Back From the Mountain

I just got back from a week-long youth mission trip to Mountain TOP in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee. Twenty-one (15 students and six adults) missionaries spent a week either leading Day Camp or laboring on work teams building, repairing, painting and improving the lives and homes of people as servants of the Lord. It was a great week! Likewise, I’m getting ready to lead a team of six to Mission Guatemala for a week in Guatemala. One of the things I hope for while in Guatemala, and which I experienced in Tennessee was time to reflect and write. I wrote and shared the following while on the Mountain:
Words
Mountain TOP 2023
I like words!
     I like words like:

• Indubitably
• Serendipity
• Peckish
• Righteous
• Skedaddle
• Pudding

     I like words!
Words have power; God spoke these words: “Let there be…” and there was.
Words have power to build up AND tear down. “Let nothing destructive come out of your mouth but only what is good for building up… that your words may give GRACE. ” (Ephesians 4:29)
     I like words. I like that word: “grace!”
GRACE – God’s perfect love.
Words are thoughts embodied. “And the WORD became flesh and dwelt among us. (John 1). The word – WORD (Logos) – lived in body; love embodied in Jesus.
     I like words. I REALLY like that word: “love!”
So many ways it is embodied:

• Eros (*whisper* “we get our word erotic from that word)
• Philia (love you brother)
• Storge (my mom loved me… God rest her soul)
• Agape (love perfected)

     I like that word: “agape!”
Love that is SO many words:

• Patient
• Kind
• Bearing all things
• Believing in all things
• Hopes
• Endures
• Never ends….

     I like this!
I’ve known that this week… perfect love.

“Go up on a high mountain… lift up your voice and shout these words: ‘Here is God!’” (Isaiah 40:9)
Here is God. I have seen God. I have experienced God—the WORD made flesh—and her name is: Kara, Lauren, Denise, Emily, Sophie and Anica (the members of my YRG), and “I’m taking pictures in my mind so I can save them for a rainy day (Stay Beautiful, Taylor Swift).
Sometimes words fail, then the Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:26), but I will try.

Thank you God for being the WORD made flesh, and for sending us to be the hands and feet of Christ, the embodiment of love for others!

Grace and peace,
Pastor Don