Oh Those Golden Fields

The other day I drove past a most welcome sight. A wheat field that was ripe for harvest! Granted, in this part of Texas the wheat fields are significantly smaller than in western Kansas, but still it was wheat and it was ripe and oh, what a beautiful sight. Yesterday I passed another field with a combine moved into the field ready to start the harvest. This brought to mind the memory of older boys/young men starting their summer jobs on custom harvesting crews. Starting now in Texas and ending in August in North Dakota or Canada, working 14 hour days for 3 months straight. Days off are rain days. Rainy days are rare (and unwelcome) during the harvesting season, which is always where they are located. The days are hot, long, and tiring with always another field to cut just up the road. By the middle of June all excitement has waned and it is now simply long, hard labor and the prospect of another 70 days of the same frenetic activity facing these young men.

How do they keep going? What stirs within them as they rise for another day.

They eagerly listen to the daily reports. Yes, fields are ripe around Wellington! Kiowa reports two more days and the fields there will be ready. Get ready boys. We're crossing into KANSAS. There we will find the sky is bluer, the air is cleaner, the sunflowers bigger, and the wheat is better! The heart of the high plains of America. It lifts the spirits and dreams of young men to new heights. Harvesting in Kansas - it doesn't get any better.
But alas, three fast weeks and Kansas will be behind and the northern high plains will be the new ground. Still, the three weeks in Kansas stays in their souls and the memories stir them to continue onward. They can finish the harvest season because they have been to Kansas. Their hearts have been strangely warmed. And like Dorothy (Wizard of Oz) they will now always possess a yearning to someday get back to that special place called Kansas.

OK, now that I have those thoughts out of my system it is on to other good things.

We (Cross Timbers Church) have eight seniors graduating from high school this year. I am so proud of these eight youth. They have wonderful hearts and cheery dispositions. They are a 'good crop' of youth. As my late grandmother would say, "they come from good stock." Best of all is they each love the Lord and are doing their best to actively follow Him. Way to go Joshua, Jonathan, Parker, Kinzey, Bradley, Natali, Simon and Sherry. May God richly bless these eight as they begin new chapters in their lives.

In other happenings of importance. I bought tickets to go see my lovely wife in the Philippines. I will be arriving in Tagbilaran on July 27th. That is 59 days from now (but who is counting?) I don't know who is more excited about this coming trip - Christie or me. What I need to find is one of those countdown clocks that have the days, hours, minutes, and seconds on it. The days go by too slowly in this matter. I need to see more progress. A countdown clock with minutes and seconds would show progress is being made ever so surely and swiftly to reach the 27th.
Speaking with Christie this morning, she now has electric lines run to her rental house and wiring of the house was done yesterday. Next Monday she will talk with the power company and have them push the magic switch allowing her to have lights in the home! But wait, you have heard it said, "give someone an inch and they will take a mile", well this just happened. Before the electricity is flowing to the house, the kids were asking mom if they would be getting a TV! Ha, some things are the same the world over.

It is time to move on into the day, so until the next post, blessings to everyone.

Choices

I remember my first morning in the Philippines. It was 4:30 in the morning, the roosters were all ready active and crowing. Stumbling into the bathroom to take a shower I was greeted with a single water knob. "'What is this?" I thought to myself. This situation was more than my introduction to cold water showers. It was the opening revelation to me of the reality of abundant choices we have as Americans. We are blessed to have more than an abundance of choices in almost every area of life here in the USA. Now, fifteen years later I am still wondering how anyone can stand to take cold water showers. And yet the majority of the world's population can not even conceive of hot water showers. And herein is part of the missing construct in most of the world.

Choices, or the lack of choices, have a profound affect on our ability to dream or to stay stagnant! And choices, or lack of choices, also spur our desire to change or inhibit one's motivation to move forward.

If a man finds himself in a room with two doors opening to the outside and he chooses the first door he will invariably begin to wonder about the possibilities which lie beyond the second door. His imagination becomes alive and active with the possibilities for more than a single outcome. That same man in a room with only one door finds it hard to imagine of any possibility other than the reality presented to him through the one door. His ability to dream is limited by lack of choices.

I think dreaming is a learned activity as much as it is an innate human trait. God gives us the ability to dream but it must be nurtured into maturity. And choices are one of the 'breeding grounds' for this nurturing of dreams. Thus, here in the USA , we find it easy to dream of other, bigger and better plans because we have choices available to us. This is one of the reasons we can say America is blessed. When our choices are lessened, one by one, as a people we lose our
ability to nurture our dreams. When this happens we begin our slide downward into the lower realm of lesser dreams and hopes.

Yes, freedom to hope. Freedom to dream. Freedom to be inspired. Much of it comes forth from the choices are have before us. As a nation we strive to preserve choices. In political verbiage we call them 'freedoms'. Without them we begin to dream little and aspire less.

Thank you, Lord, for the choices I have and the ability to dream. Amen

Blessings

The Wedding

Well I finally managed to get married the other day. I would not have suspected things could change in such short notice since I am not an aggressive and bold risk taker. But around 4:00 PM on April 24, 2010 in Tagbilaran City, Bohol Philippines at Glory Evangelical Holiness Church the beautiful Christie Buyan became Christie Hall! And now our lives take on new hopes and challenges. For those who may not know much about this marriage, Christie's first husband was a pastor who died suddenly about 18 months ago. Christie had been hoping and praying for another pastor whom she might marry and, lo and behold, this handsome American pastor shows up who was available!

Now the challenge is to get Christie and her children into the good land known as the U.S.A. legally and as quickly as possible. In this task, the time line appears to be 6 - 12 months (with 12 months suggested as being closer to reality). But we are praying for God to grease the wheels of bureaucracy at the U.S. Embassy in Manila and see this time shortened.

While in the Philippines waiting to get married I had the privilege of preaching on both Sundays and speaking twice at a youth leaders retreat. It is fun to worship with believers in other nations and join with them in their style of expressing their love to the Lord. This was really a treat as it offset the mind numbing, trivial hoops the bureaucracy continuously puts you through as you try to make advances in the Philippines. What follows is a story of such 'hoop jumping' when we went to open an account in a bank in Tagbilaran City. Everyone needs a picture ID to validate themselves as a living body sitting in front of the desk of the "New Accounts" officer. This bank required a photo to go into their file along with the photocopy of your picture ID. This still wasn't much of an inconvenience until they informed you that the photo they required had to be 1" x 1"! OK, so this means leaving the bank and finding a photo store to purchase the necessary photos. Take your photo, wait 30 minutes (thank God Dunkin Donuts was next door), pick up the six 1" x 1" photos and head back to the bank. In the Philippines it seems like everyone and everything done requires some trivial hoop like this microscopic 1" x 1" photo which will then validate their copy of your photo ID. So let's just say the wheels of efficiency move a little slower there than here.

But every culture has its nuances that seem to make sense to us and look like oddities to those outside the culture. I remember when visiting Poland one month after the 9-11 attacks. The Poles where questioning why we would let Muslims from the Middle East still enter our country with no hesitation. Trying to explain our desire to protect individual liberties was a hard sell to the Poles who thought we were nuts not to restrict all movements of those who fit the "profile" of our enemies.

Crossing cultures can be eye opening with frustration and wonderment occurring within minutes of one another. Such is the joys of travel to 'another world'. Well, I must go to bed and get reoriented to U.S. time once again.

Blessings