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.

Broken Dreams

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Go again to that dark place
where freedom dies and life lies waste.
Consider there that time, now past,
when all alone you gazed aghast
at broken dreams, forlorn and bent
beneath your feet lay, shattered, spent.

Return once more to memory’s cove
where, snug and safe, a treasure trove
of gold and silver, safely hid
from evil’s touch and gambler’s bid.
Protected by a Father’s hand
who caused these dreams to ever stand.

Some will die, and others live.
It is the Father’s grace to give
the best to those who dream, and wait
for Him to choose which one to take
and weave into life’s broken heart
a thread of hope, that missing part.

Let fall behind those painful sparks
of dying dreams that now grow cold.
And look beyond their fading light
toward His promise, pure and bright,
of dreams set free, divinely blessed,
a Father’s gift, as always, best.

Bubbles, Bathtubs and Rubber Duckies

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Les allowed his body to slide forward and his head to fall back.

There were seven seas to sail. He felt the waves gently tickle his toes, enticing him to come and explore. Bubbles rose, exploding on his cheek: A whale perhaps, blowing a welcome? A pod of dolphins to accompany him on his journey? He wiggled, and his world wiggled back, caressing and calling; calling and caressing.

But wait; an ocean of another ilk reached out for him with a scent not of salt, but of sweet. This time it was the smell of hibiscus and roses. A garden floated before his eyes, bubbles transforming into a haze of dandelions gone to seed floating upwards, seeking new horizons and uninhabited islands of verdant green. As the waves wrapped loving arms around him, so did the perfume of dancing girls in grass skirts. Odd though, that they should all bear a vague resemblance to his mother.

He could not linger long in this tropical paradise. There were other worlds awaiting him, other lives to live. Everest beckoned, reaching down with icy fingers. He felt its chill in the air and did not flinch. The Russian Steppes and the Great Wall of China called. No tour bus for him; he would arrive with due pomp and ceremony as the leader of the free world coming to bring order out of disorder. Yes, there were enemies out there preparing to meet their fate at his hand. A new Patton was on the march.

A vision of water fowl on a pond of frothy blue came to mind, awaking in him his artistic self. He’d become a great painter; no, a writer. Any fool could throw brushfuls of paint at a canvass and call it art. Writing was pure and exact. Surely a blank page waited somewhere begging for his ready pen. An audience hungered for the great novel written in his mind, possessed by his heart, but not yet released through his hands. Neither Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Donne nor Grace Livingston Hill would ever be able to hold a candle to his literary genius.

A less esoteric note rang out; one that was music to the ears of the financial world. The bell would not ring on Wall Street to signal the end of a business day without his permission. The markets hung on his decisions, rose and fell at his command. He was the cog around which the wheel turned, and that wheel would crush poverty and inequality wherever they chose to lurk.

And medical science? He would discover the cure for the dreaded big “C”, banish HIV, Bird Flu and West Nile. Every hepatitis in the alphabet would be stomped out under the boot of his needle and pill. No one would ever suffer the heartbreak of psoriasis again.

But how could he be so remiss, so selfish? The physical world was his to have and to hold, but it wasn’t about him, was it? Devils and darkness demanded his attention as well. He must preach and teach and win. Churches needed founding, missions cried out for his leadership and largesse, the dry wells of theological education begged priming. He’d be the leader of the church militant — a combination of Billy Graham, Billy Sunday with a liberal twist of “Billy” of Orange.

Yes, it was time to take charge, to regain control, to be that special man among ordinary men.

It was time …

“Les, would you please get out of the bathtub! I need you to take Genghis Khan for a walk. He’s standing out here in the hallway with his legs crossed! And don’t forget the pooper-scooper this time!”

… to get back to real life.

The rubber duck sprung a leak, flipped over on its back, slipped beneath the scummy surface of the now cool water and took its final dive to the bottom of the bathtub. One lone bubble escaped and floated free. Perhaps it was a sign that there was still a chance that a walk with old GK would be the means of bringing to life one tiny part of Les’s dream. Maybe he’d meet a beautiful Chinese girl walking a Pekinese?