I Ought To Be In Bed...

... but I'll take a couple more minutes to wish everyone a Happy New Year, a whole day late =). I just got back from the Urbana missions conference in St Louis. It's usually held in Urbana, Illinois, but this year it was held in St Louis so they could fit a bigger crowd, or so I'm told.

I'm not the kind of guy who goes into these things with very particular expectations, but I suspect that even if I did, whatever measly expectations I had would've been blown completely out of the water. I heard new things about what God was doing in Malaysia from the other Malaysians who showed up. I heard about how Christianity was becoming and perhaps had become, once again, a religion of the East. I heard about a church moving with power to heal both the bodies and minds of individuals, communities, and nations.

After I'd heard about all these things going on in the world around me, I thought I'd had my fill, and that the sum of what I'd bring home with me would be simply a new awareness of what God was doing in that world. In retrospect, it should've been obvious that God had more in store, since He's not interested in just having another employee. He wants us as partners. He wants us as friends. He wants us as sons. In the state I was in and in the direction I was headed He knew I just wouldn't do. At the table of the Lord, I encountered, once again, the God I'd almost forgotten since the days of my youth... the great lover, the compassionate forgiver, the faithful one. I'd always known Him in my head, but He reintroduced Himself to my heart. I did business with my God at that table. He showed me the junk from the past that had needed dealing with for a long time. My heart was renewed with life, a new tenderness. Stone to flesh! I've started walking again, and Dad's holding my hand.

I might blog about details later, or not. I'm thinking I'll start journaling again instead =). Suffice to say, though, it's gonna be a good year. I can't wait to get to work.