Remembering

I remember sitting and talking with one of my friends about our childhood. Both of our childhood’s were vastly different, but they held one common bond. They were spent far away from where we reside now. 

My friend spent his childhood in a city somewhere a little south of San Francisco. He soon moved closer to San Fran which is where his family resides now ( the details are a little blurry but stick with me). 

I spent my childhood in the Philippines, but by age ten we uprooted and moved back to America - St. Petersburg, Florida to be specific. 

We both had left our childhood memories in a city that we don’t live in any more. And so now our memories are a faint recall, a wisp, just a glimpse.

All this to say, I miss my childhood, though I would never go back, but it is still nice to remember it. But there is a problem, my childhood is tied to a place that is as far away as a vast ocean and two continents. I have pictures and stories that help to take me back to that lifetime once more. But for some of you, you have lived in the same town and some house since birth. Your childhood seems more real to you. Mine sometimes seems like a dream, it is cloudy and comes back in pieces. So at times when I need to reflect and remember where I came from and what helped shape me the most I find these pictures and remember once more. This is my childhood: 

These are my brothers, some of my best friends in my life.

Caliraya, a resort in the Philippines were we held Field Conference. Also a place were I grew up. Yes, that is a volcano in the distance. I spent so much time running around that place.

This is the playground at the guest house in Manila, I wasn't born yet but this picture represents how much fun we had there.

Each facial expressions is so perfect.

Our house in Blue Ridge - that was the photo op door way

This two men mean so much to me.

Simple pleasures in life, like a coke in a bag or a bike ride around our neighborhood.

My childhood gang - the MK's

Those are rice terraces behind us - basically my backyard 

Our backyard in Cinco Hermanos, that cement wall fence had broken glass along the top as added security - perks of living in Manila.

Mount Mayon - this is the view from one of the beaches from the island where we lived.

Another view of Calirya, see that clay hill in between the resort and pool? On rainy days we would roll down it through the mud. 

Faithfulness in our Season

Philippians 4:11-13
      Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. 


Contentment, something we all struggle with. Most of us, especially myself, are planners. We're looking to tomorrow, to next week, to next year; we're planning ahead. Adjusting schedules, saving up, planning - all in preparation for the future, something that has not yet come. We do this in daily activities, our work, family vacations, ministry, etc. We have yet to learn to be content where we are right now. It's part of our culture, always be preparing for what is next. Well, what about right now? What ministry, what work, what vacation has God given us right now? 


We spend a lot of time on the future, and not enough time on the present.

Sarah Edwards was the wife of early American theologian Jonathan Edwards. Most historical accounts pass right over Sarah and dive into all that Jonathan was - but there is a special and unique story in Sarah that we miss.

I am reading the book, Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God by Noel Piper. This chapter about Sarah is titled "Faithful in the Mundane."

Sarah never lived an extravagant life, never traveled to distant lands, or spoke to large crowds. Sarah ran a household of eleven children and was a faithful wife. Most people snub their noses at that kind of life - but not Sarah.

Sarah recognized that God had put her where she was for a reason, no matter how mundane it may have seemed, Sarah lived her life so that she glorified God in the "mundane"

Noel Piper writes, " We all have quiet conversations that might be forgotten. In the same way, Sarah's with Samuel would have been forgotten, except for Hopkins's journal. Their talk was part of a chain that led onward at least as far as Emerson and Thoreau, and that certainly wasn't the end of it -- we just don't have the records of what happened next and next, and next. We usually don't know how God winds the threads of our lives on and on and on. "


Sarah's story doesn't end their, she continued to greatly impact people she met in her everyday life. And those impact have had a ripple affect on the world around us. [Go look up her story sometime and all that her family generations have accomplished.]


I think we forget that we are all a part of God's bigger picture - we are each a link in the chain, a thread in the tapestry. We don't know how, why, or where our stories fit it. But it does, and it fits perfectly.

I'm not working at my internship yet, I'm not living in Chicago, I'm not taking any exciting mission trips, I'm not working at a camp in the mountains, I am not backpacking across Europe, I'm not doing anything extraordinary this summer. You could say my summer is mundane. But God is teaching me contentment in my mundane-ness. He is teaching me to trust that even when I cannot see it, He does; and He doesn't have to tell me.

So even in our mundane lives, our present, God is at work, here, in the now. Don't hold up plans for tomorrow, carry them out today. Besides, We are only promised today.