Carrying the Flag by Wil Triggs

I’ve worn suits to church—white shirts from the dry cleaners with heavy starch. I’ve also worn t-shirts, Hawaiian shirts, sport coats, even turtlenecks in the winter. And then there’s the Ukrainian folk shirt, the Russian chapka hat and the reindeer boots made for the Russian Arctic.

Yes, styles of dress change.

When we were missionaries with College Church some seven years ago, we had the privilege of participating in the missions festival “as missionaries.” It’s a very different experience to participate in this special time from that perspective. The festival is a busy time for missionaries, packed with meetings and opportunities to connect with different people, groups, classes and the whole church through the worship service. The Russian fur on the head and reindeer boots were especially handy when we used to have the “spring” missions festival in what seemed like the dead of winter.

I remember the traditional Russian and Ukrainian clothes we wore. I remember our son, hanging out with John Leaf and other MKs. I remember making a big pot of borscht for people to taste. Sharing life with other missionaries was always a gift. I recall the intemse interest and prayer support from adults. I especially enjoyed presentations on Sunday morning in the STARS classes, and how, even years later, some of the people remembered what we said and told us they were praying for us.

At one festival, our Sunday evening assignment was the two-year-old preschool class. Seriously? Two-year-olds? Based on our experience, if any missionary needs encouragement (or anyone really), he or she needs to visit the two-year-olds.

We kept the teaching simple: We explained that there are children who live in a country called Russia and that Jesus loves them. We also had one of our “matryoshka” dolls—Russian nesting dolls. We showed the little ones the first and largest doll; then opened it to reveal the second doll; then the third doll, lining them up on the table as we went along. Each doll was met with gasps of surprise and delight. We held up the tiny second-to-the-last doll and asked if this was the last doll, and when we opened it and showed the final doll, (a twig of wood with two black dots for eyes), the children broke into enthusiastic cheers and spontaneous applause.

Throughout the festival, there are meetings and presentations for missionaries, so that they can learn from one another and be encouraged and challenged in a variety of ways. I remember sharing heartfelt struggles and engaging in times of prayer with fellow missionaries, some who are still serving today. Others who have since died or moved on to another form of work or service. This is happening this weekend, too, with our current missionaries. And it is a blessing.

Looking back, I remember a sense of love from the church and my sense of obligation to serve the church well in my missionary work.

When there were flag processionals as part of the worship service, it was a big deal when our church acquired the flag of Russia (as opposed to the hammer and sickle of the U.S.S.R.). And several of us missionaries served in that area, so it was interesting to see who would be chosen to carry either the flag of Russia or Ukraine.

Now, participating in the festival as a non-missionary member of College Church, I relish the time to hear the perspectives of our missionaries from different parts of the world. I’ve noticed over time that the seemingly constant changes in the world today make for more rapid change and upheaval. This is true not just in our news and political realms, but in the global missions efforts as well.

Yet the earthly changes we experience as people do not stop the living God from working in big and little ways every day. Today even.

This weekend, I look forward to the missionaries participating this time round: nineteen missionaries, seven from watch countries, all here to be with us. Old friends, new faces—I’m hoping to learn at least three new things to help me in my sense of outreach and missions. How can I pray better? What might my next step be? How can I encourage these missionaries in real ways? What of their stories will I get to hear?

And during this festival, as in all the other festivals, when I see the black flag that represents persecution, we think and pray for so many people in many different countries of the world. We know some of their names, but there are many others whose names we don’t know. We can lift them in prayer to God, who knows not only their names, but also every hair on their head and every tear they cry.

Looking ahead, I can’t help but think of the vision John received. The blessing of so many people, from all over the world and across the whole canvas of history itself, all coming together around the Lamb. It is where we are headed, and why we long to reach out, that others from every corner of the world might join us. As we begin this special time, let us consider the heavenly kingdom that will include people from every tribe coming around the Table.

And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on earth.” Revelation 5:9, 10

The Believable God by Wallace Alcorn

Most of Julian Barnes’ novels are semi-autobiographical so we aren’t certain who is speaking, the fictional character or the novelist himself. In his Nothing to Be Afraid Of(2008), he has his older brother Jonathan, a professional philosopher, confessing: “I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him.” 

I find this at once profound and courageous. This fictional character seems to be saying: The god in which I once (naively) “believed” I find unbelievable. What I do find believable, however, is my longing for a god in which I can believe. 

He constructed his own notion of God, so that what he accurately finds unbelievable is his notion of a god but not yet the believable God. He can imagine a god only to the extent he can project beyond the finest humans he knows to something of an ideal man, a superman. Even as an image created, this is not yet God and, therefore, not yet believable. 

It is rather like an ant looking up at an elephant and saying to himself: Well, I’m glad that big thing, whatever it is, didn’t step on me. But I won’t believe in this thing until it sits down with me on my level for a cup of coffee and we can chat in my language about what interests me. I want to know what it can do for me. I want something “believable,” i.e., something in which I am able and also willing to believe, whatever that means.

Nothing a man—whether Barnes, his character, or one of us—can find is ultimately believable. We can’t find God because we don’t know where to look. 

We understandably look within, but what we find is an aching void crying out to be filled by something believable. We reasonably look outward and around us but what we find is equally disappointing. We miss him, without much of an idea of who he is. 

Although Barnes’ character uses the personal pronoun he, his language would more accurately express his actual sense of the matter if he used the neuter it. So, too, would the common noun god rather than the proper noun God. (Such is what he actually supposes.) 

God, in fact, is a person—not a concept, influence, or even a force. He is not some thing to be found, but a person who finds. Yet, his having found us is not what makes God believable, only believed. His believability, as it were, is absolute whether believed or not.

It is God, who alone is ultimately believable, who must find us. And he has. It is ours, then, to be found. Our job is to respond to God who always has found us—even when we weren’t looking or looking, but elsewhere.

You Find Me In The Desert by Virginia Hughes

You Find Me in the Desert

I miss you before I leave.

Your guiding words, 

are meant for others.            

Your time, your smile, 

Dis . . .  appear . . . ing . . .

Your way to SHOW ME this.

Your gentle touch,

I do not feel.

Not a new lamb 

seeking the outer edges.

Prone-to-wander-heart,

walking out a little farther, 

day by day, by day.

The narrow road 

widening to hold

twisting truth:

You do not love 

me anymore.

No talk today.

All day? All day.

Days turning on each other.

Week one,  

then four. 

What is forever 

but a day passing time, 

chaining one, onto another.

A name forgetting its name,

and when forgotten,

gone.

No pressure to do for you, 

lying in green pastures,

following by still waters, 

feasting at full tables.

I could never please you anyway.  

I turn away, 

from comforting. 

No rod and staff I know. 

Food here is never tasty 

As in your fields all grow.

Where is the water

in the desert; I don’t see.

Thorns scratch, legs bleed.

Snake slithers, rattle warns.

Living water, such a thirst.

All desert - no water, and a curse,

dust storms blow,

stealing breath.

Running and falling into a pit of stone.

Pleas catching in a drying throat.

Light dims. Shadows lengthen.

Darkness falls.

Sad.

Sorry.

Lost.

Lonely tears.

No one hears.

Is that a calling voice?

Ever stronger.

Answer with a choking cough.

Here you are.

Finding me in darkness.

Covering me with kindness, 

My cup runneth over.

Drink, yes drink your fill.

Anoint my head with oil.

Bandages tighten.

Medicine sting.

Lift and carry, everlasting arms won’t drop me.

I lean.

I have missed you so much.

I tried to forget you when my heart broke,

scattering itself against desert rocks and crags.

Never you who forgets or departs.

Only I.

Not knowing how much I miss you

until I see you again. 

And now remembering,

what was doubted. 

It is the end of the day, 97.

We are all here, 98.

Because you have loved, 99.

You have 100,

I have counted.

Thirsting for God in the Desert by John Maust

A few days before writing this article, I sat at my 91-year-old mother’s bedside in the hospital, watching her suffer from ferocious thirst. 

Because of fluid in her lungs, Mom was severely restricted in her intake of liquids. Throughout the previous night she had tossed and turned, craving water to slake her thirst and cool her throat. The occasional ice chip just wasn’t enough. She begged for more water, but the nurses weren’t budging. 

“If felt like I had a desert in my mouth,” she said wearily in the morning. 

Mom’s painfully graphic description stuck in my mind. What did it feel like to have a desert in one’s mouth? 

I had one previous experience with the desert and intense thirst—nearly four decades ago during the “Wheaton College in Israel” study program. 

One Saturday eight of us students decided to walk from Jericho to Jerusalem, climbing the trail up Wadi Qelt some 15 miles. Don’t ask me why we decided to go up to Jerusalem (3,600 feet higher above sea level) instead of down to Jericho in the blazing sun of mid-summer. 

We took a 5 a.m. taxi from Jerusalem to Jericho, and then blithely set off into the desert, hiking the trail snaking along the edge of the gorge back in the direction from which we came. 

We each carried two small canteens of water and a couple of peanut-butter sandwiches, figuring this would be like a walk in the Israeli park. Starting out, we enjoyed seeing the remains of the ancient Roman aqueduct and the historic Greek Orthodox monastery of St. George. 

Our stroll took a more serious turn when two in our group started complaining of thirst and asking for sips of others’ water. Then they began seeing and talking to people who weren’t there, and we realized that heatstroke was now part of the plan. 

Thankfully, we encountered some local folks who agreed to shoulder these two up the mountain to the road and drive them to Jerusalem in their Volkswagen. 

Meanwhile, the rest of us soldiered on in the sun, increasingly parched and wondering where to find a drink in the wilderness. At one juncture, the snarling dogs of a Bedouin sheepherder came after us, apparently thinking Americans were back on the menu. But it was the thirst that plagued us most. 

One by one and by different means, members of our group abandoned the hike and found ways back to Jerusalem. I made it to the outskirts of the city in a pretty decrepit and nauseous state, there flagging a taxi the rest of the way to our student residence. 

Some believe the valley in Wadi Qelt is referenced by David in Psalm 23 as “the valley of the shadow of death.” Thankfully, our group encountered only the shadow part. 

This experience brought alive to me those passages in Scripture where thirst for water is compared to thirst for God. 

“O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you,” David writes in Psalm 63 while in the wilderness in Judah. “My flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” 

Similarly, Psalm 42 says, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” 

While most of us will remember a time when we felt physically thirsty, when was the last time our soul thirsted for God? When last did every fiber of our being yearn for a closer, more intimate walk with Christ, for a deep drink of Living Water? What difference would that make in our daily lives? 

As I write these words, we just received word that my mother will be released from the hospital. When her condition had looked critical, the extended family and I prayed intensely for God’s hand of healing and recovery for her. Not only had the Lord graciously answered our prayers, but He had used Mom’s illness to increase our thirst for Him. 

None of us wants to go through a desert-like experience. But it’s interesting how God often uses the hard times to intensify our longing for him. In that regard, I’d say the desert can be a very good thing.

Morning and Evening Prayers

Here are two prayers—the first a morning prayer from Wendell Hawley and the second an evening prayer from Ellen Elwell. May these prayers frame your day.

Blessed and glorious God,
Author of our salvation, sustainer of our life, giver of all that we have—
incline our hearts to believe your Word.
We are so obsessed with trivial things, but we want to be captivated with things eternal.
So much of little worth gets our attention.
We confess inattention to your Word.
We confess the fickleness of our affections, and our unbelief limits our trust that you, O God,
are able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think.

We don't see our prayers answered with such abundance, and we doubt.
We know our problems are greater than we can solve.
But we are afraid to go out on a limb and really cast our care on you.
What if you don't answer as we want?
What if a much-needed job doesn't appear?
What if family relationships don't improve—but get worse?
What if loved ones remain disinterested in spiritual things?
What if my desperate heart's cry goes unanswered?

Lord, I'm not like Habakkuk,
who witnessed everything crashing around him and still rejoiced in the Lord.

I confess that I'm like Asaph,
who realized how bitter he had become at the bewildering events of life.
But like the psalmist, we've come to the house of the Lord . . .
It is here that we see things more clearly,
You will guide me,
counsel me,
strengthen my resolve,
shelter me in the storms,
steady my footsteps,
meet my needs,
quiet my soul.
My prayer from the depths of my heart is . . .
Deliver us from foolish charges, senseless complaints, ignorant doubts.
Saturate our souls with the greatness of Christ!
Make our faith in Christ and his goodness unshakable.
Make our trust in Christ so absolute that nothing can erode it.

We believe; help thou our unbelief.
May we not stagger at the promises of God. . .

(from A Pastor Prays for His People by Wendell C. Hawley)

Dear Father,
"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep." These words, plucked from a familiar children's prayer, still resonate with me. Somewhere deep inside me, they tap into adult-sized fears that sometimes surface in the night. Though my slumber might be disturbed by bumps and creaks, it's more often my uncertainties of the future or fears of complicated tasks and relationships that leave me tossing and turning. Yet all the while, Lord, you quietly and sovereignly watch over me. No problem or situation is unknown to you or too big for you to solve. No care or fear I have is beyond the scope of your understanding. Tonight instead of counting my worries or even counting sheep, may I rest in the countless ways you provide for me. For you are the Good Shepherd, I am your lamb, and you have promised to be with me.

(from Timeless Grace: Prayers for Every Occasion by Ellen Elwell)

Note: both their books are available at the church book stall between services on  Sunday morning.

Smiling Lessons by Virginia Hughes

With infant’s tiny hands gripping tightly from the beginning of life, sharing starts early for all of us--grappling over toys, snacks, space, time and attention. Repeatedly these “please share” lessons come into our lives and we learn and hopefully teach them to our own children. Let go of things and embrace Christ and people. We learn what is truly important.

Raising children is a series of steps in letting go. Just as the baby is born, medical hands reach, clean, check, measure, weigh and wrap the precious bundle. We wince as our baby’s blood is drawn, are you really going to poke that needle into her ittybitty foot? There is no sparing of skin with the blessing of thorough medical care. There is constant poking, prodding, injections, tears and a schedule of well checks.

The world is at your door reaching for your infant and in time you release her to God, relatives, church care, care givers, teachers, coaches, camp counselors, friendships, higher learning, employers and young adult life, life, life!  Dating turns to courting and here is the chosen person and mate for your child you trusted God to find. My daughter is in love with a stranger and the double bonus is that the stranger loves her. Great gulps of graciousness, let’s set the date and celebrate this marriage we prayed for from her earliest days!

Everything that prepares did not prepare me for letting go in that singular way. The young couple hopes for blessing, while I pray they love God first over all, choose him in their hearts most of all. Make him the center of their lives and future. Even if the fiancé is a prince of a fellow, my prayers pace over their souls. Be sure, be very sure. Daughters, hold out for the best one in this short life that becomes very long if spent in misdirection, regret and lousy company.

As I scrutinize, the Lord reminds me to hold everything with an open hand, fingers flat, not curled so tightly, grasping my loved ones to myself. I question if this is the right one for her is he, is he, is he?

I hear the still small voice, “Stop with the stranglehold on your child.” We have this ongoing conversation my Heavenly Father and I: How can I keep her safe if I hold her in an open hand?

Trust me and know you are both in my hands.

Dear Lord, pardon me, but I do not always trust you with my children who you created, who are yours; who you gave to me. I know from experience things don’t always go well or turn out nicely. You give, and you take away. This world is a grabby, sinfully wild place.

Yes, but you are in my hands. You, your daughter and the young man.

I know. However, I also know you don’t play by the rules I made up to help myself feel safer in your hands.

Even so, open your heart; open your hand.

If my hand is open, anything may be taken from it.

Yes, yes but you must trust me.

Let us imagine I let go. I still watch as a hovering drone, hands on the track to detect trains going off the rails, ears oscillating at the slightest sound as a deer panting for water. I don’t want to watch my child struggling with improv when I can write a far better life’s play with a few twists, a slight edge, a little rain, but well-honed, trusted characters and a happily ever after. Would it be so bad, the older, wiser me at the helm pulling the strings and writing the lines? I imagine the Lord may say, “I’m the Lord of all things, and I don’t wear out, but you in your mothering role, you are wearing me out.” It’s exhausting and time to let go.

Then the surprises start flowing in as wedding plans commence. The soon to be in-laws are loving and friendly and we immediately like each other. They have their own struggles to learn English well enough to pass citizenship tests. When they pass, I smile.

It is time to plan a long distance wedding. My daughter phones and we frequently discuss plans for hours. I doubt we talked this much when she lived at home and this brings many smiles. Extra visits up to Ann Arbor have us spending more time with her fiancé. He is no longer a stranger. Sincerity shines and I see he really loves my daughter. I smile.

I need be required to take covenantal parental vows and tack them to the mirror reminding myself of my acquired different role. Trust the Lord. Always pray. Be encouraging. Be available. Don’t manipulate and control circumstances pretending it’s about your deep care for her. Be generous in every way and smile.

The day before the wedding, surrounded by buckets of water, roses, chrysanthemums, seeded eucalyptus and high hopes, my three daughters and I are arranging wedding flowers for hours and hours. We work our way through centerpieces, chair decorations, bouquets and boutonnières. The flowers in my hands and conversation with my daughters are a gift rounded by giggles and laughs all day until we finally go to bed around midnight with all the flowers tucked in and ready.

The wedding day is here and standing in the procession, right before we walk down the aisle, the groom appears with the vintage ring pillow crocheted with love by my sister who went to heaven four years ago. He hands it to my 90 year old mother standing in front of me and asks Mom to pray before the ceremony begins. My mother prays for God to be Lord of their lives and center of their lives together, may they grow in grace under his loving watch. May our great and most loving Heavenly Father smile upon them and bless them as only he is able. Amen.

What a sweetness that my sister whom we miss

made that little pillow and feels present here today. What a wonder that my mother at 90 is able to clearly pray and walk with ease as part of this wedding procession. How beautiful my daughter and husband are as they walk together. What love is being expressed by this couple as they make vows to love each other. The string ensemble plays “Be Thou My Vision,” while the Lord of our hearts fills us with his love and graces us with smiles.

Look Likes a Mountain to Me by Lorraine Triggs

One significant fact you need to know about me is that my roots reside in the flat landscape of Detroit. This is a city where major east-west arteries are called mile roads and run unhindered through the city and suburbs. This is a city where you get on Interstate 94 and actually go west, real west, to Chicago. We don't deal with mountains, no matter how high or tall they are.

My husband, on the other hand, is from the Golden State full of freeways and roads that constantly run into mountains or foothills (which still look like mountains to me). The news of a wildfire at Lake Elsinore takes me back to the first time this midwesterner went to California. 

I do have to concede that California's freeways are built well. They have to be with all those obstacles, but you can take the 215 to the 15 to the Ortega Highway and snake your way to San Juan Capistrano from where Mom lived. I had no idea what any of this meant.

But that's exactly what my husband, his mother and I were doing, snaking our way to San Juan Capistrano in my mother-in-law's sturdy American-made sedan. Mom lived in the "inland empire," which was acceptably flat, nestled between a couple of different mountain ranges.

As we were driving, the only issue I had on the otherwise beautiful drive was those mountains that loomed large on the horizon as we took an exit to to Lake Elsinore.

I looked over at my husband who was clearly enjoying the drive on California roads again. "Where is San Juan Capistrano?" I asked.

"On the other side of the mountain."

"How will we get there?" I, the innocent flatland native, asked.

"We drive over the mountains," my native California husband replied.

I was silent. What? Was this a joke?

It wasn't. And this was supposed to be fun.

My first car ride over the mountains was a mixture of terrifying drop offs (note: no guard rails on the sheer cliff side of the road) to breathtaking beauty of evergreen trees and flowers. 

The road wound back and forth and scaled the mountain. We climbed so high that the view of the desert valley was starting to look the same as it had from the plane when we flew in. At a certain point in the drive, Wil confessed, "When I first went on this road as a kid, I was terrified."

Gee thanks. I am sure I didn't say one word until we began our descent and didn't fully relax until we began what seemed like a gentle slope down toward the beautiful Pacific coast. Note: after we returned home, all Wil's aunts told me that they would never drive that "treacherous" road.

Sometimes my walk with God resembles the Santa Ana mountain range by Lake Elsinore and not the flat miles of roads of my childhood.

I know that I'm going someplace good.

But I look up at the looming mountain of anxiety and wonder how I'll make it to that beautiful destination. Or I'm traveling back and forth, climbing what seems like treacherously high ground. I know I'm just a few feet away from a cliff and sudden and terrifying crash-and-death.

"How will I get there?" I ask God.

Over the mountain, of course, with all of its terrifying moments and unfound fears. The road God gives us is not always flat, not the familiar and easily navigated roads I grew to love and trust as a child.

But I know at the other side and along the way is the breathtaking wonder of God's peace and its guard rails around my heart and mind, and the Spirit's whisper to look beyond the mountain cliffs to where my help truly comes—the One who made the mountains and will not let my foot slip.

I lift up my eyes to hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved. . . . Psalm 121:1-3

Wholehearted God by Kylie Hultgren

The Lord is righteous in all his ways and faithful in all he does—Psalm 145:17 (NIV)

I think a good way to describe me is scrambled. Not like the eggs, but then again, maybe that is a good description. I throw small pieces of myself into so many different places. A little segment to this friendship, a bit to this relationship, a small portion to this assignment and even smaller portion to this event. I find my work and my efforts half–hearted, or maybe even a quarter–hearted. Each task sucks out a sliver of me, and the reality is that nothing has all of me. I feel spread out, but spread only into these little pieces. Unfortunately, none of these bits and pieces accurately represent who I am as a whole.

What brought me to this eye–opening and heart–wrenching understanding of myself was a clearer understanding of who someone else was. I found myself eye to eye, breath to breath and heart to heart with the very One who embodies consistency and faithfulness. He puts his everything into what he does, and nothing he ever commits himself to is partial, half–hearted or mediocre. Yahweh alone is completely and thoroughly wholehearted. 

A few months ago, I began doing some calligraphy with ink. One of my favorite things is to make cards with certain Swedish sayings or verses on them. The words seem so foreign, yet perfectly normal all at the same time, and  I cannot help but artistically write them out. Full confession here: I don't know a lot of Swedish words or expressions without the help of the Internet or my Farfar (Swedish for "grandfather"), but as I was aimlessly searching the Internet, I discovered one of the most profound and  beautifully ornate words—“helhjärtad," translated into English as “wholehearted."

I clung to this little word, because it is often un-useful for us. The reason we find it un-useful is because no one quite seems to fulfill its high demands of reliability. The word "wholehearted" or “helhjärtad” carries with it a rare commitment, one that we humans do not comprehend or know how to live up to.

Even the word itself is connected and whole. I found this out the hard way because I initially wrote “whole” and “hearted” as separate words, only to find it's one word. Think about the words quarter-hearted or half-hearted. They are split up, disconnected and scrambled. We do not know what it means to be “helhjärtad,” because we are so busy being scrambled, so busy being busy, so busy being needed. But are we actually really needed? That is for another musing for another Saturday. But the question truly is, do we ever do anything wholeheartedly?

The term wholehearted is hardly ever used in our culture, because it would be extremely difficult to describe anyone as wholehearted. The more I try to tackle this concept in my own mind, the more I am brought to the feet of the triune God who is wholehearted in all of his ways. He does not partially heal, slightly remove sin or somewhat hear his people when they call to him. He is 100% attentive and 100% involved. He is a “helhjärtad” God, wholehearted in word and deed. Totally wholehearted in the way he not only approaches me, but also interacts with scrambled old me.