Evendays

Sometimes, the most beautiful things around us get ignored: Nature. People. The Creator.

You may of heard about it (it was news to me), but one of the most talented violinists of our age, Joshua Bell, played in a Washington D.C. metro station as a simple street performer. Over one thousand commuters passed by him on a Friday morning in January.

Take 10 minutes and read about what happened here.

It reminds me that I can miss seeing, and hearing, what’s beautiful. So let’s keep our eyes, and ears, open.

(Just to whet your appetite):

"’At a music hall, I’ll get upset if someone coughs or if someone’s cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change.’ This is from a man whose talents can command $1,000 a minute."

The visiting missionary was asked by the preacher: You’ve been here for a month. What can you tell me about this church? And the missionary, who’d spent hours and hours at table with Christians from that church community responded: What surprises me is that everybody, everybody has a story.

Having lived 23 years in the same place, I sometimes “tune-out” to the stories of those around me. While traveling, my ears open, my heart is more aware to what others have to say.

It was our third night in town and we’d already been talking for an hour when R. told us about his family tragedies. Years ago, from a kitchen table, his 17 year-old sister picked up her eldest brother’s recently-cleaned pistol, put the barrel to her temple and pulled the trigger, stupidly thinking the weapon was unloaded.

A teenage son got talked into a robbery, chose to hold the gun, which went off during the hold-up, killing the female employee behind the counter. He’s already served over a dozen years of a life-without-parole sentence in 4 different prisons in the south of the US. He’s in a “good” prison now.

Everyone’s got a story. I just need to listen.

There has been a garbage strike going on in Naples for months. Seems that the Mafia controls the garbage pickup and disposal, and they decided to flex their muscles. There is garbage everywhere, stacked up on every other corner. Plastic bags float in the wind. Gulls and dogs nip at the garbage.

But the 14 youth who went on the mission trip never mentioned these things. When asked what they had seen, not a one mentioned the piles of trash or the nearby sea or Mont Vesuvius towering in the background. Not one.

They said they saw people who gave up their beds and slept on the floor so their guests could rest comfortably. They said they saw fellow Christians looking out for their guests’ every need. They said they saw hospitality that they’d never seen before and a desire to share Jesus with the inhabitants of the city of Naples.

They said they saw God at work, and that His perfume was invading the streets of Naples.

That’s what they said. 

 

We arrived back in Lausanne on Monday morning at 1 AM after a wonderful teen mission trip. Good to be home. Wife got up the next morning and left with the Kee family from Geneva to cook for 40 folks for a week-long retreat in Germany.

Thanks for your prayers. Some news about Naples is to follow. Great kids. Great experience.

Thursday afternoons have become a favorite time for me. At 4 PM, I often meet F. at the Manora cafeteria at the center of Lausanne. F’s 15 and very interested in spiritual things he can discover in the Bible. His parents are long-time members of the church here, and F. and I have been studying for a while, making pretty good progress (I think).

He picks up a Coke, me a hot chocolate and we dig into the Scriptures at a downstairs’ table away from the crowd. Like most 15 year-old boys, F’s mind goes everywhere, bouncing off every wall, so we use “fill in the blanks” to keep on track. But all questions are permitted if accompanied by honesty.

He told me recently that he loves our study time. Me too, because we are talking about the most important stuff ever discussed: What life is made of. And it’s a lot of fun, even if I don’t know off which wall the next question is coming.
–
Please pray for our drive back to Lausanne from Naples. Thanks.

Today, I’m in Naples, Italy with a group of teens on mission…

Jim McGuiggan had on his site a blurb about the practice of the Jews concerning contentious subjects which are not clearly defined by Scripture. When arriving in a new village (say… Naples), the Jew would simply ask the Rabbi: "What’s the practice here?" (about the contentious subject). Then the newcomer would follow the local practice even if s/he didn’t completely agree with the decisions of the local group.

I find there is much value in that. Some might call it chicken. Others might call it giving in to pressure. But you must admit that it eliminates those two dangers mentioned by Paul concerning faith expressions and community: "disdain for those who don’t and judgment against those who do".

While on the subject of prayer, many of you know that we in Lausanne have the tradition of reading through  Psalms, one psalm each Sunday, one after the other. I wanted to write praying through the Psalms, but I think some of the psalms just get read-through and not prayed-through. I’m talking about myself, not others.

Recently, there were two Sundays when the psalms read-prayed were especially appropriate. The first was when we had 9 Croatians with us for the Taizé meeting in Geneva. Psalm 113:

Praise the Lord, all you nations!
   Extol him, all you peoples!
For great is his steadfast love towards us,
   and the faithfulness of the Lord endures for ever.
Praise the Lord!

The second was last weekend at the women’s retreat. The weekend’s theme was Peace. The coincidental psalm? 122:

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
   ‘May they prosper who love you.
Peace be within your walls,
   and security within your towers.’
For the sake of my relatives and friends
   I will say, ‘Peace be within you.’
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
   I will seek your good.

Two lovely coincidences, conducive to prayer and worship.

The Tuesday prayer group at the local Protestant Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Vaud (that really is its name) always has two antiphonal prayers… One at the beginning and another, appropriately, at the end. One of the weekly participants, a very kind, yet very-old-enough-to-know-she-can-speak-her-mind lady, told me she hates those prayers. (I kind of like them.) She wonders why we have to respond like sheep baaa-ing. (Her words, not mine.) I suppose it’s because no one prays during the free prayer time. Plus we are able to cover the liturgical calendar, preparing our minds for Easter and Christmas.

Then the Tuesday pastor will continue… “As we pray the prayer that our Lord taught his disciples to pray: ‘Notre Père qui es au cieux, que ton nom soit sanctifié…’”

I was at a workers’ retreat in November ’07 when one of the guys asked me to pray. I prayed Psalm 130 and then finished with: “As we pray the prayer that our Lord taught his disciples to pray…” Several joined in. Others prayed silently.

How about you? Does your church, or do you… recite that prayer? Why?

In Burundi, you could walk into about any neighborhood, any village really, and find yourself surrounded by children. Laughing, smiling children who loved making fun of the “Europeans” in their midst, calling out “zungo”, or something much like it (to my ears), which I’m sure is a term of deep respect reserved for strangers in the neighborhood.

The median age in Burundi is 16.7.

46% of the population is 14 years of age or under.

 

Such beauty and joy.