After several years of seemingly unending e-mails, phone calls, and to-dos, the Lord has brought a sweetness of calm to the office and my soul. Although I have only been "done" with many of my AIA duties for a couple of days, the rest has been great. I have spent time logging quotes into a database (being a guy who loves great writing, this has been fun) and spending time in prayer. I am learning to be happy in the ambiguous "in between" time in which we are living and adjusting down expectations for where I am heading.
The unknown of the future has been visiting us afresh and has brought about days of uneasiness and days of great trust in God. Will we have friends? Will I fit in with a new team? What will be the actual work I will be doing? Will I regret the decision? These questions have lingered at moments, but surrounding them has been a calming providence, a sweet wind of silence in the heavens that is calling us forward in faith.
We are thankful for our friends and partners who have prayed for us in these days. The wisdom and love from a few good men has been an abundant help as well.
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.Seeking the Lord of the Great Inversion - who calls us to lose our life to find in order to find it. Out ... --------GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: NY, Image books, 1959) 94. Originally published: New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1908.