Entries Tagged 'Friends' ↓

My heart is heavy tonight. This morning we received the call from Teresa Weinberg that Grant went into cardiac arrest and was on the way to the hospital. We spent the whole day with the Weinbergs at the hospital, waiting to what the Lord would do with him. I encourage you to go to the blog that they started to document the goodness of the Lord throughout this journey. Chuck tells more details about how it all happened and gives all the credit to where credit is due. Oh how we are praying for you, Weinbergs! May God do what seems best to Him!

It was truly incredible to see the church body show up and rally around our friends. Close to a hundred people visited the hospital and stayed for a while throughout the day. It was so cool to see the body of Christ come together to support those who are suffering. Although some of the people came just because they heard someone was in need, I realized that about 99% of the people there were there because the Weinberg family had ministered to them in some way. These people had felt the love of Christ from the Weinbergs and showing up today was in a way saying, “Thank you for touching my life. I count you as my beloved friends and you are in our prayers.” The relationship with each person is a little different, but the common element is a unified love for Jesus Christ. The body looks out for each other and the parts of the body all point to and look to the Head - and that’s what happened today.

It is fairly common to think about the brevity of life when someone you love is in the balance between life and death. I thought of it in terms of the passage that I have been studying lately, Hebrews 12:1-2. We are all running a race, but some of us have long races to run and others of us have shorter ones. The thing is that we have no clue how long ours will be. I could be running my final strides right now or I could be still at the beginning. But the point is that because we don’t know where in the race we are at, we must endeavor to run faithfully during every stage. Every day is just one more stride in which we look fixedly on Christ, cast off our sin, and hold steadfastly to the truth. Too much is at stake for us to fail to do this at any point in our race, any day of our life. And although this can seem overwhelming at times, we just have to take each day at a time and ask, “Am I running faithfully today? Am I looking to Jesus today?”

I am also reminded that events like this - events that stop the normal flow of life - are opportunities to cultivate humility. In our pride, we think that we deserve another day, or that pain or death is unfair, or that these kind of things shouldn’t happen. But in reality, we deserve hell and we are not in control of one molecule of matter or one second of time - our sovereign God has all in the palm of his hand. And that is the best place for us all to be because He loves us infinitely and only does what is best for us, even if that “best” doesn’t make sense to us.

How Good is God?: The Weinberg’s blog

Check it out. You’ll be glad you did.

Be sure to check this new blog maintained by Ian, myself, and our roommate Andrew. The purpose of the blog is to document funny and random quotes that we come across, either in our room, the classroom, or church. Although generally pointless, the blog provides a chuckle every once and a while.

slight18.wordpress.com

Here at college, my fellow RA’s and I circulate daily emails with our RD just giving a brief word about what we read in the Scriptures. We do it as a simply point of accountability and encouragement. Yesterday, my friend Ryan sent this and I found it very insightful.

“I will rejoice in your lovingkindness, because you have seen my affliction; you have known the troubles of my soul…” Psalm 31:7….

Sometimes as a Calvinistic guy I handle hard issues and events intellectually, because, since God is in control, I have nothing to fret about…I like this verse because it counteracts that wrong impulse in me…I can rejoice in God’s lovingkindness, not only because it is a sovereign lovingkindness, but because it is a love that also sees and “has known” all my anguish and turmoil. Praise the Lord!

On Monday evening, my friends, Randy & Audrey Lundy, came up from Portland, Oregon in order to spend the better part of one day with my family and I. We had a great time together as I showed them a little bit of my life up here by meeting my family and some friends and by seeing the church and school that I grew up at.

On Tuesday, we drove up past Granite Falls and went hiking on the Robe Canyon Historic Trail. It wouldn’t a hike in Washington unless there was rain and we had a fair amount of it. But that rain made the whole landscape green and lush. The trail was very beautiful as it went along the Stillaguamish River and followed an old railroad that went into some tunnels.

Here are some pictures from the hike:

I am sitting in a comfortable carpeted room with Christmas music playing and lights strung around the room. I thought it appropriate to update all of my readers on the status of my body and brain after a mentally straining last week in Israel and two days of traveling.

The last days of IBEX FAO5 We said our last good-bye’s on Saturday night and then drove to the airport. We had to go through some of the most careful security that I have ever seen. They scan your entire luggage and open it up and take everything out to search it. This meant that all the dirty laundry that we had accumulated over the last week was sprawled out in front of the Israeli security personnel. We all eventually got on the flight and fell asleep, cutting our flight from Tel Aviv to Newark to only a couple of hours. We landed in 30 degree weather in New Jersey, stayed a couple of hours and then boarded another plane to take us to Los Angeles. It was hard to say good-bye to all of the people that I had spent so much time with over the last 4 months. I am excited to see what God does with the 33 people who were at IBEX in the fall of 2005. I am praying that we all will be obedient to the word of God for the love of God.

Do I miss Israel? Yeah, I do. It is hard to be with the same people so long and to grow to love them so much and then suddenly drop the relationship all together. I also miss the land. There was something special about being in the land of our God and seeing where it is that His people have dwelt for thousands of years. I will miss learning so much about the Bible. I didn’t know that there was so much that I didn’t know about the Bible and I don’t think I will ever be so excited to learn so much. God displayed His love by allowing me to learn so much about Him and to grow in my love for Him. I can only give all honor glory and praise to Him for what I experienced and how my life was changed. I would be nice to go back some day.

Am I glad to be back? Well, the way I look at it is that God placed me in that season of life for a time and now that time is over. For a couple of months I was given the opportunity to dwell in the land of Israel and I don’t regret one minute of it, but it is nice to be back in familiar territory. I have enjoyed spending time with friends, especially Grant, who is so faithful to challenge me and encourage me from the word of God. It is nice to get some variety in the food too. I had Mexican food last night and American cereal and bagels this morning. There are so many things in the US that make things easy. We live in a society where things are so readily accessible that we rely on it in order to exist. I will be really happy when I see my family and friends in Washington finally after 4 months of separation.

What has changed? I see things totally different now; not everything, but many things. I was surprised at how much I notice American wealth and greed since being back. After seeing poverty in Egypt and the lack of American comfort in Israel, it is hard to come back and just live like everything used to be. My heart and life are changed forever and I will never see things differently, or so I hope. I read my Bible so differently now, with such a better understanding of the geography and the land in which it happened. God has also allowed me to worship Him in a deeper, more intimate way because of what showed me while in Israel. He is God of the nations, the One who orchestrates all of the actions of the nations desires that His gospel be spread abroad. Why is it that so many American Christians think that the US is the only place to go and they don’t even consider foreign missions? These are just few of my thoughts.

Anyways, I am caught up on my sleep and I am enjoying spending time with Charissa and Grant down here. It has been nice seeing some IBEXers as well.