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On Elisabeth Elliot and the Hidden Realities of our Mentors
“I want to be like Elisabeth Elliot,” I told my mother. I had just graduated from college and was contemplating my next steps. I picked Elliot because she was the only example I knew of a woman speaking publicly in my faith circles. “Really?” Mom’s eyebrow raised. “Then you need a story to tell like hers. Do you want to go as a missionary to an unchartered area, lose your husband to the spear of a tribesman, raise a daughter alone, labor in a village to share the gospel as a single mom? Then finally get married again, only to lose that husband to cancer and experience widowhood a second…
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Ten Principles From Scripture to Guide Engagement
“I can’t believe you just said that!” I look aghast at my screen. “Does she really believe that?” “This can’t be happening again!” My heart starts beating faster. I feel a mixture of anger, astonishment, disgust, disappointment, confusion, fear, exasperation, and superiority. I waffle between wanting to fight or to flee. I can’t go on this way. How do I respond when social media, news, and typical conversation is fraught with fear-driven division? When I read a disturbing post, when a friend purports a conspiracy theory, when my least favorite politician wins, should I turn off all devices, quit reading the news, and only talk about the weather? I need…
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Deciding to Stay or Go
I feel like my time here may be finished? How do I know when it’s time to go? Should I stay or move on? We encounter this tough decision many times in our lives. Should we leave our job? Our church? Is it time to resign from teaching Sunday school? What about the ministry where I volunteer? Which extra activities should I let go of? Can I press through the challenges and stick it out? How do we make an intentional, not reactive, decision to stay or go? Global worker and author, Sue Eenigenburg, invited me to cowrite a workbook* with her in which we offer thirteen reflection questions to…
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Will Change Ever Get Easier?
“I have decided to accept the offer in Spain,” my colleague announced. Here we go again, my heart cried. Even though I rejoiced that God had answered her prayers for direction, I still balked. After all these years will change ever get easier? I think back to my childhood in Papua New Guinea and the classmates who came and went, the rhythm of home assignment, the moving of my belongings from home to children’s hostel every three months. Then I consider my 12 years in Indonesia. My team and leadership configuration morphed at least 15 times until my family also returned to our passport country. My senior worker and team mentor…
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Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love in Mary’s Story
As we head into the final week before Christmas, we expectantly anticipate the coming—the Advent—of the Son of the Most High as his mother, Mary, did. Consider with me the traditional Advent themes as seen in Mary’s story. HOPE “Listen: You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” —the angel Gabriel to Mary of Nazareth (LUKE 1:31-33) The Bible defines hope as patiently…
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Do Not Be Afraid, I Am With You
Since my word for the year 2023 is “with,” I’m sharing a chapter entitled “With You” from my devotional Favored Blessed Pierced: A Fresh Look at Mary of Nazareth in preparation for the upcoming Advent season. So the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid.” Luke 1:30a The angel’s preface to his commissioning, “Do not be afraid,” is the most commonly repeated command in the Bible—with good reason, for we are people of fear. Last year, I finally admitted that I feel anxious when I travel. While I have the privilege of traversing the globe in my ministry to cross-cultural workers, I rarely travel alone. Still I worry. Will we make…
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Gaze On God, Not the Wicked
News headlines are bleak these days. Factual events are spun as fiction to benefit the guilty. Differing accounts cause confusion and disguise the truth. And just when it seems things can’t get worse, violence breaks out again, communities are displaced, and thousands tragically perish. The marginalized suffer (again) while the wealth of the privileged increases. It can seem like the wicked are winning. We can feel like Asaph, the writer of Psalm 73. 3 For I envied those who are proud, as I observed the prosperity of the wicked.4 For they suffer no pain; their bodies are strong and well fed.5 They are immune to the trouble common to men; they do not suffer as other men…
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There Is Maturity in Moderation
“I’ll just have one,” I reasoned, as I reached for the mini chocolates. But it disappeared so quickly and felt so satisfying, I took another. And another. Proverbs aptly describes how I felt after my indulgence. “You have found honey—eat only what is sufficient for you, lest you become stuffed with it and vomit it up” (Proverbs 25:16). Well, that might be an exaggeration, but you get the point. Why can’t I stop with one? The alternative seems to be to deny myself totally, to abstain completely. Perhaps it’s better to not have any sweets at all. That works for me at home. I don’t regularly keep sweets lying around.…
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Why Can’t Barbie and Ken Rule Together?
“Let’s go see Barbie,” my daughter-in-law said in a moment of spontaneity on the movie’s opening weekend. We knew this Hollywood production would be silly and fun and full of nostalgia and bright colors. And it certainly delivered! But we weren’t prepared for a deep, profound, soul-searching look at patriarchy and women. [spoiler alert] In Barbieland “Stereotypical” Barbie lives a happy and accomplished life naively believing she has conquered every roadblock women face. But when she personally enters the real world (our world), she discovers that men ogle her and women hate her. Devastated, she learns that “she has been making women feel bad about themselves since she was invented.” On…
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Grace and Faith, Not Works and Striving
Nella, my close Indonesian friend and mentee, was distraught. She had just read Jesus’s words in the gospel of Matthew and she was certain she did not measure up. 41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire that has been prepared for the devil and his angels! 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. 43 I was a stranger and you did not receive me as a guest, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they too will answer, ‘Lord, when…