Well I’ve been gone awhile.  Good to go off and see the world, great to come home again.

The cloud of thoughts that hover over the tired surface of my brain are a mix of wonder and awe, sadness and confusion, longing and praise.  I have beheld immaculate beauty recently.  I have walked streets teeming with lostness.  I have seen religion doing it’s sad little victory dance.  I have seen hope overflowing the borders of despair.  And these were not mission trips!  God is good and present and working every where we go and for whatever reason we might find for going there.

I’m sure that my thoughts will find focus on certain particulars over the coming days and weeks, but today I’m at a crossroad.  While I was traveling, I read two books:  Miracles by Eric Metaxas and The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson.  The two weren’t planned to go together–not by myself anyway.  I believe they were very much in God’s plan though.  

And now two truths for the last few weeks of my life:  Our God has made one heck of a glorious planet here! And there are depths of lostness so old and so deep and so profound they steal hope and make one wonder, “Is my God big enough to beat THAT?”

If you haven’t traveled much, you should.  This country and this world are amazing testaments to the grandeur and creativity of the God we call Father and Friend.  The diversity and the vastness, the color and vibrance, the grace and awe are overwhelming and mystifying.  Go see the Grand Canyon, go take a look at the sulfur springs in Yellowstone.  Find a tree ladder somewhere in the tropics and see what the world looks like from the sky. Walk down brick streets in an ancient city.  Look down on the Caribbean from an airplane.  Stand on a mountain somewhere and behold the view.  Dip your feet in an ocean of wonder and delight.  Let your eyes be intoxicated by the colors of nature, flowers, trees in bloom, birds and animals.  Find a monkey in a jungle somewhere and watch in giddy rapture.  

If God can do all that with the mere Word of His lips, what might He do with you?

Yet life is this blessed tension of optimism and despair.  For the wonder of an emotional high, there is an equal and opposite oppression of defeat.  I believe there is a scientific Law about that.  

There is one city that haunts me.  I’m sure I’ll write about it in depth soon enough.  It is beautiful and OLD and steeped in history and tradition and built up in every way around an ancient church.  And so very very misguided.  Religion is more than strong there.  But Christ is conspicuously absent.  

After literally thousands of years of building Law around Love, can God win back the city?  Is my God big enough for THAT?

For some, we do things for so long, our parents did things for so long, our culture has done things for so long, we think we must be getting it super right by now because we’ve been perfecting it for years, right?  It seemed to work for the last generation, and we’re even more staunch than they.  We ‘tradition’ and we ‘serve’ and we ‘follow’ and we ‘work’ so blooming hard, it has to be enough, doesn’t it?

One of the things that breaks me down faster and more completely than anything else is seeing people work themselves to the bone for something they needn’t have worked for at all.  

Grace is free.  And the minute you start thinking you might have done enough to have earned it is the minute one ought to know for sure how terribly terribly far you have to go.  

How sad and despairing to see whole cultures put their stock in that which will not and does not deliver.  It’s just not how He meant for ‘religion’ to go.  At some point it is supposed to become painstakingly obvious that no amount of work will get us there.  But what for the ones who never see that?  What for those who have no hope for something greater?  What for those whose hearts have lost their visionary gene?  For those whose hearts have been altered so as to no longer dream?

Is my God big enough to fix all that?

Can He win back that which has so long been lost?

Can He make that distorted wreck of deceit into the beauty of the sunset dropping into the Haitian shoreline? Can my God do that?

Lord, make us dreamers.  Let us not live in contented slumber sadly believing that the realities of today are the heights of the greatness you offer us.  May we live in the knowledge that eternity has already begun and Heaven is not merely a permanent residence awaiting us, but a reality begging our attention and notice presently.  

Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.                     Ephesians 5:14

Mold us into believers who take you at your Word and stand firm in exultant anticipation of the fulfillment of your Promises.  Make us bold in our prayers and firm in our faith.  Make us miracle recipients and hope-filled servants.  Make us full.  Make us relentless and powerful, consumed by the Power of a God who is ABLE.  I don’t want to hedge my bets or play it safe.  I want to live in the fullness of one who is utterly and gloriously available.  

May we, every day, find ourselves faced with situations, people, and obstacles that beckon the question, “Is my God big enough for that?” and may we, every day, stand firm in our knowledge and belief in the resounding “YES!” that He has promised.  (2 Corinthians 1:20)