believe. The Ethiopian eunuch was the Secretary of the Treasury for the queen of Ethiopia. Money was no problem for him. He was no where near as wealthy as the man who made The Passion of the Christ. Mel Gibson said of his addiction, “I don’t understand it. All I can do is cry out, “‘Help’” (ABC’s Good Morning America, Monday, July 31, 2006)! Kind of like Ivars. Just throwing his arms open to heaven and asking Jesus for the help no one else can give.

By the way, what do you think happened when Ivars cried out to Jesus? Right then and there on that road, what do you think happened?

Jesus said, "‘It is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’ They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’ Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’"

Do you believe that? That we only kill others and kill ourselves because we have yet to discover that, what we really seek is found in Jesus alone? Do you believe that?

Philip did. The Ethiopian did. Dace did. Ivars did. And, they all had conversations about it with Jesus.

Have you?