Conference Update

I am here at the conference that my friend Chris is hosting, and it is a virtual homecoming for me. I'm reuniting with many of my good friends from grad school and it is warming my heart.

Yesterday my friend Grace picked me up from the Toronto airport and she updated me on why her and her husband John left Fiji earlier this year when they had committed to two years. Our stories are very similar - as I also had left my posts in South Africa and the West Bank respectively, after having felt like God had called me there. To say that we have all wrestled with issues of calling and what these experiences brought up has been an understatement.
However, it was so good to talk about this things and remember, reflecting that God is in charge and is redeeming those times.

This morning, the speaker was Walter Wink. He's written many books, one of which I read this past year, The Powers That Be. He says that institutions are neither good or bad - but that there are spiritual powers at play within everything. He cited Revelation chapter 12 (I believe it is) where letters are written to the early churches - however, what is interesting is that these letters are written to the churches' angels. If we only remember that all people, institutions, and systems have a spiritual element at their core, we might be more easily disposed to see God's grace at work and His redemptive power to judge, redeem, and call us all back to Himself.

Take the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for example: Here we have two countries at deep odds with each other- each with a desire for autonomy, protection of its sacred lands, and a desire ultimately for their people to live at peace. Clearly this is not the case, and somewhere along the road, the desires got screwed up.

Clearly, as Walter Wink states, the powers within this world were created good, became fallen, and are ultimately redeemable. Powers to promote peace, freedom for people, and respect, as well as governments that protect and promote the welfare of their citizens is at the heart of every country - These types of powers are good. But because we live in a fallen world, those powers have now been distorted in various degrees. It is our goal and life calling, as redeemed children of the King, to work in the struggle to redeem this fallen world. And this struggle is worth it!!

So, sitting night after night in the student center getting to know Palestinian students was worth it; letting people know about the plight of both Palestinians and Israelis is worth it; and loving the families I was placed around was worth it.

There's one more thing I want to add: I added a break-out session led by Walter Wink's wife, June. Although it could seem new-agey, as we moved about the room experimenting with prayer and movement, I found great healing to ask for God's blessing on me physically. At one point, we were asked to touch ourselves and ask for God's healing over this area of ourselves. I prayed for my belly - where so much of the turmoil of this past year was concentrated- from my bedroom throwing up in the West Bank, to returning home, to stresses that have plagued me this past year. It was really healing. God has compassion on these parts - both physically, and what they have symbolized for me over the past year - all that has made me sick and tight in the very core of me.

A final note: Walter reiterated a point he made in his book of how he boldly spent his sabbatical in the 80s under Pinochet's reign in Chile. The stress, the evil, the torture of place seeped down deep within him and manifested itself physically. Yes, I knew what he meant. But once he was able to recognize the Powers at play and call them out, the healing and the de-captivement could take place.

I still have a long way to go, but this will definitely help me as I seek to deconstruct the evils that overtook me and others a year ago in the West Bank, and as I strive ahead to seek God and make Him known in the boarding school institutions of the Northeast.

These institutions are neither evil or depraved in their own right, but only fallen and in need of redemption through God's grace upon them. O, to call this out upon the Israeli soldiers at the border instead of hating them; O, to call this out upon the Palestinian youth who are desperate for voice and compassion instead of reactions of violence; O to call this out upon myself and the Powers that I seek to do battle with even in this day!