Outside Yourself

For the third time in less than a decade, I have been placed into a completely different culture and have had to adapt to all the differences. It's not until you've been plunged into a new culture that you begin to understand just how different you really are.

It's not just your location that changes when you move into a new culture. Everything that has been familiar to you gets turned upside down, and in some sense, you start over, learning how to talk and relate to people all over again. The use of the language changes, the music changes, the cultural norms change, the way people relate to one another changes, the clothing changes... It can all seem a bit overwhelming.

Northern Ireland was quite different in every conceivable way from Indiana, and although Northern Ireland shares the same island with the Republic of Ireland, the cultural differences were almost as stark between them. Now I find myself living in the Denver metro area teaching at a predominantly Latino school surrounded by a culture that is radically different from the one we left in Ireland. I've learned to be comfortable being the minority and have come to appreciate the challenges of adapting to new cultures.

Although I've had to exchange bacon and cabbage for chorizo and burritos, my love for people and appreciation of their culture remains the same.

I have a rather simplistic view of being a missionary. To me, a missionary is someone who can be who they are as designed by God but be that person somewhere else. I fear that we've lost our understanding of Christian mission which seems to be monopolized by "professional missionaries" or those who have raised enough money to go on "short-term missions". I have been one of those "professional missionaries" who has taken countless youth on "short-term mission trips", and I understand and appreciate the labor and service of those who have given themselves love and serve the people He loves.

But I still believe in the mission of every individual! To get outside our ourself is a divine calling not just reserved for the professionals or seasonals but for all who claim to follow Christ. For some of us, just getting out of our home or circle of friends (or church!) and meeting people who don't know the love of God is a stretch beyond our comprehension. I don't think Jesus asks us to start with Tanzania or Slovakia or Mongolia but instead asks us to start with our neighbor, the people in our proximity.

There will be those who will go to Indonesia, India, and Ireland, but we need more barefooted followers of Christ who are willing to bring light, hope, and life right down the street. Just stepping out of the family bubble, friend bubble, or church bubble can be a huge step of faith for some, but laying down your life (your culture, your comfort, your familiarity) reminds me a lot of Someone Else I know.

Getting outside of yourself doesn't require evangelistic zeal, a degree on the wall, or fund-raisers. What's needed instead is someone who simply loves God, loves others as Jesus does, and is willing to participate in God's hope for humanity.

And who knows, you might enjoy yourself out there...

Update

We are still getting to know the place we find ourselves in. We have been trying Denver on now for a couple months, but we are still getting used to city living. Our new surroundings couldn't be more different than where we came from in Ireland. Last week Ireland hit 65 degrees; we hit 100. Ireland has rain; we have none. Ireland has green grass...

You get the picture.

Although we are missing our friends and adopted home terribly, we are grateful for where we have been planted in Colorado. We feel we are just now beginning to bloom. Brenda has established herself in her new job and is doing a magnificent job of bringing organization to the non-profit agency she works for. She seems quite content in her work environment and seems to be getting to know her co-workers well.

I started teaching at a high school in Commerce City on July 21st. One week into it, and I am enjoying the career change as well as my students. Currently, I am teaching a five-hour, five day per week course called Discovery which helps equip our students with skills for life such as team building, anger management, conflict resolution, problem solving, assertiveness training, and communication. All of these skills are new to my students, so I am having a lot of fun walking them into new experiences.

Slowly, friendships are beginning to build. We look forward to the days ahead when we will have a house full of people again coming together as family to enjoy our common faith in Christ and mutual love. We miss Christian community, but we are grateful for those who have been brought into our lives in this place.

My [older] brother, Forest, recently moved from North Carolina to Denver. It's good to have family here, and I am grateful he chose to move near us. The Ray's have been transplanted to an unexpected place, and there is no one more eager to see what comes of it than us.

Got Him Figured?

Sensationalism

I went to the mountains again today.

With camera in hand, I drove along the road leading to the summit of Mt. Evans at just over 14,000 feet. As usual, the mountains did not disappoint, their grandeur beyond words and too substantial to capture with my lens as to do it any justice. On our descent, my wife, brother, and I stopped to watch some mountain goats and take in the view. It wasn't before long, however, that I stopped looking outward and began to notice what was at my feet.

The tundra had come alive in the summer sun.

Although surrounded by peaks measuring well over 12,000 feet, I was taken in by the carpet of humble flowers spread out before me on the ground. How easily I could have walked over them without notice!

Shaw said that the real moment of success is not the moment apparent to the crowd. It's easy for us to be drawn to what is dramatic, thrilling, and breathtaking. I think we have a natural tendency to be lured by the sensational, enraptured by the powerful, charmed by the cunning, and engrossed in the large. We like it big in America: big money, big cars, big houses, big egos, and big numbers.

Today, I appreciated the smallness of things.

I think it's easy for us to translate our fascination with the sensational into our faith. We can be drawn to power and authority, seek after the miraculous, and pray with high and lofty words. We like dramatic sermons and worship services that move us, and we judge the church's we visit based on whether or not their service "did it for us". We measure the success of churches based on the size of their budget, the numbers in attendance, the appearance of their building, and their quantity of conversions. We like numbers, and the bigger, the better.

Jesus was surrounded by those drawn to the sensational -- those who wanted to see the miracles and healings and political uprisings. The stories of miracles in the New Testament are glorious and spectacular, jumping out of the pages of the Gospels! I must admit, I am fascinated by them.

But we cannot forget to stop and look at the feet of Jesus.

Meshed in with the majestic are the words "poor in spirit", "meek", "hunger and thirst", "merciful", "peacemaker", "pure in heart". Woven into the scriptures are stories of feetwashing, bandaging wounds, feeding the hungry, caring for the poor, and comforting those in mourning. Jesus spoke of loving your neighbor, turning the other cheek, not judging others, forgiving those who have sinned against you, and giving to the needy. His is a movement that is subtle, humble, and gracious.

I have seen my share of the miraculous, and it amazes me every time. There are, however, few things that impress or move me more than to see a follower of Christ walking humbly with his God, loving as Jesus loved, serving as Jesus served. Big churches, big budgets, big worship experiences, and big numbers just don't seem to measure up to the image of Jesus washing the dirt off another man's feet.

Most people wouldn't interpret such living as success, but -- like Shaw -- I believe the real moments of success just aren't apparent to the crowd.

Love Thy Neighbor

Check out this video:

http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=f3108760392e177f8a64

Here Is Love

Here is love vast as the ocean

Loving kindness as the flood

When the prince of life our ransom

Shed for us his precious blood

Who his love will not remember?

Who can cease to sing his praise?

He can never be forgotten

Throughout heaven's eternal days.

On the mount of crucifixion

Fountains opened deep and wide

Through the floodgates of God's mercy

Flowed a vast and gracious tide

Grace and love like mighty rivers

Poured incessant from above

And heaven's peace and perfect justice

Kissed a guilty world in love.

Let me all your love accepting

Love you ever all my days

Let me seek your kingdom only

And let my life be your praise

You alone shall be my glory

Nothing in the world I see

You have cleansed and sanctified me

You yourself have set me free.

Welsh Hymn

Life

Grace and Judgment

I think about grace and judgment quite often, not so much in terms of what we can expect when we stand before God but rather in how we treat one another. In particular, I think about the levels of grace verses judgment those who follow Christ seem to demonstrate in their daily lives. How often does judgment win over grace?

I've come to the conclusion that we are fairly comfortable with judgment. We can dispense it with easy measure and manage to feel good about ourselves in the process. Everyone does it -- believers and non alike. I guess that's what disturbs me, especially when I see it in myself.

Grace makes us uncomfortable. We don't know what to do with it because it's so...unnatural. Judgment seems to fit our nature, whereas grace is supernatural (beyond what is natural or normal for us). It comes from God, and like most things that are from Him, sometimes feels beyond our grasp of understanding. It certainly seems beyond the scope of our human experience.

Grace makes us squirm, because in our twisted thinking, we are convinced that being judged and judging one another is the right thing to do. To move beyond what is for most of us a daily practice of judgment would be a complete life-shift and overhaul of our thinking. Seems like it would require some sort of divine intervention to override our life-long patterns of judgment and separation.

Enter Jesus.

He showed us a better way to live among our neighbors (and to live with ourselves). He divinely interjects grace and mercy and love into a world filled with judgment. He injects me with his grace, too, but I still show symptoms of the "pattern of this world". Good thing his grace knows no bounds.

"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is -- his good, pleasing, and perfect will."

(Romans 12:2)

Wander

Freed

There's a great story in the book of Acts in the New Testament about two men named Paul and Silas who were thrown into prison because, ironically, they set a slave girl free of her demon possession. Her "owners" were angry that they could no longer make money off of her, so they had Paul and Silas thrown into prision for being a public nuissance.

About midnight, something amazing took place. "Suddenly, there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once, all the prison doors flew open, and everybody's chains came loose" (Acts 16:26). I've read this story on more than a few occassions, but it wasn't until recently that I paid much attention to the details of this verse or the implications of it. Apparently, "all the prison doors flew open" and "everybody's chains came loose". Maybe you're sharper than me, but it wasn't until recently that I realized it wasn't just the praying, singing Paul and Silas who got their freedom that night.

When Paul and Silas were set free, so were all the other prisoners. Now this is pure speculation, but that could mean that, if God was responsible for this miracle, He also set free men who could have been thieves, political prisoners, sexual offenders, or even murderers. All freed. The gift of freedom showed no partiality that night.

This just flies right in the face of our understanding of Justice, which is directly tied into our thinking that people should get what they deserve. Apparently, God doesn't think that way. The word "prisoner" implies someone who broke the law and was found guilty. It doesn't just imply those "falsely accused" like Paul and Silas.

The truth about God is that He does demand justice, but He satisfies His own justice with His son Jesus. The guilty verdict has already been placed on humanity, but the pardon -- and the freedom -- has come through Jesus. Jesus really does set the guilty free...the condemned, those who intentionally broke the law. Jesus sets the prisoners free.

What about Justice? What we think about this word, I believe, tells us a lot about what we think about God. Our sense of justice is that if the law is broken, punishment must follow. Followers of Christ can be too quick to apply this sort of justice to the world around us. We have bought into this idea that man initiates with his sin and God responds with His justice (translation, punishment). My friends, this is legalism. It's easy for us to relish the moment when the guilty get what they deserve; very few of us would relish it if we got what we deserved.

The truth is that because God's mercy triumphs over His judgment (James 2:13), we live under a different formula of justice: God initiates with His love and grace, and we respond. God's justice is satisfied with Christ. It is a curse to live under the law (Galatians 3) and with legalism in our thinking.

I am not denying my guilt -- or anyone else's -- but I no longer live under condemnation or in a prison of legalism. I am not one of those who declares that I have been "falsely accused". I am very aware of the grace I am in need of, and I am grateful for it. This guilty prisoner is free.

There's a lot of discussion in America about what liberty is and isn't, and that is evidenced by all the cases that are brought before our Supreme Court. To me, liberty is cheapened when it becomes just this shallow notion that I can just do whatever I want. I think it's something much more profound. In my thinking, liberty is a gift from God as demonstrated in the gift of His son who died to set all men free. I have a lot in common with all those criminals who shared that prison with Paul and Silas.

Without merit, I have been given my freedom.

"He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" -- Jesus (Matthew 5:45).

Restoration

Little Graces

You know how people always tell you to rip the bandage off the wound quickly because it hurts less than pulling it off slowly? I usually opt for the quick tug, because I like to get it over quickly. Well, somethings you just can't get over so quickly.

Getting over Ireland is one of those things for me.

I started pulling at the bandage in October of last year when we made the painful decision to return to the States after living there for the better part of seven years. I'm still pulling, and it still hurts.

I decided to take a small road trip last weekend to get out into the Colorado wilderness, do some photography, and get some much needed time with God. I saw some absolutely magnificent scenery and incredible wildlife, but I couldn't escape the sense of loss that I am feeling about Ireland. In fact, being alone with my own thoughts only intensified the feelings of loss...and the pain of separation.

One of my favorite authors, Brennan Manning, says that we are all "paupers a the door of God's mercy". Our need for mercy -- big mercies and small ones -- is great, and the Father's desire to be merciful is even greater. He turns His ears to those who cry out to Him (Psalm 40:1) and meets them at their point of need.

I was mourning last weekend, but this weekend I am celebrating little graces. The Lord knows we could use a dose of Ireland, and we're getting it with some Irish friends who arranged to spend the weekend with us while visiting the States this summer. I'll soak up the conversation, the company, and the moment, and I'll be grateful to the Father for meeting us at our point of need.