Delight at District Council

Reflections of district council:

One of most meaningful aspects of District Council to me is the honoring of the saints who have gone before us. We may be of a tradition that does not understand or appreciate veneration of Saints, still we understand what it means to be a saint, and delight in the legacy that the heroes of the faith leave us.

The banquet on Tuesday night honors the saints who have been ordained ministers for 50 years. This year among the others our former General Superintendent, Tom Trask was also honored. Norm Muhling was honored as well as he prepared to leave the district office for retirement. With heart felt enthusiasm we applauded each with a standing ovation. My heart swelled with gratitude each time I stood applauding the life and faithfulness of these saints. My face must have beamed as I delighted in them. Norm said that this was the closest thing to hearing his own funeral eulogies that he had experienced. I chuckled, but looking back the feeling I had that night was much like the times I have knelt by a casket and meditated on the life of the one commended to God.

Ovations continued throughout the week as gratitude would well up with in us for saints we love dearly. We honored those ordained for forty years, we honored Bro. Leach’s love and leadership to our district and Bro. Trask’s years of service at headquarters. I could tell Elaine was getting a little tired of standing up so often, but I wasn’t, my heart would stand and clap much longer for those who showed the way, for those who love us with their ministry. At times they seemed embarrassed, at others moved to tears.

Thursday night it was our turn. Elaine and I were ordained Thursday, both of us. One of the things I love about the Michigan District is the way that, from our first introduction to the leaders of the district, we have felt like they actually cared about us. Jeff Kennedy said, “Of course, that is because we do.” I have felt like they have taken a personal interest in us, like they delight in us. Who are we to receive such love, such interest? Are we rising stars in the Assemblies of God? Are we success personified? Hardly! I have a suspicion that our leaders love all of us, they look on all of us with delight. Still under their gaze I feel like a star, I feel successful. I love it.

Well, Thursday night all of us being ordained were in the front row. I’d catch a glimpse of the eyes of our leaders. They were watching us worship, beaming, taking genuine delight in us! I wondered, like a child, caught up in their delight. Then I thought of The Father in heaven delighting over his children, dancing over us! They weren’t alone. Again the congregation swelled in gratitude. Perhaps it was the joy of a fresh bunch of saints being consecrated to ministry, we beginning the adventure those Tuesday night have nearly completed, but they stood and applauded us. I truly hope that those who I have stood and applauded this week also knew the feeling of delight that we had in them.

Thank you, Father, for taking delight in us. Thank you for your saints, this wonderful family that you have given us. Thank you for the grace you gave those who have finished strong. Help us too. May 2058 find us faithful, if not already home.

Buffeted by grace

The fierce wind battered the tent fabric around me. I sat in the corner keeping the tent from becoming a kite, half hoping that this would be the day I fly. I sat hunched, the collar of my trench coat meeting the brim of my hat. My eyes peered through the crack toward the tent floor, at crystal of frozen coffee where it had spilled scalding. I spent two hours of my experiment in solitude in this way.¹

Shortly into my experience of chill. I examined my thoughts, I found that my mind was wandering to attempts to put words to the descriptions of the wind, the cold, the frozen coffee. I pulled out my rosary and fingered the beads, the Jesus prayer bringing focus back to my mind.

Bonhoeffer says, “Do not ask ‘How shall I pass this on?’ but ‘What does it say to me?’ Then ponder the Word long in your heart until it has gone right into you and taken possession of you.”²

That quote from Soul Feast has stuck with me. Too often my initial response to my conversation with God is, How am I to relate this? How do I describe this? But the discipline of solitude begs silence, begs secrecy. “Without silence there is no solitude.”³ Even though I was greatly tempted to categorized, describe and catalogue my experience, I found once I was with people I had a reticence to speak at all. It is with some difficulty that a day removed from the experience of Solitude I now turn to description.

So there I sat with my rosary beads, “Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” The touch of the beads and the recollection of prayer tuned out for a moment the writer in my mind, the cold, and the clutter of thought. I finished making my way around the decades and returned to allow the distractions of my surroundings to speak to me.

The overwhelming image, as the wind howled and tent flapped and fluttered, was that of Elijah hidden in the cleft of the rock as God passed by.

The LORD said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by."

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.⁴

“What if God was in the terrible wind?” I thought as my body leaned back into the wind and the billowing fabric embraced me. “What if this thin nylon is all that separated me from the real presence of God in the wind?” I imagined that the only reason I was inside the tent was that the fabric protected my body from being vaporized by his Holy Presence. “Wouldn’t it be better,” I thought, “to go out there and be vaporized just to see him face to face?” In the tent it certainly sounded and felt like a mountain shattering kind of wind was whipping me across Saginaw bay, but the Lord was not in the wind.

After two hours of wind and below freezing temperature⁵, I felt like giving in and giving up. I asked God what I should do. I looked longingly out the vents at the top of the tent, but not for long, the wind froze my face and blew me back. I heard him say in my heart, “Go in and enjoy my warmth.” I did not dare question whether it was my imagination or if it was truly his voice - I ran for the church.

Even before I could make myself a double English toffee latte, I was overwhelmed with a release. It was a climax. I entered into God hard after my fast from shelter. He was the warmth around me, he was the walls that kept the wind out. He was mine. If I had a fire place I would have perhaps calmed gently but instead I cried out to him and sucked the heat from my coffee even as I sucked life from His breast. I sat and listened. Silence is the essence of solitude.

In taking away shelter, I stood in solidarity with the homeless, going without another of the basic needs at the bottom of the Maslow Hierarchy. I wondered through chattering teeth what the man, a friend of a parishioner, who lives in a tent and works in the sugar factory, was doing this cold night. Has he found an affordable apartment yet? Is he freezing with me?

Simplicity strips away the romantic notions of the disciplined life. I imagined myself enjoying a few hours sitting in the middle of the tent with a cup of coffee surrounded by candles. The wind knocked over my coffee, I had to sit in the corner struggling against the wind, and the candles wouldn’t light. All the amenities stripped away, I found raw solitude. In simplicity I sat before the Lord, fully aware that I was dependent, uncomfortable and lost without him. Simplicity makes independence a dread thought.

Simplicity challenges me to the core. Do I give away the MacBook I bought for my studies? Should I have bought the new printer to go with it? Simplicity also demands that I not cast myself in a good light, so here I confess my extravagance, my printer is a color laser printer. I am not comfortable owning these hip and useful things.

Both solitude and simplicity are dear and painful to me. They stretch and buffet my soul. They answer the prayer I have prayed with John Donne, “Batter my heart, three person’d God.”

1 I thought I would see what would happen if I took away another element from the base of Maslow’s pyramid, so in my experiment I pitched a tent in the corner of the church yard furthest from all action. I didn’t stake it in so my body was all that kept if from flying away.

2 Thompson, Marjorie J. Soul Feast. Westminster John Knox Press. Pg. 26.

3 Foster, Richard J. Celebration of Discipline. Harper Collins. Pg. 98.

4 1 Kings 19:11-13 (NIV)

5 According to weather.com, the wind speed was 29 mph, and temp 28°F (wind-chill brought it to 14°F)