God On Broadband

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Why don’t you go home? You’ve been at this for more than thirty years. You don’t owe anything to anyone after all these years of service.

I’m mulling the words over in my mind. What is it that keeps me here? It’s not like anyone is depending on me to stay. No, I’ve been very careful to NOT become indispensable, not to be the tool, but to help believers form their own tools cultivating for themselves the ground God wants to bless with abundant spiritual growth. If they were more dependent, I could convince myself that I couldn’t leave them.

You’re the author of your own redundancy. You’ve equipped them well enough to work yourself out of a job. So, go somewhere else! Your gifts are portable.

I think I’ve done all I can do; all God wanted me to do. In any case, I haven’t got another generation-of-disciples-to-equip in me. I can’t repeat the process anymore, that spark is gone. I can no longer return after Home Assignment and pick up where I left off. For one thing, there isn’t anything now to pick up after. For another, the Lord has called me to go in a different direction, to fulfill a dream.

So, go home.

I can’t. The Lord has changed the mission, but I don’t have any indication that the place is any different. Besides, any major changes in location for me have always come from phone calls out of the clear blue sky at unexpected moments.

If you’re waiting for a phone call these days, you may wait forever —you’ve been “on hold” for a while now.

Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t wait for a phone call — being that specific is kind of like putting God in a box. Maybe I’m hoping for some catastrophic event to happen: earthquake, coup, getting my pink slip in the mail. I’d be forced to leave. The latter won’t happen — missionaries seldom get fired — and I really don’t want to go through the former. I’m paralyzed, waiting for something to happen, and I don’t understand why!

Someone is going to be issuing you a dose of Prozac any minute now. You must be going through a mid-life crisis. It could be too many traumatic changes and stresses over these last few years. You’re depressed. Remember, a general, non-specific feeling of unhappiness is one of the signs.

And talking to myself is a sign of … ? Anyway, I’m eating, sleeping, socializing, and working well. I like this country as much as I like my own — most of the time. I love this apartment with its “view-to-die-for.” On top of all that, I have been allowed the freedom to follow my dream and go in a new direction with the blessing of my superiors.

Then why are you so unsettled? Why are you having such a hard time getting down to making the dream a reality, to posting your mileage signs on the highway of your new direction? Why are you waiting for a phone call?

I’ve waited so long for this, and now that it’s here, I’m afraid that it won’t be what I have imagined it to be. Part of me doesn’t want it to be as good as the other part of me dreams it will be. Maybe the wait for the phone call is just my way of putting off the fulfilling of the dream, so that its culmination doesn’t become a stumbling block, an idol, or a false source of satisfaction. If I hold off the source of temporal joy, then I can hang on more tightly to the source of eternal joy.

Do you think you know yourself so well, that you can be sure you’d dethrone God with a dream? Do you really believe He gave you the chance to go in this direction, to make this dream a reality, if He didn’t want you to go there, if you were going to fail Him once you arrived? Location has nothing to do with this, does it?

I guess not. Gifts, like dreams, are portable. I can use them, and live them out anywhere. Also, I’m not talking to myself, am I?

It started out that way, but I eavesdrop a lot. A friend of mine once said that I would never lead you where I couldn’t keep you. He was right. Now go, enjoy living out the dream, whatever it takes you. Consider this your phone call.

Leaving the Family

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“You know, you don’t have to do this. You could just walk away, disappear.”

Tom, surprised that he was being offered an “out,” hesitated for only for a second.

“No, I’ll go. If I don’t, the rest of the family will wonder why I didn’t show up and that could lead to complications.”

“Fine. It’s your funeral if things go wrong.”

“I know.”

The meeting with the family was a regularly scheduled event. Not only was it scheduled; attendance was required. He straightened his tie and jacket, exchanged one last glance with his concerned companion, and left the building by a back door.

A half an hour later, Tom pulled up in front of a wrought iron gate supported by a ten-foot high stone wall. The video camera hanging from the gatepost swung in his direction as he reached out and pushed the button on the intercom that connected to the house. The gate slowly opened. Whoever was on duty on the other end of the camera had confirmed Tom’s identity and his right to admission.

Moments later he entered the house. There was no need to be told where to go—he was, after all, related. He greeted the others as he always did when these meetings were called. The words sounded normal, the gestures from cousins, uncles and from those who had “married” into the family, concealed no malice that he could identify. Nevertheless, Tom could feel the electric tension in the air, like the oppressive stillness before a storm.

Do they know? Does someone suspect that I betrayed the code, that I broke ranks?

He thought the word betrayal because the world would judge his actions as such, but he knew in his heart that a much greater betrayal had marked the life that had been, until recently, his only world.

His uncle sat enthroned at the head of an enormous teak conference table. The light coming in from the French doors behind him created an aura that wrapped itself around the old man. The position was deliberate, planned and posed. His face was like granite, his thoughts unknowable and inviolate. As was his privilege, Tom took his place to the right of the current family patriarch.

At precisely the hour assigned for it, the meeting began. As expected, the head of the family took the lead.

“Report.”

Everyone present knew to what the old man was referring.

“Two houses were raided this week…”

“…As was the warehouse…”

“Someone’s been nosing around the offshore accounts.”

The news was grim from every point of the table’s compass. Over the past several weeks, the noose around the family’s neck had inexplicably and inexorably been tightening.

They don’t know, or they wouldn’t be talking so freely…

The muffled beeping of a cell phone interrupted Tom’s thoughts and brought a startled silence to the table. For anyone to dare to call when the inner circle of the family was meeting could only mean more bad news. Without a word, the old man pulled the phone from his pocket, listened, then broke the connection. Slowly he turned toward Tom. If there were feelings behind that stony, expressionless face, the business at hand took precedence over them. All eyes followed those of their don. Something tangible, but as yet unidentifiable, had taken possession of the room. Instinctively, the others waited for the capo, the head of the family, to personally deal with the specter that had suddenly raised its ugly head at his table.

No one saw the gun. From that close, the bullet couldn’t miss even though the silencer slowed its progress. It missed the wire of the tiny microphone taped to Tom’s chest, and plowed through several vital body parts.

Jesus, I tried to put it all right. I wish I had known you sooner …

As the life drained from his body, Tom’s second-to-last thoughts focused on the conversation with the FBI agent who had offered him an escape from this very possibility.

…It’s your funeral if things go wrong.

Was this right or wrong? The recording of the discussion around the table would help to convict those present. There would be no time for the gun, or his uncle’s fingerprints, to disappear before federal agents came charging through those French doors. Humanly speaking, things had gone wrong for Tom, but whatever happened from this moment on would help to make things right.

Tom’s last thoughts were of his new family, now gathered and waiting to meet him.

He smiled.