It is rashness to search too far into [the mystery of the Trinity].  It is piety to believe it.  It is life eternal to know it.  And we can never have a full comprehension of it, till we come to enjoy it.

Bernard de Clairvaux

The term “missionary” is still a bit distant for me, mainly because it conjures up an image or picture of life that is very different from the one I am living now.  Certainly, I know that one day soon, my life will align somewhat with the image that is in my mind, but still.. I never thought I would one day be this person.  The person that asks for prayer and financial support, the person who sends letters and email newsletters updating family and friends about life on the mission field, the person who more often than not becomes a stranger to friends and home churches.

I’m at the end tail of getting ready to print and mail/email my first newsletter to supporters.  I’m new to it all.  Like many of you, I’ve written support letters for short-term mission trips, but never one from the basis of being a full-time career missionary. 

There are fears that accompany sending out mission letters.  Missionaries send out letters because they need people who care and are committed to the gospel enough to partner with them from “home”.  Missionaries need people like you and me to pray faithfully over the course of time in light of the physical challenges and spiritual trials of serving overseas (or not) and to send support generously to provide for the costs of pouring out into the work of the gospel rather than picking up a full-time or part-time job.  The fears we face are rejection, apathy, indifference – not only to us as missionaries, but to Christ.  And on the other hand, we’re also scared of running into a group of people who love Jesus desperately, but disregard the workers on the field.  

We balance the tension of asking others for precious and consecrated dollars while knowing that workers of the gospel are worthy of their wages.  Very simply, missionaries are scared that people don’t care.  We’re scared that our letters will only be read several times over, mostly by us as we write and edit them over the course of several days or possibly weeks.  We’re scared that you’ll find our letters so boring that we become pieces of mail that you’d rather throw in the recycling pile or use as a scratch piece of paper.  We’re scared that our letters will be mailed to a prayerless group of believers and that you’ll be offended or turned off when we ask for your generous financial support.  Some of us are scared that you won’t view our ministry on the mission field as legitimate or valuable to the Kingdom of God.  

I’ve gone through all these emotions one by one and all together at the same time.  I still have fears that when I send out my letters, that you won’t read it and that you’ll feel all the things that I’ve described above.  I’m scared that we’ll lose connection and that we’ll go from being good friends to functional strangers in a matter of just a few years.  I’m scared that my church will someday forget that I used to be a member or staffer.

But I also realize that God knows these fears that are buried deep down in my heart.  God knows.  I trust that God has called me to the work of missions in Thailand and that He will lead me and provide for me.  While the human variable is risky, the God variable is certain.  So in the next few days, as I begin to fold and seal and send out letters to my friends and acquaintances, I will pray:

1. For a spirit of faith and godly bravery – for the removal of the spirit of fear and discouragement in my heart and mind.  
2. That God moves people to pray passionately for Thailand and for the work of the gospel in that nation, as well as for me as I prepare to go full-time, long-term, by the summer of 2012.  
3. That God moves people to give their treasures for the work of the gospel and for my financial needs as a single missionary.  
4. That God would bless you and empower you as a co-laborer for His Kingdom as you become more aware of and invested in God’s work and activity in our world.

Peace.
m. 

To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the wilderness, is like being commanded to be well when we are sick, to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst, to run when our legs are broken. But this is the first and great commandment nonetheless. Even in the wilderness – especially in the wilderness – you shall love Him.

Frederick Buechner

Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that ‘suits’ him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches… The search for a ‘suitable’ church makes the man a critic where God wants him to be a pupil.

The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis

It is 10,000 times better than anything I have ever done.

Steve Jobs, on having children – NOT making iPods, iPads, and iPhones, etc.

Even Jobs knew that family was more important than anything Apple related at the end of his life.  Unfortunately, everyone else who’s an Apple/Jobs fanatic has forgotten that computer empires really don’t compare to having real relationships with human beings.  It’s a sad testament that a man who was so ingenious and creative and lauded by the world could never see beyond himself to see Christ – the logical conclusion of pride and secular hope.  Christ is the lesson believers ought to learn from Jobs’ death, not the gospel of Steve Jobs or the idolization of his character or the things he made.  There are no Macs in heaven, and even if there were, even Steve Jobs couldn’t make an app for heaven.  Jobs’ own gospel couldn’t save him.  Neither can Buddha.

The death of an icon should lead, of all people, believers, to the gospel of Christ, yet what I’ve seen only proves that we Christians are just like the world – in it and of it.  Instead of mourning that Jobs is not with Christ, we comfort ourselves by thanking him for the invention of our smartphones.  How ridiculously shallow.

Steve Jobs is not God, so let’s stop making him out to be one.

There comes the baffling call of God in our lives also.  The call of God can never be stated explicitly, it is implicit.  The call of God is like the call of the sea; no one hears it but the one who has the nature of the sea in him.

It cannot be stated definitely what the call of God is to because His call is to be in comradeship with himself for His own purpose, and the test is to believe that God knows what He is after.

Oswald Chambers

2 Thessalonians 3:1-3

What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it – the fact that He knows me.

I am graven on the palms of His hands; I am never out of His mind.  All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me.  I know Him because He first knew me and continues to know me.  He knows me as a friend.  There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery can now disillusion Him about me.

J.I. Packer

I found myself rummaging through a box filled with photographs of my dad last night.  I often wonder what would be different if I didn’t have them.  People instinctively grab their photographs when they’re forced to leave everything else behind.  Photographs are powerful because we long for the memory they give back to us, and when an image appropriates our memory of a person we love, we treasure it.  And with good reason.  A photograph is a beautiful thing.  But we don’t realize that the memories are better.

A few years ago, I took a couple of hours to gather pictures of him lying around the house into one single box, just in case I needed them – say, for example, to show my friends where I come from or to see if I resemble him more as I age.  And every once in a while since then, if for no other reason, I would look through them to keep the memory of his face alive in my mind.  Last night was the first time in over a year that I have looked at “him”.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Looking at a picture of my dad is very different from merely thinking about him.  I realize I don’t always get it right.  I knew when I was in the hospital with him that this day would come.  I usually look up, I realized, slightly above eye level, and tilt my chin upwards when I think of my dad.  It’s never a particular image that comes to mind, but perhaps it’s just the thought of him that keeps it fresh.

“I look like my dad..” I told my friend.

I cried, but quietly enough that only my friend on the other line could tell.  I sat on the floor of my mom’s room and sifted through the differently sized photographs with my left hand – my friend in my right keen enough to return my silence with hers.  I looked up to the ceiling at one point to take a break, realizing that it’s difficult to look at my dad’s face without reliving the loss of him.  It’s a complicated emotion – one that is much easier now after 12 years, but still one that takes me by surprise.  One that takes an effort to move in and then out of again.  Yet recovery from such a thing isn’t necessarily a goal.

Do we ever recover from losing a parent, a spouse, a child, or a friend?  Or do we learn to balance the tension and gravity of those moments while forcing ourselves to look forward?

Reconciling the absence of a person, whether gone or here, is a common pain we all share.  A distant home and family, a distant friend, a distant lover.  And yes, we can long for distant things and distant lands, but those things and lands are populated by human faces.  We only truly miss our own.  Missing an ocean or a cityscape is much different from missing a person’s laugh or a person’s being.  Even a simple squeeze of the hand or the weight of a hug is worth a thousand mountains.

Revisiting that part of life – loss – is a healing moment each time we go back.  We lose the clarity of specifics (something we hate to admit) while gaining a greater appreciation for the whole of a person.  And in some way, their death becomes the impetus to celebrate their life.  A reason to look backwards and in between with joy and tenderness; a motivation to look forward with hope and peace.  As time passes, we do begin to remember the joy of the person in place of the terror of losing them.  Life becomes the focus, and death becomes less scary – a lesser enemy.  And so, life can’t end with death.  And neither can we allow the reality of death around us to blind us to the abundance of life that surrounds us.  A photograph is a wonderful thing, but learning to relish the life of a person is a lesson we oftentimes learn the hard way.

Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him.  For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust.  As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes.  When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, and its place acknowledges it no longer.  But the lovingkindness of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him, and His righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep His covenant and remember His precepts to do them.

Psalm 103:13-18

Peace.

People can have different views, thoughts, and convictions, but sound theology is very seldom found in anger.  Even if we believe with all sincerity that we are right, we must be humble enough and honest with ourselves to know that we are not perfect, nor are we God Himself.  Walking by the Spirit is a moment to moment thing that happens by God’s grace.  We can offer the enemy a chance to walk through an open door in every situation, or even an open blog, or close it to him by keeping our hearts and eyes and will set firmly on Jesus.

We are not perfect, yet our salvation in Christ is a sure thing, a sure foundation on which we live our lives before God and others.  Don’t let anyone or anything cause you to doubt God’s faithfulness to you.  The enemy delights to bring Christians to a place of constant paranoia where they wonder if Christ really loves them or if they really love Christ or if Christ is even loving at all.  Christ is all He says He is, and the enemy works to break down the foundations of one’s faith in God Himself.

Being a Christian in process is nothing to be ashamed of, but we also shouldn’t use the reality of the process as an excuse to deliberately live in ways that we know are sinful.  We must seek Him with greater devotion and love, because He is meant to be the focus of our lives.  If we don’t find ourselves treasuring God above all things - above work, above family, above church and ministry - then we need to take a step back and remember our first love.  First loves become second, third, fourth, and no loves at all very quickly, even when these other things are good.

The way to keep our love fresh for the Lord is clear.  We know it all too well, yet we look for other, more “creative”, but less effective ways because of the pressure to conform to the world around us.  Word, prayer, worship – whether alone or with others, are the building blocks of a relationship with God.  Don’t ignore these exercises and you won’t lose sight of Christ or a life that imitates Christ.  Love God for no other reason than to know Him more.  This has been a lesson that I’ve been learning for the last four years.  For those of us in ministry, part-time, full-time, or as a lay servant, ministry can be a detriment to our intimacy with God.  The busyness and stress of having to get things done often keeps us from our own relationship with Christ.  But if we recognize that our striving and stressing is not what He truly wants from us, God will show us how to return to a true and living relationship with Him.  And this is the source of love, strength, and power for any kind of ministry with which God entrusts us.  Let ministry come after, not first.

Blessings and peace in your relationship with Christ.  God’s grace is sufficient for you each day.

Peace.