room for them all

if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. isaiah 58:10.

every time i turn around i am hearing or singing or reading about caring for others as a service to God. that his love is so abounding and so great that when you are the donor of it then you cannot help yourself but to spend yourself to give it to others. these thoughts, and our trip to the village of hope in uganda where we will care for and love on orphans, is beginning to transform me. it's reached right down into me, into my inner parts, and is starting to change me. because this is what i dreamed last night:

we had a family living with us (no surprise there, i guess), we also had a gal that worked for us in our house. this gal came to me to tell me there was a young woman at my door. she was a battered wife. and she had no place to stay. i invited her in and looked past her down the road and there three more.

my employee asked if they could all stay and i told her we would find room. we would find room for them all. so she went to get them settled.

later she found me in the kitchen and explained that the place that used to take in women who were battered had closed its doors for good. i became so grieved over this that i wept bitterly. "where will they go?"

i asked how these women had heard of us - how did they know we would take them in? i don't remember getting an answer but i knew i would find room for them all.

then a man came into the house and he was looking for one of the young ladies. i understood he was her husband. i told him he could not enter my house without my permission. he didn't budge at first - insisting on seeing his wife. i finally had to yell at him. scream to him to leave the house. when he finally did, i turned to my employee and said, "we have to find a safe place for these women." and so we decided to find some land to build a secure place where we would have room for them all.

we looked at a map and found where we lived. i pointed to our place and said, "it looks like we live on mission island." she said, "yes."

[isn't that funny? mission island?]

i told her we would travel to the main part of the island and find some land. we went 'downtown' and there was a mission there. then i was in a store with my mom and she pointed to some pencils because we wanted to purchase school supplies for the children, but i told her not to get those ones, "we can get them for less money somewhere else, and we will have more money left over for other things."

and so, it appears, that this trip and God's mission he has given us has been swirling about in my thoughts so much that i am even answering this call while i'm asleep.

when i woke up this morning and prayed, i asked God that i would wake up to his praise and that praising him would be so much on my heart that i would fall asleep with the utterance of it on my lips. and during worship today we sang a song about God's praise.

i want my life and my response to his call to simply be just one more song of praise of the God who has saved me and made me alive... truly alive. with this life you have given me, may i praise you.

missionally minded

i was reading this morning about abraham - how he was going to sacrifice his son, how his wife died and he purchased a tomb for her burial, and how he sent his servant to bring back a wife for isaac from his father's house.

and the thing that stuck with me the most this time was that after his wife died, he went to the city gate to walk through the steps of buying of a tomb. i guess in that day it was normal to go through the ping pong tournament of "i'd like to buy your property", "no no you take it", "no i want to pay you for it", "no really i insist just take it", "what do i owe you for it?", "i don't want you to pay me fifty bucks even though that's what it's worth", "ok here is fifty bucks. thank you and good day".

seriously? that was how it was done? i'm all the more grateful for craigslist.

yes. apparently that was how it was done. and abraham was willing to take the time and do it the way it was done even though his heart must have been grieving during the entire barter. it must have been one of the hardest times in his life!.. but he still acted appropriately, did what was right.

we know he was far away from his family - he is called a sojourner in the land where he lived. which is why his servant had to take a journey in order to find a wife for his son among abraham's father's house. abraham was far from home.

he lived among people who were not israelites. they were not God's chosen people. in other words - they did not have God.

why it sure sounds a lot like abraham was a missionary, doesn't it? a godly man, far from home, living in the land of people who do not have God. and in his dealings with them, he is appropriate and fair. he doesn't take advantage of any generosity, but rather does what is right and good. even in their eyes.

i wonder if any of them thought, "who is this man? he seems different. he is clearly under duress. i mean he's buying a tomb for goodness' sake. and for his wife?.. why isn't he just taking the property? why does he insist on doing this the right way? what is it that is so different in him that causes him to act so... hmm.. i guess he would call it 'godly'. but who is this God that could enable this? who is this God that can carry him through pain to still act in an upright and fair way among us whom he has no kin. we are but strangers to him. why would he care for us? is his God like this, too? could his God care for us as well? i want to know more about his God."

we are all living in a mission field and every circumstance can produce occasion to act honorable for the sake of bringing attention and honor to God. every dealing with others can result in a seed being planted or watered or cultivated. life is a splattering of such opportunities. i guess the question is, will we obey? or will we soil God's reputation simply by being associated with us?

may we act honorable and justly and giving all due credit to our God! and may others notice a changed life in us enough to desire it for themselves.