Sara and I are off to North Carolina in the morning, for a weekend retreat and then a special gathering with fellow-travelers in Charlotte on Sunday night. I thought I would leave you with this before I go:

I don’t often say this about a book, but I will this time. If you are the parent of a child who seems like a prodigal to you, wandering in a far off place from God, go get this book! But even if you don’t have such a child, go get this book! It is a powerful read of a father’s love for a rebellious son. If you’re experiencing anything similar his journey will surely encourage your own. But it is more than that. It unveils the relentless love of the Father for all of us as he continues to seek us out in the places we get lost and restore us in his grace and mercy.

I talked more about this book on last week’s podcast if you want to hear it. It is toward the end. This book is an engaging read. Remarkably well-written, honest, and vulnerable this book describes the ongoing pain of having a child wander far from the faith of his father, and a father’s love that keeps believing the best in the face of such brokenness. And through it all he discovers a depth of God’s love for himself in his wandering moments.

In addition, Dan is a friend and has been for 15 years or so. But that’s not why I’m recommending his book as many of my other friends might attest. For me to recommend a book here, I have to be convinced that it is a really good read and that a many of you will find this book helpful for your own spiritual journey. This is all that and more. It is deeply touching and wonderfully encouraging, even though they story has not yet ended. There is a spirit of triumph in it, even though Dan’s son is still sorting through the damage in his life from alcohol and PTSD from his service in Iraq.

This book is not available in stores, but you can order it from Amazon.com or from other online retailers.

Here is some added info from the back of the book:

Hope is a butterfly
Fear is a stone
As the father waits
For his son to come home.

For anyone who has loved a prodigal child, here is a voice in the night that says you are not alone. ‘The Butterfly and the Stone’ is a story of fear and hope on a journey that leads from the safety of home to Iraq, and home again to face a fiercer enemy: post-traumatic stress and addiction. Woven throughout is God’s love… found in a most unexpected place…

You can find out more at Dan’s website, StoneButterfly.net.

The life of God continues to be shared through the people I met with in Kenya. A recent report from Michael about the love of God growing among them and that they are increasingly shifting from large-group lectures, to small-group conversations to help people truly learn to live loved and not just hear sermons about it. I’m really blessed with this change.

Here’s some of what Michael wrote me this week:

Thank you very much for the great work that you are doing for the Lord especial the work of sending the gospel of Christ across the world. As I shared with you earlier that we are sharing with groups and just training them to understand God’s love to every body. So I have been receiving more invitations from the brethren here in Kenya and other part of East Africa, to go myself or send the team to help them about this revelation. I thank God some of the trip I have been sending the team a small group of people to go and help and some of the group I have been joining them. And I have seen really the hunger from the hearts of people. And yesterday Sammy my son he asked me that why this truth has been hidden for long generation and why God is revealing now?

So we have been visiting some areas where we have been meeting with local brethren ready to hear what God might having for them and very area we have been going it so fruitful and high expectation of understanding. Sometimes we break in the meetings and allow people to share among themselves. They can questions because many people were bound by religion system so some times we pray more so that people may have inner understanding. May the Lord be praised and honored for His people to get the true revelation from Him.

In Mt Elgon, we went for villages in high mountains where many people have been died during the land clashes and you may get hundreds of women who are widows and the young single mothers. My dear brother, let us continue praying for this people as God provides such time of this let us show them that they are really under the care of God no matter they may be alone but they are with |Jesus who cares the lives, there is a lot of every kind of suffering in this area but God is the solution of very thing. Among the hundreds of children we managed to take only just two but we promised that has the father provides we shall help where necessary.

We want to thank you very much for your support along with the team for the past years to help these people in relief. (We are looking for ways to help) many widows become self-reliant through income-generating businesses in teams of ten. The hunger has become very worse in the area but God is only the solution for this, you can also pray with the widows of Mt. Elgon that God may give them clear understanding. May the Lord bless you as we pray for one another.

Michael

Here, too, are some recent pictures that they sent:

A recent outreach to Mt. Elgon to help people learn to live in the love of the Father.


Learning to pass along the life of love through conversations instead of lectures


Praying


The broken transmission damaged on a trip to the highlands of Mt. Elgon

So God’s grace is growing among them, but so are the needs in this distant land. News reports continue to talk about the famine and subsequent starvation of many people in the horn of Africa, which includes this part of Kenya. The crops have failed, costs have soared. Every time I write to them I’m helping them learn how to trust Jesus for his provision and not just rely on gifts from Lifestream. They are learning to do that. At the same time, I can’t help but feel like I have a stake in this unfolding story since God has knit my heart with theirs. All we can do is make the need available to others and see what God provides for them.

There are three critical needs now:

We appreciate so much those of you who have already helped us here. If any of you would like to give to one of these needs, or simply find out more about our ongoing touch with these dear brothers and sisters in Kenya, you can read this earlier blog or see our Sharing With the World page at Lifestream. You can either donate with a credit card there, or you can mail a check to Lifestream Ministries • 1560-1 Newbury Rd #313 • Newbury Park, CA 91320. Or if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 498-7774.

Thank you for your love, prayers, and concern for these dear people.

We are getting settled back home after an incredible trip first to Spain to share with believers there, and then to Rome where we took a walk back through time to the beginning stages of western civilization. We started our trip there among the ruins of ancient Rome—the Colosseum, Palatine Hill where the rulers built their palaces, and the Roman Forum where they ruled. Later in the trip we visited the Vatican and St. Peters, a underground excavation of a 4th century basilica for early believers, and St. John’s Cathedral that was near our hotel and was the first seat of the papal authority for the Catholic Church, and it continues to be so even though St. Peter’s Basilica is nearer the Vatican.

As someone fascinated by human history experiencing these sights firsthand was amazing on a number of levels, many of which were conflicting. I could admire what mankind was able to create in ancient times, but that would be consumed by the fact that they could only do so by conquering people in far-off lands, stealing their treasures for themselves, and bringing them back as slaves to do their work. At home they created a society that sustain an elite class of the privileged at the cost of keeping everyone else impoverished. As long as they pacified 99% of the population with food and entertainment, the 1% could continue their privileged lives with little consequence.

To help me make sense of these things I saw there I also took two books along to read: Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire by Simon Baker and History of the Popes: From Peter to the Present by John O’Malley. I am still reading those now and am finding them fascinating, in both the achievements and atrocities of mankind and how in most cases how those two are directly linked.

What amazed me was seeing the juxtaposition of the pinnacle of pagan culture (Rome) and what is supposed to be the crowing glory of Christendom (the Vatican). But they are exactly identical in what they loved and treasured and in what they were willing to do to establish their authority and to manipulate the common man. In fact one could say that the priorities of the Roman Empire didn’t vanish with the fall of the culture, they simply rolled over into the defining realities of the hierarchical structures and facilities of the “church” in that day. Whether it was a small group of Romans wanting to conquer the known world to satiate their desire for power and extravagance, or a small group of religious leaders wanting to do the same thing. Moving from the Roman Forum to the Vatican it was obvious that both cultures were created and sustained by the same preoccupations with:

And through it all one phrase kept coming to mind: “What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.” (Luke16:15) That’s what Jesus said to the Pharisees about their attempts to serve both God and mammon, and he gave them a firm warning that mammon would always win that contest. And so it has, even down to the present day.

As a culture we are still impressed with magnificent-if-gaudy buildings or fascinated with celebrity. It’s the same worldly vices reborn in our generation. So many seek to find significance through fame or finances even if they have to trample on others to gain their illusion of success. It all begins with the simple deception that God’s gifts make me better than, more deserving than, more right than the people who live around me. It takes that delusion to treat people the way you have to treat them to be at home in the upper reaches of society. And even those that don’t have that kind of “success” either spend their life striving to find it, or live frustrated with God that he didn’t make them as successful or as well-known as they think they should be.

What saddens me most here are those who expound the message of grace but don’t know how to live in it for others. They take advantage for themselves, but don’t know how to extend it to the closest people to them. Jesus reminded his first disciples not to exalt any person above others, and certainly not to place themselves there. “You have one Father and you are all brothers,” he reminded them. And, “The greatest among you is the servant of all.” Once our sense of success is based in the world’s priorities of wealth, visibility, and success we have already traded Jesus’ kingdom for another, no matter how much lip service we pay to his. God’s gifts are not for personal privilege but for serving others.

After seeing the vanity and emptiness of so much opulence and false notions of power and influence, I came away even more committed to the wonderful simplicity of relationships with others as brothers and sisters, in the simple wonder of God’s gifts and graces imparted as freely to others as he has done so for me.

“What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.”