Another Land

This land where the words are different and the language unrecognizable. This land so far from home that east indeed has met west. This land of different customs and funny ideas. This land where we have gone and, though only for a little while, have become sojourners.

Rich Mullins sang about it, Abraham was one, Jesus became one, and so the theme runs with us - we are sojourners in a far off country. Where the customs are sin and the ideas are tied to our brokenness. Where to be a national is to be damnable. Not for sake of race or creed but because of sin. It is the plight of the world, the custom inherent in all everywhere.

For us here in India there is no where further away. To go any further east would mean to be closer to home and the same goes for west. But even that doesn't portray how far away from reality our sin has taken us from God. Our worlds of realities have been skewed and stretched and dismembered and disfigured so badly and completely that the only hope for any salvation or redemption had to be a Traveler from that perfect distant place. It had to be Jesus. Had to.

To leave the wonders of heaven to know the ways of men and to save them from those dastardly things they call "life." Those perishable hopes and dreams of fleeting nothing's and pithy longings of celebrity.

There is a place where none shall die and all will live; where tears are wiped away and sadness knows its end; where astounding is normal and unimaginable is seen; where the shadow of the real is touchable and the broken mirror in which we now see dimly is mended and we see our Savior face to face. There is a place and we call it "Home."

This God of the Mundane

I finally got my copy of The God of the Mundane in the mail on Friday. Theoretically I should be done reading its 73 pages by now – but I’m not. There’s too much to it. To read this tiny book quickly would be to miss the point.

I remember a time in my life when I would read at least three books a week, and we’re talking 200-300 page puppies. Then came the first short little book that took my life wrapped it around a tree and sent it in another direction, Henry Scougal’s The Life of God in the Soul of Man.

This book now, this God of the Mundane book, is compiling thoughts, conversations, and personel wrestles that have been warring in my soul for some 18 months and making them spoken, no, making them written - which is more solid than the fleeting fluttering words of the mouth. And others are reading these words too.

My dad and I have a saying about good books, that their introductions are usually worth the price of the book - that's the case here.

Here’s a snippet,

“So many pastors today, famous and otherwise, are asking young people and everyone else if they are willing to give it all and go overseas as a missionary. It’s not a bad question to ask. There is no question in my mind that this question needs to be out there. But they – or someone – also needs to ask, ‘Are you willing to be numbered among the nameless believers in history who lived in obscurity? Do you have the courage to be forgotten by everyone but God and the heavenly host? Are you willing to be found only by God as faithful right where you are? Are you willing to have no one write a book about you and what you did in the name of Christ? Are you willing to live and believe – in stark contrast to the world around you – there is a God of the Mundane?’”

Rich Mullins is playing the background; I made cookie dough tonight; and there is a God of this mundane moment where I’m just another broken hearted kid aiming at loving that God of the mundane and extraordinary with all this little heart can bare. So I’ll go read Lord of the Rings and pray for my future family because God is here.