Maranatha!

Not too long ago I began to pray asking the Lord for more of a longing for Heaven, a sense of my eternal home and not to be too caught up here on earth. 

Not long after praying this way, I began to get together with a Swiss friend, a wonderful woman who moved here to Peru to become mom to abandoned infants and raise them for life.  You may have heard me speak of Doris recently and her Refuge.  Doris looks at the horror of where they have come from, its effects, the suffering and pain of peoples' lives day in and day out. There is no isolation from it.  She and these kids have become my extended family and I am an aunt to 11 beautiful Swiss-German speaking Peruvian kids. Its been a journey that has taken me even deeper into the pain of this world. Perhaps I am used to it and can compartmentalize it with the Capernaum kids (at least I have had to in order to move forward).  However, Doris' love and longing for heaven has been contagious... and God is faithful to answer a prayer like this.  

More and more I find myself disillusioned with a broken world that has little to offer to anyone and LONGING for heaven, our real home.  Its becoming a part of my every moment, my constant longing. I feel myself pulled deeper into this solidarity with suffering people; so much so that their suffering also invades most of my moments. I carry it with me...I was talking with Christian the other day, he sees it though does not totally understand it... I was explaining to him how I have asked myself "is it depression? Is it a grey Lima winter" is it homesickness? is it being unhappy?"  All of these things could be causes, but I know it is deeper.  There are days when my clean, pretty, neat, orderly, close-to-family home back in Clovis calls my name like the serpent called Eve to the apple. I want "THAT" I think.  THAT will lighten my load, make life pretty and happy and easy. However, I know having all of "THAT" would no longer satisfy.  In fact, nothing on this earth but Christ himself will satisfy me.  

 I keep thinking of that verse "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Phil 3:10-11.  I can hear Joni Eareckson Tada speaking with such passion years ago at some conference or meeting. At the time, I could hardly wrap my mind around it, but now, my heart resounds with those words!  Its a new place, a new way... at least at a new level. It is something I feel Henri Nouwen and perhaps a few other writers have mentored me in. It is a sacred and terrible place, the fellowship of sharing in his suffering…

AND YET, in the midst of this, I think Christian, my boyfriend (almost 18 months now) is this gift that somehow pulls me out and above that for moments of ridiculous laughter, play, joy, fun, sarcasm... and it is a gift.  It is all a gift... and a burden, and a privilege.  I feel, as the author of Romans says that "the whole earth groans" and find myself more and more longing for the day when " creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God." (Romans 8:21).  

Com quickly, Lord Jesus! Maranatha!