Author: admin (Page 4 of 211)

It was around 11pm, so I walked outside to the lake’s edge, looked up, and wasn’t too impressed with the Aurora Borealis. I recalled, however, that to really see it, you needed to look through the lens of your camera. Something about ions, soft particular lights the human eye doesn’t pick up.. Once I flicked on my iPhone, there it was indeed. Something out of an alien movie. The familiar night sky, transformed into an array of color that my tired brain struggled to make sense of.

It was beautiful, but it was strange.

Coming home to Canada to spend a week with my mom. My mom is familiar, but life has shifted off-kilter for her as well. Cancer, throughout her aging body, her mind adjusting to a new reality, one riddled with medications, side effects, hair loss. A reality that we all push aside, and dare not peer too closely at lest we lose our footing.

It was a surreal and rooting week. Home, for the first time in 30 yrs without my wife, and not a kid in sight. I was the kid, walking on the dirt that raised me, driving the roads that are littered with childhood memories. We spent mornings talking, pondering, crying, and embracing the fragility and beauty of the present. Each word, a gift, time increases in value when we consider the hour glass. For the week, I was a son again. Not a husband, nor a father, not a missionary and thankfully not even a foreigner. A son, that familiar place and yet, like looking up at the Northern Lights, things have shifted, altered. Like the camera lens, we’re growing into new appreciation, new embrace, new unfolding realities.

This temporal, it gives way to the eternal. This mortality, the scriptures say, gives way to the immortal, swallowed up by the resurrection of the God who became flesh. If Christ rose, we will rise, this is our hope, and it tweaks the fabric of our physical existence, our perception and our capacity to discern what is authentic and true.

I’m thankful for the week with my mom. She’s doing well, her mind is sharp and she isn’t experiencing any pain. She’s just tired, and learning how to prioritize her own health more than she’s used to.

We returned to PA for a few days, Noah passed his learner’s test, Brent got a job, we hugged Clark a few times. The poor dude has been working 5 weeks consecutively with overtime (required) on his first industrial job.. trial by fire. Tucker, Clark and Brent are all at our house in PA, thank you Jesus for leading us to buy a place, without ever seeing it in person just 2 months before Russia invaded Ukraine. This is mercy for our family. We saw Bronner & Logan for a hot minute, quick lunch, hug, bye again!

We are back in Romania. We’re now back chasing visa options, we have 90 days. We’re now needing to see this Lighthouse project launch – who will God send us, how will this all come together? For now, it’s jetlag time, that all too familiar week of dragging through the days and nights, adjusting our tired bodies as they wonder what has happened.

Praying about transition, about the many remaining pieces, friends, ministry and resources we need to see cared for in Ukraine, now in Romania, and the US. We are ready for stability, for a measure of permanence, of routine.

I’m sitting in our living room. Bags packed, leaving for the airport in 3 hours. Our family will be returning to the US, then driving up to Canada to visit my mom. She has cancer treatments next week, and I’m hoping to spend some quality time with her, and help anyway we can.

Brent will also be returning to re-start his life in the US after staying with us for 8 months following his health crisis. He is doing really well, body, soul and spirit. He’s off all of his meds, been spared from any relapses, which is a very good sign. It’s been a tough road for him, a deep formational valley for sure. God’s mercy has been so abundant and sustaining over us all. So grateful for Olena who provided timely therapy, and for the prayer over his life! He’s grown close to the younger kids, like a re-introduced brother. We’ll miss his kindness and help going to the store for us for milk and eggs, seemingly daily.

Deb will be flying down to Florida for a family wedding with Claire while I stay with my mom. Abigail is excited to visit and stay with her big sister Bronwyn in the Rochester area.

Broderic and Kristin will be remaining in Cluj. They can’t actually leave because their kids aren’t technically re-united to their visas, which actually have expired (so confusing!). They actually need a bit of a miracle to stay, they don’t have any visa paths as of yet, and have only 60 days or so before they need one submitted and approved in the system.

Our biggest prayer is also for a legal pathway to remain in Romania as our volunteer pathways have been exhausted. Our visas expire tomorrow. So we’ll return to Romania end of May with the hopes of seeing God’s hand at work, opening necessary doors, and closing the ones that need to be closed. We are praying for His will to be done, and learning to find that deep rest once again in the places of uncertainty. It’s been almost 3 years, in reality, of being unsure where we’re supposed to be as our world has shifted beneath our feet, first from war, then with Brent, and now with my mom’s difficult cancer situation.

Sometimes the heart wants to be in more places than it can be. Lord, we ask for your guidance, and provision to remain in the spaces and places you want us to be.. hopefully growing, and learning what you want to teach us. We love you, Jesus, and are grateful for your steady hand in the shadows. Lead us to the green pastures and by your mercy, continue to restore .

Last week a group of us ventured through several regions and villages of Ukraine, visiting our volunteer partners that serve the widow. Here is my update – click here

Every one of us enjoys feeling welcome and at home. Hospitality is a spiritual grace, a gift from the holy spirit to be experienced whenever, and wherever Jesus people are present.

Churches often regard hospitality in the context of the Sunday gathering. They ask, “Do people feel welcome at our church event?” They place smiling greeters at the door and provide valuable instructions for those first-time visitors who aren’t sure where to go. But is this the essence of hospitality?

Hospitality is first found in the genesis of creation. God, the Gardner creates place, and space, and welcomes life into a place of sustainable flourishing. We belong here, and we know it. Yet, in our fallen state, humanity has adopted a theology of scarcity, believing the best route to personal fulfillment is to hoard, and even steal resources as if they belong to us.

Joong-Sik Park notes in his essay on hospitality is the primary context for evangelism, within which an authentic evangelism takes place. Yet, not in the sense that many evangelicals would suppose. Rather than seeing welcome as a means to an end, the means of welcome is itself the stage from which the love of Jesus is demonstrated in living color. “The Christian Gospel is the Word become flesh. This is more than and other than the Word become speech” (Niles 1951, 96).

Park says, “The whole life of Jesus was that of hospitality”, and as Pohl states, “Jesus gave his life so that persons could be welcomed into the Kingdom” (1999, 29). If God’s own creation wasn’t enough to reveal his heart toward us, Christ in the incarnation makes it crystal clear; we are a loved creation, and the Creator has done everything to welcome us back home.

“In Christian hospitality, the ultimate host is Christ, says Park, and we, as believers, are welcoming neighbors to the table of Christ’s resources, as we together “come as equals” (Pohl 1999, 158).

We, as a family, love to entertain, create space, and allow for human connections in our fragmented, and disconnected world. What we’re learning, however, is that to offer food, and a warm atmosphere is just the beginning of the sacred liturgy that is hospitality. We must incarnate this loving attribute by entering the lives of others and offering ours. It’s one thing to open a door and welcome someone in, it’s quite another to open the heart.