safety is like a SCSI drive

As the time lengthens between posts, I begin to wonder why anyone would keep coming back to comment and check on the situation. To those of you who do just that, many thanks.

As most of you know, I am heading up to the Boston Conservatory to do graduate work in a few short weeks. This time of life is extremely hectic and I have found little time to write down thoughts, and even littler time to keep in touch with many friends. I have been in the process of preparing music for Boston, recording an album (at the behest of so many friends and relatives) and trying to stay afloat financially in the midst of it all. I am discovering that in this transitional phase of life, none of the three are really getting accomplished. I’ve been working very hard, extended in several directions, and the money gets tighter, the album production slows, and I have very little to show for hours of piano practice in the past few months. The Lord is teaching me rudimentary lessons of living by faith that I have never had to learn before. Perhaps the greatest exercise of this mustard-seed trust in the Lord will be the cross-country driving trip I will make alone in the Neon, from Florida to Massachusetts (with a stop off in Kentucky).

The past two years of my life have been full of firsts; firsts in understanding, communication, sin, grace, and general life experience. They keep on coming. I have a feeling that I’m going to receive them tenfold when I get to Boston.

Living apart from most of what (and who) I’ve known for the past year has taught me very much about the value of family, friendship and communication. Many of you reading this have been a great comfort and encouragement to me during the past year (the truth of which is only exaggerated by the fact that you pay attention to this ridiculous journal). I want you to know that I cannot express in sentences the difference that you have made to me, either in person or across the phone lines. I only hope that I have reciprocated in kind. Thank you.

Recently, a lot of changes seem to be taking place in the country and close to home, in the families and friends that I love. Marriages are dissolving; people of all ages are feeling suicidal; friends begin to waste their lives in abuse of various substances at very early ages; the church seems to be ignorant in the face of a dying nation, even set against Christ in many places. It’s very difficult to find the church in a building. However, everyone is not asleep. Several weeks ago, I went to Eric’s church on Wednesday night (he’s my roommate and a youth minister), to play a song or two of mine for the youth group and participate in the study. The text was the apostles’ prayer in Acts 4, just after they are released from trial by the religious leaders. The text and the lesson that evening radically challenged my own view of prayer and my attitude regarding the church today. Essentially, the prayer consists of an acknowledgment of God’s greatness and sovereignty, followed by a request to Him for boldness in preaching the gospel, and a plea for Him to take notice of the threats of their enemies. Note that the church is painfully aware that she is about to undergo persecution, and that everyone in the world is set against Christ. In that dire situation, the prayer included nothing regarding personal safety, gain, or health. The church prayed for boldness in preaching and literally expected miracles and signs of God’s power to accompany them, for His glory. When they finished praying, the building they were in was shaken from the foundation and they were all filled with the Spirit.

I don’t want to make a prescriptive universal out of this passage, but I think there’s an obvious discrepancy between the prayer of the modern church and the prayer of those believers in Acts 4. This discrepancy makes clear the situation of our churches: many of our congregations are concerned about the wrong things. In fact, in thinking about my Boston drive, one of the first things that came to my mind when asking friends and family for prayer was physical safety and health, on the trip and in the city. After being confronted with the scripture, I felt ashamed of myself – not because those things are particularly unsuitable for the ears of God, but because my heart was not in the right place about life. If I’m going to Boston, or anywhere, or if I’m staying right where I am, I’m on a mission. Safety is a peripheral issue at most. I am a part of the bride, an invisible church who is now represented in this nation by a few people in many church buildings. Grace has been shown to me in great measure, as it has to you, and our mission is to commune with God constantly and allow that grace to spill all over the place in daily life and interaction. We are to win the lost, and the restoration of churches is now, by the power of the Spirit of God, in the hands of a few who see the coming storm and go with all urgency to wake the sleepers.

If you pray for me, pray that I will have the discernment to see what God is doing, the detachment to let anything go for His sake, and the boldness to preach the gospel without fear or inhibition wherever I may be. Thanks for reading and thanks for your love and friendship.