31October2014 Quickshot: Smellin' Smokey

Fall is for campfires, friends, smores, family and the Word. 

30October2014 Quickshot: Bearded

P&D dressed up for a small Trunk-or-Treat.  Fun was had by all and no one was incarcerated. 

30October2014 Halloween: Worth it?

 ...U.S. citizens should expect police reaction, including arrests, at any public Halloween-themed event.

The above excerpt was part of an alert sent out yesterday by the State Department to US citizens in the Middle East regarding Halloween:
Yep, you read that right. Arrested! 

Ever had one of those conversations, sometimes heated, with well meaning brothers or sisters who referred to October 31 as the 'devil's holiday" and emphatically stated the Church should avoid it like the plague. 

Then there's the other side of the coin.  Some Churches host those huge, pull out all the stops, blow the budget events called "Trunk or Treat," "Fall Festival" or a personal favorite "Hallelujah Party."  Or others that stay home and slip Gospel tracts in with the Skittles and Snickers for their little neighbors.  

Halloween is one of those topics, divisive topics, we just love to sink our teeth in.  We love to use as ammo when we're beating each other over the head.  There are so many others.  Worship style, alcohol consumption,  divorce, the list is pretty extensive.  And on each of these we are certain WE ARE RIGHT or better yet, THEY ARE COMPLETELY WRONG. Social media has exacerbated this issue.  You've witnessed it.  It nears a holiday season and your Facebook buddy goes on a three-day rant regarding the sacrilege of Santa or the blasphemy of the Easter bunny.  Meanwhile other friends (the ones that just hung stockings from the mantle or maybe just finished dying eggs) are highly offended and the flaming war of words ensues.  This is among Christians!  It takes so little for us to be divided.  The trivial becomes life or death.  That is until life or death really becomes life or death...or imprisonment.  

Back to the US Embassy's email.  It got me thinking about the value we place on things.  Is Halloween or the Tooth Fairy something I value so much that I'm willing to face legal penalty or persecution for? We can, and do, beat the tar out of each other about silly things but are they worth it?  On a daily basis the Body of Christ is being persecuted beyond measure.  People are actually dying because of the stand that are taking for their faith.  From the underground believers in East Asia to our decimated ranks in Iraq.  It seems we have more important things to discuss than goblins and gummy bears... 

26Oct2014 Quickshot: Room for Prayer

P took this in a local hospital this week.  May there always be room for prayer in our lives!

22October2014 Smile

I love this photo.  It's out of focus, the lighting's off, one of the boys' eyes are shut and the other one is looking down.  What makes this photo?  The beautiful smile in the middle!

I know this lady.  I've known her for a long time, nearly twenty years now, but I have never seen her smile.  Frown, yes.  Scowl, yes.  Grimace, yep.  I've even heard her laugh but it was more of a scoff than a giggle.  God bless her she doesn't smile.  Been a believer a long time, but never smiles.  In Church whenever the doors are open, no smile.  Had a bunch of children, no smile.  Beautiful grandkids, no smile.  Nice home, no smile.  New car, no smile.  Lots of friends, no smile.  Been married to the same man for a least fifty years, no smile.  (D says that explains it but I digress).

I just don't get it.  She has all her teeth and they're nice teeth too, so that's not it.  Her jaw muscles appear to function properly.  I just saw a picture of her at a birthday party on Facebook.  Every person in that photo, nearly twenty folks, are smiling....except her.  (Okay, just stop it!  You're trying to guess who I'm talking about but the who is not important here. We all know the type.)

Yesterday I spent the afternoon with a giant.  Hani can't been more than 5'6" but he's a giant nonetheless.  I felt like a child in his presence and I've got him by at least half a foot.  What makes him so large?  The man is a sharing machine.  He lives squarely in the middle of a closed country, a place were it's not only frowned upon but it's illegal to share and yet he proclaims...boldly.

Hani has been stabbed, had a gun held to his head, beaten with inches of his life but he keeps on sharing.  As he told me his life's story he smiled.  It wasn't a fake thing either.  I didn't even notice the condition of his teeth, he made not have had any for all I know.  What I did notice, what I couldn't miss was the joy that emitted from Hani's face as he recalled his twenty-year walk with God.  And when he talked about a new believer, a lady that was sharing with all her friends and family now, he positively beamed.  Joy unfettered!  

I want to be like Hani.  Not just because of his unashamed proclaiming but because in spite of persecution the man simply knows from whence true joy comes....and he lives it.  Oh LORD, I want to smile!

19October2014 Back-to-Back-Birthdays

Celebrating another sweet girl's birthday today.  So very grateful for L and pray God's rich and abundant blessings on her.  May she shine brightly for God and cling tightly to Him, walking with the Him all the days of her life.

18October2014 ثمانية ("Eight")

Happy Birthday to this wonderful, beautiful, amazing, compassionate, creative, ALIVE IN THE SPIRIT eight-year-old!  How fitting that M's memory verse this week is 1 Peter 3:18. "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit."  We celebrate her life and are grateful to God for her life!

French toast, presents and fresh kicks.  A great birthday morning for M.

17October2017 Quickshot: Our Neighbors

...there is no other commandment greater than these.

16October2014 Quickthought: Perch of Safety

Listened to a GREAT podcast from JD Greear as I walked home from the doctor's office today.  Two amazing statements really kicked me squarely in the pity party!

God does not always shield you from the storm, He allows you to go through the same things everyone else goes through so you can show them what hope from within the storm looks like, what it's like to experience the presence of God in the midst of the storm.  Because demonstrating the presence of God in the storm is more powerful to them than calling to them from outside the storm.

It is easier to proclaim hope as a fellow traveler than it is to call people from a perch of safety.

15October2014 Knee-mail

Prayer request:  P received MRI results today.  Please pray for him as we evaluate options and proceed with treatment.

13October2014 Book Recommendations

Add both of these to your Amazon Wish List.  Medearis & Dekker's Tea with Hezbollah and John Piper's Risk is Right.  

The Kindle app has opened a whole new world of reading for us over here.  Above are a couple recommended and below are a couple favorite quotes from each:

If we starve, he will be our everlasting, life-giving bread.  If we are shamed with nakedness, he will be our perfect, all-righteous apparel.  If we are tortured and made to scream in our dying pain, he will keep us from cursing his name and will restore our beaten body to everlasting beauty. Risk is Right pg.46

But none makes the worth of Christ shine more brightly than sacrificial love for other people in the name of Jesus.  Risk is Right pg.14 

The strength to risk losing face for the sake of Christ is the faith that God's love will lift up your face in the end and vindicate your cause.  The strength to risk losing money for the cause of the gospel is the faith that we have a treasure in the heavens that cannot fail.  The strength to risk losing life in this world is faith in the promise that he who loses his life in this world will save it for the age to come.  Risk is Right pg.39

It is a dangerous thing to speak about peace when everyone around you wants violence.  Or to speak of love when there is so much hate.  Tea with Hezbollah pg.188

Whether you are Muslim and consider Jesus the greatest of all prophets, or whether you are a Christian and consider him the Son of God, Jesus' claim that the heretic in his story (the Good Samaritan) was the one following the greatest commandment to love your neighbor is immediately offensive.  Tea with Hezbollah pg.73

 

13October2014 Rains

M and A dancing.  See more photos by following our Instagram.

Last night we were dancing in the driveway.  Maybe it was silly, surely our neighbors thought we were crazy Americans, but we didn't care.  The first rain of the season here is like the first snowfall in Carolina;  euphoria, exuberance, joy, and, yes, silliness .  So the drops fell and we laughed and jumped and played. 
This morning it hit me. I'm ashamed it took that long.  What about our friends?  The joy we felt was equaled or doubled by the dread our neighbors living in the camp felt.  With fall showers come cold nights.  Shoeless, but for flipflops or sandals, coatless, but for tattered sweatshirts or second hand jackets, and homeless, but for canvas tents many call home, there wasn't much celebrating or dancing.  

Dear God, may we constantly be reminded of the circumstances of others.  May we continue to be grateful for the blessings you shower down on our lives but never forget the dire situations of the marginalized or vulnerable among us.  We lift up those who are displaced and hurting all over the world.  And Father, thank you for the rain!  Amen!

11October2014 Quickverse: Smiled Upon

May the Lord bless you
and protect you.

May the Lord smile on you
and be gracious to you.

May the Lord show you His favor
and give you His peace.  

Numbers6:24-26NTL

What a beautiful, soul-refreshing thought!  To be blessed, to be protected, to be smiled upon, to be treated graciously, the be shown favor, to be given peace are amazing things.  But for the LORD to do these things to/for us, it's almost unimaginable.  We pray today that you will know that "YAHWEH makes His face shine on you." HCSB

8October2014 Post-Eid Thoughts

Great devo from My Utmost for His Highest today, especially in light of the holiday that was just celebrated here.  The majority of people in this part of the world work very hard to make recompense for the wrongs they've committed.  It is very much a works-based religion and the blood literally flowed this past weekend to prove it.

Sounds very familiar to our upbringing.  Christianity can very much be works-based as well.  Attend a couple services each week, check, bring your Bible, check, bring a friend, check, don't forget your offering, check, do your devotions, check, pray before you eat, check, lead a class, check, lead a trip , check.  We become human-doings rather than human-beings. It's easy to forget that the work has already been completed.  That doesn't mean we lay around waiting for His return, but it does mean we live knowing that we can't work our way to a restored relationship with God.  Read Chambers words.  I believe they're right on target!

Sin is a fundamental relationship— it is not wrong doing, but wrong being— it is deliberate and determined independence from God. The Christian faith bases everything on the extreme, self-confident nature of sin. Other faiths deal with sins— the Bible alone deals with sin. The first thing Jesus Christ confronted in people was the heredity of sin, and it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the gospel that the message of the gospel has lost its sting and its explosive power.

The revealed truth of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took on Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took on Himself the heredity of sin that no man can even touch. God made His own Son “to be sin” that He might make the sinner into a saint. It is revealed throughout the Bible that our Lord took on Himself the sin of the world through identification with us, not through sympathy for us. He deliberately took on His own shoulders, and endured in His own body, the complete, cumulative sin of the human race. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. . .” and by so doing He placed salvation for the entire human race solely on the basis of redemption. Jesus Christ reconciled the human race, putting it back to where God designed it to be. And now anyone can experience that reconciliation, being brought into oneness with God, on the basis of what our Lord has done on the cross.

A man cannot redeem himself— redemption is the work of God, and is absolutely finished and complete. And its application to individual people is a matter of their own individual action or response to it. A distinction must always be made between the revealed truth of redemption and the actual conscious experience of salvation in a person’s life.

7October2014 Quickshot: Our Family

M's family portrait. Two things to notice. One, everyone is smiling.  Two, J (aka "S") has quite a 'stache going.  Okay, three.....P's hair is a hot mess! 

6October2014 Light & Momentary Troubles

It started with a pop.  Two pops really.  The boys and I were out enjoying the newly installed artificial turf on our neighborhood soccer pitch.  We'd been looking forward to playing on it.  Two weeks of playing on concrete was enough.  It was time for some real, errr fake, grass.  Oh, how nice it was too.  The ball was much slower, the ground was more forgiving and it was just prettier to look at.  Something about that white and black ball rolling across that bright green grass.  Glorious!  

Took this shot right before the fall.

Back to the pop.  I was running to retrieve the ball.  I'd already surveyed the field and spotted J. running all alone toward the goal.  One easy cross and boom he would surely score.  The "boom" turned into "Pops!" and my forty-plus year-old knee buckled, sending me to the beautiful, glorious turf.  Nausea swept over me and sweat instantly drenched my body.  I didn't black out but came pretty stinking close.  The injury wasn't a new one.  This very knee had been injured when setting up an apartment for a Burmese refugee family back in March.  I'd been to the orthopedist, had x-rays and taken anti-inflammatories but had traveled overseas before an MRI could be done or surgery could take place.  Honestly I thought it was better.  Cured even.  But those pops brought me back to reality.

So, no morning walks for two weeks and everything returned to normal.  I thought.  Another pop, this time while investigating some ancient Roman ruins, I stepped down from a large building block and pop, hit the ground. Same routine routine! Nausea and sweat accompanying a near blackout followed by twenty minutes laying on the ground.  No fun!  

The next day I was pretty depressed.  How am I supposed to do all the work that needs to be done over here while hobbling along? I walk much more than I drive and the uneven surfaces of the roads and sidewalks over here are very unforgiven.  It's difficult enough to walk on two good legs!  I took some medicine and sucked it up long enough to accompany a volunteer team while visiting a Syrian family. This was way more powerful than any medicine!  How in the world could I possibly complain about a silly hurt knee when these women who have seen and experienced so much are able to smile and open their homes in such warm hospitality?  Illness, lost homes, lost things, lost loved ones, torture, betrayal, and abuse, yet they continue to persevere, raise their families and look after one another.  God bless them!  My light and momentary troubles are nothing!

Three generations of women in this beautiful Syrian family.  They have seen and experienced a lot!

4October2014 Eid Al Adha

A very common scene this week:  trucks loaded with sheep heading into the city.  Most of them will not make it through the weekend but will instead be sacrificed for Eid Al Adha. 

Some of the key indicators that Eid Al Adha is being observed this weekend.  There are sheep everywhere.  It's very reminiscent of Christmas tree lots springing up everywhere in the States the month before Christmas.  Two, there is a pronounced increase in the number of beggars asking for money at stoplights.  This is a time for charity so those in need are giving folks plenty of opportunities to give.  Three, the smell of blood is in the air.   Whenever you pass by a sheep pen you can literally smell the unmaskable ordor of blood.
As our neighbors commemorate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice "his son" and God's provision of a substitute, we pray they will come to know the Perfect Sacrifice, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world.

For more info about Eid Al Adha checkout this Wikipedia page and this article from Turkey. 

3October2014 Too Good Not to Share: Bitterness vs Thankfulness

Our friend, Maurice Ahern, posted this earlier in the week and it is just too good not to share:

"The primary way we grieve the Spirit in our lives is by fostering bitterness in our hearts." (R.T. Kendall, Total Forgiveness)

I read this tonight and was reminded of a good friend, Mike Pueppke, who lost his battle a while back to cancer. In the midst of his horrible suffering, Mike shared words with me that I will never forget. He said, "Maurice, I have learned the key to not being bitter is to be thankful." When he initially said that, I thought, "How could he be thankful, with all that is going on in his life?" But as I listened to him talk more, I realized the truth in his statement.

I believe we as human beings have a tendency to focus on the negative, on the things which seem unfair or hurtful. We tend to dwell on those things, and before we know it, those things begin to dominate our thought life. When someone has wronged us, we want to hurt them back. When something bad happens in our life, we want to blame others and even God. However, when we learn to truly forgive, when we learn to truly be thankful, something amazing starts to happens. Those areas of oppression begin to break down and the peace of God begins to fill our hearts and minds. We see the many things in our life and all around us with which we have been blessed. We see the person who has wronged us, as a person in need of mercy, just as we are.
As I write these words, I don't want to give off the impression that I practice this habitually. The brutal truth is that many times I fail in this area. But I can testify, that when I do practice forgiveness, and when I do focus on being thankful, my life is in much better state because it is being driven by a different heart and mind. If you also struggle in this area, stop focusing on the Why and begin focusing on the Who and What. Focus on Who God is and on What he has done for you in Christ and all that is promised you in Christ.