Hostage Hell to Habitual Holy

January 28 2010


Today was much calmer training than yesterday. Yesterday we did a hostage simulation; today we practiced Sabbath rest. Yikes. Night to day. One day in a box with 11 others, loud gunfire around you, bombs going off, tough choices about who’s to live or die. In the end “the rebels” took me out and shot me and three others in the back of the head. I knew it was make-believe. But with a gun at my head, face planted on the concrete floor, and a loud bang… it felt like hell.   all that made my life flash before me and eternity camp in front of me.

Today we focused on the need to obey the Sabbath commandment. We don’t wake up and say, “gosh, I can’t murder anyone today!? Jeez. And no adultery too?!” We accept it. It’s the old normal. But with the Sabbath, we cheat routinely and think nothing of the flagrant foul.  Sabbath rest involves saying frst a NO and then a YES.   Today most of us fail to say no to usual and customary work--AND we fail to savor the goodness of rest and play (that God knows) we need to refresh our bodies and mind.

It used to be in our grandparents’ day, “the holy Sabbath,” in our parents, “Sunday;” and now, "Finally Friday!" This is the new normal. So today we were encouraged to listen, obey for the safety and sanity of our souls, and rest refreshed one day out of seven. A Jewish prime minister once said, “The Jews haven’t kept the Sabbath; it has kept them.” Can we be kept too?  

The cost of this failure to listen dulls my ability to hear God in the silence--because I have none.   I'm reminded of the saying, "Silence came a long way today to visit with me, but I was otherwise engaged."   Sabbath rest and play come once I habitually say no to work and noise.   In the quiet that follows that "NO" to noise, then I can hear my calling, savour the Saviour, and learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

Battling Busyness

January 25, 2010


The past few days have been chock-a-block. New learning on adjusting to new cultures continues. Life-long learning as an idea is sweet; as a practice it is not—it requires the will to train. The mornings I feel like getting up and going to class, I do; the mornings I don’t feel like getting up and learning, I do anyway. My practice has still been getting up early before dawn and walking in the hills surrounding Missionary Training International here in Palmer Lake, elevation 7,300 ft. Sometimes I’ve walked with another missionary, Gary, who is heading off with his family to Honduras shortly. Sometimes I just walk with Jesus. Today was one of those days. I listened to a podcast on www.speakingoffaith.com, with Jean Vanier, the 82 year old founder of L’Arche, a group of 131 homes for the handicapped in 24 different countries. The topic was “the wisdom of tenderness.” His goal is nothing more than to be the friend of Jesus.

I was struck by Vanier’s focus on the primacy of experience over ideas, body over mind, being before doing, gentleness over forcefulness. He left his culture of the bright and talented for the culture of the marginalized, the weak. Now, at this age, they come to him as he sits writing, stroke his head, and say, “poor old man….” Vanier has mastered the art of being vulnerable. He is willing to stand with Jesus, outside the gates of the busy, and wait patiently for someone to open the door (Rev 3:20).

He remembers the Chinese pictograph of the word busy: one symbol for heart joined with another for death. Today he has been my teacher of a different kind of lesson than my school after the day dawned. Both were good. Thank you, Jesus, for walking with me in the dark and quiet moments of listening and prayer; the light and loud moments of listening and prayer—and all those other moments in between.