Her mother told me that she remembered her husbandʼs dissertation in 1987, and still had not fully recovered. That was my clue.

The well-articulated presentation was impressive. Her arduous study and effort in preparation were obvious.

The Advisory Committee then spoke. The pretentious and condescending tone of the questioning appalled me. “Why should we grant you a doctoral degree?”.

Withering inside as their interrogation progressed, wanting to silence these critical investigators, I listened to it all. She retained dignity and poise regardless.

Driving home, exploring my furious reaction to this evening, I knew my rage was triggering something deep within. My turmoil was about more than the dissertation criticism. Exaggerated responses are frequently keys to unraveling troublesome attitudes I possess, while discovering “the sin that so easily besets me” ( Hebrews 12:1 ).

Clarification was swift – having lived my life in front of an (internal) Advisory Committee, voices of shame and punishment have sometimes shouted, sometimes whispered, but always existed. “Who do you think you are?”. “Why should we grant you acceptance?”. “We expected so much more out of you.” “You have never lived up to your potential”. The list goes on and on and on and on, ad nauseum.

I have always told my children that the inscription I want on my tombstone is: “She Tried”. Perhaps that is not as humorous as I intended.

Iʼve craved acceptance since early childhood. Approval has been the driving force in my life, resulting in both joy and misery. Gratefully, Iʼve received much encouragement, wisdom, and reassurance from friends and strangers along the way. As the years pass, I know that the affirmation and forgiveness I yearn for is ultimately from God. Receiving that trumps any human affirmation. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31).

I stand before Him with absolutely nothing to present for unconditional acceptance but the blood of Christ. This is enough. This is more than enough. This is my diploma. I am “accepted in the beloved” ( Ephesians 1:6). “My grace is sufficient for you, My strength is made perfect in weakness (11 Corinthians 12:9).

Let the accusing committees howl.

-Kim B.

Not long ago, I saw an amazing little film called God Grew Tired of Us. It is the
story of The Lost Boys, a group of Sudanese orphaned and displaced young men
who fled from the genocide in their country and spent years in refugee camps
in Ethiopia and Kenya before some of the boys were invited to come and live in
America. The film chronicles their experience of attempting to assimilate into
American culture, which proves to be more challenging than any of the boys ever
imagined. One of the scenes that really stuck in my memory involves the boys’
initial impressions of their first Christmas in America. I’m unsure of the exact
quote, but one of the young men said something to the effect of:

“Your Christmas includes many things which are very beautiful. Trees and lights
and music, but I am very confused about what any of this has to do with the birth
of Christ.”

Ain’t it the truth? American Christmas is undeniably lovely and fun, full of
traditions, family, and of course, presents. But for those of us parents who
consider ourselves to be Christ followers, it can be immensely challenging to
find any meaningful context for the holiday in a culture where Santa and sleigh
bells get top billing, particularly when we hope to pass the true significance of the
holiday on to our children.

How can Jesus compete? His songs are much trickier for kids to learn than our
American holiday standards. Try explaining the lyrics “round yon virgin” to a four
year-old, and you’ll quickly be tempted to turn on “Frosty the Snowman” instead.
Jesus doesn’t do photo shoots at the mall. He doesn’t have a clay-mation holiday
special. And he certainly doesn’t get to take credit for Barbies and Star Wars
action figure sets under the Christmas tree.

Several of our friends have chosen to eliminate Santa from their Christmas
celebrations in an attempt to focus the holiday on its true meaning. I definitely
understand and respect the sentiment. For our family, however, we finally
decided that unless we chose to completely opt out of Christmas gift-giving, the
absence of Santa probably wouldn’t make a huge difference. And really, Santa’s
just too much fun for us to pass up. So what else can a well-meaning parent do
to help little ones understand that the birth of Christ is ultimately a much more
beautiful event than a local tree-lighting ceremony?

We certainly don’t have all the answers, but we’re trying. For most of Advent,
Jonah, Eli, and I have been reading the Christmas story each evening in their
children’s Bible (and for anyone who is searching for a wonderful Bible for kids,
I can’t recommend The Jesus Storybook Bible highly enough – its humor and
insight are teaching me each day as well!). The boys play with their little wooden

Nativity set. We sing traditional carols at church and talk, day by day, about WHY
we actually celebrate Christmas. We try to model generosity and good will. We’ll
make a cheesy birthday cake for Jesus. And we pray hard that our boys will truly
take in the meaning of my favorite name for Christ – Emmanuel – or “God with
us.” What could be more beautiful than that?

And maybe, little by little, the real miracle is making itself known. The other
day, as we finished reading the story of Jesus’ birth for the gazillionth time this
month, Jonah turned to me with his eyes sparkling.

“Mom,” he grinned, “Jesus is SO cool.”

Take that, Santa Claus.

Hello again from Cambodia!  I hope you’re well and appreciating the turning of the seasons.  Autumn’s my favorite and I’ve been missing Colorado’s crisp air and changing aspens.  Cambodia’s rainy season is drawing to a close and I thought I’d pause once more and share a bit of what’s happening here.

Daughters is a busy place as the organization seeks to help more young women coming out of the sex trade.  This month construction began on an additional floor to make more workspace for the growing number of clients coming into the program.   In the screen printing area I’m continuing to teach and manage as we fill orders for the Daughters’ gift shop.  Recently we’ve been expanding from printing on t-shirts to aprons, tea towels and place mats.  There is also a handful of young men who have joined Sons of Cambodia as part of a project created under Daughters to help males leaving the sex industry.

The busyness takes place amidst uncertainty and it’s easy to get discouraged.  Cultural differences and misunderstandings with language impede communication.  The normal challenge of securing reliable printing materials has been hampered by regional flooding.  Systemic corruption and a weak education system seem to provide little hope for Cambodia to grow in a just and equitable way.

I’m encouraged by a wonderful mix of Khmer staff and foreign volunteers.  A carpenter from England has begun teaching woodworking skills to young men in the Sons program.  A law student has joined Daughters’ administrative staff foregoing the profits she could have garnered in the Cambodian legal system.  One of the supervisors I work with in screen printing has endured the hardships of the sex trade and yet has a wonderful desire to learn and she is able to laugh everyday.

We’re motivated and we do what we can.  If it were just up to me, I know my patience, kindness and perseverance would soon run out.  I’m thankful for the inspiration I have, the support I’ve been given and the mystery and reliability of God’s sustaining hand.  Recently I’ve been reminded of these words from Oscar Romero . . .

This is what we are about: We plant the seeds that will one day grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it well. It may be incomplete but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

Looking ahead I don’t know all the details of my future.  I’m thankful for the opportunity to volunteer longer than I had initially planned.  I’m hoping to return next year and help in the development of the screen printing program.  I’d also like to devote more time to language study.  In the meantime, I’m looking forward to being in Colorado for Christmas.  Hopefully I’ll get to see some of you then!  Thanks again for your interest and involvement with all that’s happening here in Cambodia.
Love,

Margaret was a unique person that had learned well through many of life’s challenges to look beyond cultural, age, gender and economic differences to the heart and soul of each individual. Margaret could find common ground with almost everyone who crossed her path.

Margaret often spoke of her conversations with God in a way that I knew they were intimately connected. Margaret not only had a rich ministry of prayer for her family and those close to her, but Margaret prayed around the world. Each morning she received the New York Times delivered to her home; her prayer guide for the world. When she watched the evening news, it was with the purpose of praying for people and situations where she was living and as they were happening. Margaret practiced the presence of God.

Margaret displayed a continual attitude of thankfulness in all situations. In 2000 Margaret was diagnosed with ALS, (a disease of the nerve cell in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement.) I can still recall the afternoon she invited me to her apartment to confirm the diagnosis. It was a time of crying and grief, but even as she spoke very truthfully of the prognosis, there was an underlying thankfulness for the full life she had lived and for God’s provision of a small apartment she had just recently settled in and the friends and family that surrounded her. Margaret also displayed an attitude of hope and perseverance. During our weekly meetings, Margaret shared with me her desire to accomplish two projects before she died.

One was to begin writing her autobiography, which was later published by her family entitled, “Life is Relationships”. The second project was to begin a journal of thankfulness. Margaret determined to find 10 new things each day for which she was thankful. I watched Margaret’s body deteriorate over the next few months, but her spirit grew stronger each day. Until I left Margaret on that last day before our departure for Cambodia, she displayed a deep interest in others and an attitude of thankfulness that has continued to teach and instruct me for the last several years.

When I someday see her again, I will say…
Thanks for always being willing to listen.
Thanks for never making me feel like there was no time for me.
Thanks for the perspective, which was added at each turn.
Thanks for sharing those cups of peach and ginger tea.
Thanks for sharing what you knew
Thanks for questions that disturbed me and drew me closer to God.

Thanks, mostly, for “Just being a friend!” (taken in part from “Mentoring” by Bobb Biehl)
Margaret lived what I would call a radical life, one that was willing to be directed and also direct others on the healing path, where they are able to grow in faith, hope and love. Margaret taught me in her final years not only how to live each day, but also how to die. She also taught me to live with hope of a final resurrection.
-D. Rudy

One wouldn’t be surprised then to see that we like to hang out with each other. We eat lunch, play sports, study The Bible, serve the community, and talk about interesting things together. These are things that communities do. But a good community, a Godly community, does much more than this. A Godly community is full of relationships between people that are marked by the renewing work of the Holy Spirit. These include friendships, marriages, co-worker relationships, parent-child relationships, and more. When you take a minute to look into a community that truly does the work of the Lord, you will always find lives that are being transformed and created anew. You will find spiritual growth. Significant changes have taken place that have rocked people’s worlds, changes which motivate people to step up to the plate and do the work that The Church needs done. So, the work of the Lord is always  done within a context of transformation, by people whose lives are in the midst of transformation. We at All Souls are these kinds of people, people in the midst of transformation. We are all wrestling with the message of the Gospel in some way. The work of Lord, done through people, through a community, transforms lives. It’s a cyclical process at its best, through which more churches are formed and more people glorify the name of the Lord.

Especially when done on a communal scale, the work of the Lord requires organization. Good communities organize people’s skills effectively, even as these skills are offered with the enthusiasm born of the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Paul said in Ephesians 4:11-12 that Jesus gave us people like “the apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints [that's believers] for the work of ministry…”. Jesus gave us people who are to equip us, through ministry, to do more of the work of ministry. In a community, that forms the image of people ministering to each other by filling their needs with the skills God has given them, which they offer to their peers when needs arise and are made known. People are gifts because the greatest person was and is a gift. Christ presents people as gifts to each other as he was the greatest gift given by God, to show people himself, that through their showing of his grace, more might be reconciled to God.

The image and reality of a community’s members actively working for the Lord is the very example of that sharing and showing of the grace which God bestowed on believers, for those in need of it (that’s everyone). That is the Gospel in action. It expands the kingdom of God and at the same time reveals the method of its’ expansion. Lavish love. Labors of love and gratitude.  “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks (Jesus, Luke 6:45).” Your actions are of the same kind as the treasure of your heart. When Jesus is your treasure, you automatically begin to love others as he did. Showing people little bits of grace is showing people Jesus little by little, because Jesus is Grace personified. By him we have flourishing and everlasting life. Showing grace, which facilitates the flourishing of life, actually proclaims, hints at, and even prophesies about Jesus and the treasure trove of grace that he is. He is the gift. He is the “good treasure.”

Relationships within a community that serves the Lord are supported by truth. These relationships are neither productive nor lasting unless they are centered around things that are true, and more importantly, things that are true and that people in the community need. This is what a community that serves the Lord looks like – people equipped with the understanding of the truth loving other people with it. You aren’t loving someone if you don’t somehow feed them truth. A difficult word of truth loves and a comforting, easy word of falsity actually hates.  A community loves neither itself nor others unless its relational dealings are based upon truth. You cannot love someone with lies. Falsity tears people down.

We get truth first from Scripture and secondly from the revelation of God in the world. Since God is in charge of all things, these two can never be inconsistent. That’s one way in which you can know that something is not true, namely, that it is inconsistent with what Scripture actually says. So, the truth with which we seek to love is the message of the Bible, the Gospel, the good news. This is a message of enormous significance, but it can be simplified. Helping fellow community members grow in grace requires it. For this, you might start with what is perhaps the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16- “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (ESV) .” If you only knew the simplest version of the Gospel, then this verse just might be the one to know. The most important feature of the message of the Bible is the feature that never goes away: God loves us. The rest of the Bible tells you how, what it means, the response of God’s people, and how God’s people should respond. This is the message which an effective and Godly community should be spreading throughout its realm of influence, and this is the message that must serve as the fuel with which a Godly community does everything that it does. A community, just like a person, loves only because God first loved.

As Pastor Will has recently said, developing an effective community in the church is difficult because it means forming unity in the midst of diversity. Very different people are called to unite. One of the principal effects of sin is that of division and compartmentalization, among many others. Therefore, unity amidst diversity is not really practical unless the community is united around something significant enough to encompass all of the varied people in the community and fill their needs. Something that can actually keep them and their infinitely varied tasks together under one heading.  This something, a focal point, must be an end in itself, something to which other people and activities relate and more importantly, point. Fortunately, this something is no thing at all. It is Jesus. Without the one who understands all, through whom all was created, and who can legitimately charge all to work for him since all were made for him, people and their gifts are not synchronized, there is no system of community that gets good things done, and diversity devolves into division. Branches cease to bear fruit if they are removed from their vine.

-Matthew W.

You struggle. You feel like your actions are not in line with what you think
it means to be a Christian. Maybe you’re mad at God because you think he
messed up when he created you. You might have questions similar to those that
Rob Bell voices in the first chapter of his book, Love Wins. Maybe you feel
some of the things Noah Gundersen expresses in his song “Jesus, Jesus.”

Knowing God might be a turn-off to you because Christians have made fun of
you, talked over you, interrupted your thoughts, and not been trustworthy with
your personal struggles. I’m sorry. I’m sorry if people have tried to make black
and white from gray matters. I’m sorry people have pressed their agendas and
biases in the name of Jesus.

I can’t answer your questions. But know that I am here if you want to ask
them. I can’t solve your struggles. I will join you in the mystery, sit with you in
the gray matter.

Gray, black, or white, He loves you because YOU are his son. He loves you
because YOU are his daughter. Nothing can change that. Ever. Nothing can
diminish his love. John Mark McMillan describes in this video his own journey
and understanding of God’s love.

I want to love you in the way God loves you, too. And I will keep trying to live
like that.

-Emily B.

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