From David and Kimberly
A solid foundation. A
boost in the right direction. That's
what wedding gifts have always been about: helping a new couple get a head
start in their new life together. Most
engaged couples have a registry that helps friends and family get a sense of
the kinds of things that would be most appreciated. And so as we began to plan for our own
wedding, we thought about the question: What would we want our friends and
family to give us? Between the two of
us, we've already accumulated utensils and appliances to furnish our new home,
and it will be difficult to carry gifts like this to Myanmar (where we'll
settle after the wedding) anyway. So what would best help us get the right
start in life?
After some
thought, we realized that the best gifts would be those that can help us lay
the foundation for the kind of life
we want to build together. In our single
lives, both of us were drawn to a passage from the Bible that describes a life
well lived: “You have shown us what is good and what is required, to do
justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8). And we'd like this to be the foundation of
our life together as well. Could we ask
our friends for something that would help us lay this foundation well?
We spent some time digging a
little deeper into what the Bible means by justice and mercy, and found five
specific actions listed over and over (for those interested in the references,
see Isaiah 58:6-12, Isaiah 61:1-2, Luke 4:18-19, and James 1:27):
1) Bringing good news to the poor (including practical provision of
food, clothing, and shelter)
2) Freeing captives, prisoners, and the oppressed
3) Restoring physical function to the blind, the deaf, the lame, etc.
4) Caring for widows and orphans
5) Comforting the broken-hearted
What if our friends could help us begin doing these five
things as a couple together? And so we
came up with what we are calling the Justice and Mercy Experiment: In lieu of
traditional wedding presents, we're asking all of our friends to contribute to
a special fund. Our project—our
experiment—in our first years of marriage and beyond will be to apply all of
this money to the actions listed above.
We don't yet know the exact specifics of what we'll do with the money,
and part of the fun of it all for us will be figuring that out: discussing
which things to use the money for, trying small experiments, evaluating what
works and doesn't work. We do know that
we want to be personally involved in using the money toward these ends in our
actual community, not just writing checks to different charities, since the
point of all of this is not only to be charitable, but to craft a lifestyle
together.
Along the way, we're going to write periodic updates on this blog about what we're trying, and how things are going. We hope this blog will be a fun way for anyone who is interested to keep in touch with us and what we're up to after the wedding.
There's a link on this blog to send money via PayPal, you
can bring a check (payable to Kimberly Fleek) to the wedding, or you can send it care of Kimberly's parents at:
Ray and Sandy Fleek
1045 Towne Lake Hills East
Woodstock, GA 30189
We're looking forward to beginning life together with this great little
experiment, and to keeping you posted with updates as we go!
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| Trekking together in the mountains of northern Myanmar.
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