Blurred vision... new vision

It's June 26th. On this date last year, I boarded a plane and left South Africa to return to Europe. Leaving the place that had become my home was such a sad thing for me, that I could barely see for tears. Today, one year on, I have an appointment with the optician to get my eyes tested. It's time to get new glasses and sunglasses before I move to Spain. Although this "anniversary" brings a little sadness, I had to smile when I realised that it was also a day that was symbolised by new and sharper vision. I pray that this will be true spiritually as well as physically. May you also enjoy "clear vision" this week.

A new way, a new day, a new home...

Can you believe that it’s already the month of June? This blog began almost a year ago, when I left Southern Africa and came back to live and work in Europe again. As you know, this past year has been a time of transition for me: a time of stepping out in faith to discover the new things that God has for me here in Europe.

Leaving my home in Cape Town was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do, and I’ve really missed South Africa a lot. I had been there for most of the past fourteen years. During this year back in Europe, I’ve been reaching out to embrace the new things God has for me here and, in particular, I’ve been asking God where my new home should be. Three S’s emerged as the most likely options, and I’ve been praying about whether I should settle in Scotland, Spain or Switzerland for the years ahead.

Interestingly, I’ve spent this transition year doing the very same things that I was doing back in 1998: working with FireStarters youth ministry in Glasgow, and staffing a leadership development course (LDC) in the West of Scotland. The LDC is over now; the delegates and staff – who came from around 20 different nations – are all returning home this week. I’m back in Falkirk now, and will be in Central Scotland for most of the month of June.

The theme of the leadership development course was, “a new way for a new day,” and the course leader wrote a theme song, based on Isaiah 43 vs 18 – 19:

Forget what’s before;
there’s so much more
I have to offer…
I am doing something new.

For me personally, being staff on this LDC was in some ways like returning to the “old.” Staffing an LDC was the very last thing I did in 1998, before leaving Scotland and moving down to live in Cape Town. So, in this way, my LDC involvement was a fulfilment of what God had said when He told me (through Bible verses in Isaiah 43 and 51) that He was leading me into something new, and that this new thing would involve returning initially to people I had worked with and things I had done in the past.

But this year’s LDC was also a time when God confirmed the new things that He has for me in the future. Just last week, I made a decision to move down to Spain and make my home there for the coming years. I will continue to work with LDCs and other aspects of leadership development, and I will also continue to work with King’s Kids International in the area of training leaders for ministry among children, teenagers and families.

Thanks again for praying for me during this year of transition. More details about my future plans are in my June newsletter. Just contact me by email or phone if you happened not to receive it and would like me to send it to you.

Allowing some distance to creep in

Only a few more weeks until Easter, a time of year when we think again of how Jesus suffered and died for us, and rose again to give us new life. A couple of weeks ago, I was reading part of that story in Matthew’s Gospel, and I was struck by one verse in particular: after Jesus had been accused and arrested, once he was being taken for questioning at the high priest’s house, it says that Peter followed at a distance. (Matthew 26: 58)

It has always seemed to me that Peter was a little more committed to Jesus than the other disciples were at this time: at least he was there; at least he seemed to care about what happened to Jesus. All the other disciples had run away (vs 56) when Jesus was arrested in the garden. I truly believe that Peter’s heart was sincere (vs 33) when he told Jesus, “I will never leave you, even if everyone else does.”

Peter meant well, but his big mistake was that he began to distance himself a little from Jesus. He allowed his fears for his own safety to make him back off from the closeness that he and Jesus had shared for the past three years. What began in vs 58 with “following at a distance” ended in vs 69 – 75 with a violent denial that broke both of their hearts.

I always remember one of our KKI leaders from the 1990s who, when teaching about relationship with God, would tell the young people, “You can be as close to God as you want to be.” Just like Peter, each one of us has a choice whether we will commit our lives to drawing close to Jesus or whether we will decide to “follow at a distance.” This choice makes all the difference in the world.

We can even see this clearly in our own human relationships. If you begin to distance yourself in your heart from a friend or family member, the effect on that relationship will not be a good one. The distance can begin suddenly, as the result of a conflict or disappointment, or it can grow up slowly without our even being aware of it. Judas distanced himself from Jesus because he was offended by things that happened… and the result was the betrayal that paved the way for Jesus’ trial and death. Peter distanced himself from Jesus because he was afraid of those in authority… and the result was that he also ended up denying his Lord and friend. Judas planned to do it, Peter didn’t – but both of them began by allowing a little distance to creep in.

There are all kinds of reasons why we might allow distance in our relationship with God. Some people feel disillusioned when a prayer seems to go unanswered; perhaps they get angry at God when a loved one dies or when something bad happens to them or their family; perhaps they get hurt or disappointed by someone in their church. Sometimes there’s not even a real reason for the distance; sometimes it’s just laziness: we don’t put enough time and effort into drawing close to God; we stop going to church or we neglect our personal times of Bible reading and prayer… and, before you know it, a distance has crept in and you’ve settled for following God “from afar.” No matter how good Peter’s intentions were, his story stood out as a warning to me that keeping our distance can so easily lead to denial, tears and heartbreak. Peter finished this night as a broken man, who probably thought at this point that he would never see Jesus again.

How much better it is to hold on to the promise we read in James 4 vs 8: Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.

Goodbye to Andalucia

My time in Spain has almost come to an end. It's been a good time of renewing relationship with missionary friends here, of linking in with the church plant in Alhaurín de la Torre, and of working on the computer to replace (re-create) some of the teaching notes and other materials that I lost in the computer crash at the end of last year. I also took one day to play tourist and visit the picturesque little mountain village of Mijas (See photos here.)

Our house church gathering yesterday was the largest this year: more than forty adults, and around a dozen children and teenagers. The service was bilingual (Spanish and English) with messages of encouragement being shared by a Spanish pastor and an Egyptian missionary. The group is looking forward to a celebration on the 24th of this month to launch a new phase in the church's development: beginning to meet in a public venue instead of in a home. This will place the gathering in a more public arena and allow more scope for growth and expansion.

I'm returning to Scotland at the end of this week, and from 8th - 10th February I'll be busy with a FireStarters discipleship and outreach weekend in Glasgow. Around a hundred teenagers and young adults will be attending this weekend and the young people will split into eight teams, working in different parts of the city.

Knowing when, and what, to let go

This morning when I took the dog for a walk, we were playing a game of fetch with an old stick that she picked up on the gravel road. The game was fast and furious, but the stick was so dried up and brittle that it sometimes cracked and broke into two pieces when it struck the ground. I soon noticed that whenever Brandy went to fetch the stick, she always tried to bring both pieces back to me. Even if the broken piece was barely two inches long, she would faithfully arrange both pieces in her mouth, as if she had a responsibility to bring the whole stick back, instead of simply choosing the part that was most usable.

It was such a funny, quirky thing to do, and yet, even as I watched and smiled, it struck me that sometimes we can approach life in this way: just as the dog didn't want to leave part of her stick lying in the roadway, sometimes we are also reluctant to leave behind or "lose" things that have been part of our lives. And so we try to take all the pieces with us - sometimes even the "broken" pieces that are no longer useful or helpful to us. And sometimes carrying these things is just as awkward for us as it was for Brandy to pick up two pieces of stick in her mouth!

Last year, when I was preparing to leave Cape Town, I discovered that I'd had a tendency to be a "hoarder." I seemed to have accumulated so much stuff over the years and, when I was packing my suitcase, I constantly had to make decisions about what to bring back with me to Europe and what to leave behind in South Africa. I would look thoughtfully at a book I had once enjoyed, or at a pair of shoes that I seldom wore, and wonder whether I could squeeze them in... But the airline's baggage restrictions forced me to become ruthless: to recognise that there was no room to take everything with me, and that I needed to give lots of things away or simply leave them behind!

Brandy's commitment to bringing back the whole stick was admirable... but it would have been much easier for her simply to make a choice and to leave one of the pieces behind. As I go through life, I pray that I will increasingly learn to draw on God's wisdom to do the same: to know which things are important enough to hold on to and take with me... and which things are the pieces I need to let go of and leave behind me on the roadway.

Spanish Snapshots... and Stars

Spain is a religious country, and yet a surprisingly low percentage of people here would claim to know God in a close and personal way. So there is still a real need for church planting and discipleship in this nation. Yesterday I attended two informal church gatherings that were held in people's homes; one was in Cártama, and the other was the Alhaurín fellowship which currently meets at the home where I am house sitting. It was good to meet with these Christian families and share in their heart to see God at work in this part of Spain.

In an unexpected turn of events, I was recently invited to stay here in Spain for a few months and work with the discipleship training school at one of the YWAM centres in this region. Strangely enough, when I was praying at the beginning of December, I had asked God to show me whether He wanted me to work with a DTS during 2008, and I had thought about Spain as one possibility. But I felt that God said I should simply wait for Him to open the right doors. When I received the phone call last week, I wondered whether this was a door He was opening. However, as I took more time to pray about it, I came to a place of peace that God was simply asking me to continue with the commitments I have made to work with FireStarters youth ministry and with a leadership school in Scotland this year.

I've been challenged recently by the story of the wise men (Matthew chapter 2) who followed a star all the way from the east and yet, near the end of their journey, were wandering around Jerusalem, asking where the new-born King could be found. It seems that they were no longer able to see the star that they had been following for so many months. And I wondered if the wise men lost sight of the star at that point because they began to depend on their own understanding instead of just following God’s direction. You see, they knew that they were looking for the new King of the Jews, and so perhaps that’s why they headed to Jerusalem; that’s where the royal palace was, and so that’s where you’d logically expect the new king to be born. I realised that one of our biggest dangers in discerning and obeying God’s will is that we could fall into the trap of doing what seems logical or obvious... instead of just continuing to depend on the way He is leading us.

Some of the doors that have opened for me recently - like the PCYM in Switzerland or the DTS in Spain - have seemed very "logical" because they are so much in line with the kind of ministry that God has put on my heart. But, in this season of transition, I'm realising that not every door that opens is the right one, or sometimes it's just a case of not being the right timing. And so I'm continually renewing my commitment to do as it says in Proverbs chapter 3 verse 5: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and don't depend on your own understanding. As we closely follow God's leading, and submit every decision to Him, He is more than able to lead us through the right doors at the right time.

Images of Spain

Well, after six weeks without a computer, we finally got it back in January (the day before I left for Spain) but we were disappointed to discover that we had lost all our documents and photos in the process of having the computer fixed. I was particularly disappointed to have lost all the photos of our recent holiday in Canada/USA, as well as all the teaching notes and Powerpoints I had been working on during October and November. Needless to say, I've learned my lesson and will be careful to back up more regularly in future. I'm pleased to report, though, that I've ordered a new laptop (the first computer I've owned since my last laptop went the way of the dinosaurs about ten years ago) and I'll get it when I return to Scotland in February.

The south of Spain in winter reminds me a lot of the Western Cape in winter: sometimes there are cloudless blue skies, but it can also be cold and windy, and there are some days of torrential rain. It's sometimes necessary to build a wood fire in the evening. The photos above show my house mates, Brandy and Simba, as well as our little street and the local goat herd passing by.

I'll be working on a couple of writing projects this month, as well as trying to re-create some of the teachings and slide shows that got lost when the computer crashed. Thanks once again for your prayers, and I wish you God's blessing in 2008.