Authenticity! During our missionary career I was privileged to witness over and over again God accomplishing mighty miracles of redemption. I have watched in awe as He took tired and tattered lives and transformed them into strong and mighty men, women, boys and girls, powerfully witnessing to His desire and ability to rescue endangered lives. I have seen Him bring hope and light and joy among peoples who had known only darkness and defeat. I have seen God be His loving, perfect self–breaking into time and liberating both individuals and peoples, liberating them so they can glorify Him and discover joy as they live out lives authentically serving Him–reflecting in beauty how they will worship Him eternally. It is in and through such transformed lives, lived out daily amidst the challenges, the crises, the opportunities that come their way, that God shines and draws individuals, families and nations to Himself. So, I ask myself; why do I keep falling into the trap of trying out new ways to package God as if He were some commodity? Why do we, His earnest, foolish people, search so hard for anything other than the powerful, unchangeable Gospel?I fear I and many others fall into blasphemy when we fail to get out of the way and let God be His glorious, overwhelming self in and through our lives. Look at the sunflower, beginning as a tiny seed, then emerging as a seemingly insignificant sprout, next a tenuous plant, growing ever taller until it becomes a flower garden giant, putting on a greening promise of a bloom, and at last a glorious, golden, gladdening blossom hungrily searching for the sun.

Forgive this, my blasphemy,
(one that I recognize)
I keep trying to adorn eternity
Though I am stuck in temporality.

I carefully create high places
Striving for the latest schtick
And the applause of the ignorant
Trying to force your relevance.

I meticulously craft
Innuendos—word’s that
Mystify and spiritualize
Until you are smoke and mirrors. 

I emphasize impartiality
As if you’re too fair to choose,
I deify universality
And sweep away your deity. 

I keep trying to conform you,
I keep Judasizing my worship,
I keep denying any trust.
Destroy my every blasphemy.

May 8, 2019

All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned–every one–to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 53:6