Waiting for Dinner

"For the hope beyond the blue."

I'm a cynic. We're all of sure of it (all three of you who read this blog & myself). Good things happen and I'm the fella in the back going, "Just wait, you'll see...."

This has been shown pretty clear the last two days.

Good things: meeting new people and nice conversations. Questionable things: why would they respond that way, or is-there-really-been-a-change types, of questions. In all of them I've sat, or at least seen, from the view of the cynic.

I'm not quite sure this is wrong. It may be.

I'm sure we're probably supposed to see from a middle point, sometimes cynic sometimes pessimist. Looking onto both sides of things and saying, while seeing, the intricacies of both sides. (Or, at least, the possibilities therein.)

But this is still hard for me. (I'm just writing as it comes....)

I know people to be broken, to be faulty, to be sin filled. I know myself to be the same way, most definitely. I know not to put my hope in anyone, ever. But that doesn't stop me. I still return to doing it again, and again, and again... etc.

I know my hope should be in Jesus Christ and none other ("My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness."). And I know that my biggest problem (sin/damnation/the just wrath of God) has already been taken care of by Jesus.

But I also know that the point I made before is still terribly true - I'm a sinner.

The middle ground is foggy, and the ditches seem to be homey. I'm stupidly comfortable in the broken vessel I inhabit. I like to talk about me more than God....

But this I know with all my heart... his wounds have paid my ransom.

O my God. Thank God.

So whie I wait for dinner to finishing cooking, I'll look to the bloody, gory, beautiful cross by the grace and mercy of God.

Rumored Thought (Pt. 2)

Check out Part 1

Safety in mission is a relative impossibility, rather implausibility.

My dad told me just before I trounced off to Egypt for a summer, “I know you’ll be safe, ‘cause you’re in the center of God’s will -- but I guess that’s not safe, it’s just right.”

We can’t embark on mission and expect to come out the other side the same. We’ll be changed; we’ll be effected by what we’ve seen, whom we’ve spoken to, and the relationships we’ve built.

If we informally understand safety as the retention of normality than we must never see mission as safe. (And more often than not when we, as modern Americans, talk about safety we mean the normal.)

Internationally I’ve been in some rather dangerous experiences all for the sake of mission (things I’ve not told my mom… until she reads this that is), it wasn’t safe. Locally I’ve been in situations just as hairy.

My point is this: mission will never leave us the same. It won’t allow us to be just as spunky as we were when we were kids. It’ll wear our souls out and cause us to be ragged and rough. It won’t polish us up and let us be the neat little Christian legalism has told us we ought to be.

“The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;

His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure, 


One little word shall fell him….

Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;

The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,

His kingdom is forever.”

Life is a tempest, which will drowned our tiny boats eventually. We are not as we once were; we are not children anymore. No, and the cares of life have brought us the realization of reality. So why should mission be different? Why should mission cause us to be clean and neat and safe when it asks us to do precisely opposite?

No. No, mission isn’t safe, and we’ll not come out the other side of it the same. Thank God.