Great and Terrible Times

In Cry of the Soul, Dan Allender and Tremper Longman write, “The Psalms disclose God’s fiery love for His people. He draws us to the extreme edge of life, where we cannot live by careful, well-planned control. This is where the desert begins.

        “How can we begin to understand the nature of God’s anger unless we enter into our own?   

        “Unrighteous anger is a dark energy that demands for the self a more tolerable world now. Instead of waiting for God’s redemption according to divine design and timing.

        “Righteous anger invites change.”

        Recently, I’ve thought a lot about change. To be fully alive, of course, is to embrace change. How could Christ transform us from depravity to the abundant life without change?

        Babies form in the womb, but how could they grow to full maturity from within that inner sanctuary? Once born, children fill our homes with laughter, joy, energy, and a reason to make the world a better place, but how could they fulfill the dream their Father had for them as He knit them in our wombs if we don’t bless them to go, leaving our homes barren once again, void and wanting?

        A very cerebral part of me cognitively both understands and accepts the great role of change in our lives. Another part of me is like the 660-foot-thick foundation of the Hoover dam trying to hold back the terrible tide of change.

        I—and to some degree—all of MWP pivots on the cusp of change. We’re about to send out five of our Core Leadership team to dangerous and unknown destinations. Some of them will join larger teams; some will carry on alone.

        Whitney and David will leave us for at least three years, maybe longer. Matt, Audrey, and Olivia will be gone one month. By the time they return, I will be back in Africa, and it will be a very long time before we are all reunited, if ever. As Gandalf warned in Fellowship of the Rings, perhaps not all of us will return. Those of us who do will certainly be forever changed.      

        Our great and terrible day fills me with so much hope, and so much grief. The life-giving-mother of me shouts with joy for our troops moving out, full of hope as salt rubs off them as they stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the world in airport lines, food lines, orphan homes…whomever they touch, wherever they go. The fleshly-Hoover-dam of me clings, wails her protests, and grieves loss.

        Yesterday, as Milton and I led the commissioning service together, he prayed as we shared the Communion, “God thank You for sending your Son, and yet—in one way—You didn’t send Him. He chose to come.”

         In that prayer, a watershed of God’s grace poured out upon me and I unclenched my fist for the first time in days…

        Two of the ones MWP is sending this time are Whitney and Olivia, the two daughters who still lived at home (Spain and Portugal) with us when we discovered that first child brothel.

        Now, years later, Whitney is moving with her husband, David Milton, to Peru. Their union is divine, and uniquely mirrors the ecumenical heart of Make Way Partners to mobilize the entire Body of Christ.

        Whitney’s denomination is Baptist, and she went to a Wesleyan university. David is half Lebanese; his denomination is Lebanese Maronite Catholic, and he went to a secular university, but also did much mission work through a Presbyterian student ministry.  It has been so beautiful to watch both churches come together to bless, encourage, and send this young couple in the same Spirit.  Click here: To read an article about David and Whitney by Greg Garrison in the Birmingham News.

        Olivia is my youngest child, and is going to Sudan for the first time, without me. She is part of an exciting team, which Matt McGowen (MWP Sr. Field Coordinator) will lead, but every part of my flesh wants to cling, control…play God. Trusting a ferocious God is both a great and terrible thing.

        Many of the team members pictured here from the last Sudan mission team will return to Sudan next week. New members will join them. They come from Tennessee, Colorado, Texas, Pennsylvania, Alabama, New York, Oklahoma, and also Kenya and Australia.

        I thank each of these team members for forsaking an unrighteous anger that as Allender and Longman say, “demands for the self a more tolerable world now.” Instead, they choose a righteous anger that shows us how to live the life Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done [through us].”

        These teams will provide medical care, vacation Bible school, and women’s ministries for the staff, orphans, and community in both Darfur and Southern Sudan.

        I thank you, too, because it is your faithful support of prayer and finances that makes all this great and terrible work possible. You can follow the team’s great and terrible journey—and know exactly how to pray—through my blog, or expand their work by financially supporting it!

Love, your sister along the journey, 
k