Heaven Come Down

                                                                                                        Sunday, July 14th

Back at home—my home in Swaziland, anyways.  J  Serving as an intern this summer has been such a time of simplicity and abundance amdist chaos and the demand for flexibility.  Part of that flexibility has had to do with our living situations; over the last several weeks we have lived in 4 different places from our intern home, to living with the missionaries, to a retreat center in South Africa, and finally back to the team house at the Anchor Center.  I just finished moving all of my stuff back into the house for the third time this summer and I am grateful that this is the place I get to stay until I leave in just 9 days.  It means I will be able to go running in the morning only to run into all the preschool kids on their way to school and be amazingly interrupted by all of their radiant smiles and delighted squeals to throw them higher or run with them faster.  It means I will be able to wander outside whenever I want; lounging on the boxcar containers, watering the garden, or sitting behind the center and watching the sunset only to know I will be interrupted by an old friend or a new friend to be.   It means I will be able to dance with Smanga as I blast music from the stereo in the team center that I jury-rigged with a cable so we can play music from our ipods.  It means that I will constantly be at the center which anchors this beautiful and impoverished community and that I know I will be able to find everyone around that I care about and say goodbye. It will be hard to leave all this behind.   And yet I am ready to go.  This community has become a home, but I miss the home Ive always known in Oregon.  I miss my friends and my family and I am so excited to return home for my sister’s wedding in less than 2 weeks. 

            Tomorrow marks the beginning of my last full week of ministry here in Swaziland and I am eager to step into it, to serve, to invest deeply in friendships I care about, and to continue to see how God will move and make His majesty known amidst these people.  He is moving here.  He is raising up Godly leaders and youth amidst a culture that is impoverished and spiritually muddied in many ways.  I have shared in the lives and stories of many of those He is working in.  He is building up his church.  I just spent 3 hours singing and dancing and learning from the message of Job as I worshipped alongside a new church this morning.   And yet, even as I witness the new churchs forming and help construct another one at one of the care points, I have been struck profoundly by the notion that Christ’s church is not a building.  The church is our lives.  Our witness.  Our testimony by the way we live.  The church is the way we shine our lives when we are at work, when we are simply driving the vans, when we are playing with kids, investing in our families.  But even more the church is the intentional worshipping and praising of the Lord through all that we do and everything that is thrown our way.  Will I praise the Lord when life is well, I am achieving much, and am experiencing rich blessings?  Will I praise the Lord when my spirit is crushed, my motivation gone, and my body in pain? 

            This last week I found myself working almost entirely behind the scenes.  I worked at the Anchor Center.   I did a lot of tasks that probably seemed and appeared meaningless.  I did a lot of driving; to care points, the market, and even the hospital.  I got up early in the morning to help construct a new building with some Swazi brothers, who I could only share in brief conversation with.  They didn’t need my help, and even if they did they easily could have gotten the help of another Swazi man, and yet they were honored by the fact that I wanted to join them and it was there that I found satisfaction, joy, and contentment as I mixed volumes of cements and lifted concrete block after block over my head to hand to my brothers building the wall.  Most of the rest of the interns were working hands-on with another team here at a care point all week.  They were on the front lines of ministry as they played and taught with the same kids day after day and helped on new projects for the community.  When I look back, this was a week in which I didn’t do much and not many events stand out.  And yet this has been one of the richest and most profound times I have had in Swaziland yet.

            As we started last week we had to move into homes with the missionaries in order to accommodate the team of 20 at the Anchor Center.  Jesse and I found ourselves suddenly living with a Christian man named Neville, who we didn’t really know yet, but had offered up his home.  It was hard not to be frustrated at first.  We had just gotten back from our retreat and immediately had to clean and pack and distance ourselves from the Swazi community as we moved a few kilometers away.  This was not where I wanted to be, especially with only 2 weeks remaining in my timeline in Swaziland.   And yet I was praying earnestly and asking God for a heart to serve Him and those around me, as I strived to engage fully with what time I still had left.  What I found this last week was a spirit that was amazingly renewed and recharged.  What I found was that whoever wants to become greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven must become least and the servant to all.  What I found was a renewed a passion and conviction that we all desperately need God’s presence and the hope of Heaven.  Whether Swazi or American, rich or poor, famed or shamed, Jesus has died for all and His grace covers all of who we are.  He calls us to repentance.  He calls us to renewal.  He calls us to fall on our knees, acknowledge His love, and to disciple the whole world through the way we live and love. 

            He has a plan and a purpose; a vision and a direction.  There is no question of His victory in the spiritual war around us, and yet in this life we find ourselves desperately caught in the middle of it all.  Is Christ professed in my life?  Am I seeking first the Kingdom of Heaven?  Am I, with unveiled face beholding, as in a mirror, the glory of the Father and being transformed into His image day by day?  Or am I caught in my selfishness, my complacency, my needs, my lust, my satisfaction with a life that worships, seeks, and serves Him occasionally but otherwise is seeking my own?   Am I living, planning, and dreaming who I might be and where I might go and inviting the Lord to come along and bless the plans that I’ve made instead of seeking His will and glory first?  Am I missing out on the whispers of His spirit, the visions of His calling, and the demonstration of His power because even as I seek to serve Him I have no time for Him?  These are some of the questions that have kept me awake late at night and have left me simultaneously overwhelmed and shamed by my shortcomings and inspired, freed, and renewed by the passion and glory I have glimpsed before but so often let fade.  We have all been set free.  Jesus has paid the cost with His very life.  I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good.  I have seen the gates of Heaven crack and glimpsed the glory and joy that abides.  We as Christ’s followers possess the greatest news and hope the world has ever known.  One that has powerfully and radically transformed whole nations and cultures as well as individuals lives.  I know that and can dwell in thought or conversation on it for hours, but will I live it?  Am I willing to pick up my cross daily and follow Him? 

            Part of this regeneration and renewal of my heart has come about through a book I found in Neville’s home.  I had heard a bit about modern missionary and disciple Brother Yun before and some about his powerful book, The Heavenly Man, but I had never read anything by him before.  I found a book of his called, Living Water.  It was a collection of his powerful teachings and things he had learned from a life of persecution, torture, and imprisonment in China as he strived to bring the gospel to a lost country in the 70's, 80's, and 90's.  It describes tremendous rejoicing in the face of suffering and the mighty manifestation of Jesus in miraculous ways to redeem a country once considered closed-off and nearly impossible to reach with the gospel.  Reading some of his stories it bears a remarkable similarity to the stories of the apostles and the early church.  It describes the Holy Spirit coming alive and the Lord transforming people and a culture through visions and dreams, miraculous healings, prison doors thrown open, and countless hearts set free.  It describes believers who are so lost in Jesus and the vision of Heaven He is bringing down that nothing can stand in their way or oppose the movement of the Spirit. It re-awoken so many of the wonderings, passions, and hopes that I had glimpsed before as I strived to follow Christ, but somewhere along the way had begun to lose sight of.  I strongly recommend the book to disciples in the States, as it offers a renewed perspective of a life serving Jesus and what it really means to answer His call.  

            As I have prayed for the nation of Swaziland, for my friends, and for my time here I have begun to ask that God might work powerfully in Swaziland (and in the States) as He has done in China.  That Heaven would come down, revival might appear, His spirit pour out, and mighty and miraculous works be done in His name and for His glory.  I haven’t encountered His miraculous power or voice in a burning bush yet, but I have seen the Lord’s transformation and faithfulness at work, even in the small things.  Earlier this week, I was waiting at the hospital with a friend for her young nephew who we had just dropped off in the hopes that he could get in and have emergency surgery to stop an ear infection before it reached his brain.  He had been brought to the hospital (90 min away) last week and was unable to get in.  I had gotten up early in the morning to get him to the hospital first thing and was waiting with a few of my Swazi friends and Jesse, unsure if he would have the surgery today or how long it might take.  I had brought the book I’d been reading and spent my time talking with the Swazi’s and reading for a few hours.  At one point I found myself completely lost and absorbed in what I was reading as the Spirit convicted and moved my heart.  I was only a couple of pages away form finishing a chapter when I suddenly found myself overwhelmed with the thought and nudge that you need to pray for this boy right now.  I easily could have finished reading in hopes of feeding the flames of what the Spirit was moving in my heart, but instead I immediately put the book away and began to pray fervently that the Lord would protect this boy; that He would get Him into surgery right away, that He would guide the hands of the doctor, that he would comfort the boy and give him peace before he went in for surgery, and that he would raise him up to be a godly leader and model and work powerfully in His life.  Fifteen minutes later this boy’s aunt walked over to where I was and said that she was scared.  She had been with him and said that he was really scared as the doctors had received him and taken him in for surgery not ten minutes before.  I found myself sharing with her how I had been praying for the boy and how I had felt and had been scared before I went in for surgery 6 months ago for my shoulder.   We rejoiced and praised the Lord together as we waited and within a few hours the boy was released, heavily medicated, but all had gone well and he was safe to go home with no fear of further infection.  I had spent nearly the whole day driving, reading, praying, and rejoicing in the faithful God we serve and asking that He bring Heaven down to earth here and now and work in the hearts of many.

            This is a long post, but God has been doing so much this past week and I cant help but profess His glory and praise for the things I have seen.  I am looking forward to the few days I have left and then I am so excited and am eagerly anticipating returning home to so many things and so many people I love. God is faithful and He will continue to be, so I will continue to pray and ask for His vision; His calling upon my life, His redemption in poverty and pain, His faithfulness to transform the lives of those I care about, His Heaven to come down.