When you're in the middle of the story...

This morning I found myself reflecting on what it's like to be "in the middle of the story." When we read the real life stories of Bible characters, we know the accounts so well that we're already well aware of what will happen in the last chapter. 

So, when we read about Joseph being sold into slavery, falsely accused and languishing for many long years in prison... we already know that one day he is going to become governor of the whole nation.

When we read about the Israelites spending 400 years in slavery in Egypt, or 70 years in exile in Babylon... we already know that one day they will return to their promised land.

When we read about David being hunted down by jealous King Saul who wants to kill him... we already know that some fifteen years later he himself will become King of Israel.

When we read of Jesus suffering on the cross, and His dead body being placed in the garden tomb... we already know that He is going to rise from the dead and be alive for evermore.

So we read these stories without ever experiencing the devastating physical and emotional pain that these people experienced when they were still "in the middle of the story."

It's a bit different when you're reading a novel or watching a movie. Unless you flip the pages to the last chapter, or fast forward to the end of the film, you find yourself caught up in the devastation and uncertainty of what the protagonist is facing. You simply don't know yet how the story is going to end and so you experience more of the drama or danger that the character is going through.

This morning, reading in the New Testament letter to the Hebrews, I came to the part where the writer urges the believers not to "throw away" their confident trust in the Lord (Heb 10:35) but to hold on tightly, without wavering, to our hope that God can be trusted to fulfill His promises. (Heb 10:23) Of course, it's speaking about our hope of salvation... but I couldn't help seeing the parallels with the challenging situation I've found myself in this year.

Hebrews 10 verse 36 (pictured above) really stood out to me this morning: Patient endurance is what you need, so that you will continue to do God's will. Then you will receive all that He has promised. Throughout this whole year, I have sought to do God's will. Despite not being able to find a place to live, I have persevered here, believing that He was prompting me to stay in Spain and not to "throw away"my right to residency here. But it has grown harder and harder as each month has gone by. It's excruciating not to be able to visit Scotland and help out my family at this time. It's been agonising to have to cancel all my ministry plans that involved any kind of travel. We're three quarters of the way through the year and the end is still not in sight. I'm still in the middle chapters of the story and I can't fast forward or flip to the last chapter to find out how it's all going to end.

As hard as it is, all I can do is: 

• pray for patient endurance
• continue to do God's will to the best of my understanding
• trust that, in the last chapter, I'll see God prove His faithfulness as He did for all the people in those Bible stories.

 Read on in the post below where I reflect on the mystery of the recent seaside apartment chapter.

Wondering about why...

I've always believed that we shouldn't make too big a habit of asking God why some things are happening. While there is sometimes truth in the old saying that, "All things happen for a reason," I equally believe that sometimes there is no why. 

Some things do happen for a purpose, and God doesn't have a problem when we ask Him for understanding of why a certain thing is happening or what result He wants to bring out of that situation. I've done that several times this year. But especially when it comes to the hard things in life (why someone got cancer or was in a car accident, or was robbed when walking home at night...) sometimes they're just a symptom of the fact that we live in a complex, fallen and sinful world. They're not necessarily part of some huge cosmic plan.

So the, "Why me?" question is one that I've not tended to ask much. I'd be more likely to ask God questions like:

• What are you doing in this situation?
• What do you want to teach me through this?
• How do you want to turn this situation around, or what result do you want to bring from these circumstances?

This week, however, I've been asking the why question - about the recent perplexing chapter of the Fuengirola apartment. The way it happened: a complete stranger coming into church, hearing my preaching and offering me a place to stay for a few months... it really seemed as if this could be something from the Lord. But, if you read my most recent blog post, you'll know that the whole arrangement fell through.... just two days before I was due to move there.

So, what was all that about? Why, Lord, would you allow that weird and seemingly fruitless episode to feature in the middle chapters of my story?

As I reflect prayerfully on that question, I think of all that I did during those two weeks that the apartment looked like the medium term way forward: I unpacked some of my things (winter clothes, etc) that had been in storage for six months, I was able to confirm some travel plans that I'd been putting on hold for a long time...

And I could see in retrospect that the many months of "not knowing" had paralysed me in various ways. I wasn't able to make plans for next month or the month after because I often didn't even know where I would be the next week. This was particularly true in the area of being able to travel... to be with family in Scotland or to fulfill ministry commitments that had been made before I knew I'd be homeless.

Thinking I had a stable place for a few months, I was able to book my tickets to Albania (for our annual KKI Europe gathering), I was able to start planning a visit back to Scotland, and those who'd invited me to teach in a training course in France were able to book my tickets for me. I would never have been able to confirm those trips if I hadn't thought I had a place to leave my things while I was gone.

Well, that solution wasn't to be, but - as you may have read below - I do have a different and better medium term solution until January. I don't claim to have full understanding of how God was working in this perplexing situation, but I can see how He used it to draw me out of being "stuck" and help me to start being able to plan a little bit ahead again.

I'm still in the middle of the story, I still don't know how it will end, but I'm "on the move" now in more ways than what I've been experiencing for the past six months. 
 

What a roller coaster week!

If you read the blog post before this one and received my October newsletter last weekend, you'll know that I was thanking the Lord for the provision of a seaside apartment that would give me a stable base for the next few months. After six months of moving around every few weeks, I could finally unpack some of my things (like winter clothing) and get some boxes ready for moving to Fuengirola tomorrow.

Imagine my complete shock, then, when I got a phone call yesterday to tell me that the little apartment was no longer available. Reading between the lines, the lady's extended family may have objected to the idea of my living there, and she simply told me apologetically that the family needed it over the winter in order to have someone look after the 94 year old mother who lives in the same building.

Suddenly, I was once again only two days away from being homeless.... and had no idea what I could do to find a place at two days' notice. All I could do was ask people to pray.

The good news is that my friends in Coín (where I was dog sitting during July) have once again offered me the little "casita" on their property. They only have Air BnB guests up until November 5th, and so after that I can rent the two-roomed cottage (pictured above) from November to January, while I continue to search for something more permanent.

The bad news is that I don't have a place to stay during the first half of October before I leave for Albania on the 20th. Some friends have offered me a few days here and there, so I may end up moving around a bit. And I'll need a place for five or six days when I return to Spain at the end of the month. 

But I am thankful that I can rent the little apartment in Coín for the same amount of time that I was expecting to rent the apartment in Fuengirola. I can even leave Maiki there over Christmas, if needed, as the couple love her and she gets on well with their boxer, Bilbo.

In the meantime, I continue to search and pray for something long term.

The beginning of a breakthrough...?

As September began drawing to a close, I found myself once again facing the prospect of imminent homelessness. These past six months have been so unstable, with my not finding a new home and having to move to new temporary accommodation every couple of weeks. Then, something very interesting happened last week.

I was preaching in the morning service at church and I mentioned that our enemy, the devil, will try to use the difficult circumstances of our lives to tell us lies about the character of God. If we're ill, he'll try to tell us that God can't heal. If we pass through some trauma, he'll whisper to us that God doesn't protect. If we're homeless, he'll try to convince us that God doesn't care and that He isn't a Provider for us.

A visitor to the church heard me give the example of my own situation and she came to speak to me at the end of the service. "I have an apartment that I'm not using at the moment," she said. "You're welcome to live there until you find something more permanent."

And so, for the first time in this homeless journey, I find myself with the prospect of having short term accommodation that can be for a few months instead of only for a few weeks. It will give me a small measure of stability and relieve me of the stress that comes from never knowing where you're going to be living next week.

There are plenty of things about this little apartment that are not ideal:

• it's on the other side of the mountain range, 30km away in the coastal town of Fuengirola... so I'll be quite far from everyone and everything that I know.
• it's in an area of narrow pedestrian streets near the beach, so the nearest places to park my car (apart from pay-by-the-minute beach parking) will be about a mile away.
• it's on the second floor, without a lift, so carrying my suitcase or my shopping up all those stairs will be quite a challenge.
• it's only one floor of a little house that's been divided into three, so there's no separate bedroom; the sofa bed is set up permanently in the cute little living room.
• because it's furnished, my own furniture and books will need to stay in storage for now.
• it's in a street that's likely to be noisy with tourist restaurants and bars. (A policeman acquaintance warned that he'd been called out a few times to break up fights!)
• there don't seem to be any places nearby where the dog could run off-lead...

Yes, there are plenty of reasons that could make you say that this is not an ideal place to live... and yet I feel incredibly thankful for this medium term change from our nomadic lifestyle. I see it as God's provision while I continue my search for longer term accommodation, and I want to embrace the quirks and strangeness of it as a new kind of adventure.

It means, for example, that some travel will be possible for me again, as I'll have a place to leave my clothes and stuff while I am gone. I have two short ministry trips planned over the remaining months of the year, as well as a visit to my family in Scotland.

And so a new adventure begins. Next week, I'll have been in Spain for fifteen years... but I've never lived in a coastal town in a tourist area. I'll continue to look for a new home on the other side of the mountain, but I'm grateful for this little apartment that can be my base for a while.

Coping with contradictions...

If you've read what I posted yesterday (see below), you'll know that I was reading Deuteronomy chapter 8 and reflecting on why God sometimes allows delays and wandering. Today, as I moved on to read chapter 9, there was an interesting sidebar reflection in the Bible I was using.

To put things in context,  Moses is continuing with his words of wisdom to prepare the people of Israel for their upcoming entry into the promised land. Almost like a "vaccination" against self-congratulatory pride, he tells them that God will give them possession of the land not because of their own goodness, but because of the Canaanite tribes' wickedness. To reinforce this, he reminds them of their own wickedness and rebellion along the way, including the episode with the golden calf, and how he, Moses, had prayed to God to have mercy on them.

The sidebar in my Bible speaks of how disorienting it is "when God seems to be going against the calling or guidance He has already given to you" - like asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, or telling Moses that He was going to destroy the people for their rebellion.

Of course, neither of those unthinkable things actually happened, but the big question is: How do we respond to such intense times of testing and seeming contradiction? Do we "walk away" or do we hang on to what God has previously said?

The author of the sidebar writes, "These situations call for resolute obedience, unbridled faith and a commitment to the promises and purposes already revealed." But those who don't walk away from such moments of testing "are drawn higher into God's purposes and plans."

I can relate to the dilemma that this sidebar alludes to. As I wrote yesterday, I believe that God wants me to continue to live and work in Spain, yet He doesn't seem to be opening the door for me to find long term accommodation here. Why not? He is so much bigger than the current socio-economic housing crisis in the nation and could easily demonstrate His power by providing housing for me despite the crisis.

Even as I wrote that in my journal, I had to remember something that happened back in 1985. After some years of working overseas in Europe and Africa, I came into a season of transition and returned to the UK to seek work as a language teacher in a Scottish high school. But I arrived back at a time when the falling birthrate and the surplus of available teachers had led to widespread unemployment for secondary school teachers. Many of my friends from University and College of Education were on unemployment benefit because they were struggling to find teaching posts... Yet, within just a couple of weeks, I'd already had three job offers for the new school term that lay ahead.

Of course, my being sought after in a time of such unemployment was partly due to my overseas experience that had given me such proficiency and fluency in both French and German... and that experience had come as the result of a previous step of costly obedience that I had taken at God's prompting - a step of obedience that had seemed risky and had met with opposition at the time. But now God was rewarding my obedience and proving His faithfulness.

He could do that again in this housing situation. The fact that He hasn't done that yet means that I just need to keep trusting Him and not walk away from what He has previously shown me. 

Please give me grace and strength to do that, Lord.

Why all the wandering ... ?

Continuing my daily reading in the book of Deuteronomy, this morning I came to chapter 8. Right in the first few verses, Moses reminds the people of how God led them in the wilderness and he explains just a part of the reason why God allowed them to wander around so much and change location so often: He was humbling you and testing you to prove your character and find out whether you would obey Him. That explains why God's provision often came seemingly "at the last minute." He wanted to see if the people would still obey what He'd told them, even when they were already starting to get hungry.

In fact, the people failed the test again and again: they grumbled and complained, they said they wanted to go back to Egypt; on one occasion they even made themselves a new god, in the form of a golden calf. It didn't take much to nudge them into rebellion and make them forget what God had asked of them. 

In the light of history, it's easy to look back and judge them for their bad attitudes, unthankfulness and unbelief... unless you yourself have ever been in that same position of being humbled and repeatedly brought to the end of your own resources. I have to confess that I can identify with the sense of desperation that led to their failing so often. It's hard and humbling to wander around the wilderness with no permanent home and not to be able to change your situation or provide for yourself in any way.

So many times on my homeless journey this year, the next temporary accommodation has only come along at a few days' notice, when I was getting close to the point of despair and to contemplating the humiliating prospect of finding myself with nowhere to go. It would have been SO much easier for me to pack up my things and go somewhere else - like moving back to the UK or to a different ministry location in another part of Europe.

But God had led me to Spain fifteen years ago and He hadn't yet told me it was time to leave here. The big question was whether I was going to keep obeying the last thing He said to me or whether I was going to panic and try to find an easy way out. You don't need much faith to obey God when everything is going smoothly for you. Faith only fully kicks in when everything looks impossible and you just have to hold on to the fact that God will continue to be faithful to what He said.

And so I had to smile when I read (in verses 7 - 8) the description of the "good land" that God was giving them. Of course, it's a description of Israel, but it's uncanny how it could be a description of here in Andalucía. "A land of fig trees and pomegranates, olive oil and honey." I pass all four of those every day when I'm out walking the dogs. (Yes, even the honey, as the bee hives are often set up in the forest.) "Grapevines, wheat and barley, underground springs that gush out in the valleys and hills." That's an accurate description of this region of Spain... and the town I've lived in since moving here is particularly well known for its underground springs.

Moses told the people that God had led them through a long time of wandering around - so that they'd never think they had achieved the promised land by their own efforts. I've seen too that eight months of house hunting have brought no result at all. It seems that only God will be able to break this stalemate.

But until then, the important question is whether I can trust Him and continue to obey Him - even when it's hard, even when it's humbling, even when it looks impossible...  

My prayer is that I will be found faithful, and that this will open the door for me to experience the faithfulness of God.

Dealing with delays...

This week I finished reading the book of Numbers and began reading the book of Deuteronomy. The book is structured around three sermons or speeches that Moses made to the people of Israel while they were camped in the wilderness, just to the east of the River Jordan. He talks to them about their past and also about their future.

In this first chapter of Deuteronomy, we discover that the journey from Mount Sinai (where the people received the 10 Commandments) to the border of the Promised Land would normally have been a journey of only 11 days. Instead, they had wandered in the desert for 40 whole years, and Moses wants this new generation of Israelites to understand why.

And so he retells the story of the people's unbelief and rebellion when spies went to scout out the land forty years previously. He wants them to know that this long delay was not God's fault, but theirs.... and now they have a chance to do things differently.

As my home-hunting journey drags on and on, I regularly ask the Lord if there's anything I'm doing or anything I'm not  doing that is causing this long delay. I've been searching for eight months and I've been homeless for almost six months. Why is it taking so long to find that most basic of human needs - a place to live?

I've sought to be sensitive and obedient to God right from the beginning of this process, but I think it's still important to stop and evaluate regularly. Am I still on track? Am I still being radically obedient to each next step that He shows me? Is there anything more I should be doing to make the breakthrough come closer and faster?

Yes, I know that dozens, even hundreds of people are in the same position as I am, but it's still my responsibility to be faithful to what God is sharing and showing in this difficult time. I won't be held accountable for how others respond, but I am responsible for what I personally do or don't do during this process.

Reading in the Old Testament Psalms this morning, I came to Psalm 130 vs 5, which says: I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I put my hope.

I've often had to wait for answers to prayer; that happens to all of us and there are many possible reasons for why it happens. But being homeless is a more vulnerable kind of waiting than I have ever known in the past. This morning I prayed, "Lord, please don't let me slip into hopelessness as well as homelessness: help me to keep putting my trust in who You are and in what You've said. Give me resilience to wait for the solution that You're going to provide amidst this crazy social and economic phenomenon of widespread shortage of housing. Let me never embrace unbelief like the people of Israel did, but help me to trust always in your love and faithfulness."