face toward the sun

Beauty has a strange way of crashing in on us.

Every morning I get up in the predawn dark, greeted by the songbirds that populate our trees. But before I can stop to drink it in we leave that idyllic setting to brave the automotive chaos of urban traffic. These roads are less like blacktop pathways and more like storm-struck beaches beneath the collision and clash of metallic waves advancing against each other. Gone are the sweet songs of firefinches and mourning doves, now only the warbled horns blaring and chirping expletives.

And then, over the crunch and the crowd, the shadowed sky begins to break. Far on the horizon light begins to transform the city. The dark is peeled back like an orange rind and the dawn proclaims life and light for a new day.

A Girl from the Dunes

A few weeks ago, Jérémie invited me to come and preach. When he was in Bible school we began a children’s club together. Under the setting sky we would converge on a roofless discotheque, trailed by children from across the maze of homes rising out of sandy alleys. Then, after sunset, the adults would gather for a prayer meeting and short worship service.

Jérémie is now the pastor of a small fellowship an hour and a half from Dakar. It was wonderful to see him and his wife again, to rejoice at his oldest daughter’s good school marks and see how much his son has grown. It was a beautiful time together. We lifted our voices in worship, like songbirds greeting the day as they set out to search for food. I shared from the book of Mark and together we chewed on what the Spirit was saying to us.

After the service a young girl came and greeted me. Jérémie introduced her. After our club days in Wakané Nimzatt, he had taken that same model to another neighborhood. This little girl heard the love of Jesus Christ and it transformed her world. She is Pulaar, a child of an unreached and often resistant people group. As she grew in faith, her family brought her to Jérémie with these parting words: “She loves Jesus more than us. You take her.”

The sting of Jesus’ words to his disciples have never found so real an illustration for me. This little girl from an unreached people has set the weight and wonder of the cross on her shoulder and found life (Matthew 10.34-39). In her face reflects Christ’s radiance of God’s glory because even in the face of rejection, she has been grafted into the family of God and been woven into the home of Jérémie and Elisabeth (Hebrew 1.3).

What a beautiful path of discipleship. What a great reminder of the kingdom to come!

A Boy in the Kenyan Hills

At her age, I was in the Kenyan highlands, playing with friends at boarding school, building forts and chopping wood. There are few places on earth as beautiful as the Great Rift Valley, but those glorious views belie a cold that my thin island blood couldn’t adjust to.

As a dorm, we chopped wood for hot water so we didn’t freeze in the shower. We chopped wood to keep a fire going to stay warm at night. We even chopped wood because it was fun. It was incredible to see large, solid trees give way into firewood and kindling as the swing of our young arms hammered down.

Emmett Cooper and Steve Wamberg once wrote, “When splitting wood, aiming at the top of the log only produces useless slivers of wood. Aiming for the block—past the target—gets the job done.”

So often we set our eyes on what is nearest to us, the top of the log, instead of the insurmountable task ahead. We set ourselves against the task and come away with meager advance and slivers of success. We aim at what is right in front of us, forgetting what is to come. We measure ourselves against the disheveled patterns of this world and find ourselves wanting.

That little girl, however, challenges us to look past the “target,” past the plots and plans of mice and men and back toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3.12-14). How could we live the possible in the plans of people when the impossible is set before us in the profound glory of Jesus Christ our Lord? Should we abandon the Father’s promise for fear of the unseen and unknown?

A Chosen People

New Testament theologian Scot McKnight reminds us “choosing a church is choosing a culture, and the culture we choose will form us into the people we become.” Today, we must ask ourselves if the culture we’re in is willing to create space for dreaming new dreams, impossible dreams, God’s dreams?

As sons and daughters of God we must lift our arms once again, aiming for the block—not distracted or dissuaded by the systems and best practices of this world—trusting the Holy Spirit who speaks dreams and visions into our hearts will bring them into existence. Though we do not know the future, we know the One who does.

It’s in obedience, not success, that divine beauty crashes in on us. It’s in righteous pursuit, straining toward the goal surrounded by the foment and fury of this world, that we see the sunrise.

of fathers and sons

Eight hundred young men crowded the street. That’s how the story goes. The space outside the Hotel Montana was so flooded with young men from across Madrid that the police had to be called to try and disperse them.

In the days before this strange mass in the city street, a man had come to town in search of his estranged son. As Hemingway tells it in The Capital of the World, this father had placed an advertisement in the newspaper saying “Paco meet me at the Hotel Montana Noon Tuesday. All is forgiven. Papa.” One by one, tens, then hundreds of sons converged and swallowed up the gray in search of restoration.

There is something uniquely beautiful about the relationship between fathers and sons. Most sons grow up wanting to be like their dads. They navigate the years being saturated with their fathers’ worldviews, mannerisms and behaviors until they reflect their fathers as much inside as out. Time is pivotal for fathers and sons.

The Tears of a Prophet

Lately, our family Bible studies have been getting more interesting. It’s like watching a flower emerge, a time-lapse of an emerging bud encased in green, slowly unfolding with brilliant life and vibrant color. As we retrace the steps of Scripture again and again, engaging the well known stories and forgotten details, I never cease to marvel at the ever deepening questions and reflections our children bring.

In one short year, I’ve watched as my son’s mind has expanded like an exploding universe, filled with wonder and mystery, studying God’s word. The world of the Bible is coming alive to him and he’s increasingly finding his story in it.

The other night, as we sat and talked together about the role of God’s people to be a kingdom of priests for the nations (Exodus 19.6), his face clouded over. He, in his very Henry way, meekly entered the family discussion. In his clear and precise voice, he put forward a question his eyes revealed he knew the answer to: “Does this mean that [the people around us] don’t go to heaven?”

It was a heartbreaking moment as Elise and I gently said that yes, without Christ they face a Christ-less future. His eyes burst with tears and he buried his face in the arm of the couch. His mind fired like rockets with the faces and names of friends who don’t know Jesus. For the first time I watched as my eight year old son wept for the lost. In that moment, our entire family was broken anew for the unreached around us. The rest of the evening was filled with tears and intercession. And it challenged me to ask myself when was the last time I wept for the lostness of the unreached? Time is pivotal for sons and fathers.

A Life of Collected Memories

When I told my father about this particular family devotion he said, “you’ll remember that time for the rest of your life.” He’s right. That moment will become a memorial stone in our family story. When we gaze back against the horizon of time it will stand out with many others, across a promised land marked by altars, where we’ve met with God.

So much of life is spent in collecting. We arrange our closets with the collections of clothes that best describe us. We fill our libraries with books that reveal the inner workings of our minds. We saturate our walls with art and decor that create externally what we long for within. Our collections tell the world who we are because most collections are visible.

And this is what we find in the Gospels: the story of a Son and His Father. They are the collected memories of disciples who watched the love of Father and Son embrace the world. The author of Hebrews puts it this way: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power,” (Hebrews 1.1-3a).

As Christmas draws near, this time of year we celebrate the birth of Jesus “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men,” (Philippians 2.6-7). Time and time again in the Gospels we see a Father smiling on His Son. We hear a Dad cheering from the stands, each victory a new milestone, each challenge producing another memorial stone.

Time is pivotal for fathers and sons because, through time, God the Father and Christ the Son are restoring the lost. Through time, the triune King of Kings is recreating and redeeming all who respond to His call. And we, His kingdom of priests, are equipped by His Spirit to serve the widow and care for the orphan, to care for the stranger and walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8). We are called to weep with others in their brokenness and invite them to the Lord’s Table (Romans 12.15; 2 Samuel 9.13).

In this life journey we can collect memories, beautiful milestones of restored relationship and sacred memorials of salvation. Our lives are the media through which the Father proclaims to the world, “Meet with me here at this time. In Christ, All is forgiven. Papa.”