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| A tiny delicate flower (not a fig) that grows on the property we hope to develop as a future home of peace for our children. |
I have my tickets!
The exclamation mark at the end of this sentence expresses two ways one can say "hoo boy!"
Hoo Boy!
Yay and hooray, it's finally happening!
After almost two years and nine months away (February 2020 to November 2022), this feels like an unbearable longing fulfilled.
My heart lives on both sides of the world. This is a painful kind of love, as anyone who has been distanced from beloveds knows. Between our two churches, between Sponsors and children, between Suradet and Yupa and myself....our is a very relational kind of connection. And the on-the-ground feature of my role, three times a year for a month at a time, has become an essential component in the partnership and reciprocity that has been so carefully cultivated over the past fourteen years.
Of course, the dangers and anxieties related to the reason for being away, that being of course a global pandemic, only add to the sense of distress at being separated.
So, to now have my tickets for a visit scheduled from October 31 to November 22 feels like something incredible. And something solid, hopeful to hold on to, to work toward, to hang on for, in the easing of my longing to simply be with them.
Hoo Boy!
Yikes! COVID is still circulating around the globe. Travel news reports much chaos at airports. The politics of that part of the world are also making news, and I am paying extra attention to that, given my transfer point is Taipei, Taiwan. Yeah, I know. Besides all that, I hope I still have my travel 'stamina'. The flights are long and demanding. Hope I'm up to the demands.
Hoo Boy!!!
It's okay.
I find these "hoo boy!" exclamation marks force better thinking about who I am and why I do what I do. More to the point, I find I am reflecting about the whole 'mission of God' thing at perhaps deeper levels.
The Mission of God. Missio Dei.
Lest that sound too lofty, it's not really. It's something God has been quite up front about since He started to guide the process by which His heart (His Words) would be written down. It's everywhere in the Bible. But for a long lately I've been lingering in Micah, and especially chapter 4.
Emphasizing His passion for equity, and all peoples having what they need, He paints a picture through the prophet of what it will look like when His mission is fulfilled.
"Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree; and no one will make them afraid." Micah 4:4
Invoking the symbols of agricultural security, Micah describes a scenario where everyone has exactly what they need for safety, health and well being, in the most spiritually riches of ways. And not being afraid....that's everyone living in peace.
I think of our kids. How well fed and nourished and supported and protected they are.....now.
So, okay. Yes!
This is something I can 'hoo boy!' about!! This is worth moving out of my COVID and politically-safe comfort zone for! Something this important, this deeply true, is worth taking some risks.
So. Okay! HOO BOY!
The day of my departure is technically Sunday, October 30, since the flight is technically scheduled for 1 a.m. October 31st. On that Sunday at Highview, I have been invited to reflect even more on what God's been doing with our Thai family, and give something of a pre-trip report.
It's a way off, but for now, what I think is formulating for that report is this: "A three-year absence from being on site at Hot Springs has re-emphasized important understandings about the mission of God.
One, God's mission is not bound by time.
Two, God's mission cannot be thwarted.
Three, God's mission requires I give myself fully.
So much more to unpack on this, and between now and then, who knows what else may surface? For now I am happy, excited to be sitting in between the exclamation marks of this next journey with God to the other side of the world.
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