Construction in Progress

For the last two years, I've been working on a shopping center at work. Every day that I've been at work has been a struggle to get calculations accurate, designs completed and drawings issued to site, so that this shopping center can be built as planned. The architect has changed his mind a lot of the time, and the contractor has needed our help a lot of the time, too. It's all come down to this week. On Thursday, April 26th, our 22 000 square meter shopping mall opens up to the public, and it's going to be amazing!

It's very rewarding to see the product of something that you've been working on for so long, because there are many, many...many frustrations along the way. Just working with your head down, not yet being able to see what all your efforts are accomplishing. But that's where the secret is. Before it all started, there was a dream. A plan. A vision that some client saw in his mind, and he got all the right people involved to make it happen. When I visit site, now, I can finally see in concrete what he saw in his mind, and it's marvelous.

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this, but I'm very excited about my own dreams, and my own visions that God has given me in my mind. They have only been planted in my head up until now, but I must continue to work, head down, trying to reach them. Again I refer to those two verses in Philippians 3 where Paul says we must press on! It would be difficult to only work on the processes to reach the dream without taking a step back every so often to remember what that dream is all about, and what it is that we're working so hard to reach. We're heading towards eternity with Christ with the hope of a future greater than our present. So much greater.

Maybe today you're struggling to get through this part of your life. Maybe even just today is a struggle, at work or with family, or friends, and it's putting a strain on your faith in Christ. Situations like these make it so easy to forget why we found that faith in Him in the first place, so I want to encourage you to take a step back and remember Who it is that we're chasing, and why we've surrendered all to Him. In a time when He could have abandoned else because the foreign prospect of being rejected by God, Jesus, Himself, chose to press on to achieve a final product that would reunite all of His creation back to God. That love that He felt for us on that day that kept Him going is the same love that we are pursuing after to be in the presence of soon.

So keep rejoicing, keep praying, and know that even amidst the tough times, we'll get glimpses of our final goal; whether it's a touch from Christ, or a word from God, or a healing, a blessing, a gift, a friend. We know that the end is our goal, not the journey. :)

This week, I got accepted by ABBA to be a full time volunteer there in Sao Paulo. This is the first glimpse of my final product in Brazil. It's a great incentive to reinvigorate my passion! Now for the next goal: University!

Silence

There's a famous story in the book of Joshua, where he leads an army around a city in silence for a week, before they let out a loud shout and God gives them a victory with hardly any other effort from them.

This got me thinking.

An entire week, this group of people heard nothing but nature and the sound of their feet marching around a city. They spoke about nothing. They discussed nothing, and planned nothing. They had no idea what anyone else was thinking or going through or feeling. All they knew was silence.

How stark a contrast is that when you compare it to the way we live? There's hardly a moment of silence in our lives, let alone our week's. Think of your average day, and all the voices you hear. All the opinions you hear. Think of all of people's moods, and troubles, their excitement and their plans that are thrown at you. Ironically, even this blog you're reading right now is a part of all the noise in our world that bombards us incessantly on a continual basis. People want you to see things from their perspective, or to buy their product, or to conform to their world view, or to be on their side when it comes to an aspect of life. All this is done through words, through noise.

It makes me think of silence. When I don't hear from friends, or family, then I miss out on what's going on in their lives. If I don't take the time, for whatever reason, to listen or talk to others then I can't love them adequately, because I have no idea how to actively love them in a relational way. Think about the torture you go through when a loved one gives you the ‘silent treatment’. If we can, we do whatever it takes to break down that silence in order to love them interactively, again. In a very similar way, how can I love God if I don't drown out the rest of the noise of life, and focus on His voice? Instead of hearing what others say about Him, or instead of endlessly speaking things at Him, what about silencing myself to hear His voice? This is what will grow my love for Him.

Finally, my mind falls on the involuntarily silent. Those who are screaming, and are never heard. Those who are crying out for love, but their cries have been so expertly combined with the consistent noise of life that we can no longer make out what their cries are saying. Amongst those cries, I hear the kids on the street of Sao Paulo, and I long to answer at least their call. I want to help in being an answer to the cry of someone whose voice is being harshly ignored.

Face your week with determination and conviction in your life, but don't keep the volume on so loud that you become deaf to the voices that matter. Take some time out to silence all that you can, hear what God has to say, He could have an answer you need to hear.

Or maybe, just maybe, He knows where you could be an answer to a forgotten voice.

The Shadow Proves The Sunshine

There's a song by Switchfoot that I was listening to called The Shadow Proves The Sunshine where Jon Foreman sings about how if you can see a shadow, you know there must be a sun shining. You don't have to look at the sun to believe it's there.

Last night one of the girls that has been in my youth group for years, but had left for a gap year in Jeffrey's Bay, came back to church for a visit and started relating life to a video game with me. It was a fascinating conversation about how, in the game, you have to build yourself up to a level 10 warrior before you begin to fight the level 10 enemies. She was telling me how we should be sharpening our weaponry in order to be more effective warriors for Christ, however, what I walked away from that chat thinking was, if I'm facing what I feel is a level 16 challenge, then that must mean that God thinks of me as a level 16 warrior.

Even if I don't.

So when I'm faced with these challenges that seem so insurmountable and I can't see how I'm going to overcome them, it's because I'm too busy falling back in my walk with God to a level that I've grown out of, instead of advancing forward, taking ground, and becoming the person that He knows I can be.

This morning I read Matthew 12:33-37, where Jesus is telling the Pharisees how a good tree must produce good fruit, and a bad tree must produce bad fruit, because out of the good or bad of your heart comes good or bad things. I am claiming, with my life plans and with my words, that I am representing God. I am representing good. I am speaking good, and attempting to do good. However, if I'm spending all my energy and focus on what I'm doing, or saying, and none of my energy on who I am and what's in my heart, then when idle times come...the hidden me will be exposed, and my true identity revealed.

I may carry the flag of God through my life and my words, but you may too. So let us, together, make sure that what we're doing is not out of duty, but out of an overflow of identity. When we see one of our brothers or sisters facing a level 20 challenge with their faith still at level 15, let us remind them who they are beneath their fears, and stir up their faith to the next level. Let us be Who we represent, and not attempt to represent only who we want to be.

Let our shadows prove the Son is shining.