This coming Wednesday, February 5, 2014 at South Hills Church Community we are relaunching our mid-week study with a night of worship starting at 7 p.m. I'm excited to co-lead this night with my friends Aaron Garcia, Staci Leonard, Kim Garcia, and Darrell Johnson. This is a night for our students and our adults to gather together and spend extended time in God's presence as a community.
Because we believe that worship is about more than just singing, this night will also include times of confession, prayer, and communion. This is not a night to come and sing a few songs and then listen to someone teach for half an hour. This is about coming and actively engaging and participating in worship of the King.
This isn't "one more thing" to add to your calendar. This is at the core of what it means to be a disciple. To be in community with your rabbi and your fellow disciples.
So bring the kids, bring your parents, bring your friends - no-one is outside the circle of God's community. Put your other plans on hold for one night.
Come and experience first Wednesday with us.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Monday, January 27, 2014
Where I live
My family and I used to eat at some great restaurants on this street when we lived here before.
We've seen a few good movies at the movie theatre inside the Casino where I was standing when I took this picture.
It is time for us to be back together and go eat at those great restaurants again and go to some great movies together again.
I love this city, but I love it more when they are in it with me.
a night on the town
I have a great friend by the name of Mark Berry. He manages a Lindo Michoacan restaurant and cantina here in Vegas. (Great food by the way) On Sunday he invited me to be his guest at a special invite only presentation of three guitarists who were playing an exclusive show at his restaurant. The guitarists were Mario Olivares, Roman Miroshnichenko, and Roger Espinoza.
Three amazing guitarists, combining and fuzing three very different styles into one night of amazing music. These are guys who play because they love music. I'm a musician and a guitar player and I know when I hear good music - not overproduced commercialized pop pablum, but real, gritty, down to earth music played by talented people who do it for love of the music, not for the money or the fame.
In honor of the night Mark had the chef's make special guacamole. I shed a tear as I ate it. It was that spicy. Even Jorge, the guy I was sitting next to at the bar all night said it was hot. So you know, it was hot.
One of the guitar players was from Russia. Someone bought him a vodka shot during the show. He drank it and then said "what is this, water?" The next round was a full glass of the good stuff. The more he drank the better he got. That never happened to me back in the day. I guess you have to be Russian....
I got home late last night, completely fulfilled by a night of amazing musicianship. Seeing great musicians up close and personal (close enough I could talk to the guys between songs from where I was sitting) is a rewarding experience. I recommend it.
Don't ignore your local music scene. Don't pass up on the chance to see real, live, underground artists.
Real music is not overproduced auto-tuned commercialized mass-marketed money driven tunes sung by little girls wearing next to nothing. Don't buy into the lie that it is.
Have a night on the town seeing real musicians honing their craft on little stages in tiny cantinas and bars. You won't regret it.
Three amazing guitarists, combining and fuzing three very different styles into one night of amazing music. These are guys who play because they love music. I'm a musician and a guitar player and I know when I hear good music - not overproduced commercialized pop pablum, but real, gritty, down to earth music played by talented people who do it for love of the music, not for the money or the fame.
In honor of the night Mark had the chef's make special guacamole. I shed a tear as I ate it. It was that spicy. Even Jorge, the guy I was sitting next to at the bar all night said it was hot. So you know, it was hot.
One of the guitar players was from Russia. Someone bought him a vodka shot during the show. He drank it and then said "what is this, water?" The next round was a full glass of the good stuff. The more he drank the better he got. That never happened to me back in the day. I guess you have to be Russian....
I got home late last night, completely fulfilled by a night of amazing musicianship. Seeing great musicians up close and personal (close enough I could talk to the guys between songs from where I was sitting) is a rewarding experience. I recommend it.
Don't ignore your local music scene. Don't pass up on the chance to see real, live, underground artists.
Real music is not overproduced auto-tuned commercialized mass-marketed money driven tunes sung by little girls wearing next to nothing. Don't buy into the lie that it is.
Have a night on the town seeing real musicians honing their craft on little stages in tiny cantinas and bars. You won't regret it.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
gods pt 1
In prehistoric times man looked up into the night sky and saw the stars and the sun and the moon and the lightning and decided that there must be another world up there with creatures more powerful than he who were controlling everything. Thus man invented the idea of "gods".
In prehistoric times man dreamed and in his dreams he saw other men and when he awoke thought he must have entered a new dimension or reality where "others" could communicate with him and he with them. These "others" soon became the basis for "spirit beings" that eventually became "gods".
Soon, man had invented "gods" for everything. Gods that controlled the weather, and thus the crops. Gods that controlled fertility, and thus the economics of a nomadic, agrarian culture. Gods that controlled the air, the ground, the water, the animals, the plants. Gods that controlled war. Gods that controlled death.
Whether you believe in this "secular" version of how the idea of gods and religion began, or whether you follow a more religious view that there is actually One True God and that throughout history the Devil has deceived mankind into creating and believing in false gods, the reality of life is that there are many "gods".
If you read the Bible, all of these gods are in evidence. Most of the people in biblical times worshiped one of these various types of gods; often they worshiped several of them at once. The ancient Greeks and Romans worshiped Zeus, Hermes, Dagon, Aphrodite, and host of others. Religious and secular texts abound with descriptions of worship to a pantheon of gods. But worship was costly. It wasn't free. The gods and their priests demanded a high price. Some demanded your offspring become servants of the temple. Some demanded the very best of your land or your earnings. Some demanded blood. Some demanded sexual favors (well, the priests and priestesses certainly did). Some demanded death.
When an expected result did not happen, when the worshiper had paid the price, sacrificed what he was told and still got nothing in return, the priests simply said the price had not been high enough, the sacrifice not pure enough, the faith not strong enough, or someone else had paid more or given more and the god had chosen to answer the other person's competing prayer.
In the end mankind learned to hate the gods, and over time came to reject them. This is Atheism at its core. But in order to satisfy our innate need for something or someone to believe in, we substituted gods we could not control and who did not give us everything we wanted, for gods we thought we could control and who we thought would give us whatever we wanted, as long as we worked hard enough and were good enough. And so we created a whole new set of gods and we called them success, wealth, happiness, pleasure, beauty, and power.
Today, our world bows down and worships these gods of success, beauty, wealth and power. Who are our heroes? Who do we idolize? Who do we wish to become? Other people who have become successful or wealthy or powerful. We idolize the "beautiful" people because they have become our new "gods". They are who we want to be like. We idolize them, we talk about them, we read about them, we dress like them, we talk like them, we try to do what they do.
From time to time a genuine hero pops up, someone like MLK or Ghandi, but how in the world are they to compete with Lil' Wayne, Kanye, Aerosmith, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Eva Longoria, Kobe, or Ke$ha? Nobody is running out to buy shoes, hats and T-shirts with Ghandi's logo or Martin Luther King's logo. But the success of Kobe and the Lakers? The beauty of Beyonce? The hits of John Mayer or Taylor Swift? The marketing and retail world drools because it knows the the success and wealth of people like these attract far more worshipers than does the soldier who rescues his fallen comrade or the woman who maintains her purity.
And so what we tell ourselves is that if we work hard enough, if we are good enough, if we are really lucky, then we too can become like the "gods" we idolize. We can become little gods in our own right with legions of worshipers adoring us and wanting to be just like us.
In the midst of all of this, the One True God entered our world, entered the world of little gods and false gods, and said "you can't ever be good enough, only I am good enough, so follow me and live in the knowledge that in this life you will have trouble, but don't worry I have overcome the world and one day in the future, I will make everything right and I will right every wrong and I will create a better world for you to live in. So don't try to be like anybody other than me. Don't worry or become despondent if you aren't as holy or perfect or beautiful as you think you should be, because I see you as holy and perfect and beautiful. Don't let the need for pleasure or power or happiness or success be the god you worship because they will always be just out your reach. Instead, allow me to give you the ultimate pleasure, to teach you that true power comes in humility, that happiness is the knowledge of salvation, and that success is measured not in your bank account on earth, but in eternity in heaven."
This isn't considered "sexy" in today's world. People dismiss it as the attempts of unsuccessful and weak people to feel better about themselves. They laugh at pathetic Christian marketing campaigns that try to emulate secular marketing campaigns with T-shirts and bumper stickers that try to be witty and intelligent but usually end up sounding trite, condescending, or bitter. They look at what Jesus offers and they evaluate eternal rewards by temporary standards. They give up a perfect eternity in exchange for an imperfect 80 years (if they are lucky). They are shortsighted because their gods have taught them to be shortsighted.
But honestly, it isn't entirely their fault. Most of these gods and most of these ways of thinking have become so central to who we are as a human race that they have become the new world religion - the new world order - and those of us who believe in the One True God have done little to confront this central way of thinking. We haven't made the revolution that Jesus started meaningful or attractive because we don't really give ourselves 100% to the One True God. He gets a percentage right along with the gods of wealth, success, beauty, relationships, and power. Now, none of these things is wrong in any way. They just cannot be the gods we worship if we are followers of the One True God.
So how does a follower of the One True God live in a world that worships and follows all the other gods? How does a follower of Jesus one the one hand affirm what is beautiful and worthy and good in this world while on the other hand confronting all that is ugly and false and dangerous?
That is what I am trying to figure out.
In prehistoric times man dreamed and in his dreams he saw other men and when he awoke thought he must have entered a new dimension or reality where "others" could communicate with him and he with them. These "others" soon became the basis for "spirit beings" that eventually became "gods".
Soon, man had invented "gods" for everything. Gods that controlled the weather, and thus the crops. Gods that controlled fertility, and thus the economics of a nomadic, agrarian culture. Gods that controlled the air, the ground, the water, the animals, the plants. Gods that controlled war. Gods that controlled death.
Whether you believe in this "secular" version of how the idea of gods and religion began, or whether you follow a more religious view that there is actually One True God and that throughout history the Devil has deceived mankind into creating and believing in false gods, the reality of life is that there are many "gods".
If you read the Bible, all of these gods are in evidence. Most of the people in biblical times worshiped one of these various types of gods; often they worshiped several of them at once. The ancient Greeks and Romans worshiped Zeus, Hermes, Dagon, Aphrodite, and host of others. Religious and secular texts abound with descriptions of worship to a pantheon of gods. But worship was costly. It wasn't free. The gods and their priests demanded a high price. Some demanded your offspring become servants of the temple. Some demanded the very best of your land or your earnings. Some demanded blood. Some demanded sexual favors (well, the priests and priestesses certainly did). Some demanded death.
When an expected result did not happen, when the worshiper had paid the price, sacrificed what he was told and still got nothing in return, the priests simply said the price had not been high enough, the sacrifice not pure enough, the faith not strong enough, or someone else had paid more or given more and the god had chosen to answer the other person's competing prayer.
In the end mankind learned to hate the gods, and over time came to reject them. This is Atheism at its core. But in order to satisfy our innate need for something or someone to believe in, we substituted gods we could not control and who did not give us everything we wanted, for gods we thought we could control and who we thought would give us whatever we wanted, as long as we worked hard enough and were good enough. And so we created a whole new set of gods and we called them success, wealth, happiness, pleasure, beauty, and power.
Today, our world bows down and worships these gods of success, beauty, wealth and power. Who are our heroes? Who do we idolize? Who do we wish to become? Other people who have become successful or wealthy or powerful. We idolize the "beautiful" people because they have become our new "gods". They are who we want to be like. We idolize them, we talk about them, we read about them, we dress like them, we talk like them, we try to do what they do.
From time to time a genuine hero pops up, someone like MLK or Ghandi, but how in the world are they to compete with Lil' Wayne, Kanye, Aerosmith, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Eva Longoria, Kobe, or Ke$ha? Nobody is running out to buy shoes, hats and T-shirts with Ghandi's logo or Martin Luther King's logo. But the success of Kobe and the Lakers? The beauty of Beyonce? The hits of John Mayer or Taylor Swift? The marketing and retail world drools because it knows the the success and wealth of people like these attract far more worshipers than does the soldier who rescues his fallen comrade or the woman who maintains her purity.
And so what we tell ourselves is that if we work hard enough, if we are good enough, if we are really lucky, then we too can become like the "gods" we idolize. We can become little gods in our own right with legions of worshipers adoring us and wanting to be just like us.
In the midst of all of this, the One True God entered our world, entered the world of little gods and false gods, and said "you can't ever be good enough, only I am good enough, so follow me and live in the knowledge that in this life you will have trouble, but don't worry I have overcome the world and one day in the future, I will make everything right and I will right every wrong and I will create a better world for you to live in. So don't try to be like anybody other than me. Don't worry or become despondent if you aren't as holy or perfect or beautiful as you think you should be, because I see you as holy and perfect and beautiful. Don't let the need for pleasure or power or happiness or success be the god you worship because they will always be just out your reach. Instead, allow me to give you the ultimate pleasure, to teach you that true power comes in humility, that happiness is the knowledge of salvation, and that success is measured not in your bank account on earth, but in eternity in heaven."
This isn't considered "sexy" in today's world. People dismiss it as the attempts of unsuccessful and weak people to feel better about themselves. They laugh at pathetic Christian marketing campaigns that try to emulate secular marketing campaigns with T-shirts and bumper stickers that try to be witty and intelligent but usually end up sounding trite, condescending, or bitter. They look at what Jesus offers and they evaluate eternal rewards by temporary standards. They give up a perfect eternity in exchange for an imperfect 80 years (if they are lucky). They are shortsighted because their gods have taught them to be shortsighted.
But honestly, it isn't entirely their fault. Most of these gods and most of these ways of thinking have become so central to who we are as a human race that they have become the new world religion - the new world order - and those of us who believe in the One True God have done little to confront this central way of thinking. We haven't made the revolution that Jesus started meaningful or attractive because we don't really give ourselves 100% to the One True God. He gets a percentage right along with the gods of wealth, success, beauty, relationships, and power. Now, none of these things is wrong in any way. They just cannot be the gods we worship if we are followers of the One True God.
So how does a follower of the One True God live in a world that worships and follows all the other gods? How does a follower of Jesus one the one hand affirm what is beautiful and worthy and good in this world while on the other hand confronting all that is ugly and false and dangerous?
That is what I am trying to figure out.
Thursday, January 16, 2014
The not-an-omelet omelet
I am not a great cook.
I am somewhere in the middle to lower third.
With some time and some help I can achieve great things...like moving up to the middle.
On occasion I have surprised my wife with a meal.
On occasion I have surprised myself with a meal.
But these are usually special occasions with preparation and recipes and time and luck and a glass of wine for strength
Now that I am down here on my own, I am learning what "real" cooking looks like. You are hungry, its the end of the day, you are tired, you haven't had the entire day to peruse recipes, buy your ingredients, get them all ready, cook them perfectly and in order....
At least I don't have a grumpy hungry husband asking me every five seconds what I'm going to make him for supper. (Sorry about that wife, I am learning the hard way that this does not inspire you to want to make food for me :) I yell at myself now and it doesn't inspire me to want to make food for myself either.)
Which brings me to my not-an-omelet omelet.
The picture you are looking at is my second attempt at the omelet. I could not take a picture of the first attempt out of pure shame. It tasted fine, but it looked like dog food. For those of you thinking this picture doesn't look any better...well...you should have seen the first attempt.
Things were going well on this second attempt: at first. The mushrooms were fried, the onions were fried, the omelet egg mixture was in the frying pan, everything was working together splendidly. I actually thought I could pull it off. Not too much time, not too much work, just a nice quick easy dinner that would look and taste like an omelet.
Then things went horribly wrong. I don't know exactly how or why it started to fall apart. Maybe the heat was too high, maybe it was too low. Maybe I attempted to turn it too quickly. It seemed a little wet on top still, but the bottom was certainly omletey (my word invention for the day). So I attempted the flip. I'm not sure you should actually attempt to flip and omelet. BAAAAAAAD things happen. Part of it flipped. Part of it didn't. Part of it began to run down the flipper toward my hand. Some of it dripped on the stove. A mushroom leapt to safety. Another followed. An onion attempted to follow and was quickly devoured in the flame. I retrieved both onions and returned them to their proper place in the omelet. But by now it had been on the flame a little too long and the parts that had not flipped well were beginning to burn, or at least get really really dark. O.K. burn.
I figured it was now or never. Everything that was in the omelet pan ended up on my plate. Except the traitor onion. It was still burning in the hellish flames of its own making. It was then I realized that in my haste I had forgotten the cheese. Well, who was going to notice that the cheese wasn't actually inside the omelet. There really wasn't an "inside" to it anyway.
So the tomatoes and cheese went on top. I took a picture of it. For posterity.
It still tasted amazing.
I will continue to work on it. I will be triumphant.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
What I learned in grad school
I was not the world's greatest organizer in my pre-grad school life. I would get up from the dinner table in the middle of eating because I suddenly remembered something I was supposed to do, or to do something I knew I'd forget ten minutes later. I once owned a day-timer. I lost it. I bought another one. I forgot where I put it.
Once I turned around three times on my way to work to drive back home to get something I needed for the day at the office. Three times.
Long term planning meant what are we having for lunch.
I knew I needed to learn to organize my time and set priorities and that I would be less stressed if I actually planned stuff out and wasn't always scrambling at the last minute. Problem was, I didn't know how. That, and I told myself that part of being "me" was being spontaneous and unplanned and always being able to pull stuff together at the last minute because that is what creative, rebellious people did.
So I survived in that mode for over 30 years. I pastored a couple of churches in that mode. Some good, some not so good. I pulled off some great creative large church-wide programs well. I didn't pull off others so well. I burned out some of my staff and volunteers. I burned out.
Then I went to grad school. An MA at the largest university in Western Canada. My first year I took three MA courses. I was overwhelmed. I had never had so much to read and so much to write and so much to prepare for every single night. Every day in class we were expected to come prepared to discuss what we had read the night before. Not just sit and listen to others discuss, but to actually be a contributing member of the discussion. We had to be prepared to teach sections of the class to our fellow classmates. We had to write papers. Not little five page things, but lengthy in depth papers with bibliographies and citations. This meant reading other books and papers on the same topic outside of what was assigned in class. Position papers needed to be researched. And then, at the end of every class we had to write a 30 - 40 page paper. For each class. On top of this, we had to begin research for our thesis, which we would spend our second year researching and writing.
I realized that I would never survive if I did not become organized. I had to organize each semester, each month, each week, and each day. I had to organize and plan for family time, social time, work time, research time, class time, writing time, even eating and sleeping. Some weeks were busier than others. Some weeks I didn't get as much sleep as I wanted (well, that seldom ever happened in grad school), some weeks extra assignments or editing or re-writes or teaching a class for someone else messed up my plans, but the point was, I had plans, and those plans saved me.
So here I am, three years removed from my post-graduate work, living alone in Vegas and realizing that as much as I needed to organize my time in the busyness, even more so I need to organize my time when I am alone without my family. I have a lot more "free" time in my schedule right now and without organization and planning I can easily work too much, sleep too much, begin to get lazy, miss appointments, push stuff off, and get selfish and self-focused.
Grad school taught me that to be successful, I had to plan, organize, and then stick to the plan while being flexible enough to seize opportunities when they came along that might temporarily re-arrange things.
Sticking to that is not easy in this new phase of my life. In fact, I believe it is harder to organize and plan when you are not overwhelmed by a million things. When you aren't overwhelmed you tell yourself "I can push that off until tomorrow" or "I will get to that next week."
Lies. All lies.
Grad school taught me the need to organize. Real life is reminding me that I need to continue to organize. Perhaps now more than ever.
Once I turned around three times on my way to work to drive back home to get something I needed for the day at the office. Three times.
Long term planning meant what are we having for lunch.
I knew I needed to learn to organize my time and set priorities and that I would be less stressed if I actually planned stuff out and wasn't always scrambling at the last minute. Problem was, I didn't know how. That, and I told myself that part of being "me" was being spontaneous and unplanned and always being able to pull stuff together at the last minute because that is what creative, rebellious people did.
So I survived in that mode for over 30 years. I pastored a couple of churches in that mode. Some good, some not so good. I pulled off some great creative large church-wide programs well. I didn't pull off others so well. I burned out some of my staff and volunteers. I burned out.
Then I went to grad school. An MA at the largest university in Western Canada. My first year I took three MA courses. I was overwhelmed. I had never had so much to read and so much to write and so much to prepare for every single night. Every day in class we were expected to come prepared to discuss what we had read the night before. Not just sit and listen to others discuss, but to actually be a contributing member of the discussion. We had to be prepared to teach sections of the class to our fellow classmates. We had to write papers. Not little five page things, but lengthy in depth papers with bibliographies and citations. This meant reading other books and papers on the same topic outside of what was assigned in class. Position papers needed to be researched. And then, at the end of every class we had to write a 30 - 40 page paper. For each class. On top of this, we had to begin research for our thesis, which we would spend our second year researching and writing.
I realized that I would never survive if I did not become organized. I had to organize each semester, each month, each week, and each day. I had to organize and plan for family time, social time, work time, research time, class time, writing time, even eating and sleeping. Some weeks were busier than others. Some weeks I didn't get as much sleep as I wanted (well, that seldom ever happened in grad school), some weeks extra assignments or editing or re-writes or teaching a class for someone else messed up my plans, but the point was, I had plans, and those plans saved me.
So here I am, three years removed from my post-graduate work, living alone in Vegas and realizing that as much as I needed to organize my time in the busyness, even more so I need to organize my time when I am alone without my family. I have a lot more "free" time in my schedule right now and without organization and planning I can easily work too much, sleep too much, begin to get lazy, miss appointments, push stuff off, and get selfish and self-focused.
Grad school taught me that to be successful, I had to plan, organize, and then stick to the plan while being flexible enough to seize opportunities when they came along that might temporarily re-arrange things.
Sticking to that is not easy in this new phase of my life. In fact, I believe it is harder to organize and plan when you are not overwhelmed by a million things. When you aren't overwhelmed you tell yourself "I can push that off until tomorrow" or "I will get to that next week."
Lies. All lies.
Grad school taught me the need to organize. Real life is reminding me that I need to continue to organize. Perhaps now more than ever.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
The Christmas Visit
I landed in Vancouver airport at 12:05 a.m. Christmas morning, went through immigration and waited 6 hours in a Tim Horton's coffee shop for security to open so I could get on a plane and be home with my family by 9 a.m. Christmas morning to open presents. It was worth it. I arrived tired and happy and spent an amazing day with Jo and the kids and my mom and dad. We ate tons of food. Jo had made everything I love for Christmas dinner. I literally had to crawl from the table to the couch after I ate (I don't think the Bible talks anywhere about gluttony does it? - I didn't think so).
My son Braden's birthday is January 17 and since I won't be home for it, we celebrated his birthday with a great night out at his favorite Italian restaurant.
We had a family day that included our favorite Indian restaurant.
We went and saw the Hobbit 2 in 3-D together.
We went out and sat around a table at Starbucks together one morning and talked about all the things we wanted to do as a family once we were all back together in Vegas.
I led worship at my friend Greg's church on Saturday night and Sunday. I was so blessed to be able to lead my family in worship. I haven't been able to do that since we've been separated.
We celebrated a quiet New Year's eve together at home with the kids.
And then it was time to leave.
It was harder this time.
The first time there was the thrill of the new adventure. The first time there was also the complete lack of comprehension of how difficult this type of separation would be.
The second time there was the joy of being back together again and the hope that the process would somehow magically speed up for us.
This time the reality of how difficult our separation is was staring us both in the face. This time we had no illusion about a quick resolution to our immigration. We still hope, we still have faith, but we are also realists. We can read a website. We can see the case numbers still sitting in the "initial review" phase, where they have been for months now.
The drive to the airport on Friday morning was sombre. Almost holy, in a way.
Being obedient to God's call on our lives, realizing that for us, this call means we are going to endure separation for a while longer. Realizing we are in "holy time" and that we are in the middle of God's will for us, even though we don't understand it fully right now.
The thrill of this adventure is gone. We are now all on this long and difficult road that we must walk with patience and faith.
My son Braden's birthday is January 17 and since I won't be home for it, we celebrated his birthday with a great night out at his favorite Italian restaurant.
We had a family day that included our favorite Indian restaurant.
We went and saw the Hobbit 2 in 3-D together.
We went out and sat around a table at Starbucks together one morning and talked about all the things we wanted to do as a family once we were all back together in Vegas.
I led worship at my friend Greg's church on Saturday night and Sunday. I was so blessed to be able to lead my family in worship. I haven't been able to do that since we've been separated.
We celebrated a quiet New Year's eve together at home with the kids.
And then it was time to leave.
It was harder this time.
The first time there was the thrill of the new adventure. The first time there was also the complete lack of comprehension of how difficult this type of separation would be.
The second time there was the joy of being back together again and the hope that the process would somehow magically speed up for us.
This time the reality of how difficult our separation is was staring us both in the face. This time we had no illusion about a quick resolution to our immigration. We still hope, we still have faith, but we are also realists. We can read a website. We can see the case numbers still sitting in the "initial review" phase, where they have been for months now.
The drive to the airport on Friday morning was sombre. Almost holy, in a way.
Being obedient to God's call on our lives, realizing that for us, this call means we are going to endure separation for a while longer. Realizing we are in "holy time" and that we are in the middle of God's will for us, even though we don't understand it fully right now.
The thrill of this adventure is gone. We are now all on this long and difficult road that we must walk with patience and faith.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)