Our Lives are Meant for Others
Life lived for others means yours is a living sacrifice. It’s so easy to take it easy. Turning away from confronting your own pain and ugliness seems freeing. Running away from the pain of others also looks like safety. But there is no healing when pain is avoided. An honest life is a brave life. Navigating your own reality and standing with people as they confront theirs risks your comfort.
Life in Christ is heavy. It’s only made light by giving your burdens over to Him. To do that, you must be close to Him and bring Him into every moment of your life and move you make. When He is part of your mourning, He truly gives comfort. When He is recognized in your joy, He gives you His peace. He desires to be close to you and stand with you through the dark and the light. Running away when it’s dark will only make the burdens heavier.
Life is not made light by avoiding what is heavy, but by embracing what is heavy; by entering so deeply into life with Him that pain is real, struggle is real, and therefore healing and joy are real. The Lord took on flesh to be a voluntary sacrifice. The light of the empty tomb comes after the Cross. Dying for others as He did means suffering with and for others as He did. And their joy will be yours. Their peace will be yours. Their healing will be yours…when your life is given away for them. This is when you find your true self…by being willing to lose yourself.
By: Katrina Bitar
Sponsor the cost to send one leader on a YES Trip: $500
Equipped leaders make our trips impactful and transformative. We send at least 3 leaders on every trip. The most valuable thing you can do for our program is to invest in our leaders. By offering them the hands-on experience of leading a trip, you give them opportunity to grow in their YES leadership abilities and in their lives as servants of Christ and His Church.
Sponsor part of a YES Trip:
A meal for a YES Team: $300
Transportation for an entire YES Weekend: $500
Enable a group of students to share food and fellowship with someone in need: $25
Give towards a service opportunity on a trip: $50, $150, $250
Sponsor a student’s participation in a YES Trip: $175
Help us provide financial assistance to students who are unable to offer a trip donation.
Yes Trip Testimony:
“The YES College Day was an excellent experience because it looked at service through a different lens than the traditional service project day. Though coat drives, dinners, and other traditional activities are excellent ministries and incredibly necessary, YES focuses on interacting with the community in different ways.
Through personal level interactions with the community, we appealed to many different types of poverty that those around us struggle with. These situations bring out the love, patience, joy, and other fruits of the Spirit in us and whoever we are interacting with.
As Orthodox Christians, this is the life we are called to struggle to obtain and the YES Program does a great job of giving us and the community a completely natural glimpse of the beauty this can bring to our lives and the lives of those around us.”
– Peter
