In the meantime, here’s enough reading material to keep you busy for six years:

www.relevantmagazine.com

     In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

     And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.  And God saw that the light was good.  And God separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.  And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

     And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”  And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse.  And it was so.  And God called the expanse heaven.  And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

     And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.”  And it was so.  And God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas.  And God saw that it was good.

     And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.”  And it was so.  The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind.  And God saw that it was good  And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

     And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night.  And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give them light upon the earth.”  And it was so.  And God made the two great lights–the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night–and the stars.  And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness.  And God saw that it was good.  And there was evening and there was morning, the forth day.

     And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.”  So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.  And God saw that it was good.  And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”  And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

     And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds–livestock and creeping things and the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to its kind.  And God saw that it was good.

     Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.  And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

 

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.

 

     And God blessed them.  And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every thing thing that moves on the earth.”  And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit.  You shall have them for food.  And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.”  And it was so.  And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.  And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

      Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.  And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all this work that he had done.  So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

 

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.

 

    When no bush of the field was yet in the land, and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up–for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground–then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.  And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.  And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.  The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil…

     The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.  And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Ok.  Answer me honestly:  did you read all of that, or did you skip over most of it thinking that you know the story already–”Yeah yeah yeah, creation story.  I got it.”  If that’s you, then please go back and read the text again.  Read it like it’s new to you, like you’ve never read it before.

It’s no mistake that the greatest Story ever written starts with this.  Every verse, every repeated phrase, every little daily detail should resonate in our hearts and make us glad.  This is where the Gospel starts, but I fear that we (even those of us who trust Christ) have lost sight of this beginning.

Most of us have grown up hearing two different stories of how the world was made.  On the one hand, we listened to our parents and pastors as they read the above story to us on Sundays.  On the other hand, Monday through Friday we studied under teachers who taught us the latest scientific theory on the formation of the world, never giving serious thought to the Scriptures.  Because of this, many of us have grown up thinking about Genesis 1 and 2 as a beautiful story, but treating it ultimately like a fairy tale next to the supposed truth of Science.

But this story is no fairy tale, and to treat it as such is to destroy the very foundation of everything we believe as Christians.

You see, before God showed his unending love for us in Christ, before he displayed his faithfulness to Israel, even before he poured out his wrath by destroying the world with water, God established his sovereignty as creator.  He rules over light and dark, over water and sky, over land and sea, over plants and trees, over the sun and moon, over fish and birds, over all the land animals, and most importantly, he rules over all of mankind.  He created everything, and because he did, with everything he can do as he pleases.  Without this foundation, displays of God’s power would be like an intrusion into someone else’s space, and God’s love would be an adulterous affair.

Because God created us, we belong to him along with everything else.  We are his, and thus he alone has the right to tell us what is wrong and right.  He created the tree of knowledge of good and evil, so he can tell us not to eat of it.  To deny this is to deny God’s very position of being God.  After all, if he didn’t create us, what right does he have to tell us what to do?  What right does he have to destroy the world with a flood, and what significance is it to us for him to send his son?  Ultimately, if God is not creator, he does not know best, he is not just, and the sacrifice of his son is worthless to us.  

Ultimately, if he is not creator, he is not God.

But since God DID create us, he is sovereign over all things, and we do well to keep this in mind.  You see, to fail to give God glory as our creator is to insult the very nature of his being.  We’ll talk more about this next time, but for now, think hard on this truth, simple though it may sound:

God is the creator of all things, and alone has the authority to define right and wrong.

But the more I thought about it, and the more I observed other individuals and groups in Swaziland, I started to realize that most of these kids have groups of people come year-round and teach them Bible lessons, most of which consist of the popular VBS-type stories like Zacchaeus and Daniel and the Lion’s Den (as a side note, I personally think Ehud should be a standard VBS lesson. If you want to know why, read his story in Judges 3). Anyway, the more time I spent with the kids, the more I realized that they are almost over-saturated with isolated stories and have, for the most part, never been taught the over-arching ideas of Scripture.

It’s like they had all these stories in their head, but no context in which to put them. This is tragic (and common among Americans and Swazis alike, I might add). After all, while there is plenty of beauty and romance to be found in the story of Ruth and Naomi, and stories of God’s power in Isaiah instill considerable awe and wonder, if we don’t teach and understand such stories in light of the Gospel, they are at best disconnected, and young people end up thinking about the Bible as little more than a collection of cool stories.

So I decided to take a step back with the guys at Timbutini in an attempt to paint the big picture of the Gospel, starting with the story of creation and taking them all the way through the basics of our faith.

In the next four posts, I want to walk with you through those same concepts.

So get ready. This is good stuff.

For now, here’s some food for thought:

One of the most powerful confirmations that a supernatural world exists, for me, is the existence of information systems.  If you think about it, the natural world is made up of molecules and atoms and quarks and God knows (literally) what all else, but something like an information system cannot possibly arise from these elements of matter.  In order to have information, we have to have some sort of system of meaningful symbols and a coded way of arranging them in order for a sender to communicate an idea, or request, or whatever.  Language is just one example of this.  If there is a way that such a system can arise from undirected atoms and molecules, I would like to hear about it.    To my knowledge, no one has ever even claimed that a material entity can create a non-material one.  Indeed, materialism claims that there are no non-material entities.  

Yet in our bodies, we have a massive, compact information system far more sophisticated than any mankind has ever developed or discovered.  It is expressed in, or carried upon the incredible DNA molecule, but the molecule itself is not the information.  The matter does not give meaning to the symbols contained in it.  If the symbols contained in the DNA –just four amino acids– take on meaning, it is because of the code (meaningful method of arranging the symbols) that has been imposed upon them by a sender.  This is one of the many God-given, internal understandings that we have as humans: information is sent by an intelligent source.  It doesn’t just accidentally arise from inanimate matter.  Therefore this sender must have encoded the information in the molecules and constructed the biological machines that would respond to the information (decode) and carry out its instructions.  

There is no explanation for a system of symbology, encoding and decoding existing in a purely material world.  Yet in Mountain View, California, the ardent secularists of the S.E.T.I. project, who believe everything arises from randomness, spend millions of taxpayers’ dollars looking for signs of intelligent life through listening in space for patterns in the random radio signals there.  Why?  Because they know that only intelligence can give rise to information.  If they find a patterned signal, they know that it would have to have been sent by an intelligence.  So the whole basis of their experiment mocks their world view:  Life contains examples of almost indescribably complex information systems which, in their view, occurred randomly.  At the same time, they look for intelligence by searching for information transmitted from space, because they know such information can only arise from intelligence.  Someone else will have to explain that reasoning, because I can’t.

From Because I Think, I Believe, by Don Wilson (My dad.  Read more here.)

This week/weekend is going to be rather hectic, trying to see everyone and getting Kevin married off, so please forgive me for the lack of blog posts this week.  But there’s plenty to come, I promise, so stay tuned.

Hey friends!

I went by Mangwaneni on Thursday to check in and say good bye to the kids there, and it blessed my heart so much.  The kids looked clean (well, cleaner than usual anyway) and were running around laughing and playing with each other and some white people that I didn’t know.

Nosipho was running around like the rest of them.  Her foot has scabbed up and is healing nicely, and the wound will likely be nothing but a scar in a few weeks.  THANK YOU Doyle and Tonya for that last deep cleaning and dressing.  I know that it was just as painful for you as for her, but it’s what she needed, and when Titi asked her if it hurt when she walked, she said no.

S’Philile and Ngabisa were also there, causing trouble as usual.  I told them you all said hi, and they were both very happy to hear it.  Lauren, Ngabisa says that she misses you and is praying for you and everyone with you.

Phiwa and the rest of the guys ya’ll played soccer with were, of course, playing soccer.  I greeted them for you and they told me to tell you hello.

The two teachers also say hello to you.

Mayuthi (Little Buddy), the indian-looking girl and her brother, and the twins were not there, but Ngabisa said they were doing fine and Titi said she had seem them there a few days before and they looked well.  The boy I call Tsatse (he wears a striped sweater and is constantly asking you to pick him up, even though he’s too big) also was not there, nor was the ornery girl (I feel bad calling her that! ha.  did we ever find out her name?).

I know I’m leaving out a ton of kids that you guys love, but those are all the ones I could remember specifically when I was there.  Sorry .

When I greeted the kids for you, almost every single one of them asked if you were coming to see them the next day.  It was a little hard for me to explain that you guys weren’t still in Madonsa with me.  And even before I made it back to the carepoint on Thursday, I asked Titi if the kids were glad to have new white people around (meaning the ambassador team).  She said they were, but she said several of them came to her and said they missed their friends and wanted them to come back.

So know that your kids miss you and many of them are praying for you just as you are praying for them.

I miss you too!  And please know that each of you are in my prayers as you make the transition back to life in the states.

Salanikahle bengani bami!

At the moment, there are 3 main organizations working year-round in Swaziland:  Adventures in Missions, Children’s Hope Chest, and Children’s Cup.  AIM and CHC have a combined staff of somewhere around 15.  I don’t know the exact numbers for Children’s Cup, but I think a staff of 30 would be a generous estimate.  Add roughly 100 temporary people from the AIM/CHC summer trips, and we’ve got, somewhere around 150 people doing ministry in Swaziland this summer.

That seems like a lot of workers for a country smaller than my home town, but even with so many staff and volunteers, there are still somewhere around 100,000 orphans in Swaziland due to AIDS alone, not counting the thousands upon thousands more as a result of crime, tuberculosis, and influenza.

And here’s the hardest part:  even when the orphan carepoints are operating at full efficiency, they serve as a mere bandage on a growing, festering wound.  Make no mistake, the bandage is necessary–without the carepoints, Swaziland would quickly spiral out of control.  But unless we work to treat the infection from the inside as well as from the outside, the bandages only serve to buy us some time.

This is what weighs so heavily on my soul tonight.  My friends who live here (who I’m here to help these two months) are laboring with all their might for the children of Swaziland, often well beyond the bounds of what’s healthy for their own hearts and minds.  They are spread thin, stretched nearly to the point of breaking.  And for all their labor, they can only hope to slow the torrent of disease, poverty, and despair that’s wrecking this country.

We MUST do more.

When all is said and done, I will have spent 62 days away from home this summer, roughly 54 of which will have been spent in Swaziland.  When I was planning the trip, that seemed like so long that it was a little intimidating.  But tonight, as I pass the three-quarter mark of my time here, it seems desperately short.  Tonight, I want more time.  I want more time to spend with Kriek, laughing with her and helping with the day-to-day chores of running a ministry.  I want to spend more time with the RealLife team (the ones from “this month, i have sisters.”) who are leaving Swaziland tomorrow.  I want to spend more time with my new housemates, getting to know them and helping them process what’s going on here.  I want to spend more time at Thulwani and Mangwaneni, loving on the kids I’ve gotten to know there.  I want to spend more time in Timbutini, playing soccer and walking with the young men through the basics of the Gospel.  I want to spend more time with Sibugiso and Ncamiso and Senkhosi, taking their picture and making them laugh.  I want to spend more time with Musa and Xolani, encouraging them in their vision for Swaziland.  I want to spend more time with Ncobile and Hlobi and Deli and Zodwa, goofing around and being their brother.

All in all, I feel like I’m going to have to leave before I’m done, before I’ve finished the work that I started.  But as I process all this, I must fall back on the truth and trust that God will lead me wherever He wants me, even when it’s hard.

So, friends, please keep me in your prayers:  that God would use this sadness to fill me with a sense of urgency and give me the drive to take advantage of every opportunity, whether that means lifting a package of water, taking a picture, or simply laughing with a friend.

This is Cele.  He goes to Ntabas carepoint.  He bites, but he’s funny.

This is Sibukiso.  She goes to Timbutini carepoint, and I will forever remember her face when I think of Swaziland.

Sibukiso.  Again.

This is Ncamiso.  He goes to Timbutini carepoint and is the only kid who actually calls me by my name (The rest just call me umlungu, “white person.”)

This is Senkhosi.  He goes to Timbutini carepoint and is possibly the funniest 3-year-old ever.  Also, Band-Aids are racist.

So here ya go, folks:  A rundown of my day-to-day life this summer.

Day Type 1 (with Kriek and the D-Team)

Around 7:30am – Wake up, eat breakfast, and spend some time in the Word.

Sometime between 8 and 10am – Walk to Kriek’s house.

Between 8-10am and 4-7pm – Be Kriek’s slave 

This involves things like shopping for supplies, doing orientations with incoming teams, organizing 8 suitcases full of miscellaneous supplies, photographing team events like giving out new shoes or painting with the kids, photographing the kids themselves so Kriek can update sponsors, sorting and stapling letters written from sponsors to their children, riding around to each carepoint with CHC staff visiting from the states, and in all other ways finding a strange balance between being a photographer, a minister, and a pack mule.

Usually around 5pm – Arrive back home at the team house

Usually around 7pm – Eat dinner with the Real Life team

8-10:30pm – Hang out, play card games, color, and/or watch movies with the team.

10:30pm – (Lights out for the team) Retreat to my room to read, play chess on my computer, write blog posts, or pass out from exhaustion.

Hopefully sometime before 11pm – Get a text message from Kriek saying when I need to show up at her house the next morning.

Day Type 2 (with the Real Life team)

7:30am – Wake up and eat breakfast (and possibly take a shower).

8:30ish-9:30am – Read, pray, and soak up the Truth of the Scriptures.

9:30am – Team meeting, usually consisting of worship, a briefing on what the day will hold, and praying over each other before we go out.

Sometime hopefully before noon – Go out and do ministry with the team.

On a typical day, the team splits into three groups, one goes into town to do street ministry or go to the hospital, one hangs out at a hospice called the Hope House, and one team (usually including me) hangs out at Mangwaneni, a Chidren’s Cup carepoint down the road from the house.  We play soccer, help serve pop (maize meal) and beans to the kids, talk to the gogos, and get lovingly mauled by Swazi children while passing out stickers.

Between 4 and 5pm – regroup at the house and do debrief.

7ish – Dinner

8:30ish to 10:30ish – Hang out, play card games, color, and/or watch movies.  Sometimes we have dance parties.  Sometimes the girls meet and talk about weird girl stuff while me, Caleb, and Josh watch manly movies like I Am Legend and Black Hawk Down.

10:30pm – Lights out

Saturdays always look different (sometimes I’m with Kriek, sometimes I’m getting chased around by baby elephants), and Sundays usually consist of worshiping with the Church at Timbutini then coming back to the house and relaxing.  Tuesday afternoons from 2 to 4pm, I teach a guy’s Bible study at Timbutini.

So there ya go.  A glimpse into my daily life.  Hopefully that will help the following posts fit together a little better.

For now, God give you peace, and as always, THANK YOU for your prayers.