Back to Form

It was not at all apparent how far out of shape I was until I got back into it. Tajikistan is the big opportunity. Back in my Navy days, after a three month cruise I could come back to form in 2 or three workouts. But it has been 2/3 of a year now, and the body has aged slightly. So back into the summer vacation routine: up with the sun (4:30 A.M.), and 15 miles before breakfast, then back to bed. To my surprise, I could no longer comfortably do the full 15 miles. Two weeks into it and I’m only up to 13 miles – and no speed at all!

I can feel how my whole body is functioning differently now; there is a tremendous difference. Exercise does the body no good – it is the rest after the exercise that imparts strength. But if you don’t exercise well, you don’t rest right either – the workout is what makes the rest beneficial. After 2/3 of a year without exercise nor good rest, I’ve come to know true rest again. Hamroz notices that even those little scrapes are healing much more quickly these days.

Reflections on the Ground

We get the impression that the fierce battle being waged in the spiritual realms is going well lately, and that reflections of it can be seen on the ground in Central Asia.

- I began to pull around a car that was stopped in the middle of the road in KTown for no apparent reason. Half way around, I noticed that there was a new traffic light installed and he was WAITING for it to change!

- Property ownership is determined by the rule of the jungle more than any reasonable set of legal rights. This makes it an almost impossible environment for investment. The International School would be able to attract investors, but alas, there is still no legal respect of property rights here – especially those of Christian foreigners.

- The International School has become an essential fixture in the KTown landscape anyway, even renting adjacent land from multiple owners. Yet another class graduating this year; it’s getting to the point where it’s becoming hard to remember what happened in which year. The “Old Timers” who remember the first year of the USAID grant are becoming fewer and farther between. The home office continues to find and send first rate replacements for every teacher that wants to leave. We will have a new preschool teacher next year – Hamroz Drew!

Independence Day

I have celebrated various Independence Days around the world and can conclude that there is nothing like the Fourth of July. Every other country celebrates independence from the end of a war or the signing of a treaty - Not America. A-stan celebrates at least three “Independence Days” each year (when the armies of Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the Taliban withdrew). To fight for their independence from Spain, Costa Rica sent an army north to Mexico, unaware that the treaty granting independence had been signed two years earlier. Today they celebrate the treaty and have disbanded the army. T-stan celebrates it’s independence from the Soviet Union even though there is scarce historical evidence that anyone there actually wanted to be independent.

Everyone who recognizes the Fourth of July as US Independence Day participates in a clear statement of American faith. Our independence does not spring from the surrender of Cornwallis nor from the Treaty of Paris, our Declaration of Independence, previous to the battles, is what settled the matter in our minds. Nowhere else in the world are things done like this, because it rests on the intellectual pillar of the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith apart from good works. That is what makes America so different.

According to the doctrine, salvation occurs prior to and apart from any good works. It starts when a person recognizes his own sin (sin being spiritual – not just the physical act of adultery, but the desire; not just the physical act of murder but the angry spirit). No one can control their own spirit so as to never BE a sinner, even apart from DOING anything. You should realize that Christ paid the penalty of sin (death) that justice demands from each one of us. He satisfies the just claims against us if we will accept a new start to life by faith. And the born again experience begins with a public declaration:

Rom 10:9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;
Rom 10:10 for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. NASV

Then, the real war, your battle against sin, begins. Never, ever, does salvation depend on your succeeding in doing “good works”. Your ultimate goal - to live in a holy condition (be a “saint”) is secure though you fail and lose battles. The end victory is to be counted as already won - just as when they used to run the Continental Army off the field in the years after the Declaration was signed! It depends on the work Jesus did on the cross that each individual must claim in that momentous declaration of faith. This does not end, but rather begins your war against sin (the fighting of which will become your “good works”).

Then, you are ready for “life, liberty and the pursuit of holiness” as Jefferson wrote before Franklin edited.