Just Drifting

It was a perfect day for canoeing.

The sky was a perfect blue, a light breeze was whispering through the cypress and tupelos, and the air was just cool enough to ward off a sweat. My wife and I had left the kids with the grandparents and taken an hour to explore a millpond. We paddled hard for a while, leaving the dock and mill behind.

The local wildlife was restful, too. We saw a stand of cypress full of sleeping wood storks. A partly submerged log held a family of turtles. A great blue heron took off right in front of us, flapping silently between the trees.

After a while my arms were getting sore, and I felt like, I don't know, like I was missing too much. So I stopped paddling. After a few strokes my wife stopped too. In the clear water we didn't stop, we just... drifted. The canoe grew quiet. I started noticing sounds I hadn't heard before. I could hear the water of the millpond slowly moving downstream. I could hear a swarm of water bugs skittering across the surface. I could hear my heart beating, slowing down. My wife turned around and smiled.

Slowly, slowly, I felt a peace I had been missing for some time. As the canoe finally slowed, then stopped, it occured to me that we weren't making any progress, and that was okay. The place I needed to be in that moment was not further upstream, but right there in that canoe, with the woman I love, basking in the joyous glow of God's creation.


We've been paddling hard in other areas, too, and I think maybe it's time to put down the paddle and drift awhile. We're in the middle of applying to work with a missions agency, and it's a bit overwhelming. We're supposed to be writing autobiographies and formulating our statements of belief, but we're so busy right now doing all the other junk I think maybe we're missing some things. Things we need to hear. Maybe things we have to stop paddling to hear.

I don't want to miss the important stuff. I don't want to paddle hard upstream, get to where we're "supposed to go," only to find that the whole point of the trip was being in that place where we stop paddling and just listen. If we miss that, what was the point?

So I think were going to put down the paddles and drift awhile. Stop working on all the missions stuff, for a little while. There will be time for all that later. I think that, right now, just drifting is exactly where we're supposed to be.

It's Time They Found Out

A friend was telling me the other day about her situation at work. She's one of two professing Christians at her workplace, and has been trying to be a witness to her faith. She's paid close attention to the example she gives of living a Christian life. Recently, the other known Christian, an ordained minister, was found to have been embezzling money. And my friend found herself having to defend the faith in light of this other person's actions.

"How can she do that?" they ask her. "She's a minister! Aren't you supposed to be better than that?"

Now my friend feels like all the work she's put into her reputation is shot. She's built a certain level of trust with her coworkers that has now been damaged by her fellow Christian's indiscretion. And she's on the defensive, not sure whether to rationalize this minister's behavior, or say she's must not really be a Christian, or what.


I found myself thinking, if our witness is based on a reputation of goodness and honesty, it sure doesn't take much to tear it down. Isn't that the knock on Christians, in this country anyway? That we talk like we're better than everyone else, but in the end we do all the same stuff? We lie, we cheat. We cheat on our spouses. And the worst part is, it's true! We're still sinners, and you don't have to look too closely at our lives to see it. We may not do the really nasty stuff quite as much as non-Christians, and we're good at hiding the rest, but not one of us can stand up to close scrutiny. We tell lies to make us look better. We curse at people who cut us off in traffic. We're prideful and vain. We gossip. We condemn. We discriminate. If the witness of our faith is that we live better lives, I have to say it just doesn't hold water.

So what is our witness? If I'm in a community, at work or in my neighborhood or at school, and I want to be a witness to the power of Jesus Christ that lives in me, what do I do? I don't think it's enough just to be good and nice and hope people notice. Let's face it, there are better and nicer people than me all over the place, and many of them aren't believers. And for me, I don't think it's being confrontational with the Gospel. You know, yelling at passersby from the street corner, knocking on doors and asking people if they're going to heaven or hell. It's just not me, and it doesn't fit what I see in Scripture. I'm not saying God doesn't call some people to do that, or that it's never effective, I just don't think it's me.

I think the answer is somewhere around loving people, intentionally. Not letting relationships be superficial. It's so easy for me to pleasant and shallow, to say hello and make smalltalk, never to give offense, to be ready to respond honestly about my faith but never to press the issue. And I don't think that's enough. I think I need to make time to spend with my neighbors, time to allow conversations to progress past the weather and the local football team. I've been spending so much time with church people that I haven't developed meaningful relationships with anybody else, and if I'm going to have a real witness to the world, that has to change.

I've spoken with my wife about it, and she feels the same way. We have some new neighbors moving in, and it's a great excuse to throw a party. We're going to build a fire, roast some oysters and really get to know these people we've been living next to. They know I'm in seminary, but I don't think they know I love them. It's time they found out.

Being Wacky on This Side of the Pond

I came home late the other night from the third session of Share Jesus Without Fear. The kids didn't want to go to bed, it was late and my brain was fried, so it took me a long time to express to my wife what was on my heart. That's okay, she's used to my rambles. It's how I think.

Mostly I've been struck by how little I have spoken of what is most real to me with those who don't know Christ. The Lord has put this burden on me, for a world that is dying without Him, and it's getting heavier. Yet here I sit.

You know, this whole journey started out with discussions about what we were doing with our lives. I remember walking around our snooty neighborhood one night and saying, "This isn't us. We don't belong here." After some prayer and reflection, we both come to realize that the priorities we claimed to have did not match the life we were actually living. We were great at talking the Great Commission, but the evidence of our lives was more American Dream.

Now, five years later, we're working toward foreign missions. That's a big step, right? I mean, taking your family overseas in obedience to God is pretty impressive, huh?

And yet.

The fact is that I'm still living a lot the same way I was five years ago. The changes I thought were so big - quitting my job to go to seminary, moving out of town to a small house, working at a church - are really just a change of scenery. I'm not sure I'm having any more of an impact on the Kingdom of Heaven now than I was five years ago. I like to think my heart has changed, but so far the only evidence is, well, this. This blog. Words. Intentions. And we all know the road Good Intentions paved...

I guess what I'm saying is, it's time for my actions to start matching my heart. Not later, now. Not when I graduate, not when I move to another country, now.

I was a little dismayed when I heard that the missions organization I am working with wants me to tell them about the last person I led to Christ, preferably in the last twelve months. The fact is, I haven't done anything like that, not really. At first I thought it wasn't fair, that it put too much pressure on me, but now... Now I'm glad. Call it what you want, that's a fruit test. And my life simply hasn't measured up. If I'm serious about this being the direction of my life, I need to start living it on this side of the pond, before I ever think about doing it somewhere else.