brief update

It seems like it's been too long again since my last update.  I'd like to get back in the habit of updating during my weekly office hours, but it seems like there is so much that I am doing when I come into the office.  For instance, today I primed a wall which I will be painting on Friday. 

Things are going well with the Outreach department.  We are studying a different sphere of society each week according to the Seven Spheres/Mountains in the teachings of Loren Cunningham and Bill Bright.  These spheres are present in every society, in one form or another.  The Seven Spheres are:

• Government and Finance
• Family and Health Care
• Education
• Arts, Entertainment, and Sports
• Media and Communications
• Science and Technology
• Church 

For the purposes of study, we split up Government and Finance into two different weeks: government last week and finance/business this week.  Our desire in this time is to get a Biblical understanding of each of these spheres as well as a deeper understanding of how each sphere looks in American culture.  One aspect of the sphere of business is Business as Mission, which I have been researching this week. 

Tomorrow afternoon I will be leading this Bible study/discussion/prayer time.  Friday we are holding a bake sale at Walmart to raise funds for the base overhead costs.  But right now I need to dust the office...because we are, each of us on this base, servant leaders.  :-)

Blessings on your week!

Unveiled Faces

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.


2 Corinthians 3:17-18


Today I have finished reading Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis.  This book, unlike any other he has written...unlike any I have read by any other author, may just be his masterpiece.  It is a "Myth Retold", the ancient myth of Cupid or Psyche, set in Greek times in a barbaric kingdom outside Greece.  Orual, an ugly princess made queen, is making her complaint against the Gods for injustice suffered at their hands during her youth.  She wears a veil to cover her ugliness throughout her entire queenship, and then at the end of her life is given the opportunity to read her complaint.  She appears before a the council without her veil, without any barrier to hide her from them.  When she goes to read, she finds that her long, drawn out story has been replaced by a short, older complaint, which she reads over and over until interrupted by the judge.  After a long silence, the judge speaks again:


"Are you answered?" he said.
"Yes," said I.


And in the next chapter, she explains:


The Complaint was the answer.  To have heard myself making it was to be answered.  Lightly men talk of saying what they mean.  Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, "Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words."  A glib saying.  When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words.  I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer.  Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean?  How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?


Of course I have done a great injustice to the book by extracting the thesis statement from the end of the book and posting it here.  I am not sure if I have ruined the book for you...you will have to read it and let me know.  The bit, though, brings a certain amount of light to 2 Corinthians, which I have been studying this week.  To be unveiled means honesty, and that can be frightening, especially when we have been keeping one thing hidden for so long that we didn't even know it was there.  We move in 2 Corinthians from the veil and unveiled faces to the treasure which we have in jars of clay...more about honesty and the juxtaposition between the Glory of God and our incompleteness.  It is not by pretending to be a diamond vial that I will show best His glory, but if I am honest with myself about my clay-ness.  And even, proceeding to chapter 5, we see that all this honesty is not for some sort of emotional burlesque show, but for transformation from glory to glory as was mentioned in chapter 3.


For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 


2 Corinthians 5:4

Playing in the Dirt

My last post was April 9.  Could it be May already? 

The end of April is a "port of entry/exit" for our base.  What that means is this is the time when some staff go and other some on.  Cody will be leaving from his outreach location with the Discipleship Training School, and I had the pleasure of sending Lauren on her way last weekend.  Both of them will be in a transition time, discerning the next step in their lives.  Cody will be with International House of Prayer in Israel.  Lauren is on a short sabbatical in England.

We are also receiving a new staff member, Philip, who will be living in the Grover Beach.

Along with the port of entry, we will be having our "Big Ops" meeting, which is where we all come together, give our reports for each department, and "change seats on the bus"...which means we change which departments we are a part of, which ones we facilitate and so on.  I am currently facilitating four of the five departments I am a part of, and while I enjoy being involved with each of these departments, I don't feel that I need to facilitate everything.  So please pray that the Lord directs me on how to commit my time over the next six months. 

Finally, in two weeks (May 12) we will be having the "16th Street Barbecue" to build community on our street and get to know our neighbors better. 

What does all this have to do with playing in the dirt?  I have been re-potting rescued plants today.  By the time I find them they have been sent from Trader Joe's to the local food bank, where they will either die or be given away for free.  Most of them are wilty from being root bound, so I set them in the kitchen until I can attend to them.  One pot of herbs has been there a couple weeks because I needed to buy a bigger pot for it.  Several of the plants died, but a few were salvageable.  I have noticed, however, that every time I look at them they are swimming in water.  I think a roommate or a friend has taken it upon themselves to rescue the plants by drowning.  They are so root bound, however, that the water doesn't even go through the pot.  It just sits there.  Convicted of my plant neglect, I purchased a larger pot for them today and freed them from their confined little marsh.  At the base of the lavender I found nearly a half inch of tangled, rotting roots.  The poor thing...my friend kept watering and watering it when what it really needed was soil and space. 

And then I think of all the transplanting that is going on around me...people moving in and out of the base, people moving around with responsibilities within the base.  It reminds me that sometimes the most obvious solution is not the one needed, and might even be harmful without the proper care.  I pray that we all find our feet in good, spacious soil with room to grow.