"Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been prevented by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia." (emphasis added) Acts 16:6
I'll get back to this.
The little white salt shaker on my mantle is lonely for it's little red partner, the one that fits so well that, when you bring them together, they hug. White for Canadian snow; red for Thai earth.
I bought the first pair at a market in Chiang Mai, back in the day when language was still choppy and matters of the heart near impossible to articulate. The idea was and is that the white one comes home with me and the red one stays with them. And when we are together, they come together in this symbol of something just not being 'complete' when we're not.
We can speak each other's tongue easier now. But this still says more than any words, Thai or English, could possibly describe.
It's already been almost two years since I was there. And any thoughts of making the trip this January have been squashed by new news of even more deadly variants, and the absence of connecting flights between here and there until at least April 2022.
I'll be raw here and just say this hurts like hell. And not to offend, but if hell represents everything that God isn't, that good isn't, that the way it should be isn't, then it's the right word.
It's an odd place to be when you're wired for 'go'. To 'stay' instead - by what I truly believe is my best understanding of the wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit right now - is not sitting well. To have the 'right thing' feel so 'wrong'...it has a degree of what I'm okay to call suffering.
Surrender and surrender and palms turned upward to help my heart make it so. As the song says, "Where You go, I'll go. Where You stay, I'll stay." **
And this wonderful humility to realize that God is at work in all the weird and wild ways of it either way. When I go, when I stay, He's just always 'there'.
Miki helps remind me. She's one of our graduates who is now involved in an innovating, gentle and respectful mission in Bangkok where a church community has been intentionally built around a coffee shop
35 Church Home Cafe is worth a curious look. I love this concept. I love that she's serving like this. I love that she's surrounded by such an intelligent, faith-oriented community. Ironically, Miki had to 'go' all the way down to Bangkok, a move that took her away from much that is familiar in the north where, to be honest, a lot of Thais are flocking to, to be away from some of the unrest and unpleasantness in the south.
Paul couldn't always go or be where he wanted to go or be either. And not to make a lot of it, but it's of particular interest to me that at least on one occasion, it was to Asia that he was blocked from going. He writes so much in his letters of the anguish of not being with people he loves.
Yup, Paul, I get that now.
** I Will Follow by Chris Tomlin
