More on Discernment

     There are times in our lives when we truly see the depth of love and affection we have for one another. In the continuing pursuit of faithfulness to Christ, marital bliss, and responsible living, the wife and I have prayed, shared, discussed, sought out, and sometimes even received unbidden, wisdom on how others pursue the call of God to remain an active and vibrant part of Kingdom life after retirement (as if retirement meant anything other than drawing off a different bucket of income).

      We enjoy our time living in the wilds of northern PA.  The leaves are off the trees. The cold season has set in. The vents are closed. The wood is stacked, and we are reminded yet again of just how blessed we are to be living where we are. And on that note...

     The Pennsylvania Game Commission began reintroducing Fishers into our area a few years back. The Fisher (sometimes erroneously referred to as a Fisher Cat) is a forest dwelling, carnivorous mammal related to the Marten. They grow to 15-20 pounds (or more) and 36 inches (or more) with males larger than females. They have very sharp claws and can be quite aggressive. And as such, they are less than helpful for the turkey, quail, and other such populations in the area. The Game Commission has adopted a highly conservative policy regarding the animal to ensure it's re-population, expansion, and survival, much to the chagrin of many small game hunters.

     I bring this up as we have seen several in the area, even one in our yard a few evenings back. We have numerous other species of wildlife which won't be disclosed as the hollow in which we live is mostly posted and only property owners are permitted to hunt (although we occasionally have to chase others off the mountain).

     All this is to say we are happy with our lives. We recognize God's blessings on us. And we are actively engaged in several local ministries.  All this in addition to our family and social engagements.  And yet there is a longing to do more for Him who has done so much for us.

And so we continue to listen to what the Lord might yet do with us, being confident the neither comfort nor even contentment should keep anyone from the clarion call of Christ to serve as He wishes and not as we desire and hope He also wishes.

    Last month this meant a trip to Charlotte, NC to the offices of the African Bible Colleges President to debrief Glen's trip to Malawi in June.  The reports were good.  Much progress has been made and we were invited and even encouraged to make another trip to the campus to provide some further encouragement, but so too to let Carol see the setting and the work, the challenges and the blessings.  And, after careful and prayerful discussion, we made the decision to more forward on further exploring what might be ahead...and the hope from ABC staff is that this might even extend to a brief visit to the Liberia campus to see what work might be possible there.

So, the lesson we're learning is that if we will simply listen and express a willingness to serve, doors may open, opportunities may arise, and decisions may need to be made...but we pursue that prayerfully, slowly, purposefully, unselfishly, and faithfully.  This next trip or two this coming year, may yet reveal more fully God's will in all of this.  In the meantime we are praying for a clear conviction about the matter and ask you consider joining us...

More to come...SOON!

 

This Love....

This is the love of my life...second to Jesus, but still, the love of my life.  She was a gift from God at a particular time in  my life when I couldn't love myself and she loved me deeper and deeper into God's grace. She is the one I want to present to Christ as a "pure and spotless bride", even as He will, His church, to his Father.

But there are times when we seem to muddle through life more than we master it.  There are tussles here and travails there that have made this incredible adventure of life worth living. She adds the pizazz, she sometimes corrects the wrongs, she seems to know when to back off and when to push down on that accelerator. I think, if more men had as godly a wife as this, marriages would be a whole lot healthier.

Now, most of the folks we know and hang around have had some fairly significant time together. We're over 40 years now. But not very many have, what I consider to be, as healthy a marriage... longer sometimes, but not as healthy. We share everything. We don't have separate bank accounts, or charge accounts.  Each of us has each other's email passwords, and we even share fingerprint identities on each other's phones.  We not only consider it healthy, we consider it an honor that we love and trust each other as much as we do.

BUT, there are also times when we don't agree, and building on the previous blog post, I want to say that we don't seem to agree on our calling at this stage in our lives. Hence the conundrum, in the previous post.

I, being the more adventurous type, see any long term engagement as a field of compromise that arises from trying to keep everything in balance. She, on the other hand, see longevity as a rootedness, a strength.

And so we talk and we dream of what next, how to provide for both her perceived desire/need for rootedness and my desire/need for change. I've had some well-meaning folks try to steer me into the view that longevity is always a blessing (even as I have noted some significant compromise in their witness in order to maintain their position), or their view that the perennial "novice" status is almost always less than helpful.

My response is usually a "perhaps, but without the stranger, novice, explorer, you'd have no way of doing what you do.  It takes folks willing to break the ice, folks who would prefer to find a new job, or a new location, or a new setting, than to compromise their principles, to set the standard or to break the ground on which you have settled."

And yet, search as I may, there seems to be little psycho-babble on this issue that doesn't, in my opinion, lean toward compromise. 

One of the issues that seem to frame this matter for many is the perceived need for friendships, support, social capital, and that has never been something I felt a need to invest in. All of that is invested in my wife and, after Jesus Christ, she is my all-sufficient source of encouragement and strength.

I used to joke that my dream lifestyle was a one room cabin in the woods, 500 miles from anywhere, with a chair, a bed, a pot, and cup, plate and spoon...she said, "I'll come visit you on weekends." I love my wife.

There is something exciting about strangeness, novelty, the learning curve, the uphill battle that is exiting. Not knowing the lay of the land...leaning entirely on the Lord for understanding and support. And there is something about having to develop a deep and abiding relationship with anyone but Jesus Christ and my wife, that I just don't generally see as having value.

I'm sure the psychological community has a perfect understanding of my bad potty training, or my mother's nakedness, or some such basis for these feelings, but I just wink and praise God for the gift of being able to be by myself and enjoy it, as long as I am walking with the Lord and can get my regular wifey-fix.

Until the day when we are at home with Jesus, I'll continue my journey. This world, this house, this country...are not my home. I'm just passing through.

But even as I say that, I am indebted to and want make known my deep gratitude to the MANY along the way who wave, smile, and blow kisses as I go past.  You are loved! And you KNOW who you are!!!

Soli Deo Gloria,

The time has come...

We're in Thailand. And I'm, in part, trying to discern a call that may never come. We've visited and encouraged missionaries and feel good about that, but there is an unsettled part of my soul.

Throughout my life, after my conversion, I have clearly discerned the call of God, to go here, to do this, to leave that, to speak a word...but since retiring and renouncing the jurisdiction of the now apostate Presbyterian Church (USA), I'm feeling a bit lost, joyfully so in many ways.  I have surrendered my ordination. I have cast off the outmoded and inherently prone to pride and power, structure of denominationalism. And I have moved to the mountain wherein I await God's direction.

In that I have wrestled with finding a call.  I have preached here and there. I lead a Bible Study now and again.  I am part of a worshipping community, but am seeking something more.

Sometimes I am jealous of those pastors who are content to see retirement as their "reward for faithful service" a time when they can choose their calling, and generally choose golf, good wine, time with grandchildren, and time by the pool...who may present the seashells they have collected in retirement to the Lord on His return as their share of the talents he has given.

But I feel the heaviness of guilt, when He has given us such resources - experience, knowledge, wisdom, education, a secure source of funding AND TIME.  How is it not that we should pursue even more passionately the call of God? And are we truly convinced that growing old with a cute family and a comfortable house, a nice car, good friends and a worshipping community is enough.

To the left is looking down on a   pathway. Yes the metal grid is for vines to grow over to shield those waking on the pathway under them from the sun.  Chiang Rai, Thailand has seen the worst flooding in 30 years.  Nan, Thailand the worst in 100 years.  Next door in Burma, women and children are raped by the military with impunity. Here in Thailand boys and girls are sold into the sex slave trade, daily, by the hundreds, perhaps even thousands.  And one of the top recipients of those sex slaves, is the USA.

And we sit around our tables giving God thanks that we are safe. Oh we worry about the economy. We argue about who the next president will be and how awful it would be if so and so won. And lives are destroyed while we enjoy that glass of wine feeling no guilt and no responsibility.  "We're retired." "We're too old." "We've done our part." "They made the mess, let them clean it up." "I'm doing my part. I give my tithe...."

It would be easiest to give in to the complacency.  My children and grandchildren are important. I love them. But Jesus has said that no one who loves their family more than Him is of much use to Him...

He restored Peter by asking "do you love me more than these?" (John 21:15-25)

"Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; any one who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." Matthew 10:37  

So how do we, who have discerned God's call to go here, to leave here and go there, to leave there and go there, throughout our lives of ministry, settle so easily and unapologetically, into retirement.

Asking for a friend...

Living out a pardon...

 

 

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 This month's Homepage Network Message 

So having pontificated...

 

So having pontificated, enumerated, elaborated, fulminated, explicated, elucidated, and otherwise commentated on my twisted understanding of the word "mission" I regress to the matter at hand.

Perhaps by now the reader has forgotten the quote of the day;

"There is a sweet connection and understanding 

that we don’t have with others."  

While it may sound a bit arrogant, there is a special connection between those who have engaged that international endeavor I refer to as mission.  It's an experience shared with complete strangers leading to:

• the ability to look at one's own culture in a far more objective fashion than those who have never spent extended times in other countries;

• the ability to appreciate, embrace, and laugh at strangeness while understanding the truly "strange one" is oneself;

•  the ability to appreciate true poverty being not just physical, economic or social, but spiritual; and
  

•  the ability to understand there really is no such thing as home this side of glory...

 just to name a few.

Missionaries look at life differently.  They do church differently.  The do life differently.  There is a strangeness to everything.  Convenience and comfort are seen to be the tragedy and the trap that they truly are.  Whining about the weather, or one's health, or politics, or one's neighbor is seen for what it is, petty.

And I think, in many cases, there is generated:

• an unquenchable longing within;
  

• a foreignness to every experience;

• a reassessment of the value of everything; and
  

• a desire to make a difference...

which won't be satiated this side of glory.

There is a glimmer in the eye when missionaries meet, particularly if they have been in service together, or in the same country, or field of work, or with the same or a similar organization.

It may be because we share experiences that few have.  It may be because we understand the confusion of life in general.  It may because we know the price so many pay for their faith in the countries in which we have served. I'm not sure exactly what it is. 

Whatever it is...

"There is a sweet connection and understanding 

that we don’t have with others." 

and a longing to make that connection as frequently as possible while knowing the connection to come will be even better, as we pray, Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus.

 

 

 

Misrepresentation or Misunderstanding?

 

THOSE WHO KNOW, WILL GET IT.

I just had an email conversation with a former missionary and personal friend that has the quote of the day - In talking of the connection we make with other (former) International Missionaries she wrote: "There is a sweet connection and understanding that we don’t have with others."  

I've long felt that "mission" is often misused to consolidate the broader outreach of a congregation.  As such it conflates the congregation's ministry (local/domestic) with its mission (international/global). 

The confusion comes from the broader culture's own misuse of the term in such matters a "mission statement." The term "mission statement," tries to sound bigger and better than the "purpose statement" which most simply function as. 

And in most cases this results from an ignorance of the derivation of the term mission - a Latin word meaning one sent.  The word was drawn from the Roman tendency to send a representative of their interests to foreign domains. The U.S.A. government still uses the word more reasonably in declaring its foreign embassies to be "missions."

A missionary represents the sender, and in that sense it might be used in situations where the congregational members truly understand the USA to be foreign territory.  The U.S.A. IS NOT THE CHRISTIAN'S HOME. Their home is heaven and they are not to represent the USA's interests, nor even their particular congregation's or denomination's interests, but those of their Heavenly Father as His representative.

But few congregations fully understand this.  Just take a look at the godless placement of flags in the sanctuaries that dot the landscape.  The USA flag takes the place of precedence by standing stage right of the Christian flag clearly indicating the congregation is staunchly (or ignorantly) declaring its fidelity to the USA government above God's righteous decrees.

(By way of confession, I actually moved the flags in a local sanctuary to give the Christian flag its rightful place stage right. And am keeping watch to see if anyone actually notices.)

This is the very reason I bristle at any Christian's use of the term "patriot," or "American Christian" or other such terminology that sets as precedent their allegiance to their home country over their role as emissaries of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Even more so, one doesn't go "on a mission" or do "mission work" one serves as a missionary for the King of Kings serving obediently, even unto death, willingly undergoing the machinations of unjust governance, accusations, and other mistreatment, while standing for Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

As Paul writes to Timothy: "No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer. Similarly, anyone who competes as an athlete does not receive the victor's crown except competing according to the rules" [2 Timothy 2:4-5]. I often think that most athletes have a stronger commitment to their goals than the average self-professing yet worldly Christian who is stuck in the muck and mire of everyday living.   

 

So why would any believer get caught up in secular activities, EXCEPT AND ONLY to promote God's values, God's standards, God's morals to a lost and hurting, broken and belligerent, hardhearted people?  

There is but one mission, the Missio Dei, the Mission of God.  If one is truly a born again believer there is no other goal, no other effort, no other focus, no other concern in the world but everything must, of necessity, advance the cause of Christ, in the name of Christ, or it is a useless, meaningless, worthless endeavor. 

 

Weeding the Garden

  

Work at 12 Monks Hill