The God who is with us

Ἐμμανουήλ

That’s a little more than the Greek word of the day.  That word (Ἐμμανουήλ) is the word that we translate as Emmanuel.  In Scripture, it has a definition that has the power to change everything.  No, I’m not being overly dramatic. I mean it has the power to change EVERYTHING.

It means, “God with us.”

And so much is packed into a work that only appears in the words of the prophet Isaiah (as Immanuel) and then again Matthew 1:23 as Isaiah is quoted in the New Testament.

Here’s the way it appears in Matthew 1:23: Look! A virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, And they will call him, Emmanuel. (CEB)

The concept of “God with us” isn’t just limited to a couple of words from a prophet, a quote in the New Testament and the song that we sing during Advent (O Come O Come Emmanuel).  The idea of “God with us” begins in the opening words of Scripture and flows through the entirety of God’s love letter to us that we call the Bible.

In Genesis, in the Garden, God is with us.  In Egypt during the famine, God is with us. In the wilderness journey, God is with us. In the Promised Land, God is with us.  In the struggles to be like other nations and to have kings, God is with us.  In the times when it all falls apart, when the wheels come off, when we end up in exile — God is with us.

In the silent times, when we wonder whether we’ve messed it up so much that God has forgotten about us, God is still with us.  In the promise of salvation and forgiveness, of redemption and atonement, God is with us.  When we mess it up so much that we can’t get back to where we need to be on our own, God is with us.

In the birth of a savior, born in the most humble of places, to a set of couple of poor teenagers, God is with us.  To the downcast and the downtrodden, to the hopeless and the forgotten, God is with us.

In the darkest Friday of human history, the mourning of a Saturday and the power of resurrection that comes on a Sunday morning, God is with us.

In the mission to “go and make” disciples of Jesus Christ to change the world, God is with us.

In the moments when our light seems to slight to hold back all of our dark, when the problems we face seem overwhelming, when all seems lost, when failure hits, when the news knocks us to our news… Guess what?  Even then. Maybe especially then.  God is most definitely with us.

Maybe the great promise of this season of Advent, this time of waiting, is the hope, the confident expectation, of knowing that God has been with us, is still with us and will always be with us.

Emmanuel.

God is with you.

 

James 1:9-10: An upside-down world

9 Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. 10 But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower.11 For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business. – James 1:9-10 (NIV)

It’s all about where we see ourselves in the big picture.

Have you ever looked down on someone because you saw them as beneath you?  Maybe we don’t enter the day with that intention in mind.  Yet, we see another person and make snap judgments based upon the way they look, the way they are dressed, their overall cleanliness.  Sometimes, maybe without any real thought, we turn away from them and head in the other direction.  Or, we hurry past time in the store.  Or maybe we really don’t give them much of a thought at all.

But there are other people that when we look at them, we see them as having it all together.  We make those judgments based upon their clothes, their car, their wealth, their job, their status.  Maybe instead of heading in the other direction, we try to find ways to move closer to them. 

That’s the world that James seeks to address.  It’s a world where there is a bias against the “least of these” and a bias toward the “blessed of the blessed.”  One of the places it is playing out in James’ time is in the community of faith.

So, James seeks to turn that world upside down.  Those in humble circumstances, the least of these, the poor are to take pride in their “high position.”  And the rich, the wealthy, the blessed of the blessed are to take pride in “humiliation.”  Is this a statement about wealth or something else?

James is pointing out the fact that in a spiritual sense, we all come to the same place before God.  For those who have nothing, God reaches out to lift up and love the “least of these.”  For those who fall into a temptation of wealth as a god (with the little g), God shows what it means to lose all of our shame, guilt, etc., to be built up again in love.

James challenges us to see the world in a new way.  So, how will we see it today?  Will we still see it with our biases and preferences?

All-loving God, open our eyes to the world around us.  Expose to us our biases and show us the ones that we might otherwise ignore.  God help us to know that in you, we are all equals in need of your love, grace and mercy.  In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.

James 1:2-8: Joy in trials?

2 My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; 4 and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.

5 If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. 6 But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; 7, 8 for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord. (James 1:2-8, NRSV)

There are some moments in Scripture that can absolutely leave you scratching your head.  Does James seriously think that I’m going to be joyful when I’m going through the tough moments in life?  Maybe you get where I’m coming from on this.  Joy is often times the last thing that I will feel in the moments of stress, the times of struggle, in the hours of pain, in dealing with fears and questions and doubts.

Yet, that’s where this letter goes.  Go to joy.  Why?  Because it’s a chain reaction.  View it as joy because this trial can test your faith and show you just how much you need God.  And when you realize that about your faith, your faith can mature and grow.

But still, joy? Joy when someone is stabbing you in the back?  Joy when people are talking about you?  Joy when you hear a rumor or half-truth?  Joy?

Maybe what James is ultimately pointing us to is that we can reach a place in our faith when we see past the emotions that we encounter and we can see that God is still present.  It’s a place on the other side of pain and doubt.  It’s the place where we know that no matter what, God is there.

Maybe that’s what can lead us to be able to ask God without doubt.  Why?  Because we’ve had the chance to see God in our trials.  And because we’ve seen God there, we know that he’s going to be there in the future and that God’s never going to leave.

Maybe that’s what I find myself coming back to.  God is here, God is there.  God is always.  Even in the trials.

And for some reason, that does start to make me feel joy.

Almighty and loving God, thank you for your presence with me in the toughest moments of life.  God, you are with me there just as you are with me in happiest of times.  Help me, God, to find the joy in knowing you will not leave even in the toughest of moments I experience. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.

Part 6: God shows up while life happens

On the last day of our stay in the Dominican Republic, we spent some time on this beach. And it offered a chance to do some reflection on ministry and calling.

Sometimes events in life don’t come with a warning light.  Many times they don’t announce themselves at all — either on their arrival and on their leaving.

Life happens.

Sometime around September 2013, life happened for me.  I don’t know the day that it started, but I know what would come after that.  Sometime in that month, I started a string of health events that would follow me well into this year.  It started with a sinus infection that never really responded to medication.

And things kept building from there.  It would become a series of health events that included continued sinus infections, bronchitis, pneumonia, exposure to the flu, internal infections, an immune system crash and eventually sinus surgery to address an underlying issue.

After spending more than nine months on a combination of steroids and antibiotics, I reached a place of feeling absolutely depleted physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.  This ordeal affected my life, my personality, my relationships and my faith.

Every journey brings with it opportunities and costs and this journey was costly.  It cost me days and events and time with those I love the most.  I was sick during key dates with my family: pneumonia and flu during our anniversary and the Christmas holidays, infections during Grace’s birthday and Valentine’s Day, sinus issues and infections during Easter, recovery from surgery on my own birthday and Denise’s birthday.

It also left me limping through some of the biggest seasons in the church: I was ill through Advent, I could barely stand up with pneumonia on Christmas Eve, I was fighting a terrible infection during one of the church’s biggest weekends of outreach, I limped through Lent and Easter and into Annual Conference.  Many Sundays became a time for me to put the energy I did have into sermons and then I would return home and collapse on the couch for the rest of the day.

God and I would have many conversations during that time.  Some of them bore out my anger and my questions.  I kept returning to the Psalms, particularly those of David.  Honestly, there were many days when I was asking God the one-word question of “Why?”

I know that those questions and those struggles that boil underneath will eventually come to the surface.  They came out in my relationships with those I love the most.  They started to make their way into my conversations with others.  Those issues started to work their way into sermons.  There were times I absolutely lost the energy to smile.  Maybe I simply became a little darker and more sullen.

Now, this is where I pause for a moment to make a theological statement.  Sometimes people will say that we shouldn’t express questions, fears, doubts and frustrations (especially when you’re a pastor).  I would challenge those who say that to read the Psalms written by David who is described as a man after God’s own heart.  David has a tendency to ask the questions that others won’t ask and to cry out to God in pain, despair and frustration.

But those things don’t last forever.

Surgery in mid-May improved the sinus issue even if the recovery took longer than expected.  The remnants of the sinus infection appeared again and I would knock it out in late June.  

By the time of the mission trip to the Dominican Republic in early July, I was healing physically.  It was was also starting to impact my healing emotionally and mentally.  

Maybe sometimes there’s a sense that the spiritual aspect of healing is impacted by the other ways that we heal.  In some ways, I was still feeling the affects of a broken and hurting heart.

Then, we finally arrived (after a couple of days of trying) in the Dominican Republic.  Somewhere in that time and that journey together, my healing took a significant step forward.  I had the chance to remember why God called me in the first place and to see it play out before me.

I reconnected with the heart of God by seeing others connect to God’s heart.  I watched young people get excited about being missionaries and I witnessed some of them do things I’d never thought they would do.

There were people there who truly loved God, who loved others and who were doing some amazing things in the name of Jesus.

I talked to other pastors who were there in the Dominican Republic.  I listened to their stories, their journeys of faith and I was reminded so much of my own.

There was a day when I sat on the beach at Puerto Plata and listened to Pastor Fausto share the journey that the had taken to find his place in ministry.  He talked about the church that we had been working with that week.  He shared where he saw God working and the challenges that come with ministry.  And there are those times when the challenges you face lead those in ministry to ask, “Is this really worth it?”

Maybe it was that day, as we sat there on the beach, talking about life and faith and church, that I really started to realize that God was working to heal me and my broken heart.

I remember that verse where Jesus looks at his disciples and says, “I now call you friends…”  I had that thought when we left the Dominican Republic to come home.  I now had friends, those who shared in the same journey, in places like the Dominican Republic and in New York and in Prosperity and Columbia and Greenwood and all across the state.

As I end this series of blogs related to that trip to the Dominican Republic, I realize some things that happened in my life and my heart and the impact they have on the minister that I’m becoming.

Those thoughts:

• God clearly called me into ministry. 
• God didn’t call me into ministry because of what I could do.  God called me into ministry because of what God can do through me.
• My worth in ministry is not determined by a weekly counting of noses (attendance) and nickels (money).  My worth is ministry comes from the calling that God gave to me, is giving to me and will continue to give to me.
• The Gospel is the bottom line.  It changes everything. It changes me. 

Part 5: The Church is the mission

Participants in our mission trip and children from the community work together to scrape and paint bleachers in Santiago.

Sometimes I think God speaks to us softly.  It’s a gentle whisper, a nudge deep within us to do something.  Sometimes, God speaks to us in such a clear way that it as if light is shining to show us the path.

And then sometimes, and maybe it’s just with me, God borrows a move from Gibbs on the TV show, NCIS, and God smacks me on the back of the head.  Trust me, it gets my attention.

Somewhere in the middle of that missions trip to the Dominican moment, I had one of those head slap from God kind of moments.

Maybe it’s because this trip put some distance between me and what I’d been experiencing since September 2013.  Somewhere in that month, I started a battle with a nasty virus that would lead me through sinus infections, bronchitis, pneumonia, an immune system crash, etc.  It would lead to round after round of antibiotics and steroids.  Ultimately, I had sinus surgery.  To say the least, it was a very trying period of my life.

Maybe it was just that I was now in a situation where I had experienced some serious God moments (God-incidences — not coincidences!).  Something in me was already opening up for this.

But it happened one day in quiet time.

I kept coming back to a variation of a quote.  “The church doesn’t need a mission.  The church is the mission.”  It’s been said so many times and attributed to so many people that I have no clue who to credit it too.  Another way of saying it is, “The church doesn’t need a mission.  God’s mission has a church.”

But, there it was, in my head, and it started an inner conversation. In the situation that I found myself, how could we find a way to reach others for Christ?

We had been doing that through personal evangelism and meetings with those in the community in Santiago.  We did that through Vacation Bible School.  We were spending time together in worship and we were having some very profound moments of spending time with God.

But, something was tugging me in a different way.

It’s when I kept going back and saying that quote over and over again.  Then, it stuck, “The church is the mission.”

During the time that we had been in Santiago, the church (translated Eternal King Congregation) had hosted us, they had worshipped with us.  They were the site of the Vacation Bible School.  Maybe there was a way, in our role as missionaries, to come alongside this church and give them an opportunity to reach those in their community.

So, we heard about a need for the church.  The church was looking for some help with repainting its facilities.  And we decided to respond.

It was an interesting experiencing to go into one of the Dominican Republic’s versions of the home improvement stores that we are used to (Lowe’s, Home Depot). But we left armed with paint, rollers, brushes, scrapers, tape and other items.  We were ready to make the church the mission.

Now, I’m glad that I’m serving a church that does a lot of work on homes in the area around the church.  The youth and leaders who were with us know what is involved in those kinds of projects.  And they jumped in.

We scraped the paint on the bleachers and on the basketball goals. We worked to repaint the backboards and repair one of the rims.  But something bigger was happening here, something bigger than all of us.

Within about 30 minutes of us starting this project, others joined in.  It was children and teens from the neighborhood around the church.  They were armed with scrapers, or flat rocks that we were using as scrapers.  They took up paint brushes and rollers.

In a moment, I looked across the projects and it seemed like in that moment, it was an image for me of the kingdom of God.  What we were doing transcended who we were.  I had conversations with kids with only a limited knowledge of Spanish.  We did a lot of sign language and hand motions.  They followed my lead and we laughed and smiled at the moments wayward paint ended up on someone’s clothes (sometimes mine!)

I looked out at Steven Douglas, Wightman’s youth minister, and he also had a group following him from project to project.  The youth who were serving as missionaries were doing the same thing.

Then other things started to happen.  Others from the neighborhood began to arrive at the church.  They brought coconuts and fresh mangos.  Someone nearby shared with us some fried yucca.  Members of the church arrived and they joined in.

One of those church members looked at me and said, in nearly perfect English, “This is a good thing.  The community is excited about what is happening here today.”

In the afternoon, we would take a break from our painting to help with VBS, but we would return the next day and our helpers would return too.

Sometimes, most definitely, the church is the mission.

And maybe in that moment, I had some insight into how I view the church.

– The church’s mission is to “go” and by going, it means the church steps out from behind the walls and goes into the world.  Going into the world isn’t easy and sometimes it’s messy, but it is there that are able to show what it means to love Jesus.

– The church is open to all.  The church encourages people of all backgrounds to work together for a common purpose, sharing the love of Christ with the world.  In those moments, we are most like the Kingdom of God.  It doesn’t matter where we are in the journey of faith, there should be a place for us in the church.

– The church opens doors.  By doing things that help others, by showing hospitality to the world, we open the door to sharing Christ with others.

– The church helps us to take steps to move toward Jesus.  The church is a place for people to bring all that they have experienced, all of their burdens, and it is the place where we can lay them down before Christ.  By sharing together in the community of faith, we have the strength to takes steps toward Jesus.

– The church doesn’t need a mission.  The church is the mission.

Part 4: We are one in the Spirit

A view as we were walking at the end of one of the streets in Santiago, Dominican Republic.

I love church.  It has been a part of my life since before I can even remember.  I remember standing in front the church as I was baptized, along with my sister,  at Friendship Presbyterian Church in Hickory Tavern, S.C.

I’ve been a part of the United Methodist Church for more than 20 years.  Over the past eight years, I’ve been a youth volunteer, youth minister, pastor, associate pastor and then pastor again.

But sometimes, I think about a quote from Francis Chan’s book, “Crazy Love.”  He talks about how the church likes to plan and sometimes we plan to the point of what we will do if the Holy Spirit shows up.  Sometimes, we just don’t know how to handle it when the Holy Spirit shows up and wrecks us.  Maybe the same thing can be true in our lives too.

That’s probably what hit me the hardest during my time in the Dominican Republic. There was no “cellular data,” no internet to fall back on.  I wasn’t receiving e-mails all the time.  There was no Facebook or any other kind of data.  In fact, in the time there, I made just a couple of calls to talk to my wife and daughter.

For the most part, I was there in the moment.  No schedules, nothing else going on.  It was just a chance to experience God in the moment.

One of those moments came on the second day of our walk through the community in Santiago.  A small group of our “missionaries” went out that morning with Awilda Rosario, wife of the pastor of the church we were working with.  Awilda knew that area and she knew people there.

We simply started to walk from home to home.  We invited children to the Vacation Bible School and then we found ourselves in a home.

In the first home, the husband and wife pulled chairs from all over the house so that we could sit and talk with the husband in their garage.  The wife offered us water and I had a glass and thanked them for their hospitality.  The husband talked to us about the Bible about what it meant to him.  It was a great visit and we thanked them before we moved on.

As we walked down the street, Awilda stopped to talk to a man that we encountered there.  She had a long conversation with him in Spanish.  As he walked away, she apologized to us for not translating.  She said, though, that she saw that man walking on the street many times but had felt in that moment that she just needed to talk to him and encourage him.  Maybe that was the beginning of the Holy Spirit’s message for that day.

We made several other stops, but we ended up in a home with a mother, a son and the man’s nieces and nephews.  Through Awilda, the son told us of how he had spent so much of his life on the street, battling addiction issues.  However, he had found the strength in God to battle through those addictions.  He was still alive today because of God’s love.  His mother told us that she should have been dead a few years before that.  But she had miraculously pulled through.  She also gave the credit for what had happened to God. It was an incredible and inspiring conversation.  Awilda asked for someone to pray and that ended up being me.

I remember thanking God for the chance to be in this home, for the blessing of this time and this conversation.  I prayed for them, for all of their family.  It was a moving moment for me and one in which I knew I was not alone in the prayer.  God’s presence was with us.

That feeling would continue at the next home we visited.

I decided that this would be my time to talk to the family.  My conversation was with a young man named Brian.  Awilda was serving as our interpreter and I talked to Brian about the VBS and how the children were invited to come and to be a part.

But as I was talking to Brian, I felt very distracted by the older woman to the left.  Her name was Matilda and she seemed to be very unhappy as she washed out the plastic milk jugs in the sink.

There’s a part of me that was simply ready to end this conversation and move on.  There’s a part of me that was saying, “She doesn’t want you here.  It’s time to go somewhere else.”

Matilda said something to Awilda in Spanish and they began a conversation.  All I can feel at that moment was this sense that I needed to pray for Matilda, that I had to pray for Matilda.

I told Awilda that I wanted to pray for Matilda and Awilda said she wants you to pray for her.

As I begin to pray, the word “hope” kept coming to my mind.  I prayed for Brian, Matilda and their family, and I prayed for hope as Alwida translated each line of my prayer into Spanish for the family to hear.

At the end of the prayer, Matlida had tears in her eyes.  Our group began to walk away and Matlida hugged Awilda and then grabbed my hand and said to me, “Gracias.”

I remember after that seeing the tears in Awilda’s eyes as she told me what Matilda had told her.  Matilda said that she had no hope and that she was just waiting for Jesus to take her out of this life.  When I prayed for hope, the one word that kept coming to my mind, I was praying for the one thing she was looking for in her life.

That day became a day in which I was wrecked by the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit opened a door that I might never have seen or known otherwise.

I knew that as I walked away that day that something bigger was at work in me.  After spending months dealing with illness and then surgery, I knew that I had felt battered mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually.  I was already mending physically and getting there mentally.  But that day was the opening of a door to the healing of my heart, my emotional and spiritual center.

And that will be the theme of the next two parts of this journey.

Part III: Taking it to the streets

Our group walks down the street in Santiago to invite people to attend VBS.

One of the things that this mission trip to the Dominican Republic offered was a chance to do something I really haven’t had the chance to do before.

I’m talking about making contact with people you’ve never met before and inviting them to be a part of what you’re doing in faith.

I’ve done some personal evangelism before, but it wasn’t a big part of what I had to do in seminary.

So, this was a chance to really “go and make” as the Great Commission directs us to do.

Then, we went to Congregacion Cristiana Rey Eterno, the church we working with, and we headed out in small groups to meet the community.  At least on the first day, we had a mission.

We were to introduce ourselves, meet those living in the houses on our assigned streets and we were to invite them to bring their children to Vacation Bible School.  We were helping to put on the VBS for the church.

It was interesting as the “adult” in the group (aside from Awilda, our interpreter) to listen as the younger people would decide who would speak at each house.

It was also amazing to see the ways they would step up, ask questions and invite others to VBS.

The streets we were on in Santiago were an interesting mix of all styles of homes.  Some stood behind elaborate metal fences and gates.  Some open spaces were filled with banana trees.

The neighborhood was peppered with small businesses.  We entered into a store, passed by several people selling bananas, plantains and mangos, and we saw people pushing carts of items for sale down the street.

From time to time, cars would pass us on the street and motorcycles would zip in and around the obstacles on the road.

In this backdrop, we begin the task of invitation.

I don’t remember a home in which the people there didn’t welcome us.  Awilda served as our translator and, when it was our turn to speak, we would speak through her.

There are things that seem to work across cultures when it comes to this type of sharing.

• We have to open ourselves up to talk to the person we are meeting.
• We need to be interested in their lives and what we are experiencing.
• We share those places in our live and our journey that give us a common experience.
• We shared information on the church and how the children could come and be a part of VBS.

I loved listening to the conversations that we would have.  Maybe it’s because they seemed so warm and friendly.   It’s so possible to come across as cold, almost as if you are leading an interrogation, in the way that you ask the questions.

Maybe on that first day, we went to 15-20 homes.  When the VBS began that day, I saw many of the people we had talked to bringing their children to participate in the VBS.

It makes me wonder, sometimes, why we can’t do more things like that in our own community?  Is it because the rejection is easier when you are that far away from home?  Or is it something else.

I’m still struggling through that question.  Yet, I know that I saw the power that day of talking to people, sharing faith and inviting.

Maybe that’s the day that I was able to see the Great Commission in a whole new light.

16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”  — Matthew 28:16-20 (NIV)

Part 2: Passionate and Powerful Worship

This is the second part of a series of blogs related to our mission trip to the Dominican Republic.  As I write these, I’m trying to process the amazing things I experienced as a part of this adventure for God.

One of the things that I’ve found, for me, in worship:  There’s a big difference between leading worship and worshipping.

Here’s what that means for me:  In a worship service, I’m often doing such things as facilitating what happens, keeping an eye on the clock and making sure that the moving pieces are moving.  That makes it difficult, sometimes, to simply let go of everything and connect to God through worship.

Maybe that’s why what happened at 10:30 in the morning at the Congregacion Cristiana Rey Eterno (translates to Eternal King Congregation) was an important moment for me.  I was there simply to worship.

There are all kinds of excuses I hear (and I can give) about why I can’t worship.  Excuses can range from things about preference (music, sermon style, type of worship) to environmental issues (too dark, too loud, too bright, too cold).

So, here we were, our group of 30 “missionaries” and we find ourselves sitting in a church in Santiago.  It’s not like the church that most of us come from.  The church building has a roof and open walls.  It sits next to a volleyball and basketball court and two sets of bleachers.

We sit in plastic chairs lined up to point to the front of the space.  There is a podium, a drum, a keyboard and a couple of speakers so we can hear the music.

There’s no air conditioning to turn up and down.  There are no lights to set and turn toward the stage.  In fact, there’s no raised stage at all.  As we sit there before the service begins we hear the sound of the barking dog walking across the athletic court and the sounds of the rosters crowing at the house beyond that. I don’t have a hymnbook in my hands and there are no words on the screen.

Yet, something amazing would happen in that worship time.

The service opened with a translator helping us to understand the Spanish.  But as the music begins, the interpreter’s job ends.

Awilda Rosario, the wife of the pastor and one the leaders in the church, joins with the others who are leading us in song.  The music is powerful, moving and Spirit-filled.  I am only able to pick out a few words that I understand in Spanish, but I know that they, and the others there, are singing their hearts out to God.

It stirs something in me in a connection to God.

I was sitting (and at this point) standing next to Steven Douglas, Wightman’s Youth Minister.  At some point, I said something to him along the lines of, “This must be a God thing because I’m starting to understand more and more of what we’re singing about.”

There’s a quote from Donald Miller that I love and it comes from his book, “Blue Like Jazz.”  He says, “Sometimes you have to see somebody else love something before you can love it yourself.”

In that day, I saw a group of people who passionately loved Jesus.  And that love of Jesus was able to powerfully break through all of the barriers that might have been in the room that day.  Seeing their love and their passion for Christ was like a dose of spiritual vitamins into my own love of Christ.

The love of Jesus transcends the limits of language.  The love of Jesus cuts through the fatigue that we might have experienced in getting to the Dominican Republic.  The love of Jesus reminded me that my family was much bigger than I could have ever imagined it would be.

There were powerful moments in the service.

One of those moments that brought tears to my eyes came when the musicians began to sing a Spanish-language version of “Revelation Song.”  From the opening notes of that song, many of us connected.  It became a mix of “Santo, Santo, Santo” and “Holy, holy, holy.”

Then, we had the chance to connect through the Table.  A speaker, in Spanish, related to us the events of what happened at the Last Supper.  Then, we were invited to come to the front to receive the communion elements.

We sat back down and held them in our hands as we were invited to share in the breaking of the bread and drinking from the cup.  Once again, my eyes were opened to the power of God to reach across all of the barriers that we might otherwise construct.

One of the leaders from our group of missionaries shared the message that day.  At the end of the service, Steven and I, along with the other adult leaders, were invited to stand in front of the church.  They prayed for us and for what we would be doing.  They asked for God’s blessing to be upon us. They welcomed us with open arms.

When we left the church that day, I felt a few things:

• I felt overwhelmed.  Maybe that’s what comes when we feel as if we are truly pouring ourselves out in worship. I felt it physically, mentally and spiritually.
• I felt lifted up.  There’s something about a strong spiritual moment with Jesus.  It recharges you and it pierces us to the heart.  I felt that way on that Sunday.
• I knew in that moment that my mission for the week would be this church we were attending.  I know that I’ve been blessed in many ways and it gives me the opportunity to be a blessing to others.  Somehow, I just knew that this church was going to play a key role in my mission work for the next week.

On that Sunday in Santiago, I was reminded of a few things about worship:

• Worship is bigger than any barrier we can create.
• Worship is more powerful than the words that are being spoken or the lyrics that we are singing in the songs.
• Worship connects people across the globe.
• Worship is rooted in the powerful reminder of grace and mercy that come through Holy Communion.

And most of all, God reminded me of just how much I need and long for the chance to connect to the Holy Spirit through worship.  It was nothing short of a life-changing moment.

Part 1: Life Interrupted

This is the first in a series of blogs related to a mission trip to the Dominican Republic.  It will be my way of sharing as I try to make sense of the many things that happened during this time.

I believe that there are things that just happen in life.  There’s a series of connected decisions and moments that lead to events that can interrupt our lives.

But despite those events, we have a promise.  God can take all of the events that happen in our lives and God can redeem them for a higher purpose.

The series of events started on the Thursday that we were to leave for the Dominican Republic.  There’s a hurricane spinning off the East Coast.  Flights out of Atlanta are starting to get delayed.  Flights out of New York are starting to get delayed and canceled.

We arrive at the Columbia Airport in the middle of this and prepare to board the plane for the first leg of the journey that will take us to the Dominican Republic.  We hit a snag that leads to us going home for the day and coming back at 5 AM the next morning.

We try again and we make it from Columbia to Atlanta and then to New York.  Then, we hit the snag again.  Because of all the delays the cancelled flight, our flight from New York to Santiago is massively overbooked.  In our party of 10, only four have seats on the plane that is boarding to head out.  Others who are in the same predicament stand around the counter.

It’s easy to become angry and frustrated and to wonder why God would let something like that happen.  I was angry and frustrated and so was everyone else who was standing there hoping to get onboard the plane.

We were standing there with a group of teens heading to a mission trip and we couldn’t split our group up and send four now and six later.  It was all or nothing for us.  The only option was to come back on Saturday and to make the flight to the Dominican Republic.

So the four of us with tickets gave up our seats on the plane.  It felt like for a moment that I was handing over my hope.  I didn’t like this.  We had been led to believe as early as Columbia that morning that we would have no problems making this flight.

So, here’s when God steps in and the redeeming begins.

When I handed over my ticket, it went to a man who was trying to get home to see his young daughter.  (As a father with a daughter, this one tugs at me).  When the Delta employee handed him the boarding pass, he said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” as the tears streamed from his eyes.  Another of our tickets went to a mother whose young son was already sitting on the plane in a seat.  It allowed a family to travel together and to make it home.

I was still frustrated in that moment.  Maybe we all were.  It’s no fun to send text messages to those back home that we are going to be spending the night in New York.  But, here we were, in New York, on the Fourth of July.

Delta gave us a hotel room to stay in and we were still dealing with the baggage issue.  But a quick check found that eight of the 10 in our group had never been to New York before.  We rode the Air Train and the the Subway to Times Square.  We had a chance to see massive firework displays going off all over the city.  Some of our group stood with their mouths open at the overwhelming site of Times Square.  Some of us ate hot dogs from a street vendor.

The experience on the way there and back gave me a chance to see our group interacting together and becoming a family.  We laughed a lot and picked on one another.  We saw a completely different world and we had conversations with people about why we were there and where we were going.  In fact, we started being “missionaries” before we ever made it to our “mission field.”

I don’t know really where I was when we started to leave on Thursday.  I had other things on my mind and issues swirling around.  Over the course of those three days of interruptions, I was able to turn my mind away from those things to start to prepare myself for what happens next.

Maybe it was because of all that we went through that I arrived in the Dominican Republic with a new heart and a new mind.  I was appreciative to be there.  I was ready to begin this work that God had brought us too.  I was more open to God as God spoke through the people we met and the worship service that we attended.

That journey there could have put a blemish on the entire trip.  Instead, by opening myself up to the new possibilities that the interruption offered, I was able to see things in a new way.

God truly can take events and circumstances, tough moments, challenging moments even interruptions, and redeem them for His Higher Purpose.

James 4:7-10: Humbled

Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will run away from you. Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. Cry out in sorrow, mourn, and weep! Let your laughter become mourning and your joy become sadness. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. — James 4:7-10 (CEB)

Sometimes in life, you reach that point and place where you know you’ve made a mistake.  Maybe you went a little too far in something that you said to someone else.  Maybe your actions hurt another person.

It presents a moment of choice.  Do you keep on keeping on?  Do you act as if nothing has happened?  Or, do you go to that person?  Do you humble yourself?  Do you ask for forgiveness?

We can also experience that same thing in the most significant relationship we have in our lives.  The writer of “James” is pushing us to see that in our relationship with God.  Throughout the book, we’ve been reminded of how we can say and do things that do not reflect God’s presence in our life.  We can show favoritism.  We can tear others down.  We can hurt others with the things we do and say.

But we can do something about it.  We can submit ourselves to God.  We can confess our sin.  We can humble ourselves before the God who loves us.  And when we do, we get the chance to experience the God who stands beside us in all that we go through and experience.

There’s power in “humbling” ourselves before God.  Humbling means that we realize our place, our position before God.  We realize that we worship and serve God and that we don’t and can’t compete with God.  When we humble ourselves before God, we remember who were created to be.

Singer Jason Gray has a song called, “Remind Me Who I Am.”  The lyrics for that song say, “When my heart is like a stone, And I’m running far from home, Remind me who I am. When I can’t receive Your love, Afraid I’ll never be enough, Remind me who I am.”

So, in the words of James, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”

Help us to come to you, God, to submit ourselves, to surrender all that we are, to confess and seek forgiveness.  Help us to see when we have fallen from the path.  And, God, in the process remind us of who we are in your loves, mercy and grace.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.