Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Whew
Only a week has gone by. I thought January was going to be slow. Amazingly I have gotten my Grant Requests finished and off. Now it is a period of wait and see. It is a weird thing writing grants. There is that difficulty of transmitting what you believe to be true into words. There is the surrender of not having a clue as to how your vision will be received. This then leaves you wondering, and in wonder returning to that source of our deliverance. It means again having to place it in God's hands.
The small reprieve of Christmas is certainly gone. I thought the busyness of seminary would not pick up again until February but that illusion has been shattered. All at once the plate is full. My wife and I have a translation project that were trying to finish for the end of January. There is my class on Congregational Vitality which will spill over into the new semester. And then there is the upcoming trip back to St. Benedict's to preach and kick off a Lenten Practice. One wonders how it will all come together?
A small sigh of relief definitely comes with having the paperwork done. Surrender is often a good thing.
My wife and I have started to look closer at information about Honduras. We have begun to prepare ourselves by looking at pictures trying to get a better taste of what it will be like to live at Our Little Roses. There is a lot of excitement. Right behind it came the worry. "How is this going to work?", " Are the kids going to be happy?" etc, etc These were the questions we pose to the unknown and the temptation is to let it dictate the experience. We'll revisit this again and again. It seems to come in waves. We'll have to go through what we have to go through to get there.
As I begin to reflect on how God is involved in all of this I find that we in our planning often see too closely our situation to the point we miss the bigger picture. We forget in our excitement and fretfulness that we even have the opportunity to "visit" in mission. Sure it may carry personal difficulties. It may even be more dangerous than our lives here in Alexandria. What becomes so easily forgotten and pushed aside, is that the girls at Our Little Roses do not have the choice. They do not have the opportunity to "try" it out. They are not "visiting" the poor to see if their call is amongst them. They are amongst them. Their's is 24/7. So our hesitancy as persons of the West pale in comparison. As I've shared with friends, even while we kid about our lack of financial means while here at seminar, our "first class poverty" is great wealth to those who have not.
So yes, this week I put out the platinum covered alms bowl so that we may follow our call to mission in Honduras. Even as I do it I hope I may remember the distinction between our "opportunity" to bring the Gospel to Honduras is very different than those dependent upon it for daily bread. May I remember the distinction that even our period of financial "stretchedness" here at seminary contains a degree of liberty that many would covet. Even at seminary we can be challenged at Christ's call to the "rich young man".
The small reprieve of Christmas is certainly gone. I thought the busyness of seminary would not pick up again until February but that illusion has been shattered. All at once the plate is full. My wife and I have a translation project that were trying to finish for the end of January. There is my class on Congregational Vitality which will spill over into the new semester. And then there is the upcoming trip back to St. Benedict's to preach and kick off a Lenten Practice. One wonders how it will all come together?
A small sigh of relief definitely comes with having the paperwork done. Surrender is often a good thing.
My wife and I have started to look closer at information about Honduras. We have begun to prepare ourselves by looking at pictures trying to get a better taste of what it will be like to live at Our Little Roses. There is a lot of excitement. Right behind it came the worry. "How is this going to work?", " Are the kids going to be happy?" etc, etc These were the questions we pose to the unknown and the temptation is to let it dictate the experience. We'll revisit this again and again. It seems to come in waves. We'll have to go through what we have to go through to get there.
As I begin to reflect on how God is involved in all of this I find that we in our planning often see too closely our situation to the point we miss the bigger picture. We forget in our excitement and fretfulness that we even have the opportunity to "visit" in mission. Sure it may carry personal difficulties. It may even be more dangerous than our lives here in Alexandria. What becomes so easily forgotten and pushed aside, is that the girls at Our Little Roses do not have the choice. They do not have the opportunity to "try" it out. They are not "visiting" the poor to see if their call is amongst them. They are amongst them. Their's is 24/7. So our hesitancy as persons of the West pale in comparison. As I've shared with friends, even while we kid about our lack of financial means while here at seminar, our "first class poverty" is great wealth to those who have not.
So yes, this week I put out the platinum covered alms bowl so that we may follow our call to mission in Honduras. Even as I do it I hope I may remember the distinction between our "opportunity" to bring the Gospel to Honduras is very different than those dependent upon it for daily bread. May I remember the distinction that even our period of financial "stretchedness" here at seminary contains a degree of liberty that many would covet. Even at seminary we can be challenged at Christ's call to the "rich young man".
