Dear Friends,
I am writing this letter from Freetown, Sierra Leone. After a year of planning this trip, it is good to finally be here with our friends. Last January, Fani, a member of our community in Galati, came and told me that he felt God leading him to Sierra Leone. He began the application process for an internship and the preparations began. In less than a year, Fani raised almost all of his financial support (which by itself is miraculous) and is now in Freetown. He will be learning and serving with the community for the next 3 months. During this time he really wants to know God's heart and to know if this is the place where he can commit himself for the long term. Please keep Fani in your prayers over the next three months.
We are also glad that Magda has been able to join us on this trip. She, like us, is here for two weeks. It is Magda's first experience in traveling by plane, going outside Europe, and seeing another Word Made Flesh community. It was also miraculous that Magda was able to raise her financial support for this trip – mostly from within the Romanian churches. Pray that Magda will be able to process everything that she sees and experiences and that God can use it to form her and develop her calling.
On our first day in Freetown, two of the Lighthouse youth took us on a tour of the city. When Lenutsa was walking through a very impoverished slum, dozens of kids came out of the cracks to embrace Lenutsa. It is amazing that where we see so much lack, those in poverty teach us how to give. After our tour we had lunch at Auntie Sally's. She is one of the workers here. After working hard all morning to prepare our lunch, she welcomed us in her home with song. Again, we were humbled at her hospitality and overwhelming embrace. These are constant reminders about what life means, what we are living for, and what it means to be a human being.
This week I have the privilege of meeting with each the U.S. and Sierra Leonean workers serving here and discussing a community evaluation. I count it a great blessing to witness God's hand at work in this community, calling individuals, developing them and using them to bring healing and transformation among the poor. It is a beautiful thing to watch.
Next week we will take a mini-retreat together. We are looking forward to worshiping and praying together and to being refreshed in God's vision for us.
I must admit that I am really enjoying the warm January! But Galati will seem extremely cold in a few weeks. Please do pray for our health. We also will have a lot of activities to do upon our return. In addition, we will be heading to Nepal for our directors' forum in mid February. In the midst of all the travel, we would ask you to pray that we will keep a healthy rhythm in our daily lives.
Thank you for supporting us and praying for us as we seek to support and pray for our friends here.
yours in Christ,
david and lenutsa
Hope against Hope
It is interesting that in the ending months of 1999, Romania was rampant with jokes about Y2K. Because nothing but maybe the airport was dependent on computers, Romania laughed at the hoarding of canned goods and bottled water. But just nine years later the fate of Romania is seemingly tied to the technology, military and economy of the west. Because of the financial crisis in western banks, we have friends in Romania who have lost their homes and who have lost their jobs. The climate of fear pervades. As the New Year was celebrated, we heard many say, "Here comes the financial crisis."
What troubles me primarily isn't that the problems were foreseen by many analysts or that billions of poor live in a constant financial crisis without the attention of the international media or government bailout plans. What troubles me is the worldly spirit that has captured and defeated the hope of the Church. St. John Chrysostom said that it is not so much our sin but our despair that plunges us into disaster.
It seems that the church has forfeited a distinctly Christian hope and capitulated to worldly versions of hope that tempts us to place our hopes in the world's economy and the world's politics and not in God. When the hopes of the world fail, the church finds itself tempted by despair.
I am aware that Jeremiah shocks the people of God in their exile in Babylon when he prophecies: "Seek the peace of the city where I (God) have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray unto Yahweh for it; for your peace depends on their peace" (29:7).
But this does not mean that we are to have the same values as Babylon. It does not me that we are to base our peace on a system of oppression. On the contrary, God's people do not weep with the tradesmen and politicians who benefit from exploitive systems (Revelation 18:9-11). Rather, the saints rejoice (18:20). In the same fashion, Mary sings a song to the Savior, affirming that "He pulled powerful rulers from their thrones and lifted up humble people; He filled hungry people with good things and sent rich people away with nothing" (Luke 1:46-55). The difference between the mourners and the celebrants stood in their contrasting values, in different visions of hope. To be Christian in our day means resisting the attacks that attempt to define our hopes. And, as Christians today, we must recover our own wellsprings of hope.
We must ask ourselves, "What do we hope for?" We may have hopes for a better future. We may hope for a better job. We may hope that our children and grandchildren will have better lives. If we are more daring, we may have hopes for our country or for our world.
A good test for finding out what we hope for is to analyze our prayers, because we pray for that which we hope for.
Here we need to differentiate between hope and desire. When I was little, I wrote letters to Santa Claus. I claimed good behavior for the year and gave him a list of things to bring me. Those are desires. In our contemporary culture, we are compelled to be consumers. We desire everything, yet hope for nothing.
Contrarily, hope, as we learn from Christ, is that for which we will give our lives. Hope does not abate what it is contradicted. Hope does not subside when fulfillment tarries.
Unfortunately, we often, even in our prayers, make God into a Santa Claus. We treat Him like a means for getting what we want. At times we even turn God into another consumer good. We seek the hand of God instead of the face of God. We bring Him our list of desires, but there are no hopes.
Hopes are suffered and endured. We suffer them until they are fulfilled. We hope so deeply that we won't let go in spite of the suffering. What do we hope for that we are prepared to suffer? The Apostle Paul says, "The glory of God"; to participate in God's glory and to see His beauty. In Romans, Paul says:
Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing God's glory. Not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Now this hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (5:2-5).
Paul speaks of a profound suffering that is founded on a deep hope. Because he hopes to see the earth filled with God's glory, he boasts in his suffering. This is a hope so precious that it is worth paying any price.
And it is not just about our hopes. It is primarily about the hopes of God. He hopes for us. He hopes to indwell us. He hopes that our security will be in Him alone. He hopes not to be "God without us" but Emmanuel "God with us." He hopes to fill the cosmos with the glory of the Lord. Our
hopes are rooted in His.
For Christ in us is the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). Although our hope is not seen, although it is often contradicted, and although we wait in patient suffering, we hope against hope in the promises of our Father in the Son and through the Spirit (4:18). Come Lord Jesus!