Wind Blows Deeply

“The cautious faith that never saws off the limb on which it is sitting never learns that unattached limbs may find strange, unaccountable ways of not falling.”
Dallas Willard

I came across a blog today by Mark, whose 26 year old wife has stomach cancer. His constant writing about their life, their day-to-day moments, their son Micah, the support of people around them … I am struck by his honesty, transparency and faith.

Update: Aug 12 – Mark’s wife, Jennifer, died this morning. Please pray for Mark and his son Micah.

Being away from home and community is taking it’s toll on me. In many ways I think I might be putting too much pressure on ‘church’ in terms of what I can get out of it … for it to be too many things – a community, a place to serve, a place to focus on God, an environment to be taught about God. A few things from my conversation with Garth today:

God is using this to teach me something, or to grow me. The test is how I respond.

This desert is a good place to reflect and figure things out. We might want to go back ‘home’, but at the same time home is not what’s best nor is really an option. (It’s also a great place to build sandcastles.)

I need to learn a lot more patience, dependence on God …. and faith.

Prayer will help a lot of stuff. As will a better focus on God.

And yet, although all of this made sense or seemed familiar, it really didn’t do anything for my gut need for a community, for a church to call home. If anything, it made it all the more real, sort of like opening a wound. The unrest of my soul …

I just finished an hour of directed time with God. I spent time with an online devotional and with YFC’s labyrinth. My thought (?God’s points):
- my back aches, like I’ve been carrying a pack that is too full for far too long … on a hike, at the points where it is most difficult, the extras are set aside, down to bare bones so as to continue the journey
- my distractions are more inward than external – I need to set them aside, give them away
- communion – my space with God and God’s space with me … I’ve been canceling dates lately
- on the brink of creation, there is darkness
- why can’t I do it, even when I ask YOU to take over … perhaps my faith needs cultivating

What is church/the Church? I don’t think I’ve experienced what church really is. Since not having a church to call home, I’ve been able to take a step back. Quite honestly, I’ve associated church primarily with community. Perhaps it is because I rarely “experience God” there. And yet none of what I’ve just written really encapsulates the unrest I feel. I really want to find a community of believers, but am frustrated by the search (and perhaps also in not knowing what it is that I am looking for).

Why does JS Spong’s book “Why Christianity must change or die” make me feel so defensive? A quote on page 58 might answer my question … “Perhaps in their [religious people's] quest for security, they identify their concept of God with God. when that concept is challenged, they think God is being challenged.” In the beginning of his book, he discussed how society via modern advances has been able to draw away some of the attributes commonly associated with God. It kind of hit me when he talked about medicine. Not that it is bad per se, but that humans seem to consider very little involvement of God in the issues of life and death …. i.e. that we are now able to ‘play God’. So as a pharmacist, what does this mean? I’ve been up in the ICU for a month, and we keep all sorts of people with all sorts of disease alive with our drugs (among other things). I’ve lost sense of where the line is.

What am I suppose to be now or ‘when I grow up’? Being a pharmacist does not seem to be fulfilling my calling. Which leaves two options: re-examine being a pharmacist or re-examine my calling.