Come Be My Light is the new book being published this month which is causing quite a tumult in both Christian and major media circles. It is the journal entries of Mother Teresa during her years in the “Missionaries of Charity” in Calcutta, India. Since her passing, the Catholic Church has uncovered tons of documents on her and her life in the process of beautification (the path to sainthood).

What they found however shocked them. Apparently, for the last FIFTY years of her life, Teresa lived in a state of complete isolation from God. Dryness in prayer, emptiness of heart, and a mind full of doubt was somehow the driving force behind her daily interaction with the lepers, the dying and the “untouchable” caste in India. In fact, it was almost immediately AFTER she answered the call to follow Christ on mission into India that he stopped returning her calls. But why?

St. John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic calls this the “Dark Night of the Soul”, a state of pain and separation from God on the path toward greater union with him, but rarely does it ever last as long as Mother Teresa’s. And we can be sure that this was not just some naval gazing pity party. Teresa regularly gave her self away so that others could be blessed, and continued (much like someone serving a comatose spouse) seeking Jesus with no response from him.

This troubles a missionary’s heart. We believe that when we take leaps of faith (like we see Mother Teresa doing) we’re going to be rewarded with an amazing spiritual life filled with intimacy and connection with Christ. Not so for Teresa, who is in many ways a pioneer of incarnational missions.

Could her sense of the void between her and Christ be her sharing in the pain he experienced on the Cross for all humanity? In the moment when, having taken on the pain and sin of the world, he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” could Teresa, having taken on the pain of so many actually come to a similar spiritual experience?

I’ve talked with enough Christians who work with the poor and the terminally ill to know that their crisis of faith comes mixed from not knowing why God doesn’t immediately fix the problems he has power over, and from losing sight of their own spiritual healthiness to continue serving others.

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So I’m wondering: can someone experience Jesus’ separation from God as a part of their journey to live like Jesus did? Why does God allow so many people to remain stuck in the pain and misery that they are in? And, is it possible to serve others so much that it kills your spiritual life?

God continues to confound the wise and stupefy our best guesses. It is clear to me that God is actively pursuing people right around this world, and in many places (more than we will ever know) he is under the radar, supplying nutrients to grassroots, underground movements of God’s People. Joel News once again discovers yet another story to give Father praise for!

The ‘grassroots’ house church movement in Bangladesh is beating its ten thousands, reports German missions strategist Wolfgang Simson. “In 1996 I was in Bangladesh, the third-largest Muslim country in the world, with only 600,000 known and organized Christians then. Only a few Muslims were coming to Christ, and found it extremely difficult to be integrated into the traditional churches. I spoke to the majority of Christian leaders connected to the Evangelical Alliance there about the need to start underground networks of house churches, allowing whole Muslim families to be discipled and multiplied. Many leaders shook their heads: ‘Impossible; unheard of; unpractical; difficult; deadly; ridiculous, maybe in China or India, but not here’ were some of the responses I got. Crammed into my airplane seat back home I felt like such a looser. Was it worthwhile to speak about these things at all? Should we not leave everyone just alone and do their thing?”

“A few days ago in Zürich a few of us met with a man we call Brother Abdul from Bangladesh. He told us a story that made me cry - and maybe you, too. That very year I was in his land, he, as a 19 year old teenager then, started to do the very thing I was preaching. But he did not hear it from me, but from God. He started a movement to disciple Muslims through underground house churches we call ‘jamaats’, and it has now, in 2007, after only a few years, become the largest single movement bringing Muslims to Jesus in the world! Again and again people checked and rechecked the statistics; it is for fact that more than 500,000 Muslims have become disciples of Jesus through this house church movement, nearly overtaking the number of all other organized Christians in Bangladesh together.”

Source: Wolfgang Simson

Could this kind of “great awakening” have happened if traditional churches had simply figured out the right evangelistic strategy? Would there even be enough seats in the pews of the church buildings in Bangladesh to accomodate for such an amazing influx of church-goers? Thank God that his work is not confined to a church building’s retail space or conversion strategy.

A week and a half before school starts…for the last time. I would be in 20th grade this year if school was still counting, which is unbelievably too long. I’ve known very little about life outside of school, and its time I get to learning. (Funny…leave school to begin learning? One of life’s little ironies I suppose.) The school structures that I’ve been a part of for so long has been good ones. And I’ve enjoyed the overall trajectory that the Lord has sent me on through it all. But its definitely time to finish strong and to FINISH. It all comes down to this year.

My classes this fall are looking good. I’m taking two graduate classes; the first is Theology of Mission with Ed Matthews, and the second is Readings in Christian Spirituality with Jeff Childers. Since I have no clue (i.e. no syllabus emailed to me yet) about Matthews’ class, I’ve gotta rant and rave about my ‘Readings’ class. It’s looking really neat! Here are the 15 books (read, “ZOIKS”) I’ll be reading this semester.

What I’ve loved about my previous class with Childers is that his preference and expertise is on Christian communities not at the hub of Western examination. Christian expansion which coincided with the Western Roman Empire is only a slice of the pie, but that is all we’re ever taught. But what about the Syriac desert fathers of Edessa? What about Byzantium Christianity? Or the Celts? Or the early Anabaptists? Or the lesser known feminine mystics like Julian of Norwich? There is so much more to learn than my own little branches on the tree of God’s great family.

In a similar vein, I’ve been enjoying another Newsboys song (Newsboys? I feel like I’m back in High School again!) called ‘The Mission’: (listen here)

When the runners came from Bethlehem
All breathless with good news
They were passing a baton forward through time
The commission, from God’s lips to our ears
Carried by his saints two thousand years
Connects us all to the same lifeline
As I fix my eyes ahead
I can feel the spirit’s breath…

(AND) I CAN HEAR THE MISSION BELL RINGING OUT LOUD AND CLEAR
IT’S THE REVOLUTION JESUS STARTED, AND IT’S HERE
ECHOING ACROSS THE WORLD FROM THE SHORES OF GALILEE
I CAN HEAR THE MISSION BELL CALL FOR YOU AND ME
I WANNA RUN WITH FIRE
IT’S MY HEART’S DESIRE
LIFTING YOUR LOVE HIGHER

In the history of our faith’s arrivals
Great awakenings, Welsh revivals
Saints and martyrs, summoned by a new birth
Patrick’s save of the Irish nation
William Carey’s expectation
Lambs & lions
Called to the ends of the earth
Gotta put my hand to the plow
Not looking back, not now…

I have a feeling I’ll be exploring lots of uncharted territory this semester, and at the same time, I’ll be finding myself all over the place.

We had a breakthrough today…literally.

I spent the morning with Miller today digging the biggest hole I’ve ever seen made by human hands.  I mean, its huge.  It’s the kind of hole my elementary school self would have been proud of.

Apparently he’s been working on it with some other friends for quite some time.  When I arrived on the scene it was already down to about 10 feet.  We had a pulley system with a bucket to bail to dirt out…the whole schebang.  A hand dug well…that’s a first for a city-boy like me.

We both took turns picking and shoveling ourselves further and further into God’s good earth.  The only air moving around down thereis the kind you make…and believe me, you’d rather the still air to that.  :)  While Miller and I shoveled, hauled, and conversed, I allowed myself to feel God’s presence in the absolutely mundane.  There is nothing glorious about what was happening there this morning, and yet, stilling my heart was probably the best thing that could have happened to me today.

Every time I work with Miller out on his land, I get a whiff of God’s dream for humankind.  Humans are to work with their hands; to labor and sweat to produce something beautiful.  We’ve moved away from the ways in which God intended.  I mean, most of my profession as a student is just sitting in a chair facing forward, poking away at plastic bits and watching lights flash on a screen.  I never feel more satisfied than when I look back on a day I’ve poured work and sweat into, and seen the results.

As our time out on his land was nearing an end (it was STANKIN’ HOT!), we hit water!  It was no powerful geyser, but it was a definite trickle.  Praise God!  He works in the small, and unimpressive to demonstrate his incredible, everlasting love.  The deep satisfaction on Miller’s face was priceless.  It was all worth it now.

So I sit here now with my summer class papers before me, and I have to tell you all just how good life is!  It was a pretty interesting paper, don’t get me wrong.  But I’m just so GLAD to have it all finished.  It seems like every time I get to the end of one of these semesters, I get a little more disillusioned to the idea of returning to school in the fall.  Good thing this is my last year.  Right now the plans are to take Christian Readings in Spirituality this fall with Jeff Childers, a G-R-E-A-T professor on early Christianity and has some great insights into the non-traditional communities (i.e. the ones you don’t read about in Acts).  He’s got whole books on the apostle Thomas’ missionary journey to India and Philip’s journey out to China and the orient.  I get goosebumps about that kind of stuff…then again, I’m a self-proclaimed nerd.

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Some big stuff in our lives right now; and I’m just asking everyone who reads this to pray.  We’re taking some big steps of faith, and we know that God will not let us fall.  We feel like we’re following his voice into a life that is joyful, sane, and sustainable over the long term.  Maybe I’ll write more about this later.

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Tomorrow I’m going to a friend’s 90-day AA celebration!   For 90 days he’s been clean and on a track toward recovery!  It’s been great getting to know him over these past three or so months, and I’m proud that he’s wanting me there tomorrow night.  He’s a great guy and our Life Transformation Group is becoming one of my favorite times of the week.

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I wish A-Rod would just hurry up and beat Barry’s record.  Hank Aaron is waiting too.  I don’t think I’ve met a single person who is happy to hear that Barry Bonds holds the record for home runs.  Too much mud in the water with his career.   Those are my thoughts anyway.