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In the story there is pain and healing, and both the pain and the healing are caused by family
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Slow down. Take the time. Tea time.
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Eugene Peterson wrote a book titled “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society.” He reminded us that the Kingdom of God is not built quickly or easily, but requires a long journey of obedience.
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My first visit to Suzdal, Russia was 15 years ago this summer, and my first thought when we arrived was "What I am doing here?" I had come with my fellow team members and a few translators, all exhausted from a week of camp and wandering the streets as foreign tourists.
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In forty years of ordained ministry I have heard countless numbers of parishioners ask, “Why do we have to send money to foreign missions when we have so many needy people right here in our own back yard?”
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I struggled over this title. To Christians these four words conjure up a scene, a song, a promise so deep that there can be only one meaning. Yet I learned about something new last week that brings another beautiful color to its significance.
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In times of war we talk about collateral damage, which means destruction of people or things who weren’t the intended target. In Missions we can use the term collateral blessings, which means benefit to people who weren’t our intended ministry target.
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Fifteen years after I met them, a photo of my first “family group” at Kambari camp in Vladimir region, Russia, remains on my bedside table, the smiling faces of orphan children and teenagers now grown—some with whom I’ve lost contact, some adopted, but all still right next to me as I sleep.
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My parents’ generation, growing up in the 50’s where the shadow of the U.S.S.R. loomed ominously, was raised in distrust and fear of Russia and Russians. Cold, cruel and communist, surely it was a country and people not only mysterious and unkind, but opposed to the vibrant and free American dream for which their parents and peers fought.
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I’ll never forget Father Andrei. Father Andrei is the priest of the Russian Orthodox church in Komsomolsk, the small rural town housing the orphanage that many of the kids from the ministry center in Ivanovo grew up in. He is a big, happy, laughing, gregarious man with long hair whiter than his age and one of those awesome greyish beards that frames and expands his amazing smile. Sort of a young Santa Claus vibe with a subtle dose of The Dude.
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A generation, a score, two decades, 20 years. It’s long enough to make a difference and be well aware how much work is yet to be done! In March and April 1994, I was working for International Bible Society living in and around Moscow. At that time, I began to realize that the greatest—and most undeserved—blessing in my life was my family.
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I recently came across shoeboxes of letters from summer weeks long ago full of thoughts and stories and photos for keepsake. These particular notes were from Russian and Ukrainian orphans, my teenage peers at the time, anticipating the beginning of the school year, or First Bell as they call it in Russia.
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How do you measure if your efforts are successful? That’s a question we all think about, especially when we’re trying to be good stewards of the resources entrusted to us by God. Probably each of us has our own measure: for some it’s numbers, for others – its the ever difficult-to-measure quality-of-life.
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I invite you back to a previous post, dear to my heart. I have written often about our experiences with Orphans Tree, a ministry which supports older Russian orphan kids – once they are too old to live in the orphanage. Their plight is bleak with little education behind them, precious few resources in the present and a very foggy future before them.
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How can we ever truly appreciate the significance our mothers have in our lives? I realize this is not a very timely post being much closer to Fathers Day than Mothers Day, but the subject has been on my mind quite a bit lately.It was just over a year ago that my mom was diagnosed with stage four cancer and told she had no more than a couple years to live. This kind of news—after you get over the shock—gets you thinking, of course, about how important your mother really is.
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We were in Paris, a layover on our way back from the Ukraine, and we, our mission team, went out to see the city. I was the youngest member (or nearly), and I remember detesting the decadence, the joie de vive, and the way my team mates, mostly adults, were able to compartmentalize their grief.
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There's a big, a big hard sun Beating on the big people In the big hard world
— Eddie Vedder, Big Hard Sun (Originally by Indio), Into the Wild Soundtrack
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