The Vision

from the Vision and the Vow by Pete Grieg

The vision?
The vision is Jesus:
obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is of an army of young people.
You see bones?
I see an army.

And they are free from materialism

They laugh at nine-to-five little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They wouldn't even notice.
They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the West was won.

They are mobile like the wind.
They belong to the nations.
They need no passport.
People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting, dirty and dying.

What is the vision?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.
It makes children laugh and adults angry.
It gave up the game of minimal integrity long ago to reach for the stars.
It scorns the good and strains for the best.
It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers from every secret motive, from every conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps - their Satan games.

This is an army that would lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day, its soldiers choose to lose that they might one day win the great "well done¡¦of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night.

They don't need fame from names.
Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: "COME ON!¡¦

And this is the sound of the underground, the whisper of history in the making, foundations shaking, revolutionaries dreaming once again.
Mystery is scheming in whispers, conspiracy is breathing¡¦

And the army is disciple(in)ed

Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.
The tattoo on their back boasts "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.¡¦
Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes.
Winners.
Martyrs.
Who can stop them?
Can hormones hold them back?
Can failure succeed?
Can fear scare them or death kill them?

And the generation prays like a dying man with groans beyond talking, with warrior cries, sulfuric tears and great barrow loads of laughter!

Waiting.
Watching.
24-7-365.

Whatever it takes they will give:
Breaking the rules,
Shaking mediocrity from its cozy little hide,
Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs,
Laughing at labels,
Fasting essentials.
The advertisers cannot mold them.
Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late-night parties before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive on the inside.
On the outside?
They hardly care!
They wear clothes like costumes: to communicate and celebrate, but never to hide.

Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their lives, swap seats with the man on death row, guilty as hell: a throne of an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days, they pray as if it all depends on God and live as though it all depends on them.

Their DNA chooses Jesus.
He breathes out.
They breathe in.
Their subconscious sings.
They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.

Their words make demons scream in shopping malls.
Don't you hear them coming?

Herald the weirdoes!
Summon the losers and the freaks.
Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes!
They walk tall and trees applaud.
Skyscrapers bow.
Mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension.

Their prayers summon the Hound of Heaven and evoke the dream of Eden.

And, this vision will be.
It will come to pass.
It will come easily.
It will come soon.

How do I know?
Because, this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the spirit, the very dream of God.

My tomorrow is His today.
My distant hope is His 3-D.
And, my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking, great "AMEN!" from countless angels, from heroes of the faith, from Christ himself.

from the Homecoming Queen to the Last Sentry

sentry (noun)- a soldier stationed at a place to stand guard and prevent the passage of unauthorized persons, watch for fires, etc., esp. a sentinel stationed at a pass, gate, opening in a defense work, or the like. (dictionary.com)

In South Korea, during the war, my Grandpa Ryan was shot in the leg. It was during an ambush and one of his crew members came out to drag him to saftey. That night, his regiment got lost. They were walking in the direction that they believed to be towards the American troops. As they were walking, my Grandpa in a stretcher made with two jackets, they suddenly heard someone to the right in the bushes. Contact was made and the person revealed himself to be an American sentry. He asked why they were traveling that direction. When informed that they were lost, he told them that they were walking directly into enemy territory and that he was the last sentry before hitting the North Korean lines. Properly informed, my grandfather and his regiment turned in the opposite direction and back towards the safety of South Korean territory. My grandmother was pregnant at the time with my uncle, Steve who was my dad's oldest brother who ended up being the oldest of 7 children. My dad was not born for at least another decade. Had my grandfather died that night, my dad would have never been born, his 3 other brothers and 2 sisters would have never been born, my mother would have married some guy named Larry or something, and I would have never been born. If not for the last sentry, one man bold enough to risk his own life on my grandpa, dozens of people would have never even been born.

I can picture him now, standing under the Korean sky, hidden in tall grass, nervous, waiting, watching for any sign or movement from either side. Hours of silence, of false alarms, moments of terror marked off by minute after minute of nothing but crickets and the blowing of the breeze. Suddenly, down the path dark shapes begin to come into view. The muffled sound of combat boots on the dirt drawing nearer and nearer. Whether friend or foe, he could not be certain. Would he reveal himself and his post? If the newcomers were friendlies, they were headed toward certain disaster if he did not stop them, he knew he was the last sentry before the North Korean lines. But, if it was the enemy, revealing himself would result in certain capture and likely death. He had a choice to make, a choice of selfless giving or of saving himself. In that moment, did the faces of the children of those soldiers flash before his eyes? Did he know that if he did not stop the soliders and they were Americans, that many lives would never have a chance to come? Did he know? I don't. But I do know that in that moment he chose to risk his own life for mine. He didn't know it, he didn't know that by risking his life he would give me a chance to live. But he did it. He was bold enough to stand up for the truth of who he was regardless of what the response might have been, and as a result, I got to live.

My senior year of college, I was elected Homecoming Queen. There are two possible reasons for this. They are probably both true. Reason number one is because God directed me through college and led me to pour into many people's lives in little ways. He gave me encouragement to speak to people and love to give as well. However, I was also a people pleaser. I cared very much for the opinions of man and quite little for standing up for what I knew to be true. I accepted people where they were at but did not call them to much more than that. I did not stand up for the truth, even when I saw people headed in the wrong direction. Not wanting to lose their good opinion of me, I gave into half truth and a sugary gospel that said everything was ok and oh the truth of how God has called us as Christians to live doesn't apply in this circumstance or in that one. I sought the favor of man over standing up for the truth of God. Sometimes they don't exclude each other, lots of times they do. It is more important to speak truth in love according to the word of God than to be liked by everyone. Looking back, I would have rather spoken out truth about what I really believed about the lifestyle statement, about respecting authority, about relationships and relationship with God.

Fast forward to today. Taiwan. Surrounded by people who do not believe in the truth of the gospel. I will make friends with them, and I have a choice. Am I going to play the Homecoming Queen card and try to win their approval? Do I want to be their favorite person or do I want to do something else? When I am sitting in conversation, am I going to back down and hide in fear, or stand up and speak the truth? And in that moment, will I see the faces of their families and children and grandchildren who will not hear the truth of the gospel unless someone preaches it to their daugher or mother or grandmother? Speaking the truth in love does not just involve the person sitting before me, but the generations to follow.

If the last sentry in that field on the border between North and South Korea had not risked his life to warn my grandfather that he was headed directly into certain death, I would have never lived.

If I am not willing to risk my life, my reputation, being cool and liked and accepted to warn my friends that they are headed into certain death, they and those who follow them, may never truly live.  

Interior Lands

Adventure.

G.K. Chesterson said "An adventure is an inconvenience, rightly considered."

Being home has felt like an inconvenience. It has felt strange, uncomfortable, lonely, frusterating, confusing.

This morning I realized that I feel like I have just been born, I've been born again. I spent five months in the womb of DTS only to emerge a different person, incapable of normalcy. Not so much "ruined for the ordinary" as "lost and tired in the ordinary."

I'm reading an article in Discipleship Journal called "Let the Adventure Begin". There is a page sized picture of a man about to hick into and around a canyon that looks like the Grand one. He has a hiking stick and an Indiana Jones hat and a backpack with a sleeping bag rolled up on top strapped to his back. The path ahead of him looks dangerous but steady and smooth. It takes him immediately to the edge of a cliff and then onward with the canyon sides below him at every step.

There is a quote in that article that says :

"There are interior lands God wishes to take us to,
places where He wants us to grow in order to reflect Him."

Interior lands of Adventure. The thought sparked my imagination and the Holy Spirit whispered for me to get my laptop and explore this with Him.

Interior lands of Adventure. What? Like, The land of captured thoughts, the land of uncertainty, the island of worry, the pits of dispair. This is beginning to sound like Pilgrims Progress. The land of frustration, the bogs of sin, the glittering city of imorality with the glitz and the glamor of television all around. The seemingly dull path that leads through the safe valley of dependance on God. The mountains of difficulty that stand between where I am and the gentle but piercing voice that is calling me to stand on the plains of righteousness and security in Christ.

Sometimes I see my life inside of myself as unimportant. As long as the "exterior lands of adventure" continue to be conquered, the inside doesn't seem to matter as much to me. If I have a bad day on the inside but then end with a time of fun and fellowship in the outside world, my insides become more settled and secure.

I am realizing that I cannot do this alone, this Christian life. Not at all. I have been home for two weeks now and have sat in the pit of watching other people's lives through a box of lies far too many times. And to sit and write in my journal and read my Bible is like having my teeth pulled. A baby, once born is not capable of feeding herself on her own. When she was in the womb she had her food handed to her and she may have felt like she was doing it herself, and while there was struggle involved with growth and especially in birth, much of what she had was given to her by the environment surrounded her.

I am not independent of my surroundings or the people around me. At the same time, the adventures of the interior of me holds battles that I must fight and mountains that I must climb and summit but I cannot do so alone. It's like a video game that I am in, a single player attempting to survive, me alone at the controls but I cannot survive alone in there. What I need is others, others sitting in their living rooms at their video game screens who can climb into the interior as their video game character and join me inside.

Or. Or else I bring my interior lands struggles to the surface. And I merge the exterior and the interior into a hope that God is not deserting me, nor have I left Him in sin, but this entire thing is in His control and will.

"And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." - 2 Corinthians 3:18

So I haven't written on xanga in a long time. Partly because I haven't had time to and partly because I haven't had words to explain my life. I feel a bit like I've been in hyperdrive for the last five months and now that I've dropped back into Normal, quite literally, I have no idea what to do with myself.

But I'm here. And I'm sitting in my room, the one I slept in every night of junior high and high school and every summer home from college and I'm trying to write a Bible Study lesson for my mom's Bible study tomorrow. It's about Hannah and there is so much I could say that I don't know how to organize it AND at the same time I have no idea how I'm going to talk for 30 minutes. It's a little ridiculous. I'd really rather do just about anything but do this right now. I'm at a stand still. This is a great time for "when I am weak then God is strong." So I'm hoping that He will come through. He never hasn't though. Actually, there was a time when I was in the Amazon Jungle and it was for me to give the sermon, I'd never preached in my life, but I was supposed to give a sermon of the Gospel and God literally gave me every single word and sentance to say. All I did was think about it before I got up there and then speak the words that were basically WRITTEN on the back wall before my eyes. So God is good. And He will lay the stepping stones out for me as I walk. I believe that. He has not called me here to fail but to trust in Him to bless the women who I will stand before. Because truly, what I think that they need to hear and what their hearts really need are probably fairly different.

So God, here is what I have and what I am. Please use the heart and life you have given me to encourage the women tomorrow and please use my mouth to speak only truth and love and please use your Spirit to speak things to their hearts that I never say.

In the name of Jesus,

Amen

hidden treasure

Thanks for all the laughs, and thanks for all the tears.

Thanks for all the times I needed you and you were near

Thanks for you, thanks for you loving me through it all

Thanks for New Years Eve and the 4^{th of July}

Thanks for Showers in Joy Hall and staying up late talking at night

Everybody needs some friends, some pals to live life with

Everybody needs a family to grow up surrounded by

Just the little daily things that we all need to share,

The funny thing that happened in class and the Prof that made you cry

If we held it all just in at the end of every day

We’d be sad and lonely people, just trying to get by

So my friends, I just want to say, while I still have the time, while we still have some days

Thanks for all the laughs, and thanks for all the tears.

Thanks for all the times I needed you and you were near

Thanks for dinner at 6:00 and Dr Phil at three

Thanks for underwear parties and being willing to drop out of school with me

Someday we’ll be grown up, maybe we’ll be cute old ladies

 We’ll have children that we’ve raised day by day and they’ve also had babies

We’ll be grandmas, proud grandmas and someday our grandkids will ask

Grandma what was it like when you were my age? Did you have friends? What did you do?

And we’ll smile and tell them stories, bout the way things used to be,

about our friends Liz and Amanda, Amber, Leann, Annie, Katie, Hadessa, Reba, Dana, Danielle, Bethany, Lindsay,

and we’ll get out our photo albums and they’ll laugh at our funny hair and funny clothes then ask if we still have any of those

old t-shirts... and I'll smile and say, this one was once burried underground for ten years...