Mixed Bag

Today I will give you some highlights on my current trip to Virginia Beach, where I am spending a few days. Thanks to my mother's new job at Holiday Inn, I was able to get a great rate here for a few nights--and with the current price of gas, staying here from Saturday to Wednesday for services comes out about even to driving back and forth.

SERVICES
Sunday I had services first at New Creation AG in VA Beach and then at Ocean View AG in Norfolk that evening. Both services went well. It was my first time to visit New Creation, although I had met the pastor's wife, Debbie, before and found her to be a kindred spirit. They were having an afternoon barbecue at the music leader's home, as a Memorial Day celebration, so I got to eat some great food! Hamburgers, hot dogs, sweet watermelon and homemade brownies. YUM! Plus, I enjoyed the conversation a lot.

Ocean View in Norfolk welcomed me warmly back for another time. I spoke there four years ago, with my mom along for the ride. An interesting side note: the Sunday morning I spoke there, a man from Richmond was visiting his mother who attended that church. He passed by my table and took a card and spoke to me briefly; he said he would support me. I didn't know if that would actually come about, but sure enough, for the past four years, he's been supporting me for a generous sum each month. I've never seen him again. When I knew I was going to be back at Ocean View, I was eager to meet this man's mother, to tell her how good her son had been to me. However, I discovered upon asking around, that the lady went to be with the Lord around Easter. She was quite a saint and dearly beloved by her congregation, so I shared the story before I preached as a different twist on a "missionary testimony." The church was very touched that this lady's legacy could live on in a way that they never expected.

Yesterday was a holiday; obviously, I wasn't going to have success in making phone calls to pastors, so I gave myself permission to "suffer for Jesus" at the hotel pool. Late this afternoon, I suffered for Jesus again by going to the theater to see Prince Caspian. *For those unfamiliar with the term "suffering for Jesus" it's my father's teasing way of explaining when a missionary gets to do fun stuff in the course of doing missionary work.

MOVIE REVIEW
If you liked The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, you'll like Prince Caspian. That's the basic sum of this film. I think Prince Caspian is better in some ways, because I liked the plot of the book more. There is less dissension among the four Pevensie kids than the previous book and film, and more of an outside threat to Narnia, mainly the Telmarine people and their dictator, Lord Miraz. The guy playing him did the evil usurper role perfectly! The main "battle" scene is very much like the battle in the first movie, down to the same location (I believe). Aslan is barely in the film, and like the first, the religious nature of the original CS Lewis story is completely overlooked. If you take your children to see it, you might be dismayed by the fact that the Pevensie children routinely tell each other to "shut up" which struck me as realistic sibling rivalry, but I know some people don't allow their children to talk to each other that way. However, the scenery is absolutely gorgeous. I don't know where they filmed the beach scene, but I'd like to suffer for Jesus there! All in all, I liked the movie.

TRIVIA
For months now, I've been traveling periodically to this area, I've had one burning question. From the time one gets on 64 East, outside of Richmond, one can notice that on all of the entrance ramps, coming onto the highway, there are red and white striped barrier "arms" in the up position. I racked my brain as to why anyone would need these barriers to prevent people from driving onto the interstate. I thought, maybe in this tidal area, it has to do with flooding. After all, they get a fair amount of hurricanes here. Yesterday I finally got the chance to ask someone, and found out that I wasn't far off the mark. They're not for flooding, but indeed for hurricanes. During a hurricane evacuation, traffic could be routed north and west even on the wrong side of the highway to accommodate a massive amount of traffic out of the area. Barrier arms would prevent people from driving head-on into traffic.

PRAYER NEED
My father is in the hospital again, with a very ugly infection in his right leg. We thought it was cellulitis, which he's had before, but as it turns out, it may be worse than we naively expected. His current prognosis is worrisome: his kidneys are shutting down. The doctors stopped all antibiotics for the infection, for fear that they are damaging the kidneys. For now, we have to wait and see what the doctors will say. Please pray for him. This is his third hospitalization since August, and I think he feels a little more like Job everyday, losing different parts of his health.

Local Traffic

Its barely 2:30 and traffic headed south on Ritchie Highway is already backed up as far north as Glen Burnie. I wasn't able to see what the problem was or how far down the traffic jams starts. I could only assume that it was all holiday weekend traffic headed to the Eastern Shore.

All I have to say is that you couldn't pay me enough money to sit in traffic like that from Glen Burnie to the Bay Bridge (and possibly beyond).

Enjoy the Memorial Day weekend!

Long Time No Post

Okay, okay. Obviously, it's been a while since I've posted. I feel badly about that. I think there may still be one or two people who care about this blog.

Lately I've just started feeling like this blog is just another chore hanging over my head. It used to be fun for me; some days I couldn't wait to write about what happened that day. I found events and situations in my life even more interesting because I knew that I would be able to write it all up on my blog later and retelling it would be half the fun. But somewhere in the last few months, I lost that joy.

I'm still reading good books, still having new and interesting experiences. I've still got "thoughts" scrawled out on Galatians and on into I Thessalonians, now. And I'm not ready to abandon this blog completely.

I just need to get re-energized and motivated to keep on blogging.

What a Difference a Year Makes

I wish you could see how different things were this morning as I walked into my French church home in Bordeaux. I could picture myself walking in there in December of 2005, not knowing a soul there and feeling so uncomfortable in my American-ness. It took almost a full year before people finally got to know me, started to invite me to their home for lunch after church, and started to give me a role of my own in the youth group leadership.

This morning I walked in with my colleagues, who have only recently moved in to this area. They don't speak French well and don't know anyone in the church, and I totally identified with their uncertainty--even with their choice of seats, way over against one wall.

This time, however, I knew everyone. The pastor recognized me from the pulpit just before his sermon, causing all eyes to turn to me. I was surrounded after church, not only by the young adults, but even by older adults that warmly welcomed me back into their midst. The young people are putting on the big musical (that I sang in last June) again this next week in a hall across town. I was asked about a dozen times if I could stay for another week and sing with them again as a soloist. During the worship, I sang all the French choruses heartily, having missed the different songs that they sing. The young adults treated me to lunch out at a pizza restaurant, and we had a blast! I laughed at their stories and antics; they peppered me with questions about my next missions project and life in the States.

I felt so welcome, so much like I belonged. I hated to say goodbye again at the end of lunch, but they all said they know we'll meet again. They were confident that, now that I'd returned once, I would find it easier to return again to see them all. I hope so.

Clinton or Obama?

This is the question I was asked this morning by a total stranger. I was in a used book store with two books of French paperbacks. I wanted to sell them to the manager and once she found out I was American, she asked, "So, Clinton or Obama?"

I laughed and said, "McCain." She went on to suggest that we needed younger, fresher blood in our government and we had a spirited discussion of American politics for a few moments while we wheeled and dealed over the books. I had been in France only a matter of hours and it was the second conversation about politics I'd had!

After the quickest overseas flight and layover ever--seven hours from DC to Paris, 45 minutes of crossing the terminal at a run to make the next flight, and an hour to Bordeaux, I met my friends and colleagues at the airport. I lost an entire night's sleep, getting only an hour catnap on the second flight, and I had to work a full-day's work immediately after arrival.

One of the most pressing things for me was to sell all of my belongings. Just this past week, I joked to another missionary that he might need some of my stuff. He didn't laugh--he agreed. Yesterday was the only day he was available to drive down to Bordeaux with a moving truck, so after an hour of breakfast and "refreshing" my tired self, we went to my storage unit and started loading his moving truck. Four hours later, his truck was packed so full (and so well) that he could take no more. We had a late lunch and spent the afternoon working on the final documents for the transfer of my Speed-the-Light jeep to his ownership. I ended up making it all the way to 8:30 pm - 32 hours awake - a personal record I hope never to repeat!

My storage place now has no furniture, but still has boxes of clothes, kitchen stuff, hobby paraphernalia, and more. I am slowly making my way through that, so I can save the things that are personal and valuable to me. I still have a few days here to sort through it all, and I've already discovered a family in need who will reap the majority of it once I've got it all reboxed up.

Driving around today, I felt at home, in the sense that I remember everything, but I also felt totally at peace that being here is just a "trip" not a "missionfield" for me anymore. I'm glad for Chris Bryan and the Novicks who do feel called here and are doing great work, but I'm meant for the Middle East, and I'm thankful for that.

Thoughts on Galatians (part 7)

Freedom.

In a country like ours, this is a word that gets bandied about pretty freely, if you'll pardon the pun. Freedom is not just a political concept but it is the very core of our Christianity. God created man with a free will. We can choose God or not, love Him or not. We have complete freedom to choose our spiritual destiny.

I think that most people think of freedom as no limitations or in a different way, all possibilities. You can picture a tiny dot with arrows going out in all directions, like a child's drawing of the sun. Freedom means you can make any choice, right?

When I think of our response to God, I realize that our "free will" still involves a limit: by not choosing to be redeemed by God, through His plan of salvation, we are limited to hell and being separated from God. I was thinking about this during the last two weeks--I'm not an abstract thinker by nature, so it takes a while for things to percolate in my brain. I've come to the conclusion that the greatest freedom is always limited by some constraint.

Think about it. A married couple who claim to have an "open" marriage may feel free to be with other partners, but in doing so, they destroy their freedom with one another. Someone can choose to eat whatever he wants, but in over-eating he destroys his freedom to live a long, healthy life (or to fit into his clothes!). Have you ever seen children whose indulgent parents give them no or few limits? No one can stand to be around them!

Galatians chapter 5 has a lot to say about freedom and its limits. It starts with a great sentence, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free." Paul talks about being free from the restraints of Jewish law, such as circumcision, because Christ brought a new set of rules to the world; rather than trying to get to God by our good works (under Jewish law), we get to God through a Savior who took our place in God's eyes. He set us free vicariously. So if we are now free in Christ, and don't have to follow the Jewish law, what are our limitations?

I had a group of friends in college, and one good friend started to get strange in his senior year. I had already graduated and was spending my first year in Jerusalem by that point, but other friends told me that this young man was using Gal. 1:1 to proclaim his freedom to do all sorts of things. If anyone criticized him, saying that he shouldn't be getting drunk or carousing the way that he was, his response was that they were "legalistic," applying all sorts of laws to his behavior; he was "free" in Christ and didn't have to follow the law. (I'm speaking of religious or moral law, not state/federal laws, although he may have been breaking those as well.)

While I was appalled by his behavior, I was more appalled by his using his so-called "freedom" in Christ to escape all limitations. Verse 13 is Paul's complete thought, "You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature . . ." That's a pretty big limitation right there. In fact, it eliminates most of what we'd probably do if we had complete freedom. Remember the beginning of the book of Judges? "Each man did was right in his own eyes." The result was utter chaos.

I'm all for freedom. But only with limits.

One of those days

Every time I have a long list of things to do, just when I think this is a good day to get a lot accomplished, I can count on everything around me breaking down. In a two days, I have a heavy schedule in southern VA, followed almost immediately by my Arabic final exam, only a few hours before District Council, just before I leave for six days in France. So I have a lot on my mind and even more on my "to-do" list.

But this morning, my father is gone for a five day work trip, leaving my mother with the three grandchildren to babysit. The dog was deathly ill. The cable and internet were down for hours today because the electric company is working along this road. My grandmother came over to fuss at us about her cable being out, and I've been trying to get laundry done all day. At this moment, one child is asleep on the couch, one is crying for more cheerios, and one went to her own house for naptime (thankfully). My mother has appointments this afternoon, so I'm watching the kids until my sister-in-law gets off work in an hour or so.

I've accomplished two things on my "to-do" list: laundry and making two phone calls this morning. It's just one of those days.