Last night as we were having family devotions, the reading gave me this thought. We talk about how God has allowed all this suffering. We wonder why a good God has permitted evil to run amuck. We question the goodness of God because how bad things get. BUT, consider these verses.

"The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance."  (2 Peter 3:9 NAS)

"He prayed to the LORD and said, "Please LORD, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity."   (Jonah 4:2 NAS)

These verses show that God is patient.  He is slow to anger.  When we get upset because God is allowing things to go wrong, we should consider the alternative.  God could have stepped in right when Adam and Eve sinned and said, "alright, that's enough!" and punished mankind on the spot, ending the human race.   Instead, He is patient.  Even though it means that evil people will take advantage of his mercy and patience to get away with murder, He waits, allowing generation after generation to be born.  There are people coming to know Him all the time and they are worth the wait to Him.  He will not wait forever, but he is patient and slow to anger.  We should be grateful that God has waited, and realize that although he waits, he will not wait forever, and when He comes, it will be fearsome for those who have not accepted his offer of free forgiveness.

It has taken me a couple of days to get back to the blog after our return from the Dominican Republic.  We had a great trip and with one very minor hiccup, the travel back and forth was smooth.

This was my third year traveling down and it is beginning to really feel like home down there.  It is great to get familiar with the area and to feel like you know people.  Most of our team were people I had met previous years and all the translators were ones we had had before.  I got to spend time with my very good friend and brother Alex who lives down there and made many new friends.

The hospital work continues and it is remarkable to see how much gets done one year to the next.  We had a very productive week, moving tons of material and seeing the third and fourth floor of the hospital take shape right before our eyes.

It was fun traveling with Nate and working with him in partnership in building relationships and ministering to our teammates in the group.  There are so many opportunities to share the gospel with our brothers and sisters and encourage them in their relationship with Christ.  I had a great time one evening really challenging one of the young men who interpret for us in his walk with Christ and his relationships with girls.

Overall it was a really awesome week and although I am very happy to be home with my family again, I miss those I have left behind in the DR.  It was great to share the trip with more from the church and it is my hope that more will want to come back next year with us.

In a few weeks we will be showing our pictures and sharing more about our trip in an evening service.  I hope many will come out and hear and see what we experienced in the DR.

Well, the bags are finally packed and all the errands run.  This will be my third trip to the Dominican Republic but I have felt less prepared this time than the previous trips.  There has been so much other stuff going on that it has been hard to focus on getting ready to leave.  I find that each year it gets harder, not easier to leave the family as well.  I am really excited to go and am looking forward to seeing all the friends that I have made both on the team and among those to live in the DR, but I really hate leaving my family.

I sometimes wonder if these moments give us just the smallest glimpse of what Christ went through for us.  He left heaven to come to earth on a missions trip.  He knew that it would be really different than "home".  He knew there would be joys and special relationships.  He also knew it would be hard.  He came because He loved us so much that He wanted to connect to us and redeem us so that we could sometime "come home" with Him.

Me leaving home for the DR is such a poor comparison, but perhaps it gives me the smallest of glimpses into Christ's sacrifice for me.  I will miss Sarah and the kids this week, but I know they are well cared for by my church family and I know that in the end, we are all resting in the hands of our loving Father.

Obviously there will be no blog posts this week while Nate and I are away, but keep us in your prayers and I look forward to sharing some stories with you on the blog when I get back.

One of the tougher things to learn and practice in this world is humility.  Some people are probably more natural at it than others, but it is a hard thing for pretty much all of us.  We were all built with a sense of pride and a sense of self-preservation.  When we feel the need to defend ourselves or the picture of ourselves, humility often gets shunted aside.   It is part of our human nature, and in this day and age, it is increasingly part of our society.  David Brooks makes a point in this column that while our founding fathers focused on their own frailty and the frailty of man and designed a system to protect man from himself, now we are more interested in just getting what we want.  It is not just in politics he notes.  He says,

But over the past few decades, people have lost a sense of their own sinfulness. Children are raised amid a chorus of applause. Politics has become less about institutional restraint and more about giving voters whatever they want at that second. Joe DiMaggio didn’t ostentatiously admire his own home runs, but now athletes routinely celebrate themselves as part of the self-branding process.

The Bible warns of this. "For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself." (Galatians 6:3 NAS)

So a good question becomes, are you more apt to play defense or deference?  We are supposed to consider others more important than ourselves.  When we slip into defensive mode, we are thinking primarily of ourselves.  It is our default setting, but we need to move away from that setting.  We need to see ourselves as having value only as a result of Christ's work for us and in us, not because we are all that (and a bag of potato chips).  I want to show humility to my kids, my friends, the church, everywhere.  It is hard.  It is hard to even show that humility to my wife, especially when I think I am right, but the more I practice deference over defense, the less I fight with anyone and the more I can love others.  It doesn't mean I never stand up for what is right, but I listen first and when I need to make a stand on what is right, I do it without a spirit of defensiveness, but with a spirit of love.

This is one of the reasons I think we are supposed to be careful of human titles.  It is one of the reasons why I don't want to be called "Pastor".  When we start focusing on our titles or our position, that works against humility.  If I think I have some special power at church, that I deserve some special measure of respect because "I am the PASTOR!" then I am in for trouble.  I am moving towards being served rather than serving, with an attitude that I am more important than others.  That is not servant leadership.  I am a shepherd to be sure, and as such I have been given spiritual authority, but that authority and power is to serve, to sacrifice myself for the flock, and to tend for them ahead of myself.  Not to lord it over them as some do.  I still need correction, I still need to be teachable, I can still be wrong.    And when another shepherd, or a member of the flock comes to me to tell me that they think I am wrong, my reaction, whether or not they are right and whether or not they are gentle and loving in their approach, needs to be one of humility and deference.  Maybe they are right, and if they are, I need to see it and admit it.  Maybe they are wrong, and if they are, I need to show them that lovingly and gently and not react defensively because I feel threatened.

It can't be all about us.  For those of us who know Christ, it must be all about Him.

The article linked above details a woman "pastor" who was arrested after seemingly breaking into a parishioners house and stealing a laptop and fur coats. She claimed that she found a broken window, crawled in, and took the things to keep them from being stolen. The woman whose house was broken into doesn't quite understand, but says, "She seems to have this connection with God; she seems to be a woman of God," Agnew told WFAA. "I made a decision not to let it shake my faith."

Now that is nice, but what is the basis for this faith? What makes her "seem" to have a connection with God? Here are a couple of more tidbits from the article.

"Citing records, WFAA reported that McGriff has a long rap sheet and has used several aliases — including Kathy Robinson, the name under which police booked her. McGriff conceded to WFAA that the name is a fake."

So, even when she was arrested, she gave a fake name.  Hmm.

Just because a person works at a church, or calls themselves a pastor doesn't make them a pastor.  In our culture, pastor has come to be a professional job referring to someone who runs a church.  But that is not the original picture.  A pastor is supposed to be a shepherd, taking care of the sheep, not managing the pasture.  Too often someone is considered a pastor because of administrative ability or a vague sense of spiritual atmosphere.  This may mean that a person is good at doing the mechanics of church rather business or liturgy, but is not someone who is actually going to take care of people.  This woman was apparently shearing the sheep, not caring for them.  Too many churches have been victimized by pastors who are more interested in themselves and their agenda than in caring for the members of the flock.

Caring for the flock can include correction and reproof, but it is always in the interest of seeing people draw near to Christ and live in Him.  We are in the business of the gospel of reconciliation.  We're not looking for earthly riches or exalted positions.  We are here to serve.