We are physically at war here, but because you are not a participant your brain erases that fact from short term memory. You do your job, go shopping, make friends, get married and are given in marriage. The war seems to be somewhere else, beyond the mountains, or on the other side of the TV tube. Occasionally, there will be an explosion in town – the natural tendency is to try to not let that impact your day, even though there are extra detours and traffic jams. When there is a military convoy on the road, keep a good distance – so that anyone after them doesn’t get you and so that they don’t get nervous and shoot you themselves.
In the realm of spiritual warfare, there is a natural tendency to try to live your life out as a non-participant. No one in their right mind wants to be involved in real war, physical or spiritual. But if you follow the Spirit’s leading, you will find yourself in the middle of some confused battle, and the incoming shots will be all too real, aimed right at your soul. Then, you can refuse to believe that it is really spiritual. You can refuse to believe that it’s really warfare. You can duck and hide. You can blame the people around you, or yourself, or God. Or you can listen again to the Holy Spirit, who in wisdom positioned you in the battle, and shoot back, for pathetic that your capabilities might seem. None of us fights individually as isolated foot soldiers. There are always legions willing to follow your lead. And your advances always affect people on another part of the front you will never meet, your little victories are turning points in stories we will never hear, until after the enemy gates fall once and for all.
The gates of hell can never go on the offensive – gates are fixed positions. The issue at hand is how long they can prevail under our attack. Retreat is not an option for us – ducking and hiding is sufficient short-term coverage, though fatal in the long term (if you persist in it you will die of old age). Angels will follow your lead, but there is no glory in ducking, nor in hiding. Power and glory abound when the church, united with Him, is revealed (not hidden), especially when she has taken new positions right up near the gates.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Science, Magic and Miracles
The mistake man made was to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Before that, God would walk with man every morning and help him get his priorities straight. That was and remains God’s unchangeable desire – to personally guide us – but the desire to try to figure things out on our own apart from Him burns deeply in our hearts.
The Law, which was written not only in the Jewish Torah, but also in the heart of every man born, is like a mirror that shows us where we are – separated from Him. It is merciless in that it points out our condition without offering a remedy.
Miracles happen when the presence of God breaks back into our lives. The blind see, the dirty become clean, the lame walk, we have a place to go while the army that was bearing down on us is drown. All of which directs us to Calvary, where the punishments that justice demands (because of our misguided decisions about good and evil apart from God) are once and for all satisfied. There, it becomes possible to turn around from the bad decisions of our past and receive the ongoing personal counsel that God wanted to give us in the first place.
Magic is available to patch up consequences that appear because we are living apart from God. The seemingly good news is that we can have supernatural help to get what we need, want and desire while we continue manage our lives separated from our creator.
Science helps us understand the reality we live in. The paradox of it is, the more you lean on science to order your world, the more it becomes for you either magic or miracle.
Sunday or Monday ends Ramazan and starts three days of Eid celebration. (They don’t depend on science to say which day the new moon will appear to start the holiday. Every year they announce that they’ve sighted the new moon several hours after sunset – an astronomical impossibility). The first day is for visiting families, the other two are for visiting coworkers and clansmen. To visit someone is to show your respect for them. There is a protocol for visiting, including limiting time spent because the hosts, too, must go out and visit. But if you’re in our neck of the woods, scrap the protocol and come on over and set a spell.
The Law, which was written not only in the Jewish Torah, but also in the heart of every man born, is like a mirror that shows us where we are – separated from Him. It is merciless in that it points out our condition without offering a remedy.
Miracles happen when the presence of God breaks back into our lives. The blind see, the dirty become clean, the lame walk, we have a place to go while the army that was bearing down on us is drown. All of which directs us to Calvary, where the punishments that justice demands (because of our misguided decisions about good and evil apart from God) are once and for all satisfied. There, it becomes possible to turn around from the bad decisions of our past and receive the ongoing personal counsel that God wanted to give us in the first place.
Magic is available to patch up consequences that appear because we are living apart from God. The seemingly good news is that we can have supernatural help to get what we need, want and desire while we continue manage our lives separated from our creator.
Science helps us understand the reality we live in. The paradox of it is, the more you lean on science to order your world, the more it becomes for you either magic or miracle.
Sunday or Monday ends Ramazan and starts three days of Eid celebration. (They don’t depend on science to say which day the new moon will appear to start the holiday. Every year they announce that they’ve sighted the new moon several hours after sunset – an astronomical impossibility). The first day is for visiting families, the other two are for visiting coworkers and clansmen. To visit someone is to show your respect for them. There is a protocol for visiting, including limiting time spent because the hosts, too, must go out and visit. But if you’re in our neck of the woods, scrap the protocol and come on over and set a spell.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Focusing the Blur
We started up the International School of Kabul on an impossible to fulfill timeline. In June, 2005 USAID awarded a grant to rent land for a top-notch International School in Kabul. Classes started that September. I was the first of the new “ISK” people to arrive in town – having come to work on language. Back then, the school building that has housed my classroom for the last four and a half years was a freshly dug pit into which the foundations were being laid. Back then, the street between our properties was a dump where what was not grazed by the passing sheep was burned.
So it started with a blur of activity. “Supervising” workers when I knew neither their language nor their job. Receiving new staff members. Unloading shipments. Language tutoring. Meeting Afghan friends. Finding a place to run and running there. Languange tutoring. Unloading shipments. Sipping chai. At the time, the opening of the school seemed like it would be the end of the blur; today it is remembered as the beginning.
Today, it seems as though Hamroz and I have been together forever. We have an uncanny way of knowing each other’s thoughts and emotions. What a blessing it is to know and be known in such a way. There was a time, back then in the blur, when we would not even be seen together.
Today, it is hard to imagine doing anything other than teaching 6th grade at the International School. The kids, as always, are not just learning to perform academically, but to think, to question, to reason. Younger siblings get confused with their brothers and sisters who passed through my classroom in years past. We are school family; there is that energy, that bond, that affection. Not truly Afghan, not truly American, we are a third culture familiar unto ourselves. Yet, there was a time when we were strangers feeling each other out.
Today, Hamroz and I have friends who visit. Our house is full of the clanking of dinner plates and coffee/tea mugs. People watching TV, talking and laughing around that little Persian table (it’s just big enough to get a knee under it), different groups in the guestroom and the living room. Back then, there were two groups of friends, “his and hers”, today our friends are “ours”.
So it started with a blur of activity. “Supervising” workers when I knew neither their language nor their job. Receiving new staff members. Unloading shipments. Language tutoring. Meeting Afghan friends. Finding a place to run and running there. Languange tutoring. Unloading shipments. Sipping chai. At the time, the opening of the school seemed like it would be the end of the blur; today it is remembered as the beginning.
Today, it seems as though Hamroz and I have been together forever. We have an uncanny way of knowing each other’s thoughts and emotions. What a blessing it is to know and be known in such a way. There was a time, back then in the blur, when we would not even be seen together.
Today, it is hard to imagine doing anything other than teaching 6th grade at the International School. The kids, as always, are not just learning to perform academically, but to think, to question, to reason. Younger siblings get confused with their brothers and sisters who passed through my classroom in years past. We are school family; there is that energy, that bond, that affection. Not truly Afghan, not truly American, we are a third culture familiar unto ourselves. Yet, there was a time when we were strangers feeling each other out.
Today, Hamroz and I have friends who visit. Our house is full of the clanking of dinner plates and coffee/tea mugs. People watching TV, talking and laughing around that little Persian table (it’s just big enough to get a knee under it), different groups in the guestroom and the living room. Back then, there were two groups of friends, “his and hers”, today our friends are “ours”.
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