Go and Do by Jay
Milbrandt
This book was not
what I expected but glad I read it. Author Jay Milbrandt takes the
old idea of go to school. Get good grades. Get a good job. Work
twenty years and retire happy. Blows it right out of the water. With
a world so caught up with self this book is a relief. The world is a
smaller place today. Tribal hills of eastern countries have smart
phones while still living in wooden huts. It is not till you have
seen the lack of basic needs do we discover how different the world
is from the U.S.
The travels from
Jay's college days to his service in the Global Justice Program. As a
young law student one summer he entered into the Go and Do
experience. Forever changing his life and the lives of others.
How often we too
want to go and make a difference when it is those experiences that
end up making a difference in our lives. Though I may never be able
to travel to far away lands, Go and Do made me see the world a little
different than when I first began reading the book.
I can relate to how
the author put it, “I like doing the little that I can with the
little bit that I have.” As Jay shows, just a little bit can make a
big difference in someone's life even around the other side of the
world.
He opens up with
outreach. The basis of the “Great Commission.” Yet outreach can
be the hardest action to get fellow Christians to do. At first you
feel as if you are doing nothing. Feeling unprepared and thinking you
could be doing something better with your time. Not so, as the author
points out over and over again that just being present can make all
the difference in the world in the lives of others. Beyond what we
might expect.
Within the book we
go along with Jay Milbrandt on his journey and into the Go and Do
experience. We see the hardships. We feel the distress one goes
through trying to help to make a difference in the lives of those
less fortunate than us. When I say less and mean really less
fortunate. Imagine if you could. Being woken in the middle of the
night having to run for your lives. Your family scattered to the
wind. Death all around you. These are just some of the conditions
faced by our brothers and sisters in developing countries. Developed
by who? It is always the children who are made to suffer the most.
Rich or poor, we as
Christians all have the ability and desire to “Go and Do.” Sure
traveling overseas sounds great, but it is not a vacation. We come
back with stories of the lives of others. Forever touched deeply by
our fundamental interaction.
Many of us dream of
“Going” but never “Doing.” Go and Do is a challenge and a
dare by the author. To dare to “Go” and get involved in something
that helps others which in turn makes us come alive inside. There is
the point. To come alive inside. Something corporate America has no
desire to fulfill.
Either working
globally of locally. Each one of us has been called to “Go and Do.”
Just many of us seem to ignore that voice of God calling upon us.
Ignoring it for a calling of self-absorbed infatuation with the
American lie spawned by corporation after corporation. A world that
screams, “Forget about others. Get what you can for yourself.” A
world of haves and have-not. The haves seem fleeting standing before
God on the day of judgment.
A great call to
action and guide book for getting started. I highly recommend reading
“Go and Do” by Jay Milbrandt.
