Lift Up Your Eyes

The earliest documented source for this quote is Marco Antonio de Domini, who used it in his written work in the year 1617. It was since adopted, and used in a variety of settings, and has been thought to have originated by a number of other people like Rupertus Meldenius, Martin Luther, the Moravian Church, John Wesley, and many more.

I remember reading it for the first time in the early 90s while at Christ for the Nations in Dallas as an “RA” (Resident Assistant), a role for which I was exceedingly unqualified for. The quote was framed just left to my desk. This 19-year-old self would sit in an office twice weekly for a few hours and receive students who had been given citations for a variety of infractions, ranging from walking on the grass to being caught breaking curfew. RAs were endowed with the power to determine what consequences fellow classmates were to receive. Punishments ranged from peeling potatoes in the school cafeteria to having to clean student dorms.

I didn’t think much of the quote at the time. I was too busy rendering justice to think about its theological and philosophical depths. Over the years, however, I’ve come to acknowledge just how important it is in the life of the Christian, and how difficult it is to practice.

Everyone agrees that unity is important, and if everyone just got along, life would be sort of perfect, right? The issue, as I’ve discovered, is determining what exactly should be considered essential. If we’ve lived long enough, we’ll all have the battle scars. For the longest time, through most of my young adult life, actually, I pretty much packed everything I believed into the essentials category. This left me in fellowship with fewer and fewer people. Finding people who believe exactly the way you do is tricky business. If you’re unfortunate enough to find and journey with them for a season, you’ll find the world becomes a much smaller place as you identify with, know, and trust only those who drink from your particular stream. My mission, it seemed, was to convince a lost world and church to let go of their liberties and adopt my essentials as their own, drink from my stream. Then, and only then, might we enjoy true peace and friendship.

Eventually, slowly, and not without pain, I began to recognize my category of essentials was bloated and full of human-conjured, imperfect, or at least incomplete ideas. Living in another culture, among a diverse and disagreeing community of believers, has a way of shaking one’s Jenga pieces loose. Doctrines that shaped my understanding of God and my neighbor became less certain. As I began to see the perspective of another, listen not to formulate a response but to understand and learn, something radical began to take place… I was growing in liberty! As my essential category was more clearly refined and reduced, my capacity to hold space for the voice and opinions of another grew. When this took place, my world began to grow, friendship circles expanded, and hope emerged. It is a lonely place when your essentials for walking in unity require a certain uniformity. It’s how cults are formed, how communism eradicates the individual, and how human flourishing ceases.

In essentials, unity. What then are my essentials? I’m not sure what yours are, but my journey of faith has led me to embrace Jesus Christ as my ultimate and exclusive essential for deep, Christian community. Jesus’ life, his ministry, his teachings are what hold us together in unity. It’s a unity that pre-existed the church, a unity that is already in the Father, Son and Spirit. We are invited into this perfect union, a union that celebrates our unique distinctions from all nations, all languages and cultures, all political and ideological frames. We don’t need to agree, I believe, on points of doctrine to experience the unity that is in Jesus Christ. In fact, it’s in our liberty in the non-essentials outside of Jesus that demonstrate authentic Christian witness. We don’t need to be the same in order to be united; we are united by something far more meaningful than ideas. We are united in our humanity, are imago Dei, and faith in the God who sent the Son.

Lastly, even if we’re united in a belief in Jesus and possess somehow liberty in the non-essentials, without charity (love), we’ve missed the point entirely. When I look back at my RA days, confidently and sometimes mercilessly handing out punishments, I now understand why someone purchased and hung the framed quote on the wall. Without love, we can have all of the right answers, and yet miss the point of God’s coming in the first place. Undergirding all of our efforts towards a sense of Christian unity and diversity is the prime characteristic of love. When the lawyer came to test Jesus, he asked which was the greatest commandment. Jesus went for the heart, the inner life, and skipped the things we can do on our own. To love like God loves is to first experience it ourselves. As I read through history, I’m amazed at the harsh and even brutal ways so-called believers treated their fellow human beings. From many Dutch Calvinists during the slave trade in the West Indies, to the colonial evangelists toward the native American indians. The church, God’s people globally, are recognized by their capacity to centralize the Person of Jesus, experience His love personally, and give a broad and open arm of friendship to everyone, even their enemies.

In this way, through charity (where we get our english word for grace), we are lights in this world of division. We rise above arguments and place them in their proper non-essential categories. We ground ourselves in the love of God, experiencing it, then giving it away freely.

Is this not what we need today?

I’m in PA this week with Noah. He has his DL test coming up and is also enrolled in a GED program starting next week with Luzerne Community College tutoring program. He will live with his brothers for the time being as we discern next steps. We were able to secure a nice little car for him, and he’s been giving me heart attacks as he learns the roads and drives on snow for the first time.

Noah’s life is changing a lot this week. We also got his work permit and applied for her first job in the U.S… Burger King! It’s been funny helping him with his resume. Everything is new for him, he’s lived his entire life in Ukraine and the past few years in Romania.

It’s been nice to see Tucker and Brent as we try to come alongside them in support more on this side of the Atlantic. Tucker is en route to enlisting with the Air Force, more on that soon!

Deb is still up in Canada with the girls. Our house in PA is quite full at the moment with Broderic and his family in the basement apartment, and Brent, Tucker and now Noah upstairs. We are hopeful that in the coming days, the Lord will reveal for us the next steps, and that sock drawer!

Grateful for the blessings of the Lord, and the chance to hold sweet grandkids – poor Deb is a little jealous, but she’s grateful for the stability and space to keep pace with her school and not be traveling. The snow is legit – I feel like this winter has lasted forever!

Cool to hear about Lighthouse Cluj events taking place this past week, including the first open mic event – The videos looked very cool, and interactive.

Our family has landed in North America! We arrived in mid-January just in time for grandbabies #3 and #4. We then made our way north to Canada. We had rented the house next door to my parents from Feb-April, however upon arriving it became apparent that due to some delayed repairs on the place, we wouldn’t be moving in anytime soon. As I type, we’re actually unsure about our next steps. Our family has been living out of suitcases for the past month. I long for the blessings of a sock drawer!

My mom is doing well, all things considered with her cancer battle. She’s been on some heavy medications that buy time, but decrease energy and are hard on her. We know God led us back here to love and serve my parents as best we can in this season, but we didn’t plan to move in with them – so, we are praying! 

Claire and Abigail are now enrolled in the local catholic school. The teachers and staff were exceedingly accommodating and after two days, the girls are enjoying it. They are, however, quite behind. Abigail’s first class was.. French! Claire, although untested, has a unique learning disability when it comes to reading, so we’re hoping God provides the resources to learn more about her challenge ahead. As for Noah, we’ve signed him up for a GED program in Pennsylvania, starting in March so his plan is to move in with his brothers, get his Driver’s License, a part time job and enter this course to finish high school this summer sometime. Noah, who lives and breathes classical music, has applied to a summer classical arts program in Canada which lasts about 3 weeks, and looks like a dream opportunity for him. We’re praying he gets accepted.. but the standards are quite high. I’m attaching a little video we had to take to show the school his level below, if you’d like to take a listen and pray for him!!

Deb is quite busy with her Chaplaincy course, which she will complete, Lord willing, this fall. I am trying to organize some things for my parents, including organizing their bills and utilities. I am on break from doctoral studies until the end of March, but continue to organize interviews with Ukrainian, Russian and Belorussian believers as part of field research. I had thought I had a pretty neat job lined up locally with a ministry, but in the end I wasn’t the best fit. I have another opportunity that I’ve applied for, had a Zoom interview and now wait for a potential in-person visit. There’s a lot up in the air right now, and we really appreciate prayer!

It’s been really great to see all of our kids, except for Clark who is living in Texas. We hope to organize a trip to Longview and see him, and many of our long-time friends this Spring as well. We don’t feel, however, that it’s time to plan much of anything besides remain present, and allow the Lord’s direction and help. We have a deep peace, despite now knowing what we’re doing!

As for the ministries in Ukraine and Romania, we thank everyone who continues to support our friends and ministries there! It means so much to us to be able to pause our active involvement there and know God is caring for these investments and the people who lead them. Pray for Elsa and the team as they watch God bless and move through Lighthouse in Romania! Pray for our widow’s ministry in Ukraine as Natasha and our local volunteers there visit and love on the elderly this winter. Through your giving, we are able to keep sending monthly care packages to the most vulnerable. Pray for Dima and Lena, for our properties in Ukraine, and for this war to end soon.

We’ll be speaking at some churches, and exploring what opportunities God brings to us in this coming month. I’m grateful that our charity, Mir Ministries, is now also serving in Asia and partnering with more ministries. I see a potential mission network emerging and say “yes” to the Spirit if this is Jesus’ will. Yet, I’m also at peace to take my hands off the mission wheel for this season, knowing that it’s the power of the Spirit that enables all eternal, and sustainable activity in the first place.

Thank you, friends! Blessings on your family’s gratitude for all who continue partnering with us in Eastern Europe!

I’ve been reading “The Divine Conspiracy” by Dallas Willard. Spoiler alert, the conspiracy is that “God’s desire for us is that we should live in Him.” You remember, “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). But, what does this really mean?

Willard suggests God is, in God’s own nature, a “community of boundless love” from which we are all “invited to make a pilgrimage into.” For many of us, we’ve been taught this unifying end game is heaven, a place detached from the material world. Gratefully, the revelation of Jesus in history suggests we don’t have to wait for death for our own life to experience God’s plan for us, or the world He loves.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “Our faith is not a matter of hearing what Christ said long ago, and trying to ‘carry it out’.. Rather the real Son is at your side, He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself.” Could this be true? Could the coming of Jesus kingdom have flung open the reality in this present life to enter the passion of God’s own nature. God’s suffering, divesting, and perfectly glorious nature are indeed at work in all who believe and follow Jesus way.

This is how the kingdom of Jesus moves and advances in the earth.

To be a Christian, is to be like Jesus Christ, not just do like Christ, as meaningful as that. All our doing flows from God’s divine conspiracy to transform our being. Once we begin this journey of transformation, participating in the active will of God becomes our aim as the church. Willard says it like this. “For God is unlimited creative will, and constantly invites us, even now, into an even larger share in what he is doing.” As we are caught up into God’s active will, “our deeds become an element in God’s eternal history.”

Isn’t that a wild thought! We all want to be participants in God’s unfolding history. We all care about what’s happening in the world and if we’re human, want to be part of bringing lasting, flourishing change. Yet, to experience this, I’m learning I must enter God’s reality, and actualize God’s kingdom in the moments. His kingdom is here, and our transformation into Jesus’ image from the inside out advances it forward.

This makes mission all the more daunting, and sacrificial. God’s not interested, I believe, in a people willing to fling a particular message around to our neighbors. We are to, in the pattern of Christ’s coming, incarnate love, which begins with taking up a cross… then we are privileged to enter the lives of others, like Christ, and love (whatever the cost).

I’m reminded in all of the political upheaval presently in the West, that Jesus’ kingdom was not of this earth (Jn 18:36). That doesn’t mean that Jesus’ kingdom wasn’t intended FOR earth, but rather Jesus’ dismissal of the current world’s broken system. If ever there was a need for the church to embody Jesus, and enter our cultures as a people being transformed!

Bruce Crowe