Rocky Point

So what if it was a loooong 24 hours of driving to get here. Or that our car didn't have air conditioning over the last baking desert heat. Rocky Point is so beautiful it makes the eyes tear up. Its such a perfect get-away that I swear my heart is beating slower. Picture extreme high and low tides, that regularly expose a coral reef and tide pools. Imagine 85 degree water with tumbling surf. Papaya, mangoes, guayabas, avocados, shrimp the size of my hand, with home made tamales and hand patted tortillas. Oh my. And Dale is here, right here, instead of somewhere else in a court room or on the road.

We certainly could get used to this.

Am I A Mission Trip Junkie? or not?

Today at church Dale and I and the rest of our Mexico 2010 team were allowed to show pictures and tell of how wonderful it was to be serving last May. It was a good reminder for us how much we enjoyed to be together. That we were allowed to see some pretty important changes in the Tarahumara church. That God has transformed people for His glory here and there. Wow.

After the meeting I joined my Thailand team that is heading to Asia next month so that we can help a group of foreign workers in a strategy conference. We hosted a fund raising spaghetti dinner to help with the finances. Somewhere as I was talking to a friend about last summer's India trip, and got to reconnect with the Mexico team and before the planning meeting with my Asia team, someone asked me how I like being involved to the extent that I am. He said something like, 'so its like a where's waldo with you. Find Lori in the mission trip slides!'

We laughed because its true! I look at this year and just marvel that God has allowed me to be invited to so many different trips. I have walked over such different terrains, shaken so many hands, eaten such distinct foods. Said hello in varied languages. Prayed with such beautiful saints. Felt the goosebumps of many, many images of my teams being transfixed at the beauty of what God let them see.

I spend much of my time back at home in gratitude of what I was allowed to know, and in prayer that each of us would be good stewards of what we now know.

And, to be honest, dream of the next trip. Can't lie, I frankly love this!

So Wednesday Night Bible is a really cool event. Not just because we have live worship, or the cutest toddlers in Norfolk strolling around. These things are true but there is even more.

True Story

More than one, but less than a dozen, people have asked me to do something different with my blog. Or start a new one. But maintaining two seems like an awful lot of work. So for the simple acedia of it all, I will just mix it up. Make a salad of posts, as it were.

And as an inauguration of this split-purpose writing exercise, I offer this:

If you read the book of Matthew from the beginning, you read early on (4:23) that Jesus went teaching and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. I wondered what it would be like to hear one of those sermons....yeah, I'm that dull. Because, clearly, the sermon on the mount is that same sermon He taught and proclaimed everywhere. And it is such a light-endowing, amplification of God's heart toward His people message. Quite deeper and harder than what the old testament prophets would have said.

And Jesus wraps it up with a perfectly stunning application. 'If you hear these words and do them, you are like the man who built his house on the rock and no amount of rivers or flooding can knock you down.'

Building your 'house' on the sand of ignoring God's ways, or of making yourself king is easy house building. Choose your house design, move a little sand out of the way and 'presto' the house is built. And just like you wanted it made.

Building your 'house' on the rock, is difficult house building. You have to adapt yourself to the rock. You have to let the shape of the rock affect your shape. It is a lifetime of having God's word and ways change you. But the secure and sure foundation, which is Christ Himself!, keeps you from crumbling in the inevitable floods and storms. God knows that our sturdiest position is allowing ourselves to be conformed to Himself. And He also knows well what a weak foundation our own desires and changing wants are.

The following quotation is a direct steal from T Prinzi's blog from the Rabbit Room. It lit up the insides of my brain when I read it and can't seem to stop meditating on it:

We intersect with other's unfinished stories every day, and this should
cause us to be filled with grace toward one another. I think we’re
often like the taunting fairies in George MacDonald's
Phantastes: “Look at him! Look at him! He has begun a story without a
beginning, and it will never have any end! He! he! he! Look at him!”

It’s easy to forget that each of us is stumbling through an unknown land
with hardly the faintest clue what direction we’re heading in, and
it’s easy to taunt each other instead of encourage one another.

Which gives me a clue to a question I have been asking myself. When Jesus tells us to 'not judge' in Matthew 7, He follows that instruction with 'don't cast pearls before swine or give what is holy to dogs'. My question has been, what is judging then? Sounds like judging to me, to call someone a swine or a dog.

But there seems to be an enormous difference between discernment and being judgmental. So the George MacDonald thought above is pointing me toward this thought: I am discerning when I notice that someone is being foolish or simple or scornful or teachable. I am judging when I imagine for a second, and communicate it to any other, that I am never vulnerable in that same way. That it would be unlike me and impossible for me to commit that same sin.

Because I am an unfinished story. I have no certainty what the rest of my life will be like. And in great humility and compassion for the struggles of others, I need to consider that my life is in great peril of stumbling, too. Indeed, I have had overwhelming seasons of stumbling already.

Back From India

I'm not exactly sure why but it takes me a little while to reconnect with my life after I have been gone to India. There are a few reasons that might be true: jet lag seriously messes with my brain. or. It is such a completely altered life for me that I get disoriented trying to rejoin my original me. or. Savoring what I saw and tasted and learned and loved is sweet and I like to savor it long. Maybe all this and more.

Anyway, I love this picture because it reminds me of a hilarious and glorious hour where these accomplished dancers pulled me into their circle and would not let me leave. Twice, I breathlessly stepped out of their midst and they hauled me back in, pulling on my sari. One of the women would slap my arms or back to make sure I watched her and did this thing correctly. I think I finally learned the steps, but I'm not a good judge of that!

As I look at the pictures of India that are on my computer I feel happiness and gratitude that I was allowed to be there again.

A Concert

The other day a number of us gathered at a coffee shop, Indigo Bridges, for a concert. If I hadn't had been there for something else, I would have scouted out the back half of the shop which was rows and rows of books. And the coffee was good! (you don't hear me say that just anywhere)

But there were several musicians singing and playing their original music. It was a lovely night. What makes this post-worthy is that Dear Herman was there. It is remarkable to me what music can do. Words that swirl and pool and pile up in the head can become thoughts. If a creative person lets them become pointed and honed, then those words can be transfered into ideas. Ideas in song that are then caught by other brains. I may not have the entire song memorized but words stand out. Those words swirl and pool in my head to formulate other ideas.

And to be frank, I was just plain dazzled by my daughters' ability to bless and strengthen and inspire a roomful of people. Truly God lets us hear His thoughts about us through their music.