The bloody razor edge

The rip went all the way from my shoulder fading away into my back as you can see in the photos. This is how we ended a great afternoon of playing in the lake. It was an accident. No one intended any wrong or hurt. No one had malice on their mind. But it still really hurt. The kind of hurt that leaves scars. Scars are great conversation points after the pain fades, but they sure hurt like the blazes at the moment of injury.



We are still hurting from the death of our Muslim friend who died two weeks ago. On Saturday I will be speaking at his memorial service. It cuts like the razor’s edge too . . . it leaves scars on my soul. As I have sat here this day and thought carefully about the theological quagmire that I find myself in, it just hurts like the ripping fingernails that made the cuts in the photo above on my shoulders.

I have decided that death should hurt. The hurt increases my sensitivity to how Christ must have felt on the Cross with the potential deaths of all of humanity upon His shoulders, and His own imminent physical death. Too, I wonder if death makes God as angry as it does me? The end of all that potential, all that fathering, all that son-ing, all that husband-ing, all that creativity, all that loving, all that giving, all that laughing, all that potential . . . ending. Robbed by death’s unexpected arrival.

I too am going to die. It may be today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, after retirement, whenever, but it will happen. I wonder now, if I am squandering all my potential in LIFE, in worrying about the razor edge that is coming? It is inevitable . . . death is coming and that right soon, but is it not today that matters? This moment? I think I will go hug my daughter right now.

You can not smell the roses

We discovered a wild phenomena on Sunday as one of the families were departing our house after our big Sunday BBQ bash. One of their kid’s had his nose stuck in one of my red roses, and I told him, “don’t waste your time with the reds, they don’t have any smell at all to them, try the yellows.” The boy then looks at me strangely and said, “but these reds smell wonderful!” I responded, “you are kidding?” and I was thinking “dude, what have you been smoking?” I continued, “The reds have no smell at all unless you crush the leaves, only the yellow roses have a sweet fragrance throughout the blooming cycle.”

Then the boy’s father came over and smelled the yellows, and then the reds, and he informed me that the reds had a much stronger and sweeter fragrance, than did the yellows! Now I am starting to think that they are jerking my chain and loading my wagon, because I have been growing (and sniffing) these flowers for longer than three years. So we started asking people which smell was better, and which rose was stronger. About 65% of the people asked, thought the red rose had a stronger and sweeter fragrance, and about 35% swore that the reds had no odor at all (as in zero!) and that the yellows smelled like . . . well, roses.



Hhhhmmmmm. Just to make certain certain, I just had Wendy my assistant, go out and smell the roses . . . she came back and confirmed that only the yellows have fragrance.

The bottom line is that not all roses can be smelled by all people. That is what makes us all different at some fundamental level, i.e. individuals. Unique creations of God, that are special and one of a kind (OK at least yellow roses and red roses kinds), with no two of us exactly the same. What is there about this infinite variety that God loves so much, that He insists upon it within the creation? Am I (and even you) that special and one of a kind with Him? It is a breath-taking thought, even if I can’t smell red roses.

The stretching of time

Time must stretch, because we are constantly challenged to do more and accomplish more, and since no one gets more time, then I have decided that time must stretch. Today is a perfect example of what I mean. When I got up this morning at 6:30, there were only two items on my agenda for the day (and week actually). All I needed to get done this day/week (progress today, completion by week’s end) was preparing our worship set for Sunday and writing the sermon for Sunday. Normal, everyday work for the pastor types, right?

Remember my Muslim friend that was killed almost two weeks ago, well, now we are to have a memorial service for him, and the widow wants me involved. This is really tricky, although I have agreed to participate, because he was Muslim, she is rather agnostic, but I am the only vicar-dude she knows . . . but when am I supposed to prepare this? And of course every pastor can tell you that you need to prepare ahead, in case of emergencies just like this. Anyhoo, this negotiation took a fair amount of my morning mental energy.

Then a friend came over this afternoon to get some resources I had pledged toward an evangelism project he and his organization are doing this week. That hand-me-the-money-moment turned into a typical Balkan 2 hour brain blitzkrieg, that left me mentally brain-dead for the rest of the day. I hadn’t even got the music set done, much less looked at the sermon passage for the week. We talked about Board meetings, evangelism strategies, Home Assignment (he will be coming with me for a few weeks as a National Representative), and we discussed his personnel challenges, and then he wanted me to commit to a leadership conference for him this Fall, and then to do some monthly training of his staff on leadership principles (and all of this followed a discussion where I told him how busy was going to be for the next four months!) and then he was wondering when we could just go out and have a coffee! Yikes!

Now the day has filled up with so much more than I started it out with . . . proof that time stretches. But isn’t this typical for everyone? It sure is a typical time stretching day for Dave.

The deaths of a thousand goodbyes

The first time we did this, she was only 7 years old, a second grader at boarding school. We gathered as a family of five in a dark corner of a dirty airport in Rostov-na-danu Russia, and we put Heidi on an airplane and watched her leave us.

That was the flash-back in my mind as I drove home from the airport in Skopje this morning, having put the very same girl an another airplane in a different country and watched her leave us. Oh yes, she is a 19 year old college sophomore now, but it still makes me die a little inside every time we go through this. In 36 hours I will have to do the same with Jake as he heads out for his senior year at boarding school.

These little deaths have a cumulative affect. My soul shrinks each time. My care and concern for people here diminishes. My desire to stay here falls. My sense of powerlessness to protect my children grows. My feeling of isolation from them seems to overwhelm me. My weakness is evident for all to see. If not for the mercy of God, all would be lost.

Somebody out there must be praying for me today.

The world at my door

There were people from Tanzania, Mali, Ireland, Macedonia, England, Iran and Alabama here yesterday. A veritable smorgasbord of nations, all sitting down at our table and having lunch with us. You should have heard their stories. You should attend our church! There we have 11 nationalities represented . . . it is a little bit like I imagine heaven to be: multicolored and multi-ligual. Life together as a group of internationals just has so much more taste to, than the monochrome experiences I had in North America.

All Nations, represented around the throne is the way that heaven is described in the scriptures. But it is so rarely how our churches are here on earth. Especially here in the ethnic-hatred capital of the world, this is so true. In fact I have been party to keeping the ethnic churches/groups separate from one another. Why?

Because in this fallen world, you cannot grow churches up the social scale. You can only move down the social scale. In other words, we began a Gypsy church in Bitola, because Gypsy families started attending the Macedonia services. But when the Gypsy families started attending, the Macedonians stopped attending (I am generalizing here to make a point, not all families stopped coming because they had Christ in their hearts) and so in order to plant the Macedonian congregation, we had to get the Gypsy families out.

We are having a similar problem in Bosnia. The high class folks won’t come to church with the low class folks, and thus it seems to be everywhere in the world. I wonder what Jesus thinks about all of this silliness? I imagine that His heart breaks a bit every time this stuff happens within His family. I hope the joy He has in the multi-cultural International church offsets His sadness in the most segregated hour of the week.

how to tell a 5 year old that her father is dead

Her father was a Muslim (officially). He also was one of the kindest and most compassionate people I have ever met (in truth). Today I tried to explain to his five year old daughter why he is never coming home ever again. I guess I was also trying to explain to his wife the same concept at an adult level. He was tragically killed in an automobile pileup on Wednesday afternoon.

This muslim fellow was an amazing person. He lived in the moment, embracing everyone who came into his path, especially children. All the children loved him. Interestingly enough, he and his wife are well surrounded by folks from the International church, and we were loving back on him . . . and he was joyful, but not at peace . . . and he and I were starting to dialogue about truth, spiritual things, God, the differences between Islam and Christianity, and why there are so many arrogant people that call themselves christian.

All those conversations are now finished. He was killed almost instantly on Wednesday just as his wife and 5 year daughter were getting on an airplane in England to return here to the hairy armpit after a two week holiday. Folks from ICS had to meet them at the airport to give them the tragic news. And then she asked me to come and explain to the child why daddy was not coming home again.

I am way out of my comfort zone. Because I am little like the man we are discussing here. Kids don’t love me, nor am I compassionate and kind. I am much more the snarly kind of pastor (or vicar as they call me). I am the kind that thinks he has most of the right answers, but has little of the character that should come with it. I am the kind that teaches the bible and theology as pretty much black and white stuff, while life itself is only shades of grey. I am the kind that talks lots and lives little. The 29 year old father/husband we are discussing was a better man than me. And all his wife wants to know, is this, “is he OK?” “Is he alright?” “Will I see him again?”

These are not questions that I can answer since I am not God, but I suspect I have answers that she would rather not hear. The other questions I have are about us as a church, and should we have been more direct? More pushy? More shark-like in our evangelism? And I come up with the same answers every time, that you have to be relationally close enough to bear the weight of discussing eternity and God. It just can’t happen any other way. We were getting there, but in the end we were too late.

Life has been tremendously sad since we received the news of his death. There is little hope that he embraced our God in the manner that we believe God must be embraced. And we certainly bear some responsibility here. That salt, was burning in the wound today, as I tried to explain why daddy wasn’t coming home again ever.

my spiritual stomach

This great phrase was used by Dragan, a new believer in the International Church. During the month of August, we have cancelled all formal church services, and instead are having Sunday Dinners together. We are knitting together the body of Christ in fellowship. And it is working out great.

So this week Dragan and his girlfriend were on the schedule to be at our house for Sunday Dinner. I called him up and invited them over for Sunday, and unfortunately, he and his girl were leaving town for holidays, and that is when he told me how torn he was, about whether to come to our home or to go on vacation. He said, “David, my spiritual stomach is hungry!” What a great statement.

I find that my spiritual stomach is not always hungry for God and His children. I find that I can easily take for granted all the scriptures and fellowship that we have, and become spiritually obese.

Dragan encouraged me much with his heartfelt statement, and I suddenly found that I wanted to be with him more too! Please pray for your new brother in Christ, as his father died Sunday afternoon and was buried on Monday. This was completely unexpected, and Dragan’s heart is filled with pain. But may he never lose his spiritual hunger I pray.

they took my car 2 - Spider Sector

That is exactly how the sign read, where the city keeps your hijacked auto, until you pay all said fines and penalties. Spider Sector is a relatively friendly place, since they have all the power (they have your car under lock and key) and the only way that you can retrieve your car is by paying the bill. Jake and I asked around and while there was some disagreement about where this place was actually located, the majority of taxi drivers, believed it to be at the train station.

So we hopped in one of the taxis and headed the train station. Jake spotted the car before I did and sure enough, we were directly under the train tracks. And the spider trucks were busily going in and out, all loaded with cars as they were going in, and empty coming out. They were doing some hot business there.

So we get in line with other unhappy people, paid our fine of $45, and the man gave us our receipt which allowed us entry into the compound so that we could drive our car away.

All cities formerly under socialism have huge parking problems, and they are being compounded daily by more apartment buildings - more cars - no new parking places, but I am not sure that grabbing people’s auto’s off the street is a way to resolve this problem.

But my lesson is learned, I am going back to taxis and walking.

they took my car!

When I parked the car, it was in a fairly normal parking place, and we were only planning to be 5 minutes at the most, as we were searching for a new meeting place for the International Church. Well 5 minutes turned into 20 as it typically does here, and when we returned I say to Mark, “the car is gone!”

And it was. As in no where to be found at all. At first I thought that it had been stolen as was our co-workers car last year in Bosnia, but then I quickly discarded that idea, as our car is not worth being stolen. It is old, with tons of miles on it, and frankly it is pretty beat up and not sexy in any fashion . . . i.e. not stolen car material. Plus the final proof that it had not been stolen, was the fact that I had the key in my pocket (but I checked to just be certain).

No, what happened to my car was that the spider got it. The spider is how we refer to the machine that comes and lifts your car off the street up onto the back of the truck and then it is carted away and placed under lock and key. So now we have to go search out where they keep the spidered autos here in the city. Tomorrow I will let you know how this goes.

six coins, three earrings, one key

In the 13 years since we went to Russia with our parent organization, I have learned that certain things are more difficult to live without than certain other things. For instance, electricity is far easier to live without than is running water. In fact, in my humble opinion, nothing is more difficult to live without for any period of time, than water. The same formula applies to appliances.

The last couple of months have seen us without air conditioning and that is hot sometimes, but not critical. Then the fridge/freezer went out again and they came and got it and kept it for a couple of weeks, but again, not a big hairy deal really. But when the washing machine stopped working 10 days ago, and I called and called and called, trying to get a meister here to repair it, and the clothes piled higher and deeper, (six people generate a lot of dirty clothes in 10 days!) I have come to appreciate a washing machine that works, right up there with running water!

When meister Pero arrived, he greeted the other two meisters who were here working on the fridge/freezer, and they talked shop for a while, (we were having sort of a mini meister convention yesterday), I finally got Pero upstairs to look at the washing machine.

“When is the last time you cleaned the filter?” he asked. “You mean I am supposed to clean the filter?” I responded. “Every month” meister Pero said. “Well meister, this filter has never been cleaned” I boldly informed him. He played with the settings and bit, and then showed me that the pump was not working. Little surprise seeing that the filter had not been cleaned in 6 years.

Long story short, he had to take the entire pump apart because our missing house key was wedged inside the pump along with 24 denars in coins and three earrings and a ton of completely unidentifiable other stuff. We had looked everywhere for that key . . . well except inside the pump in the washing machine that is . . . .

The last 24 hours has seen load after load after load of wash go through the newly cleaned pump. I told each member of the family, that if they planned to see their next birthday, that coins, keys and earrings and other stuff better not show up in the wash any long . . . an essential death threat . . . that is how important a washing machine is to a family like ours.

Today was very calm meister-wise, except the fridge/freezer compressor will not cut off and everything inside is all frosted up, so I turned that off and just called the meister again. I wonder how long it will be before they actually show up and we have a refrigerator again? But who cares as long as we have clean clothes.

The sad affair of the professional christian

Professional Christians are those who put bread on the table and a roof over the heads of their families via the church. They may be the senior pastor of a large multi-staff church or a worship pastor or the solo pastor of a small fellowship, but if you receive your wages from these churches or any type of ministry/mission/NGO or such things, where you are expected to be on all the time, regardless of the actual condition of your soul, then you are by my definition, a professional christian.

No congregation in the world is going to be very understanding if you as the worship pastor, or as any other kind of missionary/pastor, stand up on Sunday morning and announce that, “you know what, its been a really tough week, and I am struggling in my walk with God” or “this week I am having real and genuine doubts about my faith in God” or “I have sinned so badly this week, and instead of preaching today, I think I will just confess my sins instead” . . . or a hundred other such potential statements . . . you will simply lose your job, and find it extremely extremely difficult to find another one in a church.

No. As a professional christian you must appear to enthusiastically and genuinely worship (if you are a worship pastor/leader) or you must as a professional christian get up and preach a theologically correct and emotionally powerful and memorable (at least until the end of Sunday lunch) sermon . . . and this must happen week after week after month after month after year after year. Regardless.

Regardless to the actual condition of your soul. Regardless of the struggles you may have (they may not be allowed to interfere with Sunday services). Regardless to how true and genuine any of your actions actually may be on any given Sunday, the expectations are clear. Regardless of practically all circumstances, temptations, wrongs, passions, hurts, struggles and sins . . . the show must go on. This is the life of a professional christian.

The end result for any professional christian is that sometimes (oftentimes?) we are performing instead of praying, acting instead of worshiping, talking instead of preaching. Sometimes these fake actions force us to turn to God week after week, and that is a good thing. Sometimes though, a habitual process of faking it can take a calling and turn it into a job. Then you may well find yourself faking it all the time.

Of course the solution to this is a vital ongoing daily living relationship with God Himself who can and does renew us and our weary souls. He wants us far more than we want Him and it shows . . . He has made all the arrangements for us to enjoy and benefit from Him, while He takes all of the abuse and difficulties on Himself. A professional christian is pretty useless to the King and Kingdom, unless he/she realizes the act of faking it, repents, and rejoins their soul to the Spring of Refreshment, Jesus Himself and do it for Him, and not a paycheck.

The sweet sweet rain

Our street is flooding, my car is leaking and I have a big ole’ puddle in the passenger side floor, and the bang of the steady dripping of water in the drainage pipes throughout the night kept my niece awake and sleepless for much of the night, we get soaked everytime we have to go to the market for food, the rain has caused the internet to stop working, and the washing machine is still not working though that has little to do with the rain. Sounds wonderful doesn’t it?

It is. After two solid months of no rain, raging wildfires, unbearable heat, scorching winds, and brown everything, the rain is wonderful. Nothing sweeter, no air can be cleaner, no smell is better than dry parched ground soaking up the richest nectar on earth - rain. It is supposed to rain all day, and may it be so!

We need the same in our spiritual lives. Rain from God, it most satisfies our parched souls. I think rain from God is found in relationships. Instead of church services yesterday, we cancelled formal church services, and got together in four large groups across the city and just had fun being together and eating and talking and laughing and experiencing God’s rain. It was sweet sweet.

Jellyfish goo

While swimming innocently in the pristine waters off the Greek coast recently, I was suddenly shocked, literally. Followed immediately by burning on my leg, ankle, and all of my back. Burning which would not go away . . . apparently I swam into a school of jellyfish, and they left their mark on me. It is not uncommon for jellyfish to swarm in the late afternoon, early evening - exactly when I was swimming. These Mediterranean jellyfish are often known as mauve stingers.

It is amazingly easy in life to run into painful, stinging problems that bring much discomfort into our lives. Even in the most ideal settings like a holiday on a Greek beach, can bear difficult situations and hurtful experiences. In fact, the very last time we were at this exact beach, some 7 years ago, Helen stepped on a spiny sea urchin, and you do not want to even imagine how painful it was digging those spines out of her foot!

Sometimes life/work/spiritual life seem to be like the jellyfish experience. I can be mindlessly swimming along, enjoying the atmosphere, the ambience, or the view, the sparkles on the water, when all of the sudden there is a painful burning feeling at work in my life. I have swam into a school of jellyfish. And let’s face it, the jellyfish was not out to get me, it was just being a jellyfish . . . so the why question is mute here, there is no why, stuff just happens.

I only wish that I could respond in life, the same way that I can respond to the burns from a jellyfish. With the jellyfish, I was able to discern what had happened, realize that it was an incident that tomorrow would not be so painful and would fade away in significance, and to go out with my family and have a nice meal, even though I was in some pain physically . . . I knew it would soon pass.

When I run into schools of jellyfish in life though, I often feel overwhelmed and overrun and in too much pain to function! Even though there is often no blame to be laid (remember stuff happens), and even though in the great scheme of things it probably does not mean all that much (especially tomorrow it will be better, less intense, etc) I can still react far too much in relation to what the situation calls for. I need to develop a life perspective that matches my medical perspective, then I will handle the stings of life in a more mature, and Godly way.

Some people may react to this post with a “just stay out of the water man!” kind of attitude, but where is the adventure in that? You could choose to take no risks and have a life of no potential pain, but then again, that’s not living, that’s existing. You have only one life, live it!