Reflections From Ephesus

During a recent trip to explore the possibility of work in Turkey, I was able to spend a day in Ephesus. It is a huge archaeological dig that has been in process for much of the last century. What has been uncovered and reassembled is breathtaking. This was my first time to visit any site that has a key role in the Bible. It was surreal thinking that the apostles Paul and John would have been seeing the same structures. It was awe inspiring to stand in the amphitheater where Paul addressed the Ephesians and to see the harbor where they had their tearful farewell. This was one of the great cities of Rome and one of the cities where the early church was founded. Yet as the water receded from the harbor and earthquakes hit, the city died and soon was forgotten. There now actually is a small town nearby. We met with a couple of believers who work there - they told us there are no fellowships of believers meeting in that town.

One can't help but consider the parallels especially as we experience the current upheavals in our own civilization. A great city and civilization that must have seen impregnable and never-ending is now just an interesting archaeological dig. And the city where the Apostles themselves lived and where one of the first churches in history was established no longer has a single church. Yet the indicators were already there even as John penned revelation - John, who tradition holds spent his last years in Ephesus. We visited the place he is purported to be buried. In the letters to the churches in Revelation, Ephesus is the church who Christ rebukes for having "forsaken their first love."


Standing in that place and reflecting on those words, I could not help but be reminded that no people has an entitlement to God's favor nor any civilization a promise of longevity. In fact, it is when we begin to rest on those assumptions that complacency creeps in and we risk losing our first love. I could not help but be saddened to think that this place, so rich in the history of God's revelation, now is practically without a witness. When I look at my own culture as we argue over nativity scenes, when I see charitable giving as the first thing to go when economic times are uncertain, and when I am often confronted with a myopic view of what it means to be church, I wonder what would the content of a Revelation-style letter to the churches in our nation and our time in history be? Like the Ephesians, we are called to repent when we have lost our first love. We are called to recommit ourselves to being carriers of His Word to a nation and world who need to hear it. Just some reflections caused by a recent experience in the light of our current times.

Lost Voices

Well, my great plans for a travel blog during my trip to Prague didn't work out. I'm back home now. It was a great trip, though.

The most memorable, though, was a trip to Terezin I took on Saturday. It was the location of a Jewish Ghetto during the Nazi occupation - many lost their lives there due to horrible conditions. 84,000 passed through, ending up in the more well-known places of horror like Auschwitz where they lost their lives.

In one room, the wall was covered with names of those who perished. But it wasn't just anyone - it was limited to children. The tragedy was overwhelming. As I looked at the birth dates, I realized these people would be my parents' age. Most were born in the 30's, but perished from 1942-1945. Thousands of lives lost - what contributions would they have made to the world had they not been destroyed by that evil? How many children and grandchildren would now be in the world today if that generation of children had been allowed to live.

As you walk into the room, you are met by a photo of a boy of about 12 years old. Here is the poem he wrote while in the ghetto. He later died in a concentration camp.

A little garden,
Fragrant and full of roses.
The path is narrow
And a little boy walks along it.
A little boy, a sweet boy,
Like that growing blossom.
When the blossom comes to bloom,
The little boy will be no more.

To read such words in the context of that place created an incredible sense of sadness. Yet even today, children's lives are cut short by hunger, war, and sex trafficking and their innocence is destroyed by the self-centeredness of many adults. It must grieve the heart of God.

Praying for Us - They Really Mean It!

Last weekend Shawn, Rebekah, and I traveled down to Tallahassee to visit the folks at Killearn United Methodist Church. This church, and particularly a women's fellowship group, have been supporting us and praying for us since we first started preparing to go to Kaz back in 1995. They invited us down to help kick off a day of service they were doing in the community, then share with them in their worship services on Sunday (4 services, no less).

It was truly a joy to be with them and see the enthusiasm of the people who turned out on a Saturday to go out and serve. But the greatest blessing was the number of women from the fellowship group who came up to us - many had never even met us - and asked knowingly about our family and ministry. They had been praying for us. One woman - Mrs Dorothy, is 91 years old. She asked very specifically about things I had shared about in newsletters many months ago. She asked about each of our children, again knowing what they were up to, remembering what we've shared about them over the years.

We've had this experience before, but it always humbles me when we meet others who say they pray for us and really mean it. It is truly the lifeline of all people - would that we all prayed for one another with that same fervor that we as missionaries are blessed to receive.

Economic woes or opportunity for faith?

Like many folks, I've been afraid to even look at my retirement accounts for fear of how much lower the value is than it was just a week ago, not to mention a year ago. I get nervous when I hear predictions of economic collapse. I am tempted to get impatient with the gas stations with no gas here in Atlanta this week. I want to grumble about paying $4.50 a gallon after waiting in line when I do find a pump. And I wonder at the intensity and meanness of the political dialogue (if one could call it that!).

But what if I just stop for a few minutes and consider the things that are not on the radar screen of most of us in the USA? Even if my retirement vaporized, the fact I am in a house still puts me among the wealthiest people in the world. If our whole economy were to collapse - I'd be no worse off than the many friends we had in Kazakhstan when we moved there in 1996. I don't like paying $4.50/gallon for gas, but in most countries it's much higher, and the vast majority of people in this world don't even own a car. And as inane as the political debate is and the meanness of the tone, at least varying opinions are allowed and I'm not likely to be shot by someone who holds an opposing view as mine.

I don't know where all the current challenges will lead, but I do know that the Lord does not want us to be myopically focused only on that which affects us. RIght now, hundreds of Christians in the Orissa State of India have fled to the jungles after having their houses burned in a wave of militant Hindu violence. Dozens have been killed. Yet that hasn't shown up once on my home screen of Google's top five news stories. In our churches, are we praying for our brothers and sisters in India in addition to praying for our own economy and our retirement accounts?

Lest anyone think I'm standing in judgement here, let me hasten to assure that I include myself in this. I am astonished at how quickly even someone who lived in a collapsed economy for 10 years among people with limited freedom and now who has seen poverty around the world can get grumpy about waiting 15 minutes to get gas and having to pay more for it! I expect Shawn could identify such a person - she has to live with him!

I guess I would encourage myself and all of us who testify to Christ as Lord that we need to ask Him to help us see the world as He sees it and to maintain His heart for the world, even in times when our self-centered nature pulls us toward self-pity. Especially in uncertain times as this, we can be witnesses to faith in a sovereign Lord, for whom NONE of this is a surprise or even a "blip" on his time line. Can the God - who gives strength to the believers in Orissa who choose death rather than recant their faith - can that God be trusted to see us through these times, regardless of who gets elected, which way the stocks bounce, or whether or not the local gas pump is empty? Let's allow the uncertainty of the times help us not focus on the uncertainty but on God's faithfulness and constancy.

Russian Language at the Beach

I'm on vacation, but while playing on the computer, I realized it has been over a month since my last post. If I don't post now, my usual pattern of lack of follow-through will consume this blog. So, a vacation blog. We are at the beach - much needed vacation. Shawn and I with our younger two children, Jon & Naomi, plus 4 Duggins children - Hannah, Ruslan, Lydia, Albina. Out in the water today, I heard "Vada kholodnaya". Russian! Since returning to the US, we don't hear Russian much - when we do, our ears tune in and our hearts leap. It was a teenage girl speaking to a boy. Then she spoke typical teen-English to the other boy. So I introduced myself. Turns out, she was adopted 7 years ago from Kazakhstan! The Russian-speaking boy had been adopted just 5 months ago, along with a biological sister, also from Kazakhstan. This family then has two biological children. So we got to speak some Russian to the kids, then visit with the parents. The kids had come from near Pavlodar, a few hours north of Karaganda where we'd lived.

As we spoke with the parents, it reminded me of the many adopting parents we had known over the years. It is a grueling process, a real emotional roller coaster with the excitement of bringing home children mixed with the complete dependence on the whim of the local officials, who often see opportunities for personal financial gain. I congratulated these folks on going through it twice. It was good to see these kids - a happy ending to the story.

3 Weddings and a Couple Doctor Appointments

I just returned from 3 weddings of nieces and nephews. And although I don't anicipate a funeral, ironically I had appointments this week with a cardiologist and a orthopaedist. (Nothing serious in either department - routine check with the former, working on a bum shoulder with the latter). However, seeing these young folks get married and seeing my other nieces and nephews being all growed up, having Rebekah finish college, etc. You just can't help but ponder the movement of time!

A colleague told me that on his annual checkup when he turned 50, the doctor warned him that the body is designed to last 50 years, so things will likely start going wrong. Hmmm. At 48, that does give me pause to thought. Another generation enters the scene with excitement and potential. Most of the young folks at the weddings were solid believers, desiring to serve God. I see the generation above me in their twilight years, some already with the Lord. Many who are also solid believers who have allowed themselves to be used mightily by God.

The winds of change come and go. Fads, fashions, wars, kingdoms. But God will always raise up a new generation to carry His word in their hearts and to live it in their actions.

Into the Future

(The following text is from my e-mail "diary" I send out every few weeks. It's something I started way back when we first went to Kazakhstan. You can get these via e-mail by sending an e-mail to Ramsays-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.)

Weekend before last Shawn, Naomi, and I were in Western NY to attend Rebekah's graduation from Houghton College. We are very proud of her accomplishments and look forward to seeing what the Lord has in store for her. She majored in History. For her senior seminar project, she studied the culture where she grew up, doing a major project on the impact of collectivization on the Kazakh people during Stalin's years. It is neat to see how the Lord is already integrating the experience our children had growing up into their adult lives.

As the graduates paraded across the stage, I could not help but wonder what the future holds. What sort of world will they be ministering in? The week before her graduation, we had a 2-day intensive session with a handful of staff and missionaries at The Mission Society to consider that question for ourselves as a ministry. We took a look out 25 years and gave thought as to what sort of world it might be - painting a picture of the horizon out there and our place in it. It was a good exercise to help move us away from thinking in today's set of assumptions. We all know that the rate of change seems always to accelerate.

We tried to imagine what the world will be like in 2033 and what would be the shape of the religious landscape. We know that mission will be a calling for believers until Christ Himself returns. But what forms will it take then? How will those who call Jesus Lord and Saviour best communicate that Good News to others? And given those possibilities, what do we need to be doing now as believers and as a mission agency to prepare ourselves for that world? This whole process is a precursor to a year of long range planning we will be doing with our missionaries worldwide. When one begins to look ahead, it can be overwhelming. Just looking around at the world today can cause a person to want to retreat into a fairly closed-off, isolated life, just ignoring the world. 80,000 dead in China. Conflict in the Middle East that seems it will still be going in 2033. Election years that evoke ever-increasing cynicism. AIDS in Africa. The warnings of limited oil from my childhood seeming now to become reality. Collapse of morality and basic social institutions. The list can go on and on.

But this should not scare us off as believers. God does some of His best work in the midst of human chaos and tragedy. He does not call us to be ignorant, nor does He call us to despair. But we are to fully engage the world in whatever location He has placed us.

That's what comes to mind as I think of these young folks completing their studies. I've gotten to know many of Rebekah's friends -these and other young folks I've met among our other children's friends and our young interns serving with The Mission Society. I think of the young believers we worked with in Kazakhstan. When I think of these folks, I can't help but be convinced that God is preparing a new body of Christ-followers who will be ready to engage this newly messed up world. He is always there in the present as well as in the horizon!

Bragging Time - I mean "objective evaluation of your child" Time

OK, I won't normally use this blog to brag on my kids - but when a guy's daughter graduates from college and has professors gushing to him about what a great student she is, it's hard to think about much else. This weekend Shawn, Naomi, and I went up to Houghton, New York to attend Rebekah's college graduation. She majored in history. Last week, she completed her final assignment - a 70-page senior seminar paper which she also had to defend before a committee of professors. The topic - the transformation of the Kazakh culture from a nomadic people to Soviet citizens. This is very painful period of oppression and forced cultural change among the Kazakh people of Central Asia.

I'll let interested readers ask Rebekah for the text, but it is such a joy to see her, having grown up in Kazakhstan, use that experience and interest to understand the culture better. I could include all the comments her advising professors said about her paper and presentation, but that might sound like I'm bragging. I could wax on about how blessed I was to see the deep friendships Rebekah has developed with some really great young people, about the love and respect I see people have for her, and just generally about what an incredible young woman she is, but, I'll avoid that. You just gotta be careful about people thinking you are biased about your own children....

Anyhow, we are very proud of her accomplishments and eagerly await how God will continue to work in her and through her in the coming years.

Stories

Fresh back from Colorado Springs where I attended a debriefing seminar at MTI (Mission Training International). It was good to work on some skills for debriefing missionaries. But I went away with much more. I left convinced that debriefing is not something just to get a quick check on "how we're doing", but it is a profound gift we can give people to tell their story - to express the joys and struggles of their experience. Without that possibility, people can get stuck and have a hard time getting perspective on their past. It was very interesting to see all the ways that we tend NOT to listen - that we tend to short circuit the process. Yet the Lord made us so that we need to tell our story and to listen to one another's stories. It is amazing how much of the Bible is exactly that - the Psalms are full of David's expressing the paradoxes of life. We no less need to give expression to the experiences we have. So hopefully I'll be a better listener and will seek ways to give people changes to reflect upon their life experience with me.

Paraguay Travel Log - April 18 - Foz do Iguacu

I can't really visit Paraguay without visiting the famous Falls of Iguassu. And having visited, this log would be incomplete without a couple photos of this amazing site. It was overcast and foggy during my visit there, so I don't have the rainbows that you might find in other photo collections. It is one of the most amazing sights I've ever seen. The photos cannot do justice to the massiveness of the reality.

Paraguay Travel Log - April 19-20 - They Way Home

Well, the travel for this trip continued to be exciting. Argentina was experiencing a major forest fire resulting in a thick smoke settling in around the airport in Buenos Aires. My flight was delayed by 5 hours, causing me to miss my Delta connection to Atlanta. So I got to enjoy an overnight. The fun part was that the lady at the taxi place did not speak English, so I got to put my fledgling Spanish to the test and was able to ask for a cheap hotel close to the airport and even found out what was causing the smoke. So I enjoyed an extra day in Buenos Aires prior to finally getting home this morning at 6:00am. The hotel was nice AND both my bags arrived with me.

Paraguay Travel Log - April 13-18

My final few days in Paraguay consisted primarily of meeting with our missionaries. I come away from the trip with a great respect for the caliber of people we have working there. They serve in diverse ways - teaching in a seminary, drilling water wells, teaching at a Christian school for expats, working in a poor community, developing children's ministry, construction, etc. All do it with passion for the people. In the image to the right, missionary Alica Grey prays with an elderly woman who lives in a small 1-room squatters shack, about the size of a typical living room.

My meeting Tuesday with Pablo and Claudette went very well. Pablo serves as president of the Methodist denomination and his wife the educational work. They have served from the beginning. We had a good discussion about the future - vision and challenges - and how our missionaries can assist.

I enjoyed being hosted by the Carrick family this trip. They have really made Paraguay their home, speaking Spanish fluently, navigating the nutty traffic, and building close friendships with the people. Their three teenaged kids are delightful. By the end, I was even friends with the two enormous dogs they own. On my first day, I think they wanted me for an afternoon snack, but by the end I was able to pet them.

The challenges of our work in Paraguay along with the Methodist church there is to keep finding ways to share the faith with the people that will address their lives. Many are very poor. The risks of unhealthy dependency are very great in church work, especially with the abundance of mission teams who come with good motivations, but sometimes with money and attitudes that end up disempowering the local folks. But the church is established and will grow as people live out the grace and truth that is the Gospel.

Paraguay Travel Log - 12 April - Celebration!

Today I headed out early with Christian Dickson to visit a church camp run by the Methodist church. We were joined by Mary Jo and her daughter Rebekah Phillips, two fellow Kentuckians who have been engaged with the work in Paraguay for many years. Christian's daughters Camila (9) and Ann Belen (1) were also with us. The camp was great and I had the chance to see the swimming pool that was built using funds from Redwood Christian Park in California, where I'll be speaking in two months.

And we had ice cream on the way home. Wuhoo! Second round. And my luggage arrived - oh happy day.

This evening we attended the big celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Evangelical Methodist Church of Paraguay. I was able to share on behalf of The Mission Society, which has been part of this work from the start. About 1000 people attended from the various Methodist churches that have been planted throughout. (It was really, really hot, but I managed to wear a sports coat and tie in spite of it. I figured that should be worth several spiritual points and earned me another round of ice cream.)

It was good to see the relationship our missionaries here have with the people. Lots of hugging and laughing that made me sense the depth of the history that has been made over these 20 years, and the commitment required by those from all over (Brazilian, Korean, US, Paraguayan) who have been part of the work.

The celebration lasted over 3 hours, ending in a consecration service for four new pastors. We got home late, stopping for empanadas (sp?) on the way home.

Paraguay Travel Log - 11 April - Off to the Boonies!

Friday I went (dressed in Christian's shorts and t-shirt and Ian's sandals) with missionaries Ed & Linda Baker and our field leader Christian Dickson to Yrybucau (sp?) - a small town about a 4-hour drive into the interior from Asuncion. It was a chance to see some of the church plants in the more rural area, a school that Christian's wife Angelica directs, the agricultural center the mission is developing, and several of the wells that the Bakers have drilled. There obviously is great need in this area and it was good to see the needs being addressed by the various people in ministry there. I told Ed and Linda that if I had to make a short list of what I've learned in the past year or so of travels with my new role at The Mission Society, somewhere in there would be the importance of water in so much of the world. It is amazing to hear the impact that is made in many parts of the world simply by providing access to water.

When we got back, we had ice cream - which was high on my agenda for this trip. Hopefully not for the last time!

Paraguay Travel Log - 10 April - The Arrival

Well, I got here. Long flight, on an exit row next to a window/emergency door that I think they forgot to insulate, so it was really cold all night. Overnight flights are the worst - even though the time zone in Asuncion is the same as Atlanta, the overnight on an airplane guarantees jet-lag like symptoms. But it was a nice, safe flight. My connection from Buenos Aires to Asuncion was delayed an hour, but got here fine. But, no luggage. Ugh. I've beaten the odds (sorry for the gambling language, but really it's mathematical probability language) over the years - only once having had a bag delayed. And that was a trip home to Kazakhstan, so no big deal. But now it's happened. I have a nice dinner meeting tonight and only the couple things I tossed in my carry-on "just in case" to show for it. Sigh. Main concern is whether all the chocolate goodies I brought for the missionaries will still be there when it arrives and will not have melted in the heat if it does make it! But if some delayed luggage is the worst thing that happens, I'll count it as joy! I had a missionary colleague in Kaz tell me when we first came there in 1996, "If you get here with your passport, your kids, and the shirt on your back, consider everything else a bonus!" Good attitude.

Kingdom Talk - True Ecumenism

Evangelical Christians sometimes get spooked by the word "ecumenical" - and for good reason. Often it has reflected a sort of least common denominator approach. And the "least" part of it was pretty low. But what I call true ecumenism is something we are commanded by Scripture to seek. Finding true unity - and that unity only exists as we together seek the Kingdom. We see the Kingdom and the King (Jesus) as the absolutes, but we recognize also that the Kingdom may play out in various forms through history and through culture. The Kingdom of God tends to break out from within rather than invading from without. Jesus showed up inside a specific culture at a specific time, ushering in the Kingdom. But neither that culture nor that time could contain it. It continues to break out over the world in many different ways. How tragic when we miss out on this due to a mistaken assumption that when it breaks out there it should look like it did when it broke out here. True unity occurs when we sense and celebrate the commonality of God's Kingdom in its varied forms and ways.

Kingdom Talk - Just the Basics

Historically, people have tended to add to the Gospel what it means to be a follower of Christ. Some of that is natural since we need to discover and work through how the Gospel plays out in our individual cultures and in our own lives. How do we apply the principles of what Jesus teaches in our workplaces? How do his teachings challenge our own culture? Yet the problem comes when we take these additions and confuse them with the Gospel itself. We end up becoming the very thing Jesus spoke so adamently against as he locked horns with the Pharisees. And when we do that, those additions become obstacles to others coming into direct contact with the Gospel - especially as it is shared across cultures. A person may think that becoming a Christian means I have to dress a certain way or hang out with certain kinds of people. They become put off by those items and as a result never come face to face with the person of Jesus. So while it is fine and expected that we apply the Gospel in our own lives, we need to do a "Kingdom check" every so often and revisit what the core teachings and values of the Kingdom are. We need to check these against our own lives. And we need to make sure that these values are the focus of teaching and sharing with others rather than focusing on the exterior of our faith.

Kingdom Talk - Radically Sold Out

The conference I was at has concluded. Every time I've done a comprehensive inductive study of Mark, I am struck again at the radical demands of the Kingdom. I remember first being hit by this back in my college days. It continues to this day. This is no half-way with Jesus. You can't just get your feet wet, then stay there. He is gentle, but he is demanding. The measure you give will be the measure you get - the more you enter the Kingdom, the more you are invited to come in. Yet the more you allow yourself to remain on the fringes, the further outside you'll find yourself. This is the challenge - the nature of the challenge differs from culture to culture, but there is no doubt that one effect of sin is our tendency to go into drift mode. We'll use anything to innoculate ourselves against Kingdom demands - routine, work, addictions, distractions, even church. It takes constant vigilance to keep our focus, but if we seek Him, He is faithful to help us along the way.

Kingdom Talk

At the conference I'm at, we are going through the Gospel of Mark. I have done inductive studies on Mark many times and in Kazakhstan I taught a class on Introduction to Inductive Bible Study Methodologies, using Mark. One thing you can't escape if you look at Mark in its own context is the absolute emphasis on the Kingdom of God. It is the central part of the teaching of Jesus. The problem is that often we either skip over that or we look at many of the parts of Mark outside of that lens. Or we assume the Kingdom of God = the Church and move on. Yet, when reading carefully and allowing the radical nature of Jesus's teachings to soak in, one cannot help but be challenged and confronted anew with every serious reading of Mark. Are we really living as participants in God's Kingdom? Are we reflecting the values Jesus talks about that are central to the Kingdom? Do we allow ourselves to see past the surface appearance and dig into the assumptions that we make about our faith, our church, and our culture? Well, when starting this blog, I promised myself I'd keep the entries short. So I'll stop by simply encouraging a good, inductive read of Mark. I may make additional comments about the Kingdom in future entries as well. Stay tuned...

Airplanes and Human Nature

I wonder if any psychologist has done a disseration on human nature on airlines. Having just finished a 14-hour flight from Atlanta to Seoul and looking forward to another 6 hours here in a while to get me on to Bangkok, it's sort of fresh in my mind now. Of course, when I say "mind," remember I'm on 24+ hours of no sleep.

What's interesting is how the "competition" shifts. First, the competitors are those jockeying for a position in line. And the enemy are those who try to board before their zone. If you happen to be an airline club member, thus allowed to board first, you definitely deserve to get on first and you might get frustrated at the low life types who don't give way. Of course, if you don't have that perk, then you look with disgust at the folks who waltz to the front of the line. Who do they think they are, anyway?!

Once on the plane, now it's the overhead bins. On one flight you are thankful for the empty space a couple rows back, since your bin is full. On another flight, you conjure up tortures that would be appropriate for the bum two rows up who put his suitcase in your overhead bin. And it goes on - fighting over the armrest or thinking evil thoughts about the guy in front who leans his seat back, planting the video screen firmly against your nose. On and on.

When the flight is over, everyone goes separate ways and all is forgotten. But what about when things go wrong. In coming back from Kazakhstan last December, we were delayed 19 hours. All of a sudden, the other passengers were no longer competitors, but we felt a sort of comeraderie; even friendship. One lady showed Shawn and me her daughter's wedding photos. I'm sure people who survive a serious scare or accident on an airline even develop a sense of community that goes beyond the flight itself.

Are we really that utilitarian? If someone is in my way, he/she is a member of the impersonal "they" who are out to inconvenience me? But if someone and I together are put upon by another "they," then we become fast friends. Hmmm. Well, in about an hour I'll have the opportunity for an attitude check!

Dogs and Missions

These two don't seem to have much in common, but the past two weeks have sort of brought them together. During all of our years in Kazakhstan, we never felt we could own a dog since it would be hard to handle with furlough schedules, plus apartment living and really cold winters just seemed incompatible with dog ownership. Although lots of local folks did have dogs. Our kids missed having pets - especially Naomi always wanted a dog. It was one of the many small things that they did give up by growing up there, although there are so many things they gained. But now that we're stateside, we decided last week that it was time. So Lizzy, a Dalmation/American Bulldog mix, is now part of our family.

It is noteworthy that we brought Lizzy home just two days after a dog of our missionary colleagues, who live in a village in Kazakhstan, saved their lives by waking them up in the middle of the night to a house fire. They all escaped unharmed, but the dog was too panicked to leave the house with them through the smoke and flames and perished. Ringo will go down in dog history as a hero. Fortunately the house wasn't destroyed, but many of their belongings were ruined by the smoke damage.

So who knows how the Lord might use Lizzy in the life of our family?!

Crucifixion and Resurrection

Whew - I almost forgot again, but here I am, making a second entry! I am at our mission organization's President's Gathering in Florida. Lots of great presentations today that have my head spinning. Darrell Whiteman, our staff missiologist, shared as I have heard him on many occasions past, but it always hits me over and over. He talked about how we should minister in the model of Jesus. Incarnation - living among people, living in a way that they can understand, sharing the good news of the Kingdom with them. But what hit me harder this round is what follows. Darrell talked about how Incarnation will always lead to Crucifixion. When we give ourselves to God, we will certainly be asked to die to things. Maybe to prestige, to security, to convenience, perhaps even to long life. I've experienced that in the past, but I think every day we are asked anew, "what will you die to now?" But the incredible thing is that Resurrection follows Crucifixion. The "backwards law" of the Bible, as one of my seminary profs used to say, comes in to play. As we die to things, we then become alive to so much more. That is the experience of mission and ministry. I'm so thankful that we've been able to experience that in some small way through our lives.