a day escape and what we can do for HIS name

As you've been hearing, the potential for things to be heating up politically very soon is growing, and with classes starting Monday and visiting professors coming this weekend and more meetings this week than we can remember, yesterday we did the ONLY thing we could do: went to the beach :)

We called it Family Day and all our resident families headed off after about an hour of checking the political climate and calling a few people to make sure the long trek was safe.  Our Chief Security Advisor, Abel :), finally sent us off at 9 with his blessing, and we never heard or saw a lick of anything exciting (except a few men fighting over a chicken), Praise the Lord.

And it was GREAT.  The weather was perfect, everyone had a fantastic time, and we were even joined by this bizarre bird that ended up becoming quite friendly.  Dodo was the bravest of them all, though, with the bird making itself quite at home on her head until finally Lily said, "Go Away!"

We brought the kayak, snorkel gear, brownies and water guns, too, which really just resulted in a lot of behaving like children :)  It was wonderful, and just what everyone needed...an escape...with so much good work and potential home-bound-ness ahead.

Today we are refreshed, getting ready for our first staff meeting of the year at 9, and ready to go!

John and O. Chambers helped my spirit get there, too, this morning with this reminder:

How many of us are expecting Jesus Christ to quench our thirst when we should be satisfying Him!   We should be pouring out our lives, investing our total beings, being "witnesses to Me" (Acts 1:8).  That means lives of pure, uncompromising, and unrestrained devotion to the Lord, which will be satisfying to Him WHEREVER He may send us.  Beware of anything competing for your loyalty with Jesus, even service.


I guess it is the US sin-chip in us that makes us so concerned about what He is doing for us, how He is meeting our wants and needs and desires.  But what a joy to think about today as a chance instead to satisfy Him, investing my total being.  Who among us EVER decided that we wanted to live a slightly soiled, compromising, and undevoted life?  And yet, it comes if we aren't deliberate about purity, unabashed devotion and NOT compromising.

Praise the Lord for a new chance today to just be His, and to please Him just with our love and what pours out of us because of that love.

I also loved in John 20 when Jesus starts re-appearing to people after his resurrection.  He reappears to Mary, but as he speaks to her, her perspective was somehow veiled and she didn't understand that it was Him.  He asks her a few questions, addressing her as "woman", and she remains in the dark.

"MARY!" he finally says, and that was all it took.  "Teacher!" she exclaims, falling to the ground and clinging to her God.

She didn't even recognize a man she had intimately encountered a hundred times....until He said her name.

What a thrill of hope this gave me this morning for our little corner of the world.  Instead of being frustrated that a people who have encountered Him SO MANY TIMES still live in darkness, I will wait and share with anticipation for the day when He calls their name (praying that maybe in some way we might be a part of that!) and the scales suddenly fall...making them realize that it is HE whom they have seen SO many times before.

Don't give up hope!