We're going to Hungary!!

WOOOOOO HOOOOOO!!! On Friday, late morning, we received the "go ahead" to go to the Summer Project, Speakout (for more information about how we will be spending most of our summer go here), in Hungary!!! We are so excited for JJ's FIRST trip to Hungary and an awesome opportunity to re-enter ministry...full-force and with a mixture of all of the best that we love in this calling that we are so blessed to have received. We will also be practicing the discipline of simplicity as we lay aside many of the things we think we need and "make due" with what there is...and find great joy in it. It will also be an awesome reunion with many special ones that were such a part of our year in Hungary. God is soooo good!

We also were given the "go ahead" to plan our move to FLORIDA!!! Wow!! We are still a little bit short of our monthly goal and will work towards full completion of that as we prepare to move to Florida and get ready to go to Hungary, but we have been blessed with many special gifts, enough to be confident to walk ahead as "fully-funded" into ministry! Words cannot describe how humbled we are at this provision and all that the Lord continues to bless us with--it is so deeply written upon our hearts that we are "blessed to be a blessing". As the Lord pours over us His manifold blessings, our hearts respond in gratitude and are filled with the earnest desire to walk faithfully each step in this calling...

I pray all who might read this will be encouraged to step out in faith and know that our God is faithful to His children and BELIEVE that He can and will do "exceeding immeasurably beyond all that we could ask or imagine" as we commit our lives to Him in His great purpose of drawing all peoples to Himself!

Emptiness and Fullness

Emptiness and Fullness

Emptiness and fullness at first seem complete opposites. But in the spiritual life they are not. In the spiritual life we find the fulfillment of our deepest desires by becoming empty for God.

We must empty the cups of our lives completely to be able to receive the fullness of life from God. Jesus lived this on the cross. The moment of complete emptiness and complete fullness become the same. When he had given all away to his Abba, his dear Father, he cried out, "It is fulfilled" (John 19:30). He who was lifted up on the cross was also lifted into the resurrection. He who had emptied and humbled himself was raised up and "given the name above all other names" (see Philippians 2:7-9). Let us keep listening to Jesus' question: "Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?" (Matthew 20:22).

Once again, I find myself sharing with you the Nouwen meditation for today...I have truly been touched by the last few meditations that have focused on the cups of our lives.

I do find the paradox of how in our emptiness we find His fullness. For so long, I trusted my own heart's strength to love a hurting, dying and broken world. I believed that if I cared enough, I could change the world. In the end, this only leads to one place--a dried-up, burnt- out and often embittered soul desiring to stay hedged in and not reach out--believing that there is nothing left to give...

But when we begin to see the "end of ourselves" and realize how utterly futile to transform even our most beautiful caring is, we are ready to be used of Him however He would choose...At that place when we think that we can do no more, is where we find "His strength made perfect."

One of the most vivid memories of this for me came when I was caring for my mother in the last stages of her terminal cancer. I found myself with no strength to care for her that morning and see her frail "wasting away" body, and as I prepared to do just that, I cried out in desperation "God, I cannot do it! I cannot continue to watch her life waste away." Almost as instantly as the words were uttered, I heard the Lord so distinctly direct me to the passage in II Corinthians 4: 16-18 "...though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day...so we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." The Lord was leading me to not see the wasting away of my mother, but rather her soul being renewed and prepared for Eternity with every breath she took. I will always remember that day in caring for her and the eyes I saw clearer and more beautiful than I had ever seen.

I pray you find yourselves emptied today and that in so doing you drink of the infinite waters of His cup.

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Our cups of life...

Drinking the Cup

After firmly holding the cups of our lives and lifting them up as signs of hope for others, we have to drink them. Drinking our cups means fully appropriating and interiorizing what each of has acknowledged as our life, with all its unique sorrows and joys.

How do we drink our cups? We drink them as we listen in silence to the truth of our lives, as we speak in trust with friends about ways we want to grow, and as we act in deeds of service. Drinking our cups is following freely and courageously God's call and staying faithfully on the path that is ours. Thus our life cups become the cups of salvation. When we have emptied them to the bottom, God will fill them with "water" for eternal life.

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Read Bread for the Journey The popular Nouwen book upon which our 'Daily Meditation' eLetter is based.

Again, I find so many pearls of wisdom that stay with me as I read pieces of Henri Nouwen's writings. I hope I make you all want to read him if I have not yet:-)