Archive for February, 2007

Retreat forward

February 9, 2007 at 6:29 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

4th February 2007

 

Helena, Montana

 

Sunday rest.  Tonight, thinking and considering that this week is a good week to seek my Oasis, Jesus Christ, for deeper communion with Him.  I believe that it needs to be a week of greater focus on prayer… becoming more of a man of prayer.  Some may think that a man like me who has spent the last 5 years as a missionary would already be a man of prayer.  God matured me in so many ways through our life in England; but I still have so far to go.  Like all Christians, my main problem is forgetting the reality of the gospel and not applying it daily to my life.  So here I am (seemingly) again at Square One, learning the same lesson but deeper.

 

This week, for my retreat, I want to use the memory of a place of beauty and faith as a symbol for my time “away”.  So a good place to remember is Llangwyfan, the tidal island church off the coast of Anglesey in Wales (see my blog from February last year– http://vingilot.wordpress.com/2006/02/).  I cannot leave everything for several days; I will have to bob in and out of family life & normal goings-on.  Just like the church-in-the-sea: low tide, high tide.  Separate from all else/ joined to the active world I live in.  Retreat & solitude/ engagement in my “spheres” (family, church, work, society, etc).

 

I think I shall spend some “island time” twice a day, morning and afternoon.  Other times, I have to keep up with job hunting, playing with the kids, and so on.  In my island time I hope to take some walks alone, closet myself in our bedroom, read Scripture, journal daily, and pray… time to praise, time to intercede for my extended family, time to wonder and ask God questions, time to seek His face, for His will to be done in my life, time to confess.

 

And yet not to regiment it all—which would simply be one more attempt to focus on my plans & ideas & structures, rather than being open to His guidance by the Spirit.

I need to gain wisdom, and regain vision for my life and my priorities.  May God help me this week as I seek these precious tools.

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Course Correction

February 9, 2007 at 4:59 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

1st February 2007

Helena, Montana

After returning from a week in Sublette County, Wyoming, I have realized that I am not in a good way… felt pensive and downcast lately, and it came on strongly this week.  I have much to be thankful for, but I am wrestling with questions of what is my niche here, and who am I upon returning from England?  How has it changed or affected me?  I don’t know.  I am no longer a missionary/church planter/active elder.  I am feeling a sense of let-down.  Yet I do not wish that I had come back and immediately gone into teaching here in the USA.  This place (my in-laws’ home) is an oasis that we sorely need, a place to regroup and be refreshed.  But sometimes it doesn’t feel refreshing.  I suppose it’s being in someone else’s house… also I chafe at being in-between jobs, homes, etc.

I must quench my thirst at the real Oasis for this oasis to do any good.  I face the same dilemma from a year ago… when I felt homesick and restless, and needed most of all to turn to Jesus as my Home.  As Ruth Cowan said last summer, “Home is a person, not a place.”  Stability comes from the Lord.  Therefore I need to take this transition as an opportunity to take my bearings and travel on a new course… a course correction.

I once thought our family motto could be “Floreo in Fragilitatis” (flourish in frailty), to remember that by God’s grace we are strong in the midst of weakness.  But now I think we need something more blunt, more vital: “Jesus is My Life”.  It focuses the eye of faith clearly not on itself, but on the meritorious life and death of the Messiah.  Given for me…  to give us life abundantly.  He is my life, and I love Him.

Lately though, I have felt such a pale experience of my relationship with God, like the snow on a moonlit night… the light is so watered down.  The gloriously bright sun, even on this winter’s day, shone with strength over the land.  At dusk, as I drove home from some errand, I glimpsed through my windshield a wonderful rising moon, reflecting that sun’s light like a silver shadow.  Bright—but not quite the same.  How much more diluted was the wan luminescence of the snow at midnight, imitating twilight? When is light not light?  And so my passion for the Lord, and foremost His love for me, lately seem to be a copy of a copy of the real thing.  It may be light, but it’s weak and lacks full reality.

moonlight_on_snow.jpg

I long for a new brilliance in knowing God—not being satisfied with a likeness of a likeness of his glory… I need the full magnitude of the Son that I may bask in.  And draw new strength & enthusiasm to serve Him, and help my wife, and love my kids!  And find my niche…

So therefore today I resolve to not accept of myself a half-hearted nod to the gospel.  No more!  Let the truth of Jesus make me know my freedom better!  I have all I have need already in Christ.  But may I not be content with lip-service to the King.  I am a King’s man.  I owe Him a fully thankful heart.

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