Question: What happens when two missionaries get lost in a foreign country with no map, a non-functional GPS, and no cell phone?
Answer: God does what He wills. (Alleluia!)
Last night, Amanda and I spent some time with all the fabulous folks from St. Tomas parish in Roermond (NL) for XLT. We had managed to get to the church no problem--even early, which is a feat in itself for us!--and counted it as a blessing from God, because we didn’t even have to turn around once. It was almost like our car was on auto-pilot to the church. Anyway, it was a great night: we prayed, we praised the Lord, Amanda shared her heart in her testimony, we sang, Jesus showed up in the Eucharist (!), and we got to know some of the teens and Core from the parish. God definitely moved--there was such a spirit of freedom while we were praying with everyone! After cleaning up and putting the church hall back together, Bernadette sent us home with some St. Nicholas candy (happy feast day!) and joy in our hearts.
After saying a prayer of thanksgiving for the night and asking for safe travels, we started driving home. Amanda and I were so excited on the way back--we were talking about how great it was to pray with everyone--and so we didn’t think much of the fact that we didn’t have directions for the way back home (we’re still trying to figure out the freeway system here…it’s not quite the same as navigating the freeways back at home). We trusted that God would get us home safely. And He did…eventually.
After several wrong turns, many variations of the question “do you remember this road at all?”, innumerable signs pointing to Venlo in all directions (still have no idea where it is), driving along the Belgian border for awhile (how many countries can you visit in one night? we’re up to 3 so far…), getting directions from a well-intending (albeit incorrect) group of Dutch men in a Burger King, a GPS navigator that could somehow only manage to say “make a U-turn now,” and 2.5 hours travel time for a trip that should have taken 30 minutes, I felt like I understood Psalm 139 in a whole new light: “my travels and my rest you mark; with all my ways you are familiar.”
When I first realized we were lost, I was frustrated. I was anxious--no, I was worried. How are we going to get home? What if we get in an accident? Do we have enough gas? It’s disconcerting to be in a completely foreign place, with no means of communication, having completely zero idea where you’re going, or how you’re going to get home. But even as I’m writing this, I’m realizing that last night’s adventure was a real-life example of what my spiritual life looks like, and how God is trying to teach me to trust more in Him--to trust only in Him.
At some moment along our journey (it might have been as we were sitting underneath a bridge in before-mentioned Venlo, realizing that REALLY, only God could get us home), God’s grace won over my humanness and I let go of all my worry. We were lost. There was nothing I could do about it but trust. Trust in the face of what seemed like an almost impossible situation. Trust even though it seemed crazy because we had nothing. Trust even though I had no idea where we would end up (maybe home? maybe Poland?), even though I was driving the car.
How many times have I prayed “God, what are you doing? Where am I going? How am I going to do this?” I don’t think I could count all of them--and it seems like the longer I live as a missionary, the fewer answers I have to those questions. But when I recognize that--when I admit that I don’t have anything, that I don’t know the way, or the why, or the how--and when I completely surrender to God, abandoning myself to Him in a way that seems like insanity, then I’m able to just enjoy the journey.
Amanda and I had a great conversation in the car. We were able to see a little bit of Belgium (and she got to read French, which she was excited about). We were able to witness in a very small way to the guys who gave us directions (”no, we’re not students, we’re missionaries…”). We learned a little bit more about what it means to “pray without ceasing” and to invoke the intercession of our guardian angels. And miraculously, just when we stopped needing it, the GPS started working and we ended up back at home with gas in the tank to spare. It’s amazing what God can do with a heart that gives Him the chance.
“Wait for the Lord, take courage; be stouthearted, wait for the Lord!” (Psalm 27)
Monday, December 7, 2009
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Bereiten den Weg
“A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the Lord!” (Isaiah 40:3).
Welcome to Advent, everyone (albeit a bit belatedly, but welcome all the same)! Advent is all about preparation; it’s a time the Church—in her infinite wisdom, guided by the Holy Spirit—has set aside for us to really reflect about how ready our hearts are to receive Christ, and to make them ready! Prepare the way of the Lord! We’re just about one week in, and I am really loving it so far. I’m noticing that God is moving in my heart in patterns similar to the way we celebrate His movement in His people as a whole during this season; I feel like I’m living Advent!
“Preparing the way” has been, and continues to be, a big theme for us here. The truth is, God has been working here, in this area, this community, long before we ever showed up; we just get to see how things are unfolding! And so our mission is one that works with and within God’s movement in this community. We have been entrusted with the task of being part of the preparation for the way of a Life Teen missionary presence here: to pray with and for the people we meet every day, to live a life of radical trust in the Lord, to invite other people into that life, to call people to go deeper in relationship with God, to be present to everyone and love them with the love of Christ. We’re not doing anything new as far as God is concerned; we’re just here, as St. Peter says, to “remind you of these things, even though you already know them [...] to stir you up by a reminder” (2 Peter 1:12,13). But we can’t just come in and DO—there is a lot of preparation, a lot of building, a lot of prayer, communication, and getting to know people, a lot of learning that is involved in this paving of the way.
I don’t know how much you know about laying paving stones—I’m not that familiar with the process myself, but I have been able to glean a little bit of information from my time spent at Covecrest (shout-out to Jason Ball—thanks for all your sidewalk-laying wisdom!). Paving a walkway is a meticulous process; it’s not just drop-and-go, you can’t just roll out a sidewalk in one day. First you have to get the bricks to the place you want to start laying them (ask anyone who worked on maintenance this summer at camp about how easy that is sometime). Next, you have to level out the ground where the walkway is going to be—and you have to be willing to re-smooth and re-level (with patience!) if someone happens to walk onto your path, not realizing you’re laying a walkway. Only then can you start thinking about laying the actual stones down (and by this time, most people are already sweating)! If you want to create a walkway with two straight, parallel edges, you also have to cut some of the stones to fit—and if you happen to have a curve in your walkway, there’s a lot of gradual filling in with little bits of stone to make it level and even. Every stone has to fit together just so, both for the structural integrity of the sidewalk and for aesthetics—you can’t just place stones willy-nilly wherever you want! Sometimes, this involves a painstaking process of going back over the sidewalk a second or third time to make sure the spaces where the stones meet are straight. Then there’s filling in, finishing touches, and—FINALLY!—you have a sidewalk.
Gosh. I’m tired just thinking about it!
In this process of our preparing—paving—a way here, I can sometimes feel rather like I’m doing it with a blindfold on; I can’t see where we’re going or what we’re doing, how much we’ve already done or how much still needs to be done. As a matter of fact, most of the time I don’t even know where the bricks are! Someone else (that would be God in this analogy) hands them to me and tells me where to put them—if I need to move a little to the left or right, if I need to cut some of the bricks in half, or shave off a little piece to make it fit. It’s hard to not know so much—and to realize that in the big scheme of things, my job is relatively unimportant. I’m just the manual labor! God has the vision and the plan, He has all the supplies and the knowledge of how to lay a walkway in the first place! He just needs me to do what He tells me, trusting that even if I don’t do it perfectly, He will come behind me and make all my crooked lines straight.
Thank you for your continued prayers as I prepare my own heart, so that I can better prepare the way, “...while from behind, a voice shall sound in your ears: ‘This is the way; walk in it,’ when you would turn to the right or to the left” (Isaiah 30:21).
Welcome to Advent, everyone (albeit a bit belatedly, but welcome all the same)! Advent is all about preparation; it’s a time the Church—in her infinite wisdom, guided by the Holy Spirit—has set aside for us to really reflect about how ready our hearts are to receive Christ, and to make them ready! Prepare the way of the Lord! We’re just about one week in, and I am really loving it so far. I’m noticing that God is moving in my heart in patterns similar to the way we celebrate His movement in His people as a whole during this season; I feel like I’m living Advent!
“Preparing the way” has been, and continues to be, a big theme for us here. The truth is, God has been working here, in this area, this community, long before we ever showed up; we just get to see how things are unfolding! And so our mission is one that works with and within God’s movement in this community. We have been entrusted with the task of being part of the preparation for the way of a Life Teen missionary presence here: to pray with and for the people we meet every day, to live a life of radical trust in the Lord, to invite other people into that life, to call people to go deeper in relationship with God, to be present to everyone and love them with the love of Christ. We’re not doing anything new as far as God is concerned; we’re just here, as St. Peter says, to “remind you of these things, even though you already know them [...] to stir you up by a reminder” (2 Peter 1:12,13). But we can’t just come in and DO—there is a lot of preparation, a lot of building, a lot of prayer, communication, and getting to know people, a lot of learning that is involved in this paving of the way.
I don’t know how much you know about laying paving stones—I’m not that familiar with the process myself, but I have been able to glean a little bit of information from my time spent at Covecrest (shout-out to Jason Ball—thanks for all your sidewalk-laying wisdom!). Paving a walkway is a meticulous process; it’s not just drop-and-go, you can’t just roll out a sidewalk in one day. First you have to get the bricks to the place you want to start laying them (ask anyone who worked on maintenance this summer at camp about how easy that is sometime). Next, you have to level out the ground where the walkway is going to be—and you have to be willing to re-smooth and re-level (with patience!) if someone happens to walk onto your path, not realizing you’re laying a walkway. Only then can you start thinking about laying the actual stones down (and by this time, most people are already sweating)! If you want to create a walkway with two straight, parallel edges, you also have to cut some of the stones to fit—and if you happen to have a curve in your walkway, there’s a lot of gradual filling in with little bits of stone to make it level and even. Every stone has to fit together just so, both for the structural integrity of the sidewalk and for aesthetics—you can’t just place stones willy-nilly wherever you want! Sometimes, this involves a painstaking process of going back over the sidewalk a second or third time to make sure the spaces where the stones meet are straight. Then there’s filling in, finishing touches, and—FINALLY!—you have a sidewalk.
Gosh. I’m tired just thinking about it!
In this process of our preparing—paving—a way here, I can sometimes feel rather like I’m doing it with a blindfold on; I can’t see where we’re going or what we’re doing, how much we’ve already done or how much still needs to be done. As a matter of fact, most of the time I don’t even know where the bricks are! Someone else (that would be God in this analogy) hands them to me and tells me where to put them—if I need to move a little to the left or right, if I need to cut some of the bricks in half, or shave off a little piece to make it fit. It’s hard to not know so much—and to realize that in the big scheme of things, my job is relatively unimportant. I’m just the manual labor! God has the vision and the plan, He has all the supplies and the knowledge of how to lay a walkway in the first place! He just needs me to do what He tells me, trusting that even if I don’t do it perfectly, He will come behind me and make all my crooked lines straight.
Thank you for your continued prayers as I prepare my own heart, so that I can better prepare the way, “...while from behind, a voice shall sound in your ears: ‘This is the way; walk in it,’ when you would turn to the right or to the left” (Isaiah 30:21).
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