Thanks...anyway!

We arrived here at the homestead one year ago this week. As we pulled down the long lane, the scenario was much as it is today - bare trees; grey skies; a bit too cool and damp for comfort. It was hard to believe that we were coming home... and we still are adjusting to this being our home, even after one whole year. It probably doesn't help that we are living in a construction zone - and with many boxes still unpacked from Singapore. But that is our choice in some ways - we jumped into life here full force with a desire to do everything we could to catch up with our country dream after so many years of city living. Looking back, we can agree that perhaps we should have taken a bit more time to settle in before taking on so many projects, and we are committed now to finishing the ones we have started before starting any new ones. Unless of course spring gets here first with the promise of new life and growth; and the garden beckons; and we have the opportunity to get some more goats; and maybe a calf or two...

As we look back over the past years of transition we are also reminded at this time of year that we are to be thankful for everything that happens to us in life.  Eugene Peterson paraphrases a well known passage in 1 Thessalonians 5 this way in the Message: "Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live." A more direct translation states that we should "rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."  So often I hear people ask "How can we know God's will for our life?" Well, here is a very clear and direct statement of what God's will is for us as followers of Christ. If we chose to ignore this; if we chose to disobey the will that we know already; why should God give us any further clarity in terms of His specific will for our lives?

We find it very difficult to give thanks when things don't go well - when resources are not available or when difficult circumstances get in the way of what we want to do. All of us probably receive many newsletters and prayer letters from missionaries and ministry leaders around the world. They are usually full of exciting ministry updates and possibilities. They often also contain prayer requests regarding needs - real needs - that will impact the ministry negatively if not met soon. The cares of this world are hard to be thankful for when they take us away from what we want to spend our time on. Personally, as we look back over the past years that we have been serving with International Training Partners, we see many events and processes which have slowed us down in areas of ministry that we wanted to move ahead in. Sometimes there is simply a lack of energy, time, money or other resources that we need to do something we want to do. Sometimes it is more complex - partnerships which don't work out as well as we had hoped, or partners who themselves run into roadblocks or delays.

It is God's will that we should give Him thanks for all roadblocks; every lack of resource; each difficult time; the non-ending transitions; the sadness; the loss; the frustrations...

In special Thanksgiving services, and around many family Thanksgiving tables across America, we will hear words of thanksgiving this week for all the blessings He has showered on us this year. We will hear heartfelt words of thanks for the many good things He has worked out in our lives, and we will share thoughts and expressions of thanks for so much...  He is a gracious, loving and merciful God who does give us so much more than we deserve. Our reasons to be thankful mount up to the sky.

Can we also be thankful for the heartbreaks; the dead ends; the black holes of our lives and ministries? Can we trust Him enough to accept that He is indeed faithful and that He causes everything to work together for our good, and the good of His kingdom? Can we really give thanks anyway?

Breaking Unplowed Ground

Recently I found myself in our "vegetable garden" once again. Honestly... we haven't spent any time there since late summer when we were able to harvest a few vegetables.  Since then it has been the domain of chickens and guinea fowl, who have cleaned it up pretty nicely.  But I had read that I needed to do some more work before the snow falls and the ground freezes...  so that our efforts next year might bear more fruit  (or vegetables as the case may be!)

So as I tilled the soil, mixing in some compost and other biodegradable stuff we have laying around, I decided to expand the borders of the garden a bit for next year and tilled up another few feet around the edge of what we had done this year. It has been very dry here lately, and the ground was very hard and not at all easy to break up.

As I tried my best to control the rotor-tiller, my thoughts went to a passage of scripture that has been used powerfully in my life in years gone by. "Break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, until He comes and showers His righteousness on you." While these words were originally spoken many years ago to the children of Israel, they have tremendous applications for us today as well... Applications that for me have been enhanced by recent messages on God's grace that we have heard at church.

Hosea 10:12-13 is in fact a powerful message about grace... about the wonderful "juxtapositioning" of grace and faith... and about the futility of legalism and self righteousness which becomes even more complicated by the resulting self deception.

As I continued breaking up my unplowed ground in the physical sense, I started considering what might be some areas of unplowed ground I needed to break up spiritually as well. While I am not much of a gardener yet, it is pretty clear even to me that if we don't prepare the soil, we will not benefit much from any "showers" that might come our way.  Is that true also in the spiritual sense? As His children we do not work to be righteous, but we do need to be open to His righteousness which He wants to shower on us. We need to be ready to reap the fruit of unfailing love, (only God's love is unfailing...) We should have a deep desire to seek the Lord until He comes and showers His righteousness on us.  

Well, I have to admit there is "ground" in my life which needs to be broken up. I want to reap the fruit of unfailing love, not the fruit of deception. God's unfailing love lets us look at the world around us with the compassion and grace that only He can provide, rather than the harsh judgmental attitude which comes as a result of self deception and self righteousness.

We are starting to understand that there are specific times when we need to do certain things in our garden. Getting those things done at just the right time makes a lot of difference, and we can mess things up if we don't get it just right. It is awesome to me that we can know absolutely that it is always the best time to seek the Lord because He is always ready to shower us with His righteousness!

Don't wait for anything or anybody.... Seek Him right now until He comes and showers His righteousness on you! Just make sure your "ground" is ready!

Of Coyotes & Wolves

The last couple of mornings we have been awakened by the howls of a pack of coyotes in the creek-bottoms behind our house. Sometimes we hear them in the distance, but recently they have been coming quite close. It's a good reminder that we live in an environment surrounded by predators which would like to have an up close and personal relationship with our poultry.

We really don't need much of a reminder because we have already lost a number of guinea fowl and chickens... as well as one duck... to things that go bump in the night.  Now we make the extra effort to make sure all the poultry spend the nights inside their safe little homes that we have built for them, but for a while we had allowed them to sleep outside... and that was just what the predators had ordered!

It was too difficult to get the ducks back in their little house... they didn't want to go in, and they seemed to really appreciate the freedom to sleep out under the stars in our front yard. The guinea fowl had also started to decline our invitation to sleep in a nice safe place with the chickens, and they were roosting up in a tree.  There seemed little that we could do to change their minds, so we left them in peace...

It took the loss of a duck and five guinea fowl to night time predators to make us realize we had to do something. It wasn't going to be easy, and it wouldn't make our poultry happy... but we could no longer compromise on their safety. They had to sleep indoors at night, or there would not be any left to carry on the family name! The last several weeks we have been more insistent, and have come up with ways that keep our flock safe at night. We are also sleeping easy as a result, even when the coyotes wail nearby!

There are some churches, ministries and missions who compromise on specific issues to make their flock; their missionaries; or those they are trying to reach, more comfortable and content. Compromises of over-contextualization, over-conformity to host cultures and religions, and even adding to and taking away from the very Word of God when doing so-called translations, are happening in churches & missions that we think of as conservative, Bible believing and teaching ministries. These compromises go way beyond conformity of dress or diet, and as a result leave those impacted in actual danger of their spiritual lives when the predators come out to feast.

Paul, in his farewell speech to the elders of the church in Ephesus hammered the dangers of compromise home. He reminded them:   "For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God. Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them." This challenge to these men of God that Paul had invested so much time with is a sobering reminder to us that the very same thing can happen today. How much worse will the impact be if we compromise on the essentials of our faith that keep us and others safe in His care.

Chicken... or Duck Leadership?

During our time at home we found it fascinating to observe our little flock of chickens and compare them with our ducks. It's been a lot of fun, and we have learned a lot as we observed the social interaction of our maturing birds.

Chickens have a very well defined hierarchy. The term pecking order is well illustrated as they interact with each other. We had purchased 25 pullets back in April. The pullets are all growing into good looking hens by this time. Well almost all of them anyway. We did lose five of them to various natural and unnatural causes, and one of these "hens" has actually turned out to be a rooster, who we decided to name "Himer" Once Himer started crowing he became king of the roost, and made sure all the other chickens stayed in line.

Then along came Henry. Henry belonged to a friend in town who had to find a country home for him when he started bothering the neighbors with his crowing. Henry was a little older and bigger than Himer, so we figured there would be a bit of a shake up in the social order of things when the two met for the first time. There was, and very shortly after Henry was the new king. Long live King Henry!

So the chickens, while a bit independent in their free ranging ways, live under a strict leadership with Henry as numero uno and Himer as his self proclaimed deputy. The hens seem to have accepted this arrangement and are even following their leaders and developing the pecking order even further within their own members. While the strict form of leadership seems a bit painful at times, Henry does take his job as chief protector of the flock very seriously and keeps a sharp eye on any chickens that wander off as he keeps another eye out for any predators. From our observations it seems the chickens are well organized in their social structure and functioning as a community.

The ducks on the other hand have a completely different social structure. They move en-mass, and if any duck gets separated from the larger body they do everything they can to get back together. There is no obvious leadership, yet there seems to be pretty much total consensus in their movements around the yard. I hesitate to suggest that they practice a form of team leadership, but it certainly looks that way! They are still a bit young though, so we will see how things emerge as they mature.

I probably need to do more research on poultry leadership styles (meaning I still need to see how our guineas behave and I probably need to get some geese and turkeys to augment the research!) At this point though I am struck by how very different forms of leadership are being displayed by our flocks. It makes me think about how we as people can learn from our God's creation of nature and animals, even in regards to our forms of social and organizational interaction.

What lessons do we need to learn about our own leadership styles and the way we interact with those around us?

Experience Needed

“Experience is what you get when things don’t go the way you planned!” This statement is potentially one of the most powerful ones I have digested in a long time. It keeps coming back to me, but I will always remember the day that Gwen used it on me for the first time…

We were trying to figure out how to get from Singapore to Malacca, Malaysia by bus. We knew it was possible, we just didn’t know all the details. But we were game to figure it out and so we set off on a little adventure. The first bus took us across the causeway between Singapore and Malaysia. We went through Singapore immigrations, and then through Malaysian immigrations. That went well, but then we had to find the correct bus to get us to the regional bus terminal. We weren’t sure of several key points and in the end took the wrong bus to the wrong terminal. I was getting a bit frustrated, but Gwen pointed out that the whole reason we were taking this little adventure was so that we would know the correct way for future use. Then she pulled out the quote: “experience is what you get when things don’t go the way you planned…”

It’s a significant truth, and one that we now often use when we find ourselves in such appropriate circumstances. Have to say though; we still hate to find ourselves in those appropriate times!  Life is so much easier when we don’t need to gain additional experience

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Prone to Wander

Our Lady dog has developed an obstinate need to wander. We are trying hard to figure out how to deal with her and keep her out of trouble. We have almost twenty acres that she is free to roam at will, and it is a veritable puppy play ground with rabbits to chase (as well as skunks!); a pond to swim in; goats, chickens and ducks to annoy and lots of tall grass, just waiting to be explored.

But on the other side of the fence is an awesome, amazing, never ending world to be explored. "The road goes ever on and on..." as it were. Deer, turkey and cows to be chased. Creeks and trails to explore...

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Summer on the Homestead #3

We have two kids - okay, we have four all together, but two of them are goats! We have named the two goats Mutton & Massala! Their little hut doesn't look like much, but the scenery makes up for it!

Summer on the Homestead #2

We have 23 pullets now which are about 3 months old. They are all healthy and enjoying their free ranging ways each day. We have a variety as you can probably see from the pics below.

Omce a day we give them some supplemental feed which they all seem to really enjoy.

 

Summer on the Homestead #1

Well, our newest additions to our homestead menagerie are 15 white Peking ducklings; 30 assorted Guinea Fowl keets; 10 Barred Rock cockerels and 10 Buff Orpinton cockerels. They came in the mail 10 days ago and are all growing like crazy, especially the ducklings. I need to get them into bigger quarters soon!

Above the ducklings and keets... below are the cockerels. Both pics are the day we got them.