It’s good to be back from Australia and catch-up a bit on some sleep and tons of office stuff that piled up in my three-week absence. If you want to hear my reflections on my time in Australia as well as some comments on a recent Barna study that concludes Christians more reflect the spirit of the Pharisees in the world than they do the character of Jesus, check out my latest podcast at The God Journey. But back to Australia, this was as wonderful a time with individual people and being there at incredibly significant moments of God’s revelation to them as I’ve ever had. I watched people come alive on a journey and make incredible shifts in their thinking as God brought them into a greater reality.
Since reading the Birthday Book my daugher assembled for my birthday this year, I’m much more attune to the fact that the way God’s life is passed on in the world is not by books, movies, podcasts, or media of any kind, but simply by the way we treate people around us. If we can find God’s love for us real enough that we live quite naturally in the world aware of and caring for people around us, some incredible things happen. In this vein, what we do intentionally is less significant than those words or actions that just pop out spontaneously as we are simply living in the moment with graciousness. I love that. I want to learn more of it.
I even had time to spend with some of the local wildlife:
Many of you know that Sara had to face down a wildfire while I was gone as it swept up the hill behind our home. It was one of the big ones in California already this spring. Fortunately the winds shifted as it got within a mile or two of our home, but it was a harrowing day indeed for my lady while she was home alone. Graciously a host of friends and family shot over to help her load the critical things and get them off the property in case the fire kept coming. That was a Saturday for me and I felt so far away from her as I got text and Facebook updates. I am so grateful a greater castrophe was averted.
I also stopped by Ireland this week and did a podcast interview for PilgrimTalk. I did stop in via Skype rather than actually go there, but nontheless Anthony was very gracious to me as he posed some questions I didn’t always find easy to answer. It’s brief and you can hear it here.
It’s great to be home. Tomorrow we tape more of the Engage videos. I’m blessed to hear that people are finding these helpful in sorting out their own growing relationship with Father and Son. Other than that, I’ve plowed through a thousand emails, many of them to prepare for my upcoming trip to North Carolina.
With Mother’s Day this weekend and lots of family, as well as a Saturday night gathering of some of the believers who live around us, I can truly say it there is no place like home! I hope that’s true for you, too, even if you’re in difficult circumstances. I know Mother’s Day can be a day of pain for many people, those with wayward children, broken moms, or even missing a mom no longer with us. May you especially be at home in the Father that day and know that he is bigger than any thing this world can dish out on us.
