Trauma Patchwork

It's been over a month since I was caught up in the attacks on the beach at Grand Bassam on March 13, 2016.

The healing process has been long and slow. For me, it has been a jumble of verses, psalms and songs that God has sent me or brought to mind. I have clung to them and dwelt in them. And the Lord has woven them into a patchwork quilt to keep cover me and keep me dry from the waves and storm.

The Lord reminded me of this verse during the events.
The picture is one I took a few weeks before the attacks. 

Ready for the Storm

by Dougie MacLean (Made popular by Rich Mullins)

The waves crash in and the tide tide pulls out
It's an angry sea but there is no doubt
That the lighthouse will keep shining out To warn the lonely sailor
And the lightning strikes and the wind cuts cold Through the sailor's bones to the sailor's soul
Till there's nothing left that he can hold Except the rolling ocean

But I am ready for the storm, yes sir ready
I am ready for the storm, I'm ready for the storm

Distance it is no real friend And time will take its time
And you will find that in the end It brings you me, the lonely sailor
And when you take me by your side You love me warm, you love me
And I should have realized I had no reason to be frightened

But I am ready for the storm, yes sir ready
I am ready for the storm, I'm ready for the storm

"Ready for the Storm" became the framework and refrain for the lament that I wrote about what we experienced:

It’s shooting outside
And the waves crash in.
Am I ready for the storm
If the waves flood through the door?

Down in the Lowlands (Charlie Peacock)

One of my favorite albums of all time is Russ Taff's self-titled album from 1987, which obviously was born out of some sort of "dark night of the soul". I immediately gravitated back to "Down in the Lowlands" because of the water imagery and the words that cry out from Psalm 69.

The water is up to my neck; I'm sinking in the deep,
There is no foothold to be found anywhere,
I'm very worn out from calling for help,
My throat is hoarse, and dry as a bone,
My eyes, they fail me from looking for you,
Are you looking for me?

Down in the lowlands, where the water is deep,
Hear my cry, hear my shout,
Save me, save me,
Down in the lowlands, where the water is deep,
Hear my cry, hear my shout,
Save me, save me.

Could this be it?
Could I be drowning?
Have I failed to be heard by the only one who can save me? (save me, save me)
Show me some mercy, and touch me again,
Please lift me up above where I am.

I Cannot Tell

A week after the attack, a friend loaned me a keyboard and I started playing old hymns and choruses. This one jumped out and ministered to me, especially the second verse, made poignant by the fact that we were coming up to Passion Week.

A verse from my Sabbatical Time in Kansas City. 

I cannot tell how silently He suffered,
As with His peace He graced this place of tears,
Or how His heart upon the Cross was broken,
The crown of pain to three and thirty years.

But this I know, He heals the broken-hearted,
And stays our sin, and calms our lurking fear,
And lifts the burden from the heavy laden,
For yet the Savior, Savior of the world, is here.

Psalm 124 - What if the Lord had not been on our side?

About a week into this, someone shared Psalm 124 and it really seemed like the entire chapter had been written for us!

It was easy to see God's hand in saving us. But harder to reconcile all the questions that it raised. Why does God allow suffering? Why are some spared and others not? Is my faith just a house of cards, as CS Lewis observes in "A Grief Observed"?

"Why is he so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble? Not that I am... In much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about him. " (Lewis, p. 8)

The Psalms with their questions, accusations and statements of faith
all mixed together were a great source of comfort and the idea that there was hope that I WILL YET PRAISE HIM!

The questions are unchanged
The cry remains the same
I pray You'll lift me higher; Face to face with who I am
Higher - Above the myths that make the man
Higher - Please hold on to me

Russ Taff, Higher  

I Still Believe
by Michael Been of the Call, as recorded by Russ Taff

I've been out in a cave

For forty days 

With only a spark

To light my way
But I still believe. . .

I'll march this road
And I'll climb this hill
Upon my knees
If I have to

I still believe
I must believe
You can't take that away from me
I still believe.

Hold on to me. I must believe. Bring me into a spacious place.

50 years – The Fifth Decade 2004 -2014 – The One with the Sabbatical

I turned fifty last month and wrote 4 blogposts looking at each decade of my life. I got as far as 2004, when I was well-established in field administration. This is the installment that brings us up to the present and then “to infinity and beyond”.

Places lived: Mali, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, USA. 

Verse:

Jeremiah 6:16
This is what the Lord says: “Stop at the crossroads and look around. Ask for the old, godly way, and walk in it. Travel its path, and you will find rest for your souls. But you reply, ‘No that’s not the road we want!’”

Life-Shaping events:

In 2004, due to political unrest and its aftereffects, I ended up going from being assistant director over one country to full director over two countries. The day before I was elected, we had some sort of group mixer in which we pasted bits of cardboard to a map to represent the different parts of our work. For some reason, I had to carry it home for the night and bring it back the next day. As I picked my way carefully through mud puddles, I had a fear that I would drop the poster in the mud and mess it up. And then I realized that I had a much larger fear: “What if I drop the BRANCH in the mud while I am director?”

It was a difficult time to be director and as the years went by I wondered why I could not be director at a time when all was normal. We were losing staff and the financial resources that went with them. Work in both countries was threatened by instability.  We joked in meetings about making “more bricks with less straw”.

Key verse:

You keep track of my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. Psalm 56:8

There were a lot of difficult things during this period, so many, in fact that I was overwhelmed by “unexpected tears” during my sabbatical (2011) when I finally took time to enumerate and grieve over them:

Senseless court cases, civil unrest, threats of terrorists, sickness and medevacs of key people, a suicide, personal and family crises among our staff. So much that might have been, that was thwarted for reasons I cannot now see. So many cases also where we were forced to rely on God instead of our own capacities

 I’d like to say that this was a time that I did rely solely on God, but much of the time I relied on my own ability to multi-task and stay on top of a multitude of things. I am someone driven by duty and the work was without end, with not enough people to do it. People often commented then (and still do) on my seemingly limitless energy and my job became one that no one else could imagine doing.

By 2009, I was nearing burnout. I was dry and thirsty and in exile spiritually.

 But God was seeking after me putting books and sermons and verses in my path. I actually memorized:

“I lie in the dust completely discouraged. Revive me by your word.” Ps 119:25

My furlough was due in mid-2010 and my boss suggested that rather than doing a normal “home assignment” in administration, I consider a Sabbatical. This was a window of hope that was opened to me, that somehow things could get better. But even as I planned things to do during my sabbatical, events combined to delay it until early 2011. Read here (in the first post on this blog) about how God began inviting me to healthy practices of reading and meditation and scripture memory in that time of “delayed gratification”.



In the summer of 2010, when I should have been returning to begin the sabbatical but could not, I went ahead and did a trip to Northern Ireland which was truly a drink of cold water to me in a very dry time.

Read: northern-ireland-and-color-green

This was also a time where I was challenged to begin thinking about Sabbath and what it really means for me, the gift that it is. (See here my “Prezi” sermon on Sabbath, which I have given three times.)

Coming back to Mali, I began getting serious about Sabbath and that is literally what carried me through to the Sabbatical time in 2011.

As that time is mostly detailed in this blog, I will not repeat it here, or this could become very recursive. I've included lots of links to specific blog-posts.

Highlights of the Sabbatical would be

• The time at the Boiler room in Kansas City.



Boiler Room Building in Kansas City 

• A month at the retreat center on Lake Thunderbird

• The Oklahoma Freewheel 500-mile bike ride across Oklahoma. 

 

In this Sabbatical time and beyond, God is teaching me the importance of

• Removing distractions
• Creating space for quietness and contemplation.
• Sabbath
• Creativity – including blogging, making candles, music.
• Reading
• Journaling
• The Liturgical year: Lent, advent. . .
• Living in community and interdependence
• Living in simplicity without a lot of stuff. Being evacuated and then having to liquidate your household in short order will do that to you.
• God’s work is Unhindered by what appear to us to be major setbacks.
• The Responsibility for Getting the work done is God’s not mine.

“Do not feel totally, personally, irrevocably responsible for everything. . . That’s my job. Love, God.”

 After the Sabbatical

God knew what he was doing in arranging the sabbatical before one of the most difficult times in my life: the coup d’état in Mali and our evacuation [March-April 2012]. (Read “In the Pressure cooker” parts 1, 2, 3 and 4). I really do not know if I could have survived this time without the Sabbatical preparation.

God prepared me and resourced me to lead our group in this very difficult time, using the unique gifts he had given me. He had taught me that I needed to take time for myself, for reflection and contemplation and planning and rest:

“Get up and go! Come back and wield your sword in the part of the kingdom where you can wield it best.” [see blog post]

The time during the coup is one where God sustained me and where my unique giftings came together for that time. People commented that it seemed like I was truly “in the zone.” It is

During my sabbatical, God introduced me to the idea of being a nomad, living simply and relying on God. 2012 was the year of being a nomad. When I did my taxes for the year 2012, I honestly could not say where my tax home was. In this year, I made 15 border crossings, hopping back and forth between Mali, Kenya, Burkina Faso, Thailand, France, and Cameroon. From March to December, I averaged 2.5 weeks per country and was truly “transient” in this time.

And it was during this time that the Lord led me to accept a regional role which would involve setting up in Cameroon and traveling significantly throughout Francophone Africa. This, too, was a step of faith, but God has been good.

It is interesting to see how the administrative skills as well as my crisis management experience in the past years have prepared me for this role.

“These 40 years . . . “

As I was reflecting on the five decades that make up my first 50 years, I began thinking of theme verses for each decade. The week of my birthday, I kept coming back to Deuteronomy 2:7 which was a key verse for my 3rd decade

“The Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He has watched over your journey through this vast wilderness. These 40 years, the Lord your God has been with you and you have lacked nothing.”

And then I heard a podcast the week of my birthday and it centered on Deuteronomy 8, which had such a similar theme that I thought it was the same passage until I looked it up.

8.2 Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. 3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. 4 Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. 5 Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.
15 He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. 16 He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, 

This really seems to be a perfect description of the past 10 years especially but also the entire 40 years I have been a Christian.

[To follow - 5th Decade - part 2, people, bikes, music, books, etc]

Dancing in the Margins

Anyone who has had any management or life coaching will tell you the importance of “building margin” into your life – down time, times of rest and reflection. Like a page filled to the edges with no margin, a life with no margin is illegible. But what if the page is all gone and you are forced to write ONLY in the margins? 

In April, most of my colleagues and I were “strategically withdrawn” from our country of service due to unrest. The immediate effects of this were described in several blog posts entitled “thoughts from the pressure cooker”.

In the meantime, I have become a nomad and it looks like that is unlikely to change before year-end, by which time I will have made 14 border crossings going back and forth between 6 different countries, averaging just 3 weeks per country. 

Our group has adapted to having at least half of our people working remotely. In fact, I can’t think of anyone who is not separated from at least some of his “direct reports.”

The logistics of managing money and houses and cars and salaries at a distance is quite complicated.  The extra travel and rent were not budgeted. Some of us have taken up new assignments in other countries or their home countries, which leaves serious personnel holes.

In addition to ongoing uncertainty about the security situation and the very real possibility of war, the local economy has made things difficult for most of general population. 

Whereas it is fairly normal in our work to have  crises arrive that take energy and time, we normally seem to be able to come up with a work around. However, so many thing have come to a head since the crisis that it seems we do nothing but shuffle things around with no room to maneuver. 

The other day I was in a meeting and something came up and I said offhandedly, “It’s like we are always dancing in the margins”. 

This image really seemed to resonate and I mulled it over for a few days and worked it into my main director’s report to our group. 

Life is a Dance

Life is a dance, that we do for the glory of God. We all dance, according to our gifts, background and culture, each one bringing something different to the mix. Our dancing should attract others to the dance, so that there is someone from each tongue and tribe and nation dancing with us in the “Great Dance” described so nicely by CS Lewis in Perelandra.

  

 Sometimes life will send an obstacle our way, opening up a hole in the dance floor.  But if you know it’s there, you can dance around it.  Even if there are TWO holes, you can keep dancing, with some modifications.

But occasionally, your world turns upside down and a sinkhole opens up in your living room, relegating you to dancing in the margins.

So what is our response to being forced into the margin?

Can we ignore the sinkhole and just imagine it does not exist? Not really, without some serious psychological consequences down the road. 

Can we continue to dance? Do we have to, or can we just give up? This is a valid question and the answer depends a lot on your individual and family needs, and your calling. In our context, it is obvious that our group needs to keep working as long as it is day, “Because night is coming, when no one can work." (John 9:4-5) 

  

Okay, so if you we decide that we are called to continue to work “in the margins”, how do we go about that? 

• Meet Jesus in the Margins.  He who so frequently sought out the marginal meets us there, too. As I mulled over this, I imagined our Good Shepherd preparing us a table right there in the margins, next to our gaping sinkhole. If he can do it in the presences of our enemies, why not? And he provides not just sustenance but a joyful banquet.
• Don’t just soldier on in your own human strength. Realize, like God does, that we are "but dust". HE is the one who rescues us from the pit, renews my strength like the Eagle’s and fills my life with good things! (Psalm 103)
• Share in the death of Jesus so that HIS life is shared with us!  

2 Corinthians 4-8-10 We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.”

I am not sure how this works. I can certainly relate to the “pressed on every side, perplexed, knocked down. . .” but it seems that these painful things are accompanied with this promise of Jesus sharing his life with us, through us. 

• Do what you can to change the internal factors, realizing you cannot do anything about the external factors. You may not be able to fill in the sinkhole, but you can clear out the furniture that is blocking the rest of the floor.P
• Pray for God to bring justice and cause rivers to flow in the desert. Isaiah 35.

 Keep Dancing with Jesus in the margins!

out of the pressure cooker, steam to tears

 It's one month today since I came out of Mali and this makes the third country I have been in on my exile: Burkina Faso (working base), Thailand  (conference), and now France for two weeks of vacation.

The time in Mali was intense, the pressure always building, being responsible for and making decisions that would affect the lives of 100 people for months to come.

Our spiritual retreat was scheduled during the early days of the coup when we were still under curfew. I hope the catholic center is enjoying the grill we took out to their retreat center. We were never able to pick it up.

We eventually had a three-day mini retreat, without our speaker and childcare team. I decided to start out the sharing times as people were coming into it cold.  I began by sharing about my sabbatical in 2011, beginning with  the quote I had seen at Corrymeela in northern Ireland in 2010:

  "Do not feel totally, personally, irrevocably resonsible for everything...That's my job.        Love, God"

That was good head knowledge, but it was taking a while to sink in.

In telling about my sabbatical, I got to the part where God brought unexpected tears in healing for a bunch of hard things in previous years. As I cited them, the tears began again. I was thinking that this whole coup situation is another really hard thing.

And on another level, I was thinking, "I'm Monsieur le Directeur, I can't cry in front of everybody. What will the Malians think?  If I lose it, what will that do to everyone else?"  In retrospect, they were good tears and not a bad things for people to see even in or cross cultural context.

Just two days later, I was announcing our "strategic withdrawal" to the same group and this time my prayer was to get everything explained clearly (in French and without prep) and without crying . This time I did and felt God sustaining as he would so many times in the next 11 days.

And through all that time, god also brought times of encouragement coupled with sustaining and tears:

•  a song (Jonathan David Helser's "I have risen"
• a verse (Numbers 33:14 The LORD replied, “I will personally go with you, Moses, and I will give you rest—everything will be fine for you.”)
• through an eCard:

"You are the Lord's. You are in God's place at God's perfect time. Your days are in his hands and he holds your future. He has gifted you and placed his hand upon you to bless you and make you a blessing. The burden of your ministry is not yours to carry - as you rest, HE will work; as you abide, He will bring fruit; as you sow, he will give the increase. He is your shield and exceeding great reward." Roy Lessin

I got a lot of emails from folks saying they were praying. And the ones from form former directors who'd been there in the trenches in ivory coast with me always hit the spot but made it hard to see the screen for a while. (thanks, guys).
I think the tie with 9 years of unrest in Ivory Coast made it particularly hard. While I recognized that I have unique giftings in crisis management - apparemment je suis diplôme en gestion de crises ; I did not want to look down the long road ahead if it meant years of unraveling. I kept thinking, "I don't know if I can do it all over again," and at the same time, "for such a time as this."

When we came out a month ago, I  had a personal debrief and then a group debrief. Tears were had by all.

If you think about a pressure cooker, after you turn it off, all that steam eventually has to come out. And that's a good thing.

This morning my devotional took me to

Luke 6.21.MSG
"You're blessed when you've lost it all. God's kingdom is there for the finding. You're blessed when you're ravenously hungry. Then you're ready for the Messianic meal.  You're blessed when the tears flow freely. Joy comes with the morning."

Thanks, God, for tears and the promise of joy and land where one day there will be no more tears.

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Thoughts from the Pressure Cooker IV - the least of these

Continuing on in thoughts gathered in the 3 weeks I was in Mali following the coup d'état that started on March 21. 

One of the hardest things every westerner has to deal with when they arrive in West Africa is the great disparity between what you have and those around you have. You step off the plane and suddenly you go from being middle class to someone who is immensely wealthy. People show up at your door weekly with great needs and you have to figure out whom to give to and how much. And you also have to learn to deal with the fact that you can not help everyone. Over the years, you end up with a list of people you help because you are in some sort of relationship to them.

That disparity between what I had and what others didn't kicked into high gear with this situation. Everyone I knew, even those normally doing okay, was pushed down into a precarious situation and those just barely getting by were suddenly desperate.


Economic sanctions beginning on April 2nd meant temporarily closed borders and skyrocketing prices for basic commodities, and shortages of fuel and electricity. This was compounded by a food security crisis that pre-dated the the security problems - the worst in a generation. The ordinary Malian, even in the peaceful southern section of the country where I live, was facing tremendous pressure. Extended family were showing up at his door due to the famine or insecurity. The price of rice was so high it was hard to buy enough to feed his family, much less those being added to it. In the North, I knew of one man who had 32 people move into his house with him fleeing insecurity and famine.

Grain prices are skyrocketing due to the insecurity and a famine. Many areas of Mali received no rain at all in the 2011 growing season.

The vegetable lady I buy from several times a week and the guy who owns the little boutique down the street both sell to the expats in the neighborhood. They suddenly had no more customers as 95% of the expat community left at the request of our embassies. My refugee friends from Sierra Leone and Liberia, who have survived since 2000 by dying tablecloths to sell to foreigners, also found themselves without any clients. I knew it was bad when on my last day in Mali, one of these refugees came to me and begged for help to get his wife and kid out of Mali.


Suddenly I knew what Jesus meant by "the least of these".
And I found it hard to know how to help. My three weeks in the pressure cooker were spent trying to maximize and prioritize resources and help where we could.

On Easter, I asked all the expats who were leaving in the coming days to bring all their extra clothes and bedding, and food they would need to get rid of from their fridges and freezers. We gathered a decent-sized impromptu offering for the brothers and sisters fleeing from the North. It was a great coming together of need and opportunity.

But that was just "the first pass". Two days later, I met a man who had fled with his family and left everything behind in the face of looting and persecution. I showed him where he could wash his clothes at our center, only to find out they just had the ones on their backs. I went back to my closet to see if I could maybe find something more for him.
Later that day, my refugee friend came just as I was doing the final cleaning out of my fridge. He got EVERYTHING else that was left, including some of the canned goods I was saving for when I came back.

But there are so many more who need help. My prayer is that the Malian Church can step and do its part sacrificially, and they are doing a good job so far. (Below: clothes and food collected by the Churches in Bamako) Do pray for them and those they are ministering to.


 

 We who are now "out of Mali" will do what we can from afar. And then leave it all in the capable hand of Him who clothes the flowers and birds and you and me and the least of these. 

Thoughts from the Pressure Cooker III - Consider the Sunflowers of the Field

Continuing on in thoughts gathered in the 3 weeks I was in Mali following the coup d'état that started on March 21. 

The passage from yesterday's post (Matthew 6:25-27) goes on to say,

And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don't work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if god cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. . . . Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs.Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

There is nothing like packing that one "just in case" suitcase you are allowed on the evacuation plane to put everything in perspective. I have lived in the same apartment in Bamako since 1999 and filled it with things brought from America 2 suitcases at a time or bought locally.

On April 4 (day 14 of the coup), as I lay in bed at midnight reading news articles on my phone, I decided that things were looking like we might be leaving sooner than I'd thought. And given that I had a huge amount of things to finish at the office, I could see myself on the last day, running home with one hour to spare to pack. So I got up and worked from midnight to 3 a.m. to pack my suitcase. Walking around the house in the wee hours you realize that there is VERY little that you really need and can't live without. I ended up with

• some tax, medical and legal records, 
• a few changes of clothes
• very basic toiletries, and medicine
• family pictures 
• a few special items that I had made or people had made for me. 
• my journals

Everything else, you can do without. It seemed so anticlimactic and in a sense so contrary to the party game where you ask what you would save from your house if it was on fire, or what you would take to a desert island because it really was a no-brainer.

I did not leave until a week later and flew out on a regular commercial flight and so had 40 kilos and so was able to add a second small suitcase - more clothes, some books, some work files and some cycling items - just in case I could find a bike. In the end, my suitcases were even 3 kilos under the limit.

It's easy to feel somehow spiritual about leaving all behind, but I know in my heart of hearts that I have a vast network of people overseas who can and will help me to replace what I need, and also a credit card.

But what of "the least of these"? (more on that in part IV).

Thoughts from the Pressure Cooker II - Consider the Birds of the Air

Continuing on in thoughts gathered in the 3 weeks I was in Mali following the coup d'état that started on March 21. 

Initially there was a lot of gunfire to be heard, including 5-6 shots fired in the air down the street from our office on the afternoon of March 21st. The first night there was heavier artillery across the river and nearer the centers of power. For the next two days, there was a lot of shooting into the air by soldiers (not fighting, just celebratory or for show) and you could hear this all over town but none immediately near where I live. (Thankfully there was very little bloodshed).

We were under 24-hour curfew for 2 days and then 12-hour curfew for a few more, so there was not much going out. Like us, most Malians were staying near to home. There were kids out playing soccer and even a wedding on our street on day 5, but very little traffic even in the neighborhoods.

It's not long in this setting when you find yourself jumping when a car drives down your street: Where's he going? Or when a car backfires or someone slams a metal gate. If you hear sirens in the distance, you wonder what they might mean. You become, for want of a better word, "flighty". My cat Tigger is like this and it always makes me laugh if I should accidentally drop something in the kitchen, how he can fly out of there so fast you can almost see the blurred lines racing behind him like in a cartoon.

On Easter morning (day 19), the remnant was  gathered on our office lawn for our Easter service and a small group of birds flew by in a flurry and swung up by the 2nd floor balcony before flying over to the trees. I realized that they were entirely without care and oblivious to the uncertainty that hung as heavy in the air as the humidity that was suffocating us in the early stages of hot season. Sure, the birds, cats, dogs, goats and sheep in Bamako were certainly as frightened by the gunfire as we were, but their reaction returns to normal within a short time. They do not have the long-term post-trauma anxiety that we do.

Later in the day, we went to a restaurant on the Niger river that had a pool for a very non-traditional Easter dinner. It was 109 F (43C) and the power was out, like it had been for the past 8 days, so there was no point going home to cook and we were all cleaning out our fridges to leave anyway.
So we swam in the pool and had pizzas or steak au poivre vert.
And there they were again - birds, carefree and oblivious. There were 2 goats tied up in the lawn and cranes kept landing and walking around among these goats and then flying up to the wall. 

And the words of Jesus came to me "Consider the birds of the air".

Matthew 6: 25-27 "That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life . . . . Look at the birds. They don't plan or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren't you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?"

Admittedly, the context here is about not having enough to eat or drink and what we might wear, but I think certainly this could be extended to worries about personal security.

I always ask my cat when he goes racing out of the room when I drop something whether I have EVER done anything to intentionally hurt him? Why can he not trust me after years of living in my apartment?

Lord, help me to rest in your arms and trust YOU without flightiness at uncertainties. 

Unhindered

I am writing from Mali which has had increasing levels of insecurity since late last year, culminating in a coup d'état on March 21, 2012. I am not going to comment here on what has happened or continues to happen. If you are curious look at the BBC Africa page  or Google News and do a search for Mali.

Since late 2009, we have gone through progressive stages of relocating people from the locations best suited for their work and ministry to safer areas. Now we are more or less all in the capital, being told to "shelter in place" by our various embassies. (Has anyone ever successfully "sheltered on the move"?!?) That odd bit of "embassy speak" means we are supposed to stay at home, not go out and respect the curfew - initially a 24-hour curfew and now just 6 pm to 6 a.m.

This week our organization had planned a retreat and a triennial business conference to elect new officers and to look at strategies to best carry out our little corner of God's work here. And now our conference is cancelled, months of planning laid to waste, as people are scattered across the city (and country), "sheltering in place". 

And the question rises, starting as a whimper deep in our guts rising up to something unspoken stuck in our throats: God, how are we supposed to do the work you have called us to do? Circumstances certainly seem to be increasingly limiting, and at the same time opportunities are vast. Why? How?

A few weeks ago, I was struck by something while reading in Eugene Peterson's "Christ Plays in 10,000 places". I began reading this book on my sabbatical about this time last year.As I read pages 296-298, I noted to myself that I should include this in my report to our conference (which is now indefinitely on hold). 

In the third section of Peterson's book, he takes us through Luke and Acts describing God's work in the world: the birth of Jesus and his role in the world in Luke, the birth of the Jesus community and it's role in the world in Acts. 

Luke 2 opens with the Roman emperor calling for a census of the whole (known) world and Acts ends with the leader of the church, Paul, being taken to the center of the known world, Rome. But this is not the end of the story of the Jesus community, but the very first chapter.

So in Acts 28, Paul has been taken to Rome and is under house arrest, chained to a Roman soldier and confined to house arrest for the last 2 years of his life. Paul had just had a disappointing meeting with Jewish leaders in Rome who did not receive him well. Christians are already being persecuted. This sounds pretty familiar to our context, not a lot of freedom to move about. In human terms, it seems daunting at best.

And yet the last verse of Acts (28:31) says that Paul "is preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ quite openly and unhindered."  Luke chooses his words very carefully and so he didn't put "unhindered" in there by mistake or just to make the rhyme work. 

"All the emphasis lies on that last phrase.", writes I. Howard Marshall (quoted by Peterson).  "Being chained to a soldier doesn't seem like a promising strategy for accomplishing the salvation of the world." Peterson surmises that this word "unhindered" might not signal the circumstances but rather the means by which the HS accomplishes the kingdom work:

• The gospel has spread "to the ends of the earth" - Rome is the center of the known world. the Kingdom is poised to go out.
• Once resurrection is introduced into any story, all the ways in which we work have to be "rethought, reimagined, and reworked. The world's means can no longer be employed for kingdom ends. We become willing participants not only in what God does but in the way he does it."
• in a Pre-resurrection world, the means the world uses include "power and money, information and technology, lust and avarice, pride and anger." They work rather well but are not God's way. 
• The Jesus community is called to avoid using the world's means instead we should be "unhindered: content and relaxed, practiced and discerning in living the Jesus life in the Jesus way, living a congruence between the resurrection reality and the means by which we give witness and live obediently to it."
  

Peterson says that "the judicial footdragging that has kept Paul mired in prison for years, the religious obduracy of the Jewish leadership, the massacres of Christians in the city DO NOT QUALIFY as HINDRANCES."

Likewise, in God's overall plan the complex security situation in Mali, inability to travel to areas of the country, the need to stay at home. . .  do not qualify as hindrances either to the advancement of the work he has given us!

Lord, give us eyes to see how our "hindrances" are really "opportunities" in your resurrection way of working.