April 23rd, 2004

It's interesting. I'm beginning to wakeup in the morning by the thought, "Whoa, I'm going to Kazakhstan." Dang. It's a sobering thought, and never fails to wake me up when I'm groggy in the morning. It's like that little rush of adrenaline if you are falling asleep at the wheel and almost run off the road. Bam! Kazakhstan! This is exascerbated by the fact that I really have no idea what I'm going to do over there, I mean, except for vague general things like learning Russian and teaching English. Everything else seems pretty contingent upon circumstances of my site. Shoot, I may not even be teaching English regularly!

It's time like these when faith becomes so much more important. There is a great verse in Isaiah 30:15 that says, "In repentence and rest is your salvation. In quietness and trust is your strength." God has already granted us repentence as his children, and rest is relying on Christ and his power to change us. The next part is the hardest, because now as people saved through repentence and rest, we are told that quietness and trust will give us strength. I always think of this as like a giant fortress in which we "rest," safe within all the while hearing the sounds of battle through the thick masonry wall. The closest to the battle we will ever come is still seperated by 10 feet of solid rock. Trust is saying that that 10 feet of rock will keep us safe, and when you think about it, it is such an absurd reality. Of course it will keep us safe! God has made it that way! And so how can we not have faith? Just think about if that wall were not there. Put your ear to the wall, and you hear the God of the Storm thundering, rumbling, shaking the battlefield; you hear the rattle of arms and clash of steel, the thudding of distant cannon almost overpowered by the thunder; you hear shouts and screams of Lilliputian men struck by Something they can only fathom as that something's power rips through them. And that Something is on our side...

Going to Kazakhstan will be difficult, and not only for me. My family will probably have a tough time every once in a while. But since God is leading us, we can only trust that he has brought this for purposes of growth, and this brings me joy. I may not know what will happen, but I'm content that I am where I need to be. Peace. Rest. And joy. Those are all good things.

I remember in intro to Psychology in college, that "studies found people who had a good sense that they were in control of their situation" were always less stressed and had less likelihood of going insane, whereas people who felt that their circumstances were controlled by external forces, could quite possibly go off the deep end at any minute. Like the uncontrollable storm in King Lear that ripped through the minds of our main characters, modern psychology seems to say that mental and psychological--even spiritual--peace, if external, is like taking that wall away between us and the battle. I never understood this, because as a Christian, I, a stupid and fallible creature, rely on something extremely larger than I, who sways the battle for his glory. I am perfectly confident that on the other side of the wall my Ally is winning. If that wall were not there, I could not control the storm, I could not win the war. And so the stuff of science seems merely the stuff of science fiction.

Grace, peace, and joy to all my fellow believers out there.