The Lay Of The Land

It is the last day of August, which for us means the end of another year of ministry.  We arrived in Dulce in late August of 2013 and the first Sunday was on September 1st, so by our reckoning the fourth year ends today and the fifth year begins tomorrow.

What an amazing adventure!  Changing careers for Robin and I, moving our family to a part of the country we barely knew, entering a culture that was completely new.  We probably thought that we had a vague idea of what we were getting into as we wondered about all the unknowns ahead.  What kinds of things would happen?  How would we handle the all of the things that we couldn’t even begin to anticipate?

Four years later some of those things have been figured out.  Some things are problems with solutions.  Some are problems that are more managed than solved.  And there are things that we feel there just isn’t anything we have to offer.  Four years have taught us that as long as we will live and serve here there will be many more surprises, things that just cannot be planned for, and we imagine that is the case with ministry no matter where a person may be serving.

One way to frame our perspective at this point is that in four years we have learned the lay of the land.  I took this picture while driving home from Pagosa Springs this week.  I haven’t made that trip nearly as many times as Robin, but I've made it enough times to know what lies ahead as I travel along the road.  I took the picture close to a place called Edith, a scattered collection of houses just across the Navajo River and barely inside Colorado. I was traveling the "back road," a route which saves miles, but not time, and is hard on tires.

About three and a half years ago I took that road for the first time. If my eyes had scanned the horizon everything would have looked the same.  Hills here, pastures there.  Greens, browns, and perhaps some cattle or deer.  Back then nothing stood out as particular to my untrained eye.

But now my perspective is different.  I look towards where I took the picture and I see the change in line that marks where the road crosses the river and then climbs as it bends south.  I understand the lay of the land in ways that were unknown to me four years ago.  While I'm using the physical landscape as an example I have also learned much of the landscape of the people of our congregation and the community which we call home.  

It would be disingenuous to say that the last four years have been a steady upward journey, moving from success to success, learning along the way and with every lesson being easy and nearly intuitive. 

Success? Certainly, but also failure, disappointment, and regret.  Easy lessons? Absolutely, but also the kind of learning that only comes the hard way, and those lessons are perhaps the more precious ones.

As the fourth year comes to a close I still feel as I did at the end of the first, second and third years, which is glad that this place, Dulce, New Mexico, the homeland of the Jicarilla Apache Nation, is the place where God brought us to serve in ministry.  God has given us many gifts for ministry in this particular place, and we dearly love so many of the people we have met here. 

I'm going to close with the benediction from the Letter to the Hebrews, because after four years we do feel equipped, and we pray for God to work through us according to His will, to produce what is pleasing in His sight, to His glory.  Four years to learn the lay of the land, and excited to see what is yet to come.

"Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen."

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Distance

When we were on vacation last month we drove close to 3,000 miles over 16 days.  Most of those miles were in the two days it took us to get to the Midwest and the two days back, while the remainder happened in various shorter trips to see family and friends in the places where we stayed.  There weren't any days where we didn't go at least one or two places, and all those miles added up.  Any way you look at it, we covered a lot of distance.

One of the blessings of traveling to the Midwest was that for a few days we could enjoy a greatly decreased distance from members of our families, especially our parents.  In Minnesota we were just two miles from Robin's parents, and in Wisconsin my mother was often no farther away than the next room in her house.

The Bible also shows us something of distance, particularly in the distance separating God from humans.  On the one hand the distance between the two is impossible to measure.  God is holy and humans are sinful, and so the distance between the two is vast.  But on the other hand, under the right circumstances, the distance is virtually erased.

Psalm 145:18 says,

"The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth."

As I read that verse I understand "truth" to mean a  recognition that the psalmist is a sinner, who acknowledges his sin before God and seeks God's forgiveness.  The psalmist understands this very basic notion about God.  In the New Testament we see with clarity the means of God's forgiveness, which is our having faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus as the sacrifice that removes our sin, so that we can confidently come before God and know His very presence with us each and every moment of every day.

Unlike our trip to the Midwest, which we have to save for and can only happen once a year, the closing of the distance between any human being and God costs that person nothing except surrendering their own sense of pride and living as the god of their own life, and placing their faith in Jesus.   

And once it takes place it is a permanent action.  God's promise is that He will be there with you, end of story.  Moses reminded the people of Israel in Deuteronomy 31:6,

"Be strong and courageous.  Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the LORD your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you."

Like the words of the psalmist, the words of Moses are made clear in the person of Jesus Christ.  

Place your faith in Him today, close the distance, and know that He will be with you, now and forever.  Amen.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Having a Thought Towards the Future

"Her uncleanness was in her skirts;

she took no thought of her future;

therefore her fall is terrible;

she has no comforter."           

Those words come from the opening chapter of Lamentations, as the author expresses his grief over the fall of Jerusalem and the carrying off of the people of Israel into captivity.  Last week I finished reading through Jeremiah, where the prophet makes repeated calls for the people of Israel to repent of their sin and turn to the Lord.  The call for repentance is accompanied by a word of warning of the dangers of persisting in their disregard for God.  Lamentations follows Jeremiah, with grief over the fact that God's chosen people got exactly what they were warned about.

As I read Lamentations that one phrase, "she took no thought of her future," hit me hard and stuck with me.  The people of Israel are God's chosen people, called by Him and set apart by Him as His witnesses in the world.  It is they to whom He has revealed His law and it is through them that He will work out His promised plan of redemption.  When it comes to sin, or willful disobedience of the will of God, they, of all people, should know better. 

They should know better, and they probably do know better, and yet they persist in following their own will rather than Gods.  Living in the present, with whatever temporary sense of pleasure, or escape or what have you, as they disobey and disregard God, with no thought of their future.

I don’t know about you, but those words are convicting to me when I look back at my sin.  It was something I did at the moment without any care for its effects in the future.

Ongoing sin, unfortunately, is part of the Christian life.  We can understand our weakness in one area, and deal with it accordingly, and then find that as soon as we turn from that one thing we fall into another. 

While I am convicted by the words of Lamentations, I am also comforted, knowing that in Christ Jesus there is a truly merciful Savior.  The fall into sin does not have to be a free fall into a bottomless pit, or a fall to a hard landing and no possible way out. 

My sin has consequences, affecting me, and, both selfishly and unfortunately, other people as well.  May God, in His grace, make me more mindful of that truth, as well as the grace that come through Christ, the next time I consider taking a step into the pit.  May I live with a thought towards the future in terms of the effects of my sin, and also a future where one day sin will be no more.  Amen.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Full Disclosure

In just 11 days a solar eclipse will pass across North America.  The "band of totality," or area that will be 100% dark as the moon blocks the sun's rays from reaching Earth, is expected to be right through the heart of the United States, reaching from Northwest to Southeast.  As a result of this area of total darkness, virtually all of the United States will be affected by the eclipse.

One of the ways in which Robin is taking notice of the eclipse comes in a humorous t-shirt she bought.  It shows various arrangements of the sun, moon and Earth, and labels them "lunar eclipse," "solar eclipse" and "apocalypse."  Kat, our inquisitive child and growing reader, saw the shirt during dinner and asked, "What does apocalypse mean?"

A pretty good question, to which Robin and I looked at each other and each said, "Hmmm."  And then I decided to get up and fetch my New Testament Greek dictionary, recalling that the Greek title for the Revelation to John is roughly Apocalypse to John.  According to that reference the primary definition is: making fully known, revelation, disclosure.  The New Testament uses it fourteen times, including just once in the book where it is also part of the title. 

It is curious that the popular definition we would have for apocalypse, that of a cataclysmic conflagration marking the end of civilization as we know it, with zombies left to run everything, is not the apocalypse per se but merely the end result.  In actuality an apocalypse is a full disclosure, a revealing of things that were not previously known.

The last book of the Bible, the Revelation to John, is most certainly a full disclosure of end times from a biblical perspective.  But taking another step back, to look at the Bible as a whole, we also see this idea of apocalypse, of revelation, at work.

It is in the Bible, and nowhere else, where humans are given insight into the mind and purposes of God as He works in the world.  Through the pages of the Bible we understand why God created the world, why He created humans, why things went awry between humans and God and God's subsequent promise to one day make things right. 

We see the fulfillment of that promise in the person and work of Jesus, and God's plan to continue drawing people to Himself until the day when He brings time and space in the creation we see and know to an end. 

In no way does the Bible provide exhaustive knowledge of the things of God.  We will always have questions that remain unanswered, no matter how long or deeply we study God's word.  But for our purposes, from God's point-of-view, His word contains the revelation, the full disclosure of all that we need to love Him, to worship Him and to serve Him.  Amen