not to Russia, with love

Perhaps the recent events of my life have been directed by the Lord simply to force me to post more often on this journal. Perhaps not.

I received a call the other day from Steve Edwards, who (as far as I knew) was going to be leading the Russia trip this summer. He had some disturbing news. The Russian Embassy in Washington somehow managed to screw up Steve’s (and my) paperwork, losing the oh-so-important letters that allowed us to get government invitations and thereby run the camp legally. What this means is that we could only now enter the country as tourists. This might even be possible, but it would run the risk of putting the Kindness Foundation’s ministry in jeopardy, because we wouldn’t legally be able to participate in the youth camp. The end result? The two of us aren’t going. Just like that. I was pretty shocked, but I started to realize what it really meant when Steve was asking me to make recordings of our “cultural presentation” music so that the folks who are going will be able to sing to something.

The Lord has obviously changed my direction for the next month or so, and to what purpose I still don’t know. All I know is that there is one, and I need your prayers right now as I seek it out.

Oh, and a special thanks goes out to each one of you who understands where I am on my journey now and who agrees (or at least struggles) with the need to find a way not to waste our lives, to wake the church up to repentance and action, and to find the purpose of God and zealously pursue it with our lives. I talk to a lot of people in churches here about things like that and they basically look at me funny, as if everything were alright and God probably couldn’t be more pleased with the state of affairs. It’s tough to find company as a “radical.” May the Lord bless you for understanding and keeping in touch. Keep fighting the good fight.

it’s on the cd now, baby

Recently, the Lord has been dealing with me in a new way. I’ve been earnestly seeking the solution to the problem of feeling out of fellowship with Him, and He has shown me through various things that what I really need is more experiential knowledge of Him. I’m a very cerebrally oriented person, so the assimilation of knowledge and the solving of puzzles comes easily to me. I’ve strained and struggled to know God through intellectual grasping for a long time and ignored my need for personal communion with Him on a daily basis. In a sermon I recently heard, the pastor made a statement that seemed elementary on the surface, but it struck me at the heart. He said, “Prayer is the least spectacular thing you can do in your relationship with the Lord.” He went on to examine the power of prayer in the fellowship of the Spirit, and the amount of powerless Christians that arrive in that place primarily because we do not pray.

It’s certainly true that all of us want to be doing spectacular things. Even though I love people and my desire is to serve them, my flesh interrupts frequently with the desire for some glory to come out of it. But fellowship with God in the closet is indeed the most inglorious and difficult thing in our journey, and, of all things, the most necessary to our life in Christ. As I have been seeking to enter that fellowship lately, and seeking to know and love the Lord as He is, He has given me a song and I thought I’d share it here with my readers. Sorry you can’t hear the music yet (you’ll have to wait for the CD).

The Few Years that Remain (6/21/04)

I’ve lived under Your banner
I’ve done works in Your Name
And I’ve sung my Hosannas
In the hope of earthly gain
I stood proud among Your children
When I should have been ashamed
Now I want to learn to trust You
In the few years that remain

I’ve learned about the Scriptures
I’ve studied all the saints
My terms and definitions
Built these walls and barred these gates
I mastered all the doctrines
That seemed hardest to explain
Now I want to learn to serve You
In the few years that remain

I’ve loved who I’m supposed to
With them I kept my word
It’s hard to keep on loving
When you keep on getting hurt
But You’ve begun to show me
How You know that kind of pain
Now I want to learn to love You
In the few years that remain

(bridge)
I’ve been so dull of hearing
And I haven’t read Your Word
I’m so boldly unrepentant
And so blindly self-assured
I take all Your gifts for granted
And I wonder why it seems so hard to turn

I’ve lost that holy fire
I never learned to pray
But You don’t like a liar
So I’m giving up today
I’m calling on Your Spirit
And if He makes good His claim
There’s no measure of the value
Of the few years that remain.

beetween Detroit and Amsterdam

Here is a bonus selection that has only been previously reviewed by Christopher Lovely. This is what happens when you try to write at the end of an 8-hour plane flight.

Plane Poem, 5/17/04

Seven miles in the air
And just one thousand left to fly
The girl behind my airplane chair
Has kicked her anti-lullaby
The better part of eight hours’ span
Between Detroit and Amsterdam.

Seven hours half-awake
And just one till we touch the ground
The baby’s lip begins to quake
Once more the shrill, familiar sound
From day to night to day again
Between Detroit and Amsterdam.

Seven people I have met;
The air force man from Germany,
The flight attendant in my debt,
The Indian with the company,
The couple, the kicker and the Scottish man
Between Detroit and Amsterdam.

Seven-twenty Holland time
And neither armrest is for me;
The lavatory lost its line
But I no longer have to pee -
I can’t get out unless we land
Between Detroit and Amsterdam.

Seven miles in the air
I can’t sleep at this altitude
Scrunched up in the kicking chair
Between the babe and the breakfast food,
Between the Scot and the businessman,
Between Detroit and Amsterdam.