Hurry Up & Wait

We had a super-busy December, galavanting around the country (buckle up!), from Pennsylvania to Kentucky to Indiana to Colorado to New Mexico back to Colorado back to Indiana to Illinois to Missouri back to Illinois and Indiana to Ohio and now full-circle back to Pennsylvania, though in Lititz and not Myerstown. It was a very full time and such a great blessing to see family and friends, receive great training at MTI, and to see more family!

And now we wait...to receive a call...that says..."Come to New York and pick up your residency visas from the Spanish Consulate." We could receive that call tomorrow, or it could come in two months. It's out of our control, so we wait. Please pray with us that our visas come swiftly, and even more that we would not view this limbo time as a waste but as a great opportunity to catch our breath and prepare for the big leap we're about to take. We hurried through December, and now, in January 2009, we wait on Spain...more significantly, though, we wait on God as He guides us through this transition.

Gratitude.

Over the past few weeks, we have been extremely busy. Moving into a new house (only a block away but still quite a chore!), the E.C. National Conference, working, speaking in churches, and the like. But as I reflect, I have a few things to mention that I'm thankful to God for:

I'm thankful for Jesus, His Presence with us, and His work in and through us. It was really good to celebrate the Lord's Supper at the E.C. National Conference last week.

I'm grateful to God for Godly leadership in our denomination. Our new bishop was consecrated last week at Conference, and we have commented over and over how thankful to God we are that the Godliness of our denomination's leadership is hardly a question for us.

My car. It's not much to look at, the paint's flaking off, and the head gasket is leaking. But God has kept the Neon going well beyond our expectancy for it, and it got me to and from Conference safely and without incident.

A washer and dryer. As we moved into our new temporary house, we knew it lacked laundry facilities, and we thought we would be buying a washer and dryer for a few months' use. But our need was mentioned to the pastor at one of the churches we visited--Dennis Snyder--and he happened to have a spare washer and dryer. God provided one of our needs (or conveniences) through Dennis, and we are deeply grateful for His provision.

Last, and certainly not least, second to Christ I'm most thankful for a beautiful, faithful, strong even in weakness, amazing wife. She has been an incredible instrument of God's love, correction, and salvation in my life.

The Muslim Jesus

Well, I handed in the final paper of my seminary career on Saturday--quite relieving and bewildering all at the same time. Anyhow, the paper was for my Islam course, and I wrote on the Muslim view of Jesus, or 'Isa, as He is known to Muslims. It was quite an interesting study. According to the Qur'an, Jesus was born of a virgin but not divine, not the Savior, and was rescued by Allah before being crucified on the cross (Allah could not allow one of his prophets to be shamed so deeply). Instead, Muslims see Jesus as a great prophet who came to teach and lead his people back to the straight path of Allah. The Qur'an even goes so far as to call Jesus the "Word of God," the "Masih" (Messiah, though it doesn't mean the same thing for Muslims) and an "Apostle from God," but he could never be the Son of God; such thinking is blasphemous. He is not the suffering Savior of the world because the problem of humanity is not really sin and relational separation from our Creator for Muslims; we are simply ignorant and sometimes led astray, which is why we only need prophets to guide us back to the right ways from time to time.

As I reflect upon my study, I have just one observation: the Muslim 'Isa pales in comparison to the Jesus of the Gospels. The Gospels give such profound, rich insight into Jesus' humanity and divinity that the Qur'an hardly alludes to (the divinity of Christ, of course, is attacked by Muhammad). Literally, the Muslim 'Isa is paler than the Biblical Jesus, as well; Muslim tradition says that 'Isa was fair skinned and had red hair and freckles. An Iranian movie of the Muslim Jesus, called "The Messiah," is coming out in Iran sometime this year (a poster for it is above). It should be interesting to see what the reaction or response to it will be, as well as if and how God uses it to draw people to Himself through His Son Jesus.

Reflections on the Cross

It seems that each year around this time, God helps me understand the Cross in a fresh light; not necessarily a new light that I've never seen before, but a specific aspect of the meaning of Christ's crucifixion. A couple years ago, God worked through an Eastern Orthodox bishop and thinker named Kallistos Ware to help me see the profound significance of Christ's work on the cross as more than a mere sacrifice that somehow got God to forgive my personal sins. In fact, there was a way in the Old Testament for finding forgiveness for personal sins, as we see in David's confession and repentance after his sin with Bathsheba. Deeper than that, as I saw then, Christ went to the cross to heal a broken, sin-sick humanity. Isaiah wrote about this in Is. 53:5: "By His wounds we are healed." Spiritual healing from sin and its effects seems to be in mind in John 3:14-15, as John or Jesus refers to Moses' bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness. The cross is about Christ's brokenness leading to our healing from sin.

This year has been different, though. God has really been teaching me and speaking to me through my evangelism class, and as I've thought about sharing the Gospel with others, it's become evident that we can't leave sin out of the equation. We can't understand the truly good news of Jesus' death and resurrection unless we first understand the bad news of our sin and the punishment we deserve because of our sin. As an American evangelical, it is tempting for me to skip over the reality of sin and God's justice in hating and punishing sin, simply wanting to jump to the good news of God's love shown in Jesus dying for us. But without a recognition of our sin (as individuals who are part of the whole human race) and God's justice (which is clear throughout the Bible), the Cross is a mere tragedy. So God has been showing me that He truly is good, holy, just and loving, and it is because of all those aspects of who He is that Jesus, God the Son, willingly went to the Cross on our behalf. Healing...Punishment...Love...Justice... Because of the truly profound nature of God, I'll never fully understand the richness of the Cross, but He continues to give me hints and tastes of His fullness shown to us there.