{"id":564,"date":"2010-12-31T15:26:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-31T15:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoe.com\/wheresjoe\/?p=564"},"modified":"2010-12-31T15:26:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-31T15:26:00","slug":"gift-that-keeps-on-giving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=564","title":{"rendered":"gift that keeps on giving…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our family’s gift to Jesus this Christmas was a financial gift to Heifer International. \u00a0<\/strong> We all kicked in some money to buy chickens for a Third World village. \u00a0 Heifer raises animals in America then ships them to these villages. \u00a0 The provision is that once, say, the chickens have other chickens, the baby chicks are to be given to other villagers, who in turn give the next offspring to other villagers… It’s a gift that keeps on giving, in a big<\/em> \u00a0 way… \u00a0 I found my self in a conversation with a Libertarian at the YMCA. \u00a0 He said he was not particularly in favor of entitlement programs. \u00a0 I said we’d just spent five years in the inner city of Cleveland on the front line, if you will. \u00a0 Kids growing up trying daily to dodge hunger, needles, bullets… While the kids in the suburbs (and many small towns) have a way<\/em> \u00a0 better shot at life. \u00a0 And I believe it’s a spiritual imperative we help level the playing field. \u00a0 (And no, that doesn’t have a damn<\/em> \u00a0 thing to do with socialism. \u00a0 It has everything to do with Christian love.) \u00a0 As coincidence would have it, last night I stepped in to help coach my son’s home school basketball team. \u00a0 Most of the kids are from suburban Atlanta. \u00a0 They show up in Lexus’s (etc.) driven by their parents and play in $100 basketball shoes. \u00a0 Of the teams I coached at the Cleveland Rec Center in the city, these kids showed up primarily on foot or by bus (through some pretty rough neighborhoods). and their shoes, for the most part, were bought used in thrift stores. \u00a0 What’s more, many of them were going home to places without a father; or to parents who are alcoholics, or crack addicts… \u00a0 Note: \u00a0 While at the Open Door Community in urban Atlanta, I interviewed a volunteer here who just retired as legal counsel for the Weather Chanel. \u00a0 In her retirement, she has become involved with “Leadership Atlanta.”<\/strong> \u00a0 This is a year long program for seniors who want to “…give back to the community.” \u00a0 Each month there is a day long seminar on various social issues in Atlanta. \u00a0 Some of the topics include: race relations; education, health care… \u00a0 The intent of the program (each class has 75 students) is to not only expose people to the issues, but create “leaders” who will take the ball and either create programs, or get involved with existing programs, to impact some of these issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our family’s gift to Jesus this Christmas was a financial gift to Heifer International. \u00a0 We all kicked in some money to buy chickens for a Third World village. \u00a0 Heifer raises animals in America then ships them to these …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}