tunnels

naked i came into the world and naked i will depart.  this world welcomed me and soon it will see me off.  naked i came, naked i’ll leave. 

when i reflect on this simple truth, it’s hard to maintain a constitution of individual rights and fair play. 

i am dust. 

when the wind blows, dust is displaced; when the rains fall, dust becomes mud; beneath the sun, mud is hardened into clods; and under trampling feet, earth clods crumble and return to dust.

dust has the ‘right’ to be displaced, altered, hardened, trampled, and to begin the process anew.

i am a simple lump of clay, molded into His image, infused with breathe and with spirit.  opportunities to experience love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness are fruits of His creativity—I have no right to these apart from Him. 

my life was bought at a price.  an unfathomable, heart-wrenching, cosmically baffling act of love purchased me from death and availed communion with Life.  i am animate dust and an heir of Life:

Prince Pinocchio.

if anyone had a right to a prosperous future, Abraham would be the man.  when Creator God decides to name you the father of a great nation,  a father you will be—end of discussion.  there is no one on earth or under the earth that can tamper with that promise. 

so fancy yourself this father, and Isaac, your son.  you and your son are on a hike.  father and son, a packed donkey, and a couple of young working hands, touring the land of Moriah, and you, the father, will get to throw the match on an only-begotten-bonfire. 

--

quick tangent:

ever played ‘would you rather…’?  would you rather be: Job, a man of God who has his family, fortune, and body utterly ravaged by the evil one—or—Abraham, trekking the countryside with your beloved son, and the whole excursion you are wondering what it will be like to watch your son bake on the altar of God’s promise…

well, which scenario would you choose??

i would rather just read about those stories, thank you.  i mean, hadn’t God read the U.S. constitution?  what ever happened to an individual’s unalienable rights? 

life,

liberty,

the pursuit of happiness???

these men weren’t American apparently. 

probably a good thing, too.  had they been, i could see them calling a meeting with God at Starbucks, bringing their lawyers along (of course), and serving God legal complaints of injustice over a hot beverage.  i could imagine God perusing the documents for a moment before looking over his vanilla chai latte at these jokers—seeing not two men, but elaborate piles of dust.  two rich piles of dust with two other rich piles of dust (but these two piles have degrees in law); and on the other side of the table, the Alpha and Omega.  and bearing witness on His behalf: the breadth of creation.  yeah… that would be a rowdy meeting.

ok, end tangent.

--

so there you are, in the land of Moriah—you and Isaac, and it’s the worst day of your life.  Isaac is laying on his back, staring at the object exalted in your hand; and you, quivering beside the altar, are ready to plunge a knife into your son—him, your beloved son and heir of everything you have been promised.  at the moment, you feel less significant than a lump of clay, peering down at your son, your blood boiling at the thought of your hopes and dreams being consumed on this altar.

was Abraham the promised father of a great nation?

yes.

was Abraham to have descendants as countless as the world’s grains of sand?

yes.

did Abraham have a the right to question God’s goodness and faithfulness that day in the clefts of Moriah?

apparently not.

apparently a covenant with God didn’t give Abraham the right to doubt His goodness— even if it meant the slaying of His own son. 

naked we came into the world and naked we will depart.

 

there are times in life that feel like crawling and clawing our way through a tunnel, and we spend most of the time wondering how life could get any worse than the present circumstances.  tomorrow shows no sign of relent, for we’ve learned that the worse of today usually becomes tomorrow’s norm.  restlessness is your anthem, food has lost its savor, and crawling under the covers at night is just a little colder than you would prefer.  most of us can relate to life in this tunnel.

maybe before we begin to evaluate our present tunnel-peril, we should consider the dirt on our knees and the dust under our fingernails.  if the stains and the grime could speak to us in those tunnel-moments, what wisdom would be imparted to us? 

maybe…

(dust under our fingernails):

“He didn’t have to breathe life into you.  He could have left you as i am.  but He didn’t.  He loves you… you have no idea how profoundly He loves you!

“yes: the journey can be daunting.

yes: you will grieve your time in the tunnels.

yes: following Him will appear foolish at times.

“His children have been led into floods and furnaces, my friend, and presently you find yourself crawling down this tunnel.  but be reminded that this is a temporary tunnel—a cranny of the valley of the shadow of death.  but your present demise isn’t the last word.  the Word endured the demise and overcame it.  remember?!  a day is coming when tunnels will collapse under the weight of glory, when valleys of death will flood with Living Water. 

“but for now, remember your origins, my friend.  dust has no right to glory.  that you see light at all is a miracle, and that you have partaken of love and joy and peace is a profound blessing.  the angels themselves do not understand it. 

“so in this present darkness, be reminded of your origins, and revel in the pin pricks of light, for these are rumors of your destiny.”

 

fellow travelers: the darkness we encounter in these tunnels is not the final word.  yet in the tunnels, we seek for light—any promise of an end to the turmoil—but to no avail, or at least never in the timing we would prefer. 

this is not the life He meant for us.  tunnel-life is not the end game. 

the cross tells us that Hope has known this very tunnel, and by His Spirit He is crawling beside us.  but we have not the eyes to see the ever-present One (yet).

could it be that tunnels are the painfully appropriate classrooms wherein we learn to plead for Wisdom and the ability to recognize the presence of Light?  once Light begins to overcome the tunnels of our life, what of existence under the sun?!  it would be a tragedy to be under the sun your whole life, yet perceive only darkness.  Solomon knows what i’m talking about.

so maybe we find ourselves in tunnels that we may be able to ascertain Light. 

the journey from mere dust-hood to glorious Bride-hood is one hell of a journey.  the journey through the valley of the shadow of death is brutal and wearisome, but our destination is a bright country and life eternal with our Faithful Groom.

take a quick moment to read James 1:2—18 from the perspective of your tunnel…

the Father of lights is Faithful… His presence in caverns of darkness transforms them into sanctuaries of Light.  in Him there is no variation… no shadows… ever.

beloved:

the Light will find you in the tunnel.

the Beloved and the thief (SWE)

josh and i have spent the past couple days developing the theme that we will be weaving in to the curriculum of our spring adventure groups.  as participants are up in the trees, eating meals, enjoying one another's company, we want them to be contemplating unity.  

most of the groups that come through this spring will not be of the Christian influence; a good number of the groups will be confirmation groups—a very traditional, religious rite of passage in sweden that is as common as getting your driver's license in the states.  the students study the creeds and the doctrines of the church along with other complimentary studies and many groups choose to celebrate their confirmation with some kind of retreat (coming to holsby, for example).  we are told that the youth of these groups participate in confirmation rites for the following primary reasons:

their parents make them do it,

all their friends are doing it,

they will get a lot of money gifts from grandparents if they do.  

our hope is to give them an introduction to the Gift who will capture their hearts and rattle their world.  the message we will be passing on is one of Love, and Him unified.

in his letter to the ephesians, the apostle paul is trying to communicate a mystery.  well before he calls the ephesians to be a unified people, he urges the people to consider the Beloved;

the Blessed,

the Son.

what do we mean by "God loves us," apart from the reality that the Father loves His Son?  it is because of the Father and Son's love for each other that we can know love—He is perfectly One, perfectly Love, and it is out of Him (the Unified One) that we are blessed and saved from a life of pursuing counterfeit union.  since we are created in His likeness, it is not an option for us to not be “in union” with something or someone.  we simply are incapable of finding significance in anything else (even the person of social and technological solitude embraces an other—think of tom hanks’ character’s relationship with a volleyball in “cast away”).

our hope for the groups that come through holsby this spring is that they will consider to whom or to what thing(s) they are seeking unity with.  and when we consider how we spend our money and our time, light begins to shine on what we value as ‘our other’.  it is with an invitation to put on relational lenses that we begin to see the absurdity of what we are doing with our lives… so many of the things that we pour resources and effort into have no capacity to love us, and deep in our make-up, we long to be unified with Love.

ephesians 4:28 says, “let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” 

by nature, you and i are thieves, desperate for that which we cannot buy.  consider the garden of eden: adam and eve partook of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil at the expense of unity with the Father.  make no mistake: something powerful was gained that day: we learned that we could indulge our appetites in our world, apart from Him—a very powerful tool of individual survival.  and from that day forth, the serpent has invited us to binge on drunkenness, sexual immorality, gluttony, and the like; but notice how it is always in the context of distrusting the Word that we receive this invitation (on the flipside, consider the One who stood firm against the serpent in the desert… the new Adam). 

we are thieves who are skilled in stealing a “unity” of sorts.  we are thieves, and we are fools, because Truth invites us to imitate Him as the Beloved (see eph. 5:1) and receive the love and unity we could never afford (see eph. 2:8). 

the prophet Isaiah pleads, “come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat.  come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.  why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?  incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live…”

we are thieves, and we are fools.  if we knew the gift of God and believed the truth about the riches of our inheritance as beloved children, we would actually receive the things of which we pursue the shadows of.  we waste our time and affection on shadows, but there are no shadows in Him Who is Light.

our hand reaches for the apple everyday; fruit of incomplete, worldly "unity".  knowledge apart from relationship.  if we insist on relying on our own efforts to feed our hunger for love and unity, we forfeit our inheritance as beloved children and are left foraging from apple trees.

josh and i hope that this season of holsby will be characterized by pursuing the Love of our life and being blessed in Him who is the Beloved.  our deepest desire is to enter into the labor of love, actually relating to the Giver of good things and learning from the Beloved, so that we might have something to give to those in need (“let the thief no longer steal…but have something to share with those in need”).

 

may our ministry here at holsby be the wake we leave behind as we pursue our Love!

i just walked from our guys house, Ekhaga, to the upstairs loft of our chapel, and the short walk from A to B was curtained in darkness with one of the more extravagant displays of stars I have seen in a while. there are plenty of lights around campus, but with little pollution and being out in the forest, the celestial show was still quite extravagant. if you have a chance you're thursday night, get somewhere you can see the stars and allow Him to remind you of who He is and how profoundly He loves you...

 

the stars are not only a creative masterpiece, but a future inheritance; it's good to know the King!

they have monkeys in Sweden (SWE)

today was our first hands-on training day on the ropes course.  it snowed an inch or so last night so the whole course took on a unique challenge on top of being a challenge course itself.  Josh and I are no experts up in the trees, but we both did very well doing about 10 legs of the circuit.  there were a couple time of flutter-heart, but for the most part, we were just a couple monkeys learning the ropes ;)  the platforms on the trees are about 35 ft. above the ground and are significantly smaller than the platforms we used at the course on Mt. Hood... you could almost lay a sleeping bag out and have a night of it at the latter while the former allows you a couple of inches of play in front of your toes if your heels are neatly backed up to the tree.  at some of the outlying stations in the trees, you can look out over the forest and feel like you are floating in one place since it takes quite a bit of purpose to notice the platform under your feet... a very surreal experience.  

this weekend, Josh and I will get a couple days to relax and hopefully more fully adjust to the time difference.  sleep is still scattered at best and we would appreciate prayer for that adjustment.  you know that frame of mind you're in when it's about three hours past your bedtime and anything you say makes you sound about 10 years developmentally more immature than you really are??  well, that has been our reality as it were, sometimes talking to each other in our room and then having to break mid-sentence out of the realization that we were the one sharing the words that were floating around in the air.  ok, maybe not that bad, but that actually did happen earlier today as we were trying to brainstorm what we want the training to look for the interns that will be assisting us with the Spring adventure teams; our brainstorm sessions are more like a light mist that floats away the moment you move your hand towards it.  all this to say, may the Lord see fit that we trade in the mist for the storm here soon :)

with our time off this weekend, Josh and I will probably ride the community bicycles into Vetlanda, probably a 45 minute ride.  Vetlanda has a population of 14,000 or so and not a whole lot to see, but we heard today from a fellow staff that they do have an H&M (a rare and favored apparel provider in our eyes), it being Sweden and all, so we are stoked to pedal into town and explore!

we spent a good amount of time today learning the staff privileges, responsibilities, and conduct today... it is refreshing to be getting a better idea of how we ought to relate to the Holsby community; the people are good natured and there are many opportunities to encourage one another and grow together rapidly.  we hope that we can be men who are patient listeners and eager students of the culturally-diverse community in which we now live.  

I hope you are all doing remarkably well in the states (or wherever you may be) and recognize the possibility for this day to be a significant opportunity to live for the glory of the Lord.  don't drift through this day in quiet desperation as we are so accustomed to... stoke the vital fire that makes you human and live in the wild presence of your Maker... feel His warm hands around you, molding and shaping you into something designed for His purposes and His glory!

but be warned: He is not a timid Potter.

with love, from a fellow lump of clay:

patrick

there’s no place like home (SWE)

“it took three generations… you and I are the first of our families to return ‘home’”

currently we are looking out our windows at the industrial south of Sweden, thankful to be sitting in comfortable chairs on a 10-minute-delayed train.  it’s 5:30pm here and still evidently have an hour or so of daylight left, so wherever we got the idea that our niche of Sweden was going to be largely dark this time of year was a misinformed source (a pleasant surprise to the both of us).  getting on the train with our 150lbs. of gear (each) was about as difficult/entertaining as we figured it would be.  other than that 5 min. escapade, our travel has been pleasant and relatively on-time.  the terrain so far is a mix of industry and farm country—picture max having a route through Sandy, OR with a mix of Sauvie’s Island… that is the scene we are taking in, in so short a description.

in about an hour and a half, we will be arriving in Nassjö and catching a connecting bus into Vetlanda where we are to be picked up by someone from Holsby (hopefully!).  despite some stomach uneasiness for Josh and an expected tiredness for the both of us, we are fairing as good as we could have hoped.  not sure what awaits us once we get to Holsby (i.e. dinner, room situation, tour of the campus, etc.) so wanted to take this downtime on the plane to write a quick note to let all of you know that weariest aspects of our travels are passed and that we are eager to get to Holsby and see what awaits us! 

i’ll send this off as soon as we have an internet connection, so by the time you read this, my guess is we’ll be safe and sound at Holsby.  thank you all for your prayers for this leg of our journey… the fun is just getting started!

with love, from Sweden 

the good news!!!

ladies and gentlemen: a drum roll, please... ... ... ... ... and now, the news we've all been hoping to hear--our visas have been approved!!!! (yay!--whoo-hoo!) to be clear, this is the news we have been waiting to hear for months, and it is the news that confirms a USA departure in the next few days. with any luck, i (and Josh) will be receiving our passports/visas in the mail this saturday, booking our tickets shortly thereafter, and heading for sweden as early as this monday! (thank the Lord that airfare is remarkably cheap as of a couple hours ago, under $1,000 for a roundtrip ticket!) as soon as i have received my passport/visa and booked a flight, i will let you all know--my last post from the states for some time =)

i half-wish that i would have held off another day or two before writing my last post, because then i would have been able to report the news without showing you my frustration. but i only half-wish that. the other half of me (or at least the better part of me) is glad that i have the freedom to be known in my frustration, my weariness. thank you all for your prayers... i have no doubt that prayers of the saints find great favor in His eyes and move His far-stretching hands.

continue to pray that we will find favor in His eyes, and thereby a mysterious favor in all the people we may encounter on our journey.

for His glory!!

a quick update (SWE)

the past couple weeks have been pretty trying to put it mildly.  for those of you who haven't been in direct contact with me, i apologize for the lack of information... i am still in the states waiting for my visa application to be approved by the Swedish Migration Board.  to my knowledge, there is no reason to believe that we will not qualify for the requested visa, but it seems the delay has been because of A LOT of miscommunication between Sweden's consulate general in LA and the Migration Board in Sweden.  it is of little use to share all of the disheartening details, but to catch those up who have been out of the loop in so many words: we are in the midst of an extended waiting game.  it would be appropriate at this point for me to ask any and all to be praying for the status of our applications and that communication can begin to start happening between the said parties.  there is the ongoing battle with being frustrated with the way this process has unfolded, but i know that the Lord is ready to give grace to those who humble themselves before Him in the midst of life's curve balls.  i am also praying that the Lord would allow me to hold fast to him in the days to come--that I would see His hands at work when it seems that all the employees at the Migration Board are sitting on theirs :)  

thank you for all of your loving support... i hope to report some good news here soon.  but even if  i don't, He is still good and so incredibly worthy of all i have, and if i can love and trust Him in these moments of frustration, that is something significant to be encouraged about :)