Mountain Shelters

I often come home from mission trips with my emotions in tatters. I stare off into space. I am sapped of strength. I cry at nothing. I sleep a lot.

I cannot get the images out of my mind of the latest experience, of the people and of the time that we have shared. The way that God has wired me is with a deep desire to help people on a real level and the kicker is that I am powerless to effect change or real growth inside of people. This part of me is “balanced” on the other hand with my innate drive for non confrontation. We read through 1 Peter together during this ten day trip to Anapra and Peter reminds those Christ followers to be ready to give an answer for the hope that they have. I love the fact that the Holy Spirit has the job of changing us. I am humbled at the thought that I get to participate in the action of the faith life expansion.

There is not too much that compares - so don’t mind me if I pause to build three shelters on the top of this mountain while I am visiting.

Mexico Again!

Here we go! About 24 hours and we head out again to my second home, Anapra, Mexico. It is such an honor to be involved in a Church that loves "all nations." God once again provided all the money that we need and once again it was at the last second. Three weeks ago we had raised about $100.00 of the $5,000.00 needed, last week we had about $2,200.00 and between Sunday and monday all of the money came in plus $500.00. So in all $5,500.00 will be used to continue construction on the Bunkhouse and fixing a house and food for the poor!
Thanks to all who gave and please pray everyday from the 16th through the 26th for protection from the evil one and for open hearts, ours and others!

Jesus’ Creed

I’ve been using Scot McKnight’s book “The Jesus Creed” as a devotional recently and it has been good. Jesus’ knack for taking the things that we wish to complicate and making them simple is demonstrated again in Mark 12. Someone asks Jesus what the most important commandment was. In other words, what is central to being a God follower? Jesus answered with the “Shema”, which was the twice daily prayer of any Jew. Every Jew in Jesus’ world would have recognized Jesus’ responce immediately from Deuteronomy 6:4-5 ““Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.” But then Jesus adds one verse from Leviticus 19:18 “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And says: “There is no commandment greater than these.”

Why are we so good at complicating what it means to follow Jesus?

Love God with all you have and love others. In theory it almost seems too easy, in practice it is the hardest of all things. Keeping things simple always helps me!

White Grace

I like winter. I have been sad that we have had only about four weeks of it so far this year, the weeks from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Then last weekend we got a good storm it went from rain to snow and dumped about 8 inches in my yard. What was so beautiful was the fact that the snow from this storm stuck to everything. Everything was painted white and bent over from the weight of it all.

What a picture of grace. Our ugliness gets exchanged for the pure righteousness of Jesus, by faith. Have you ever been stuck with the immensity of the grace of God? Has the beauty of the Everlasting One taken your breath away recently? Have you been dumbfounded by the love of Jesus? On some days the tears flow freely and God blows me away again, granting me another view of Him that I had yet to experience. Those are the white days that make the cloudy mess that we call life, bearable.

Still Laughing

The SuperBowl was in Detroit this year and living an hour northeast I took interest in the stuff that was going on around the area. One event was the “Celebrity Flag Football game” being held this past Saturday at the Pontiac Silverdome. My son Ryan had received some tickets because our team won the flag football league championship here in the Port Huron area. So we went to the game, there were 10 of us, guys and their girlfriends, my wife and I. So sitting through this terribly lame game we were at about the 50 yard line ten rows up from the field. With about two minutes to go in the game a guy without a shirt comes running across the field through the players and I’m thinking what is this shirtless guy with “I Love Flute” written on his chest doing? Then I realize it is one of the guys that I brought! I almost wet myself with laughter right then. What is worse he climbs into the seats and starts to run up the isle way on which I am seated on the end. As he is running by I say to him “keep running right on by Nick!” which is exactly the wrong thing to say because he stops and hugs me. At that moment I thought that we would get tossed out of the SilverDome into the raging snowstorm, which we didn’t. The only thing that happened (Other than Nick almost getting taken out by one of the players - Cory Redding) was the PA announcer came on and said for everyone to stay in their seats.

I am still laughing.