Engaging (Part 1)

When was the last time you looked outside the window of your life to the world beyond? Why do I ask? Each of my blogs/letters to you over the last year or so have focused on the difficulties you are facing, how to keep your spiritual wits about you, and each has offered encouragement about the prospects for tomorrow. It is obvious you are hurting, especially financially, but personally as well. The majority of us are.

Each day my snail mail, email, and online mail is filled with prayer requests for a variety of needs. Cancer, death, fragmenting families, abuse, loneliness, loss of a job, a spouse, a chance; dashed hopes, faded dreams, and lives on the rocks.

These are challenging days.

Even though the economic indicators are portending a recovery from our economic woes, it will be at least two—maybe three—years before you feel the surge. Meanwhile, the rest of life will not relent.

You will get older. The status quo will change more rapidly next year than it did this year. People around you will continue to make poor choices that will affect you adversely. And…. I could go on, but you know what I’m talking about.

The things I have written to you over these months are true. I have not retracted anything in any of my blogs or letters to you.

The Scriptures still stand. Father remains on His throne. You are still an alien in a foreign land awaiting your summons to return home. Christ’s role in your life is unchanged: He remains the one called to preach good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to set the captives free, and to proclaim a release from darkness to the prisoners.

Where do you fit within His mission statement?

Are you poor? Brokenhearted? Captive? A prisoner? The answer is, “Yes.” You are all of the above, and that is precisely why I have written focused encouragement to you.

But what about the world beyond you? Or as I asked at the top of my letter: What is happening in the world outside of your life?