Armchair Christian

It's been almost a month since my last post.  Sorry about that.  It's just that I've really been trying to live out a little bit more of what I have been writing to you about.  You see it's occurred to me that it's pretty easy to go to church and sit there.  And that can be a good thing - a really good thing.

Be still and know that I am God.
 - Psalm 46:10

It's so much easier to hear God when you're sitting still.  He speaks ever so softly. But eventually, after all that stillness and all the listening and all that sitting, you should probably do something, right?  Unlike football, Christianity is not a game you can play from your armchair on Sundays.  This is a concept my friend and pastor, Rob Wegner has been saying to me for years.  Back in February, I posted  Why Not Now?  In it I wrote "If not now, when will I ... help someone else with their dream?"

It was about that time that my wife, Chris introduced me to Jan Pilarski, a woman who had a dream.  Like Chris and me, Jan has a 20-something-year-old son with autism.  Jan told me she was starting a company called Green Bridge Growers, an Aquaponics Farm with a social mission to employ people with Autism.  Jan said that people with Autism, even high-functioning people with Autism, have a 90% unemployment rate.

Well, Jan decided to do something about it and start Green Bridge Growers.  To help gain insight and capital, Jan entered the McCloskey Business Plan Competition at the University of Notre Dame to earn funding for her startup.  Because I have some experience in the food service distribution industry, Jan asked if I would join her, her son, and a team of Notre Dame ESTEEM Fellows from Ireland to help.  I'm glad I said yes because I learned more from them than I could have possibly contributed to the team.  I learned about other cultures, about creativity, and about vision.  Most of all, I learned about tenacity.  Jan has spent thousands of hours on this project and I was excited to learn that her efforts culminated in winning one of the top prizes in the competition - The $15,000 Klau Family Award for Social Impact.  Simply terrific.

It's been a long time since I sold food to restaurants and I thought that chapter in my life was closed and useless.  God must have thought differently about that.  Honestly, seeing Jan and her team win this award brought me the most joy I've had in a long, long time.  I wish that kind of joy on anyone.  And so I encourage you to sit still and listen to God for a while and to be receptive to His leading on how you can use your experiences, your knowledge, your skills to help someone else with their dream.

It's Sunday afternoon.  It's game time.  Get out of the chair and into the game - you'll love it.