Travel Day

Merhaba! (that’s “hello” in Turkish from Charlie)
July 3, 2010

I’m sitting in the Istanbul airport terminal waiting for our flight to Antalya, after a 10.5 hour flight from Chicago. Everyone on the team fell sound asleep at some point except me. I had moments of semi-consciousness as I listened to my iPod, but that was about it. You can see the picture of us all in our seats. Each seat back had an individual screen and you could pick from quite a selection of movies, TV shows, music, games, etc. I watched Casablanca for the first time.

Cross Training finished with some strong teaching and a very meaningful and moving day of personal sharing amongst the team as we shared our testimonies about coming to faith in Christ, which really became a time of sharing our life stories, or at least parts of them. The evening concluded with a rich time of worship, a footwashing ceremony with each team and then communion.

For me the two things stand out regarding what God was doing in me this week. The first is experiencing a real sense of coming together as a team. There is a deep appreciation for the wonderful variety of people on our team. Times of sharing naturally spilled over into praying for one another as tender pieces of our lives were exposed and offered to the group. We have truly come to enjoy, trust and care for one another in a rather compressed amount of time.

The second thing is what I would call a ‘stripping away’ of my need to be ‘prepared’ to do whatever we might be asked to do. Some of my concern about being prepared has stemmed from the fact that our purpose is more relationship-based than task-oriented. Of course all IMPACT teams come prepared to develop relationships, but there is usually a very clear task or project they will do and they know what it is ahead of time. For us, we are here to be a part of their community – to get to know them and simply share our lives. Yes, we do have some things that we will do, such as a women’s retreat, Sunday School with the children, visitation, etc. But nothing we have been able to get ‘prepared’ for in the manner I am accustomed. I did spend quite of bit of time getting craft supplies for the women (stamps and other materials to make greeting cards, courtesy of my wife) and all the leftover VBS supplies for the children. I felt at least somewhat prepared to offer that toward activities we would be doing. But as the week progressed, we didn’t have enough information to really plan much of anything around these activities, and then, unbelievably, I forgot to pack the craft supply suitcase in the truck that was taking us to the airport. I realized it halfway there, but by then it was too late. All that effort and expense...for nothing. Why God? How hard would it have been to have received just a little nudge from the Spirit to remind me to go into the other room where it was stored? Now I’m not blaming God, as it was me who forgot. But by the time I got to LAX I realized that most all my attempts to plan and be in at least some measure of ‘control’ over what was going to happen, for one reason or another didn’t happen. It was as if God was saying, “Stop trying to hard to orchestrate your experience. Just GO. Take yourself and I will go with you. You need to learn to trust me – and trust yourself.” So I am learning in yet another way to step into something of an unknown future, knowing only that it is the future God has set before me and that he will be in it ahead of me. These words of Jesus continue to have increasing meaning for me in this season of my ministry: “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does likewise. (Jn. 5.19) I set forth in this new and unfamiliar land to pay attention to what God is doing...and then do it with Him.

In and for the glory of Christ, Charlie