Transatlantic and transpacific...

If you're reading this blog post during the last weekend of February, chances are I'm sky-high in a plane somewhere, or hanging around in an airport waiting for my next flight. I fly on Friday from Malaga to Edinburgh, then backtrack to Amsterdam before crossing the Atlantic Ocean and the entire USA to Seattle. A couple of hours later the last leg of my journey sees me crossing the Pacific Ocean to the little town of Kona, on one of the Hawaiian islands. I'll arrive on Saturday night, Kona time, which is Sunday morning European time.

After a few days of rest (it seemed a pity to go all the way to Hawaii without building in a few days of holiday) I'll be busy for two weeks with KKI international leadership team meetings, as well as some faculty meetings with the University of the Nations. Thanks for your prayers during this long trip and this busy time of ministry meetings.

Writing for a reason...

Have you ever wondered why, when God wanted to reveal Himself to the people of Israel, He so often chose to do it by writing? The ten commandments were written on tablets of stone, the warning to Belshazzar was written on a wall, the prophets were told to write things down in a scroll or on tablets, and some of the first teachings of the early church were written in letters to the believers.

Our faith hinges on the truths written in God’s book, which is in fact a whole library of books. In fact, the only thing better than God’s written Word to us was when He came Himself in the flesh.... and even then He was also called the Word: “ the Word became flesh and lived among us.” (John 1: 14)

So if writing was so important to God throughout the Old and New Testament era, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that He still calls people to write things today. I seemed to have an unusual amount of writing tasks in my schedule during these first two months of 2016: ministry manuals, university papers, home preparation materials for summer outreach… Some days I spent so much time writing, that I began to have a feel for what it must be like to be a full time author!

I'm so pleased that everything on my list is completed now. My goals was to finish all those writing projects before leaving for my first trip. Praise God, I finished the last paper today, and I leave for the airport first thing tomorrow morning.

The good news is that I generally enjoy writing. As a friend pointed out, why else would I write more than 55 entries in my journal and some 33 posts on this blog, when I was already spending so much of my working day on different writing tasks?

I've finished my two month journey through the book of Genesis now, and I trust you've enjoyed reflecting with me on the lives of some of the characters in that first book of the Bible. I've certainly enjoyed reading your comments and reflections sent to me by email. Thank you… and may God bless you as you continue to meditate on his word during 2016. I encourage you to write down some of your insights and discoveries. It's amazing how encouraging it can be to read them again at the end of the year.

It all depends on your perspective...

In Genesis 47, when Pharaoh asks Jacob how old he is, Jacob's reply (verse 9) is, "My years have been few and difficult. I have travelled this earth for 130 hard years."  It's true that Jacob didn't have an easy life. While much of the hardship was due to his own fault and lack of character, it still must have been hard to flee from home because you'd made your brother angry enough to want to kill you. It must have been awful to be deceived by your father in law on your wedding day. How devastating it must have been to think that your favourite son had been killed by wild animals. And now, in your old age, to be a refugee, leaving your own country because of famine.

But in the next chapter, when Jacob is blessing his grandsons, he sees his life and sees God from a completely different perspective. In Genesis 48: 15 he says, "May the Lord, who has been my Shepherd all my life to this very day, the Angel who has rescued me from all harm, bless these boys."

Yes, his life has known hardships and struggles, but now when he looks back at the entirety of his life, he is able to say, God has always been with me, He has always taken care of me,  He has protected me from all kinds of harm. Remember that Jacob and his sons after him had been shepherds their whole lives. They knew what it meant to care for sheep: the investment of time, and the willingness to put your own life on the line to protect them from attack.

We all know the famous words of David, when he wrote in Psalm 23 that the Lord was his shepherd. We know the famous passage in John chapter 10, where Jesus describes Himself as the good Shepherd. But here already, in the very first book of the Bible, we find Jacob acknowledging that God has shepherded him throughout his whole lifetime.

Yes, Jacob the deceiver, Jacob the rebel, Jacob who described his life as, "130 hard years," is the same man who, seventeen years later, when he chooses not to focus on the hard and the negative, can say in all sincerity that he's always known the protection of Jehovah Rohi, the Lord our Shepherd. It all depends on your perspective.

The cross-handed blessing...

In Genesis chapter 48, as Jacob is reaching the end of his life, he calls in his son Joseph and explains that he wants to bless his two grandsons, Manasseh and Ephraim. These two boys were Joseph’s sons that had been born in Egypt, and something rather intriguing happens as Jacob reaches out to lay hands on the boys. Joseph has positioned them so that Jacob’s right hand will touch Manasseh and his left hand rest on Ephraim - presumably because the right hand was for the older son and was symbolic of the greater blessing.

For some reason, Jacob crosses his arms and places his hands differently, so that his right hand rests on Ephraim and his left hand on Manasseh. What prompted him to do this? I can think of one or two possible reasons, but that’s for a different blog post at a different time. Instead, what stood out to me in my reading this morning was a rather encouraging parallel that this account brought to mind.

It struck me that we don’t need to fret and fear that we’ll miss out on a blessing if it seems like life’s circumstances have put us in the “wrong place.” If our hearts are right before the Lord, God is able to “cross his hands” and reach out to bless us, right where we are.

I think, for example, of people who leave the mission field they were called to, and go home to look after an ageing parent. I think of friends of mine who recently had to leave the Middle East and return to their home country so that their youngest child could get care for a rare and degenerative form of autism. I think of missionaries whose visas are denied, like the many who were thrown out of Morocco a few years ago. I think of myself when damage to my lungs meant that I had to leave Austria, right at the point when I was about to make a longer missionary commitment there...

That illness seemed to take me away from my calling and put me in the “wrong place.” Yet, little did I know that the move would put me on the trajectory that has largely shaped my life’s journey until today. My many years in Africa and now in Spain were built upon the foundation of those unexpected years in Scotland in the 1990s.

God is not limited by our geography. When life’s circumstances appear to knock us off track, He can nonethess “cross his hands” and make sure that we receive His blessing right where we are. As I wrote in Tuesday’s blog post, He will be with us even in our “Egypts” and nothing - nothing except our own wilful disobedience - can prevent Him from blessing us.

Another incredible encounter (3)

In previous blog posts (see 14th February) 
I reflected on Jacob’s two God-encounters at Bethel and Peniel. In the first four verses of Genesis chapter 46, we read of another encounter that Jacob had in his old age, and it was at Beersheba, the well of the promise.

The Bethel encounter saw God reassuring Jacob as he was forced to flee from the land of his inheritance. The Peniel encounter saw God preparing him to return, and re-affirming the promise. Now, a couple of decades later, Jacob is having to leave the country again, and not only himself this time, but with his whole family - all the descendants who were to inherit the land. If you’ve read the story of Joseph in the previous chapters, you’ll know that Jacob’s family was having to move to Egypt in order to survive in a time of famine. Jacob knew it was necessary - it was leave or die - but what must he have been thinking as he set off once again to leave the land that had been promised to him?

When the huge tribe reaches Beersheba and stops for the night, God speaks to Jacob in a vision. Not a dream this time. It seems Jacob has grown in his relationship with God, and can hear His voice without God having to bypass his conscious mind. The Lord, who saw and knew Jacob’s troubled thoughts, begins by saying, “Don’t be afraid to go down to Egypt.” Don’t be afraid to walk away from the land that I’ve promised you. Don’t worry that you appear to be turning your back on your inheritance.

Next comes a part that probably astounded Jacob - when God says, “.. for I will make your family into a great nation there.” What? The promise would actually be fulfilled in that hard, foreign place? Surely a “nation” is a group of people in a specific location.

But there’s more to being God’s people than being in a particular geographical setting - just as there’s more to being a Christian than sitting in church on a Sunday morning. Being part of God’s people, part of His “chosen nation,” is more about who you are than where you are. It’s about how you live your life and how you see God. And so God tells Jacob that Egypt, a place seemingly distanced from what the Lord has promised, is the very place where He will make them into a nation.

A devastating illness, a change of circumstances, a loss of some kind; all of these things can feel like “Egypt” to us. (I think of my Dad spending nearly a year in hospital, or a colleague whose young daughter dropped dead with an aneurysm, or my neighbour whose mother’s deterioriating Alzheimer’s stole her from us at a terrifying rate.) There are many situations and circumstances in our lives that can seem to be taking us away from the fullness of God’s blessing. Yet these things, hard as they are, may be the very place where God does something great in us, and for us. The key lies in our never letting go of the truth that God’s presence is with us in that situation. The very next thing God says to Jacob is, “I will go with you to Egypt,” and in whatever circumstances we face, He also says to us, “I am with you.”

Finally, in the last part of the vision, God tells Jacob two things that sound contradictory: “I will bring you back again,” and “You will die in Egypt.” Of course, the seeming contradiction is explained by the fact that the first “you” is the plural, collective you: God will one day bring Jacob’s descendants back to the land He promised them. The second “you” is the individual, personal you: Jacob as an individual will never leave Egypt; he is saying goodbye forever to the inheritance that God has repeatedly promised him. Hardly surprising if we consider that he was a very old man by this time.

But it’s not all bad news, because something special is offered in return for Jacob’s sacrifice: he is first going to be reunited with the son that he hasn’t seen for more than twenty years, and then in death he will see face to face the God that he has slowly been learning to know through dreams and visions, mistakes and miracles, hard lessons and wonderful blessings. Dying in Egypt doesn’t sound quite so bad, when you think of what Jacob would experience as well.

The reality of life is that we don’t always live to see the complete fulfilment of all that was promised to us. Sometimes it’s a future generation that sees the blessing and fulfilment of the things that we were trusting God for. If we have lived our lives well, we can “die in Egypt” like Jacob did, knowing that our legacy will live on and our promises will become reality. As we read later, at the end of chapter 47 and the end of chapter 49, Jacob may have died in Egypt, but he wasn't buried there. His final resting place (for his bones, at least!) was indeed in the land that God had promised him.

Mostly in life, when we find ourselves in tough times, we can hang on to the fact that “this too will pass.” When some horrible situation, some family tragedy, or some personal crisis catapults us into Egypt, God assures us, “I will go with you, and I will bring you back out of it again.” The hard things in life seldom last for ever; it may feel like it at the time, but it’s only temporary in the light of eternity, and God promises to bring us through the storm, bring us safe and stronger out the other side. As I wrote in a previous post: don’t judge the book  by a chapter. God alone knows the end of the story and is able to work all things out for our good.

But sometimes, just occasionally, there are those who do “die in Egypt.” They never get healed from that terminal cancer; that rocky marriage does end in divorce; that illness does cause us pain or rob us of mobility; that longstanding conflict never gets fully resolved... In such situations, God remains unchanging; He’s not fazed by the drama and He reassures us that one day He will welcome us into the final chapter of all; then we too will see Him face to face.

Birthday babies

Yesterday was Tobi and Teddi's seventh birthday! I can't believe that the time has gone by so fast. Have I really lived here in Alhaurín for seven years?

Little did I suspect, when I was playing midwife at midnight (read here) that two of those babies would still be with me seven years later. And I still have the mother, Tamba, too, by the way.

If you'd spoken to me ten years ago, the truth is I never expected to be living in Spain… and I never expected to have a household of cats. Life has a way of taking us by surprise. I wonder what surprises lie in store over the next seven or ten years.

Not the end of the story

This morning I was reading in Genesis chapters 39 and 40, the well known account of Joseph’s trials in Egypt. Joseph is a Bible character who has long been an inspiration to me because it seems that, despite his early immaturity in Genesis 37, he was a person who consistently sought to make right choices, and we read over and over again that, “the Lord was with him."

Joseph’s story is told in just a few short chapters of the Bible; only two or three chapters span the time from when he was a 17 year old till the time he was 30. A few further chapters bring us to the end of Joseph’s lifetime, and so we all know the end of the story; we know that things began to turn around for him when he was thirty. (Gen 41: 46) But the previous thirteen years were pretty awful: hated by his brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused of rape, forgotten in prison...  Again and again, Joseph was the victim of tragedy and injustice. Yes, we’ve read the last chapter and we know there was a “happy ending,” but what must Joseph have been thinking and feeling when events had only half run their course? It says a couple of times in chapter 39 that God blessed Joseph and gave him success.... but I guess that might all seem kind of relative, if your “blessing” is happening in the context of slavery or of wrongful imprisonment.

The thing that has always stood out to me, however, is that Joseph never seemed to slip into self pity, bitterness, anger, or simply giving up. Did he keep holding on to his God-given dreams or did he abandon them, believing them to be impossible now? Either way, he seems to have kept holding on to God, and this seems to have enabled him to bring the very best out of every situation he found himself in - no matter how awful or injust or just plain wrong it was at the time.

A danger for us is that we look at our lives right here and now, and we evaluate them as if they were already the last chapter of the story. What’s happening in my life right now is not the whole story of my life; it’s just a snapshot, only one chapter among many. If it happens to be a really hard or horrible chapter, that shouldn’t be allowed to eclipse the fact that very many good chapters went before it, and (if I’ve consistently made right choices in life) more good chapters will still come after it.

An old proverb says, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” The lesson I learn from Joseph’s life is, “Don’t judge the book by a chapter.” Don’t judge your life, or judge God, on the basis of the one chapter that you find yourself in today. If, like Joseph, we hold on to God and hold on to right attitudes, the last chapter of our story will look very different from the one we find ourselves in today.