Great & Small
“Do great things as though they were small because of Jesus Christ and small things as though they were great because of Jesus Christ.”
-Blaise Pascal
Perspective for Your Bad Day
It’s generally on Saturdays that I find myself reading the next chapter or two in Fergus Fleming’s great book, Off the Map: Tales of Endurance and Exploration. Most recently I read about Gordon Laing’s search for Timbuctoo in 1824-1826. If you’re having a bad day, it may help you put your troubles in perspective to read Gordon Laing’s report of what happened to him when attacked by thieves in the Sahara Desert one January afternoon in 1826. In a letter to a friend, Laing writes:
“To begin from the top: I have five sabre cuts on the crown of the head and three on the left temple, all fractures from which much bone has come away; one on my left cheek which fractured the jaw bone and has divided the ear, forming a very unsightly wound; one over the right temple and a dreadful gash on the back of the neck, which slightly grazed the windpipe; a musket ball in the hip, which made its way through my back, slightly grazing the backbone; five sabre cuts on my right arm and hand, three of the fingers broken, the hand cut three-fourths across, and the wrist bones cut through; three cuts on the left arm, the bone of which has been broken and but is again uniting; one slight wound on the right leg and two with one dreadful gash on the left, to say nothing of a cut across the fingers of my left hand, now healed up.”
The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller
Thanks to the kind wishlist birthday gift from Steve Hart, I’m very much enjoying The Heart of a Servant Leader by Jack Miller. This book is a collection of letters that the now deceased Jack Miller (seminary professor, church planter, and founder of World Harvest Mission) wrote to various family members, friends, and co-workers.
As I work my way through these letters I feel like I’m being personally counseled by Jack Miller. Below are a few excerpts from these letters that have especially encouraged and challenged me.
From a letter to a missionary couple stationed in Uganda:
“What I finally came to as I walked and prayed for you is the old, old story of getting the gospel clear in your own hearts and minds, making it clear to others, and doing it with only one motive–the glory of Christ.”
From a letter to a pastor preparing to go to Ireland to encourage a group of missionaries:
“We secretly suspect that His will might be more demanding, more crucifying of our desires, than we can handle. But daily surrender to His will as you pray, and it will bring a freedom from anxiety that you cannot believe.
“Recently I was caught up in a spirit of anxiety. Nothing would shake it. But I simply gave myself to thanksgiving and praising God for everything I could think of. Result? As I increasingly gave Him the glory for all His great works, my faith recovered from its near death and I ended up walking on water and singing a song as I went.”
From a letter to a young missionary couple unsure of their future status as missionaries:
“Let me counsel you…to pray much more. Pray and keep praying and then pray some more.”
From a letter to a young man just starting out in missionary work (so far, this is my favorite letter):
“My second thought is to make sure you are enjoying yourself and not taking your work too seriously. You don’t have anything to prove to us or to the world. The work is finished at Calvary, and that work alone has unlimited meaning and value. Keep your focus there. And then read Robert Ludlum and/or go on vacation.”
“Fourth, major in giving thanks for what has been accomplished and don’t spend more than one-half hour looking at your sins. Keep the praise constant.”
“Fifth, do some evangelism with someone every week. Watch out for the saying, ‘There is a lion in the streets, and therefore nothing can be done today.’ Don’t wait until it is perfect, just go.”
Three Pastoral Concerns
My piece, Three Pastoral Concerns in 800 Words, has been posted on the New Attitude (Na) blog.
Know What You Preach, Or Sit Down
“A man ought to know what he is preaching about, or else let him sit down. If I had any doubt about the matters I preach from this pulpit, I should be ashamed to remain the pastor of this church; but I preach what I do know, and testify what I have seen. If I am mistaken, I am heartily and intensely mistaken; and I risk my soul and all its eternal interests upon the truth of what I preach. If the gospel which I preach does not save me, I shall never be saved, for what I proclaim to others is my own personal ground of trust. I have no private lifeboat; the ark to which I invite others holds myself and all I have.”
-Charles Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 173
Richard Swenson, Margin
More quotes from Richard Swenson’s great little book, Margin:
“No one in the history of humankind has ever had to live with the number and intensity of stressors we have acting upon us today.”
“For millenia upon millenia, change was slow, controlled, assessable; now it convulses at warp speed. ‘Nothing defines our age more than the furious and relentless increase in the rate of change.’”
“In 1980, there were 12,000 items in the average supermarket; today there are 30,000–including the 186 different choices of breakfast cereal in our local grocery store…’As the number of choices grows further, the negative escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.’”
“A single edition of the New York Times contains more information than a seventeenth-century Britisher would encounter in a lifetime.”
“Everything I own owns me.”
“…our modern view of time is to compress it and milk it for every nanosecond of productivity we can get.”
“The best thing to remember about time-saving technologies is that they don’t. Instead, they consume, compress, devour time. All the countries with the most time-saving technologies are the most stressed-out countries–an assertion that’s easy to prove.”
“A man from Mali, West Africa told me ‘You Americans have all the watches, but we have all the time.’”
Saturday Shot
Some shots from two different ledges on the edge of Taft Point, 3,000 feet above the valley floor of Yosemite:
Faith & Football
Here’s a great interview with Florida quarterback Tim Tebow which explores his early years as a missionary kid and his faith in Jesus.
