Life bursts forth in beauty and splendor, the overflow of a good God, shining and testifying to who He is.  The message of Easter: God is making the world new!

Some cross culture moments just makes you smile.  Like these guys for example.  Someone has to hold those cement beams in place while driving down the highway and these guys have it covered.    Audrey and I drove with our Thai staff workers to pick up two girls from their home village, who are in our orphan care program at Faithful Heart.  It is always a humbling experience to see such simplicity and subsistence existence.  These pictures are of a small Lahu village outside of Chiang Dao, right near the Myanmar border.

I have found in my own heart a limit to real compassion.  Most of us feel capable of loving only so many people.  It is not evil in us, only limitation.  We can and ought to stretch our ability to love.  However, being human we will always be limited at least in the expression of our love.  These kinds of experiences strain me because I see more than my heart can handle.  I want to love these people, everyone of them.  I want to do something for them.  When I feel overwhelmed I do one of two things; I get depressed and do nothing, or I find something I can do and ask for grace, knowing whatever I do it will not be enough.  May we choose the latter.  For here is powerful evidence that we can not overestimate the value and potential impact of a single life.

Meet Sarah (black shirt) and Laura (white shirt). 

Sarah and Laura are both top in their class at school; beautiful bright girls.  Sarah and Laura are able to go to school, eat good food, be a part of a family, and will even have the opportunity to attend college because they are sponsored by kind people from the US.  When was the last time your cable bill changed someone’s world?  They love their village and who knows how they might one day bless it? 

Your impact can be beyond your ability. 

Goodbyes are hard on everyone, especially the girls, their mother and grandma (the one with the loving headlock on the two girls).  There’s so much love in the family, but they simply don’t have the means to keep the girls in the village with them. I hope you don’t see the poverty only, but also the potential.      Education really is a wonderful privilege and an incredible responsibility. 

One question for us all to meditate on (before I leave with some photos of lovely scenery, and a beautiful woman sitting next to a tired, sweaty guy.)

 How might we use the privileges and opportunities we have been blessed with to bless those who have not?  How can you impact reach beyond your ability?

We love you all and  we could not share in this work without you! 

Thank you so much for your support, prayers, and love.  

I’ll leave you with a quote from Oscar Romero that has spoken to us in recent days:

It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of
saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession
brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives include everything.

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one
day will grow. We water the 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 this.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very 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.