More of Romans 3

The main theme of Romans 3 is righteousness. We tend to think of righteousness as a description of a person’s behavior or character; if you read this chapter carefully, though, you will notice that Paul does not speak of righteousness as if it is behavior, but more as if it is a status. He says that a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known. Later he says that “we maintain that a man is justified [made righteous] by faith apart from observing the law;” in other words a person’s righteousness does not depend on what he does—not on his observance of the law.

I can remember Sunday School teachers defining “righteousness” as a right relationship with God. I like that idea; and the relationship with God that it best describes is a relationship of approval: your status is “righteous” when God approves of you. Mankind has always assumed that we had to earn God’s approval by keeping the law, but Paul explains that we can never earn God’s approval no matter how hard we try. Instead God bestows His approval graciously on anybody who trusts in the sacrifice of Jesus.

Romans 3 again

Another thing about Romans 3 is that it keeps emphasizing that we're all the same, especially equating the Gentiles and the Jews. Verse 9 says that Jews and Gentiles are all under sin; verse 22 says there is no difference, meaning there's no difference between Jews and Gentiles, that we all sin and fall short of God's glory and we're all justified by His grace. Paul does say, though, that the Jews have an advantage: they KNOW what God demands, because He told them; verse 1 says they've been entrusted with the very words of God. Having an advantage doesn't mean you win. . .it just means you get a head start.

Romans 3

I started memorizing Romans 3 a month or so ago, because I love its message so much. As far as I'm concerned, the essence of the gospel is explained so well in this one little chapter.

Basically, Paul starts out by saying that God didn't give us His Law so that we could perfect ourselves by keeping the law: He gave it so that we could see how far short of perfection we fall. That's what verse 20 means, ". . .rather, through the law we become conscious of sin." I think of it like this: what we were doing was wrong all along, but it was not formally wrong till there was a law against it. You know, they can't charge you with a crime if there's no law against it yet. There was a time when baby car seats were not the law--that meant you could carry your baby in your arms in the car and the police wouldn't stop you and write you a ticket. But it was still dangerous: if you'd crashed your car, the baby still would have been hurt or even killed. The pre-1970's world went along totally oblivious to the danger of babies riding in cars; but the law made us conscious of the danger by holding the threat of a ticket over our heads. The law made of conscious of the sin of carrying a baby loose in a car that's speeding down the highway.

Still becoming

We recently read a great book by a guy named J.A.C. Redford; it's called "Welcome All Wonders: A Composer's Journey." You know, people usually think of "finding themselves" during their youth--as a teenager, human beings take a journey that brings them to that place where they become sure of their identity.

But I feel like I'm still becoming who I am. I don't have to stop learning and changing simply because I'm. . .mature! I don't change my mind as easily as I used to, but I still read and listen and consider new information and change old habits.

How does this work?

Fund-raising is NEVER fun and it's getting harder as wall street tanks. We're trying to be creative about finding a way to get back to Botswana in time for the school term that begins in January. We wrote to AGWM (Assemblies of God World Missions, our sending organization) about taking steps to reduce our budget, so that we could return to Africa with less support than they've told us we need. We even suggested that we might take money out of our personal income and pledge it towards our own Mission account. Chuck got an e-mail back from AGWM and they said we can't do that, the IRS doesn't allow it.

So I thought a little while about it and then I suggested to Chuck, "Well, we could take money out of our personal income, though, and pledge it to some OTHER missionary family." You may be wondering, "But how does that help the WILSONS raise the support they need?" It doesn't. But I know that all our missionary friends and colleagues are struggling, too, and none of us is finding it easy to raise our support.

The next day I got a call first thing in the morning from a cousin of mine; she wants to know how she and her husband can support us on a regular basis. You see, they've retired now, sold their house, bought an RV, and they're traveling around the country. Since they're not going to church at the same place every week, they're not putting their tithe toward the support of a local church. I was amazed when I got off the phone.

I told Chuck the good news and he looked up from his e-mails and said, "I have a message from AGWM that we got four new pledges yesterday." We were ecstatic! We haven't received a new pledge in nearly four weeks, and in one day we had reports of four new pledges and a promise of one that'll be coming in soon.

Chuck commented, "I think it's significant that the day after we made pledges to two of our missionary colleagues is the day we got five new pledges." I asked him, "Do you think they're really connected?" Does God really work like that? If somebody wrote a novel and put in a sequence like that, you would probably ditch the novel and say, "It's just not realistic." But this IS realistic, you know, because it's REAL. God really did this for us: He knows we needed the encouragement, no matter what the timing of it, and it takes my breath away that God's abundant blessings came right on the heals of our own gift to others.

But, even if it DOESN'T work that way, it did this time. God is good.

Pay-Pal Church?

I just got an idea yesterday. This idea is a potential solution to a problem facing today's churches: younger worshippers don't carry cash, nor do they carry checkbooks. A lot of churches are trying creative ways to give these young people the opportunity to give, but it continues to be a problem. Here's my solution:

Why not make the sanctuary a free wi-fi zone and set up a pay-pal account for the church? Then, instead of insisting that everyone turn OFF their cell phones in church, you could encourage them to leave on their phones, blackberries, i-phones, or even their laptop computers. At offering time, tech-savvy worshippers could log on and put their offering into the church's pay-pal account, and some of us more techno-challenged could drop a check or currency into the plat as it goes by.

A side benefit might also be sending out announcements and even the sermon power-point via internet right during the service. Hey, it might not solve ALL our problems, but it could be worth a try!

Replacement computer

Earlier this week, Chuck suggested that we go look at computers, to see if we could replace that one that was stolen at the Sea-Tac airport a couple of weeks ago. I said, "No, let's just be a bit patient and see if God will replace it for us" Later, as I prayed about it, I thought it would be good to wait at least till Sunday (tomorrow) to see what the Lord would do.

Yesterday we got a call from the pastor where we were scheduled to speak last night--at a Missions Banquet. He thought there might be something we needed that he could get for us; at first he thought perhaps we could use a video projector, but when he heard that a computer was a bigger need for us (and not quite as much money either), he said, "Go for it."

I'm glad we were patient. God is not in a hurry.

Don't Panic

That's what I keep telling Chuck: we can't panic. We've discussed whether or not we should move our retirement savings right now, but I say, that's reacting in panic. I confess I FEEL panic, but I know I can't act in panic. Just ride this out and after things are calm, then we'll consider our options and make changes if necessary. Let's not panic.

The Indigenous Church again

<---We are working in Kacgae to establish an indigenous church among the San.

I'm sure you've heard the old proverb: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime. That's kind of the principle behind the indigenous church. I read an article in Time magazine some weeks back that illustrates the principle of "teaching a man to fish." Or rather, it illustrates what happens when you FAIL to teach a man to fish. [This is in Time, August 18, 2008, the same issue where the interview with Rick Warren appeared.]
On page 34: "In Ethiopia, 4. million people are at risk, and 75,00 children have severe acute malnutrition. Nearly a quarter-century ago, an outright famine led to Live Aid, an international fund-raising effort promoted by rock stars, which produced an outpouring of global generosity: millions of tons of food flooded into the country. Yet, ironically, that very generosity may have contributed to today's crisis. "Over time, sustained food aid creates dependence on handouts and shifts focus away from improving agricultural practices to increase local food supplies. Ethiopia exemplifies the consequences of giving a starving man a fish instead of teaching him to catch his own. . .Why bother with development when shortfalls are met by aid? Ethiopian farmers can't compete with free food, so they stop trying. Over time there's a loss of key skills, and a country that doesn't have to feed itself soon becomes a country that can't."
On page 35: "Why do we get aid so wrong? Because it feels so right. 'The American people,' says U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia Donald Yamamoto, 'are simply not going to sit tight while they see children dying.'" [emphasis mine]

What is true of food aid to the starving is also true of "aid" that American churches send overseas for the spread of the gospel. Thousands of American Christians are sending "fish" to the lost and dying in Africa because it's so much harder to teach them to fish.

Home from Alaska

We just got back from Alaska on Tuesday evening. We visited 4 churches in 5 days and cooked our African stew twice. We drove just about a thousand miles. We enjoyed seeing God's creation and God's people; we've already made one more trip here in Oregon since arriving home, so we're still moving.

God has truly been good to us and we remain committed to Him, first of all, and to His work as well. One thing that we talk about a lot as we drive down the road is our vision for the Bible College in Botswana. We read a lot of books. . .I read out loud while Chuck listens. The more I read, the more I am convinced that there is no work so enduring as the establishment of indigenous churches. I've seen what happens when missionaries carry the burden of the church on their own shoulders; any missionary who is indispensable is probably carrying the national church on his/her shoulders.

John Bueno, our missions director for the Assemblies of God, quoted something a couple of months ago in one of our publications, and I can't remember where he said he got it from (I think it was a traditional African proverb): he said, "If you want to travel fast, go alone; if you want to travel far, go together." Too many missionaries only see the value of traveling fast.

Robbed

My computer was just stolen at the Seattle Airport. Our flight from Portland was delayed for nearly an hour and our connecting flight to Sitka didn't wait for us in Seattle; the plane was still at the gate when we arrived breathless, but the door was already shut. We had to re-book, and then we had to figure out how to get hold of the people in Sitka to let them know we'll be there at 11 PM instead of at 6 PM. I sat down next to Chuck while he called information to get the Church's number and then called to inform them of the change of plans. I was vaguely aware that the guy on the other side of me got up, clicked his briefcase shut and left. After Chuck was off the phone I reached to get my book out of my computer bag, which I had put on the seat between me and the stranger. My coat was still there on the seat, but the computer bag was gone! What a sick feeling. Brand new. . .we bought it in August.

The police came, but obviously, they don't hold out much hope. I could not give them a very specific description of the guy because I barely noticed him--I was concentrating on Chuck's phone call. This kind of stuff really shakes me up. . .I guess I'm no different than the next guy. Where's my joy?

Money, money, money

As Margaret says, it all takes money! Not just solar panels, but everything. There may come a day, though, when solar panels are actually cheaper than petroleum products; scary, but it could happen.

We are sitting in the Portland Airport right now waiting for our flight to Seattle, and then on to Sitka, Alaska. This will be a whirlwind trip: 4 churches in 5 days. Tomorrow evening we'll cook our African stew in Sitka and tell them about all that God is doing in Botswana. At the crack of dawn on Saturday we'll board a plane for Anchorage, and by nightfall on Saturday, we need to be in Glennallen. After the morning worship celebration in Glennallen, we'll drive all the way to North Pole. . .not the North Pole, but the town of North Pole, AK. We'll share our ministry with the people there on Sunday evening and then hop in the car and drive all the way back to Anchorage to cook African Stew again in Anchorage. The fun just keeps on coming!

We do this to connect with God's people and report what He is doing among the nations. . . specifically in the nation of Botswana.

Solar Power

Maybe this doesn't seem like a post that belongs in a missionary blog, but it's just something that I've had on my mind a lot recently: I think solar energy could be put to use even for cars. I've been trying to get the attention of car makers and solar panel manufacturers, but it's hard to get anybody to take me seriously.

Could not solar panels be incorporated into the body of a car? And couldn't the car run on a battery large enough to hold 12 or more hours of charge? I know this might not be a good solution for places like Seattle, where the sun seldom shines, or Fairbanks, where the days are very short during the winter. But we don't all buy the same kind of cars, anyway.

More good news from Botswana

Since May of 2006 we have been trying to get Assembly Bible College registered with the federal government of Botswana. "Registration" is similar to what we would call "accreditation" here in the U.S. The application was submitted in December of 2006, and yesterday we got this e-mail from our colleague Pat Mahar in Botswana:

Two members of the Tertiary Committee stopped by the Bible School yesterday and delivered a Draft Registration Certificate (which is temporary, of course). We are now offical and legal! PTL!! Of course, we have to start meeting the recommendations that they've given us. The new kitchen is the first big pressing issue. We are well on our way...

Thought you'd like to rejoice too.

Pat

Pictures

I posted pictures on facebook of friends we've been connecting with as we travel. Most are in Oregon, but a few scattered throughout the country. Here's the link:

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1994&l=28369&id=1463262232

Behavior matters

Behavior matters, though. My righteousness is not based on my behavior, but still my behavior matters. Jesus tells me in Matthew that I should let my light shine before men so that they may see my good works and glorify my Father in heaven. So, you see, my good works are the light by which my friends and acquaintences see the Father; if I shine my light brightly, they get a clear, honest picture of Him. If my light is dim or if it goes out, they can't see the Father at all or they get such a dim view of Him that they disapprove!

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, my righteousness does not depend on my behavior, but somebody else's salvation may depend on my behavior.

My righteousness or His?

A lot of Americans assume they know what the Bible teaches about righteousness, but I wonder how many really do.

I think most Americans assume the Bible teaches that we have to be good, avoid sex and alcohol and beating your wife. They think the message of the Bible is, if you're good enough, God will declare you righteous and you get to go to heaven. But that's not it.

What the Bible does teach is that every human being that has ever lived has fallen short of "good enough" to go to heaven. But since God really wants us to go to heaven, He fixed it so that we could go to heaven because of Jesus' righteousness and not because of our own. The main message of the Bible is not "what I have to do for God so that He will love me" but "what God did for me because He loves me."

Who moved Sunday?

Who put Sunday at the end of the week? You know, in South Africa you can hardly find ANY calendar that has Sunday at the beginning of the week: they all start with Monday. Here in the U.S., almost all the monthly calendars have Sunday at the beginning. But I kind of like to use those weekly planners and I can't find a one that has Sunday as the first day. And many of them even cram Saturday and Sunday together at the end of the week; as missionaries, Sunday is our busiest day and that's the day where we need the biggest square for writing stuff in.

This is not a religious dogma for me: it's just a matter of avoiding confusion. My eyes are used to seeing Tuesday in that third square, you know, and Saturday in the last square. Whose idea was it to change the order of the days of the week?

Books

Chuck and I are reading a book called "Visoneering" by Andy Stanley, son of Charles Stanley. It's great! It's old enough you might be able to get it at the public library. . .no need buying every book you might ever want to read if the library has them.

Something else I highly recommend is the series by Alexander McCall-Smith called "The #1 Ladies' Detective Agency." The first book in the series is named (co-incidentally) The #1 Ladies' Detective Agency! The whole series is set in Botswana, as a matter of fact, right in Tlokweng mostly, and that's where our Bible College is. McCall-Smith is a British man who taught at the University of Botswana for several years. The books are down-to-earth and light-hearted; an outsiders view of Botswana, to be sure, but still a valid view.

More old friends

We're in Hermiston this afternoon: we had a missions service at Irrigon Assembly of God this morning and tonight we'll be going to Umatilla Assembly. This is our old stompin' grounds.



We were excited to hear about Sarah Palin's selection as the Republican vice-presidential candidate. Chuck grew up in Alaska and he still has family there. We were aware of the birth of her Down's Syndrome baby and of much she has done in Alaska. MacCain has taken a big political risk choosing her.

I'm now on Facebook

I spent the evening signing up for Facebook and trying to figure it out. I'm not sure I understand how it's better than e-mails, or even how it serves a different purpose than e-mails. But we'll see.

Old Friends

Chuck performed a wedding this morning for a friend of ours that we've known for years and years. We only met the bride yesterday, but the groom was a teenager in our youth group when Chuck was youth pastor in Hermiston, Oregon. Children of both the bride and the groom participated in the wedding, making it a family affair and a happy and touching ceremony. It was held in Columbia Park along the Columbia River in Washington, just over the state line from Hermiston.

Last night we spent the night with other friends who were in the church in Hermiston and who now live in Kennewick, Washington. We really enjoy spending time with old friends. On Monday we will drive through the Dalles and visit with other old friends from Hermiston; it'll be lovely. God is good.

Email from Botswana

Last year, just before we left Botswana, I developed three courses for the first-year classes: the first is called "Methods in Home Evangelism" the second is "Home Evangelism Practicum 1" and the third is called "Home Evangelism Practicum 2." (We have 3 terms of school in Botswana, so each course runs for one 10-week term.) The purpose of the practicum is two-fold; the first goal is to familiarize students with an unfamiliar method of ministry. The second purpose is to make disciples.

During the first term, the teacher introduces the concept and explains just what it is the students are expected to do. At the same time, the teacher is responsible for contacting local pastors to arrange for students to have ministry in the homes of some of the members. The point is to connect students with church families that speak the same local language; this explains the "home" part of Home Evangelism Practicum.

During the second and third terms, students begin meeting with the assigned families and with a few neighbors of the same language group that the church family may invite. We encourage the church families to invite either other believers or unbelievers. Thus the "evangelism" part of Home Evangelism Practicum.

I hesitated to introduce this new series of classes because Chuck and I would not be there to help, encourage, and monitor. But I did all that I could and left in in God's hands--and I also left it in the hands of one of our Batswana teachers, Pastor Phodiso Ntwaetsile. I was extremely encouraged to receive this e-mail from Pastor Ntwaetsile just a few days ago.

Phodiso wrote:

Hi the Wilsons.

It's a long time without hearing from each other. However God is still sustaning us and keeping us in his love. We are still praying for you and believing that soon you will be joining us here in Botswana.

Well, regarding the Home Evangelism, everything is in place. We managed to complete Practicum 1, and now looking forward to do the last Practicum, thus Practicum 2. However, I want to admit that I still have some problems with making the pastors get motivated to influence their church members to give us opportunities to use their homes. For example, pastors around Gaborone are happy about the program, but they are failing to influence their members. This forced me to look for opportunities at the Botswana Prison to run the program with them. Of course it was a good thing to penetrate the prison apartments, but the problem is some prisoners who participated in the program are executed before the end of the program. And this will mean that at the end of the program we will be left with few persons who completed the program and can therefore remain doing it with other prisoners.

Apart from the prison, we are running the program with at least one family, and some of my students are compiling their lessons in Sekhalahari language since we failed to find a family that speaks Sekhalahari. I have a strong hope that their material will aid the next year students during their preparations for the same program.After all, I want to tell you that the goals and objectives of the program are being met. I believe next year we will have many families involved in the program as I am still discussing the program with pastors around. Some pastors from Apostolic Faith Mission are showing interest on the program, of which I still want to ask you if you are comfortable with running the program with them?After all, everything is in place. You will hear good reports when you return.

Lastly, pray for me and my wife, we are opening a church branch in Kopong. The village has got 5571 people. We have started the cell-group and people a responding to the gospel.

Yours in Christ.

Two thoughts for the day

We’re in Gold Beach, Oregon, and I’m sitting at a coffee shop/ book shop that has wireless internet access—not for free, but for a reasonable price. Chuck went fishing today, but I was not interested.

I mentioned something about romance novels last time. The thing that bugs me about romance novels is that there’s always a bad boy who falls for a nice girl and she finally overcomes her aversion to his bad habits and falls head over heals for him. I first noticed this story line some years ago when I watched “Carousel” (Rodgers & Hammerstein?). What really stopped me in my tracks is when the girl (I can’t remember if it’s the young wife or later the teen-aged daughter) says, “When somebody who loves you slaps you, it doesn’t really hurt.” Oh, right! That gives permission for men everywhere to continue beating their wives, as long as they really love them.

Danielle Steele (sp?) and Victoria Holt are not much better. There’s always a pirate or a gambler or a womanizer who is drop-dead gorgeous and the heroine always chooses him over the reliable, respectful—albeit slightly boring—lord or earl or businessman. I thank my God I chose the reliable, respectful, and never boring Chuck Wilson; yesterday we celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary and I have not regretted even one day of our life together.

My second thought for the day is a bit more religious in nature, because after all this is a missionary blog, so you do expect it to be religious, don’t you? We have majored for about 5 years now on God’s blessing to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. God promises Abraham to bless him and make his name great and to bless the whole earth through him etc. etc. In our presentations at churches, we have tended to stress the fact that when God blesses, He intends the blessed person to be a blessing: “We are blessed to be a blessing” is the jist of it.

Recently, though, my attention was drawn to God’s promise to “make his name great.” I began to contrast that promise with the efforts of many a man to “make a name for himself.” For several days I couldn’t track down a verse in the Bible that refers to a person “making a name for him/herself” and then I finally remembered the Tower of Babel story. Those people wanted to build a great tower, using brick and mortar, to make a name for themselves (and to keep from being scattered througout the earth). It’s no coincidence that most of the people who have impressed me recently as trying to make a name for themselves have done it with brick and mortar.

I have often regretted the fact that Chuck and I are not in-demand conference speakers. You won’t find our name on brochures for camp meeting speakers, church-growth seminars or big revivals. We have not risen to leadership in our mission organization either. Nobody knows our names.

Except for the God of heaven. I will leave it to Him to make our names great.

Waiting room

Aug 22, 2008

I am sitting in the waiting room at the Salem Edoscopy Center, waiting for Chuck to be scoped. He has suffered indigestion and heartburn for years and we knew that he would eventually have to be scoped, so today that day has finally arrived. It’s not that the problems have gotten worse, really, so much as they’ve just hung on for so long that our doctor didn’t think we ought to ignore it longer. Well, we hadn’t really been ignoring it, but, you know, zantac and prilosec will only take you so far!

We’re sending out a paper newsletter this week, and I’ve spent the last hour or so updating our mailing list. If you are not on our mailing list but you’d like to be, just post a comment to this blog and let me know your address. If you are on our mailing list and you don’t want to be, please don’t write an irate letter, but do let us know.

We spend so much time in the car these days, traveling from church to church, that I’ve done a lot of reading. I know that makes some people carsick, but I usually do ok if I take short breaks frequently. I read a lot of romance novels, but they are not very satisfying.

But I’ll have to save that for tomorrow, Chuck’s scheduled to be done pretty soon here.

Children in Africa

I got an e-mail today from somebody who attended the worship service Sunday in Klamath Falls. Her heart was especially touched by something Chuck said: we don't see much (if anything) going on in Botswana in the way of children's ministry. We would like to see that changed, and we have been recruiting people who hear God's call in that direction.

For those readers who have gifts in various areas of service and who feel that God is calling them to serve His people in Africa, we recommend a couple of excellent books:

Ministering Cross-Culturally by Sherwood Lingenfelter and Marvin Mayers

and

Teaching Cross-Culturally by Judith and Sherwood Lingenfelter.

God bless you and make you more like Christ.

from Janet

Poetry

Poetry is easy to recognize, yet hard to define, kind of like the "syllable." Well, maybe poetry in your own language is easy to recognize, anyway. I remember studying Hebrew poetry before, probably when I was in Bible college, and it seemed a bit circular when they said that poetry is identified by poetic language. You know, English poetry has rhyme and meter, and in European languages, meter is a characteristic of poetry, but the Bible scholars say, meter is not a characteristic of Hebrew poetry: that leaves only that elusive concept, poetic language.

Now that I've gone to school for so many more years, I begin to understand what poetic language is, and I would rather say "figures of speech." Then you avoid that circular reasoning. But as I reflected on what to tell my own students, I thought that a contrast is the best way to describe poetry. I told them:

You use ordinary language to appeal to the mind.
You use poetic language to appeal to both the mind and the ear.

In other words, poetry is language that has been fashioned to be beautiful. And beauty is something that is very culture-specific; that means that utterances that are beautiful in one language may not be so beautiful in some other language.

Then, just the last few days, I also thought of another contrast:

You use ordinary language to make your listener know something he/she doesn't know yet.
You use poetry to make your listener feel something he/she doesn't feel yet.

Of course, neither of these contrasts is truly a definition, because they are not precise enough to define poetry and differentiate it from all prose. But I find that definitions are not always useful in helping students understand a concept.

Meditating on the Bible

I have read much in the Bible about meditating on God’s word. Remember. . . "Basic Youth Conflicts?” I can’t remember the guy’s name that used to do those seminars, but I remember something I read one time and I think he was the author. He wrote about meditating on scripture. He said that to meditate on the scripture, you need to memorize it; he emphasized that memorization does not equal meditation, but that it’s hard to have one without the other. I have found that to be true: if you want to memorize scripture, the process demands meditation, and if you meditate on scripture, you memorize it even if that was not your intent.

And then, in some course that I prepared to teach at the Bible College—it must have been a Global University course, because nearly all our courses are G.U. courses. In preparing to teach that course, I read that the Hebrew word that’s translated “meditate” has as it’s basic meaning something like “to mutter under your breath.” To mutter, to mumble, to meditate, to recite in a whisper. . .that’s what I do as I meditate on the Psalms, in an effort to memorize. I memorize so that I might meditate, and I meditate so that I might memorize.

I started memorizing consistently only about 4 years ago, though my first feats of memory came decades ago, when I was a Bible college student myself. As I memorized the book of Hebrews, I discovered that it had meaning as a whole, as an entity in itself, as a book and not just as a hodge-podge of verses. I’ve always been an avid reader, since first grade, but I could never read the Bible with the same enthusiasm as I read a novel. That’s because at each verse, I started over; like Abraham Lincoln’s description of reading the dictionary, I found it very interesting, but the plot was a bit hard to follow. I thought to find in each single verse a whole universe of meaning, instead of connecting each sentence, each paragraph, each argument, into a unified discourse.

I memorized Hebrews from beginning to end, but I determined to memorize the Psalms from the end to the beginning. I started with Psalm 4 and memorized the last verse first: “I will lie down and sleep in peace, oh Lord, for you alone make me dwell in safety.” (If my memory serves me well.) Then the next day I memorized the next-to-the-last verse and strung it together with the last one: “You have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new wine abound. I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, oh Lord, make me dwell in safety.” And I mutter it under my breath, because I have found that when I merely form the words in my mind, my errant mind tends to wander and I don’t even notice. If my lips stop moving, sooner or later I notice and force them to start up again.

I mutter, I meditate, not so that I can recite God’s Word for an audience, but so that I can live God’s Word for His honor and glory. Meditation soothes the anxious mind and brings serenity to a frazzled life. God is good.

Home-Based Bible Fellowships

Chuck and I have talked a long time about an alternative way to “do church.” I tried to explain to my students in one class at the Bible College (in Botswana), that the church grew exponentially in the first couple of centuries, as long as it was based in homes. After congregations started building themselves structures whose unique purpose was the Sunday worship meeting, church growth slowed considerably. One student objected that the church only started erecting buildings after they could afford to, and that it was just a coincidence that the church growth slowed significantly at the same time the church began to put its money into brick and mortar.

Not that I would advocate tearing down existing church buildings and favor putting all congregations out into homes, but just think about this: if a church in a town of 100,000 has the resources to build a building (on faith) that will seat 15,000, they have just excluded 185,000 in the community from attending their church. However, if that same church begins to establish home-based congregations and teach them to observe all that Jesus commanded us (as in Matthew 28:19), the entire population of the town could become congregations and they could all worship in the houses that have already been built there! We could release the church to grow to 100% of the population.

God is good. We want to glorify Him in every way that we can.

On the East Coast

We're in Connecticut today, having flown all day yesterday. We're staying at a nice B&B, called the Watson House: built in the 1700's.

We have 3 things scheduled here in the area this week: a meeting with a pastor in East Hartford today, tomorrow we're cooking our African stew at a church in Philadelphia, and then Thursday we are tentatively scheduled to have lunch with a pastor in Springfield, VA. Chuck had e-mailed the pastor (today's lunch meeting) before we left Sunday, and when we finally got online today, we had an e-mail from him cancelling that meeting! AAAAAACK.

But then, Chuck read me his explanation--he had experienced a possible TIA last Wednesday: I think that stands for transient ischemic attack, basically a mini-stroke. He had gone to the ER at the time, but he had to schedule a follow-up with his own doctor. He suggested we meet for breakfast today instead; but we had a hard time getting online this morning and didn't even SEE the e-mail till about 10:00. We couldn't reach him by phone at first, but we did finally talk and he told us we were close to the church and to come on over before his doctor's appt. So that's what we did.

On the road again

I actually wrote this in the car on Friday as we were driving and pasted it in here today. Now today, Sunday we are on the road again, and then tomorrow in the air.

August 1, 2008

We’re finally on our way home—from travel to School of Missions and from visiting several churches and friends and family throughout the Midwestern part of the U.S. Today we went through rural Caliornia—I bet you didn’t know there was such a thing! We passed through towns such as Ravendale, population 20 and Termo, elevation 5,300, population 26. Now we’re on the road between Lakeview and Klamath Falls. Our GPS says we’ll arrive back in Gresham at 10:28 tonight, but we know we’ll get home long before that; the GPS calculates our speed as about 36 MPH on secondary roads and 60 MPH on the Interstate. We go a bit faster than that!

At first we were planning to drive to Winnemucca, Nevada yesterday, after visiting Chuck’s cousin in Henderson. But when Chuck checked on the internet, he said there are virtually NO hotels in Winnemucca, and the only one that was fit to stay at was full. However, Reno offers rooms at their casino hotels for next to nothing, so we drove there! Of course, they expect that they’ll make up the loss on your room when you indulge in the slot machines, but I’m afraid they lost money on us.

God is good. May He bless you and your family just as He is blessing us.

First day

OK, I've set up a blog. I thought I had a lot to say, but now my mind has gone blank. I guess I'll figure it out as I go along.