The World Race has officially begun! As I sat in JFK International airport, my mind raced. Airports are prime locations for sensory overload, and the array of foreign sights, smells, and sounds in the international terminal was staggering. With all the logistical odds and ends that surrounded the airport experience, it was so easy to forget the bigger picture; namely, that eleven months of intimacy with God (in a challenging global context) were about to start.
It was much easier to remember this in the quiet sanctuary of my own bedroom last night, but much harder to keep this in mind during the frenzy of intercom calls, ticket counter stress, and fast food runs. These logistical airport experiences are, of course, a means to an end (glorifying God around the world), but sometimes the very ordinariness of the means seems to run in stark contrast with the extra-ordinariness and the super-naturalness of the of the mission.
I love what C.S. Lewis says in The Screwtape Letters about Satan’s use of the ordinary to make us forget the extraordinary. He says, in the mock voice of Satan writing to his subordinate:
“Remember, he (the human) is not, like you, a pure spirit. Never having been a human (Oh that abominable advantage of the Enemy's! (God) you don't realise how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary. I once had a patient, a sound atheist, who used to read in the British Museum. One day, as he sat reading, I saw a train of thought in his mind beginning to go the wrong way. The Enemy, of course, was at his elbow in a moment. Before I knew where I was, I saw my twenty years' work beginning to totter. If I had lost my head and begun to attempt a defence by argument I should have been undone. But I was not such a fool. I struck instantly at the part of the man which I had best under my control and suggested that it was just about time he had some lunch. The Enemy presumably made the counter-suggestion (you know how one can never quite overhear What He says to them?) that this was more important than lunch. At least I think that must have been His line for when I said "Quite. In fact much too important to tackle it the end of a morning", the patient brightened up considerably; and by the time I had added "Much better come back after lunch and go into it with a fresh mind", he was already half way to the door. Once he was in the street the battle was won. I showed him a newsboy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps I had got into him an unalterable conviction that, whatever odd ideas might come into a man's head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of "real life" (by which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to show him that all "that sort of thing" just couldn't be true. He knew he'd had a narrow escape and in later years was fond of talking about "that inarticulate sense for actuality which is our ultimate safeguard against the aberrations of mere logic". He is now safe in Our Father's house.
You begin to see the point? Thanks to processes which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things.”
I thank God for preparing me with this wisdom and I pray that I never lose sight of God’s mighty hand throughout this next year. I often fall into the trap of believing that the work of the disciples and the apostles was nothing but fire and miracles, and that their ministry was completely devoid of a sense of ordinariness, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
I have absolutely no reason to believe (and the Bible gives me no reason either) that the Apostle Paul’s feet never got blistered or that Timothy never got bored. I have no reason to believe that Barnabas never once got food poisoning or that Peter never ripped a hole in his tunic and had to get it fixed before continuing on. Or, even to use non-Biblical figures, did Martin Luther always remember to pack his bag correctly and did C.S. Lewis ever eat at a fast food joint? The point is, that this sense of ordinariness we feel should not decay our recognition of (and thirst for) the supernatural.
We got into Bucharest at around noon today. I haven’t slept in about 36 hours (Romania is seven hours ahead of eastern time), so needless to say, I’m feeling incredibly disoriented! We are all staying the same hostel as a whole squad for three more days. During the next three days, we will have some training exercises and worship time before the teams split up and head to our real locations for the month. Team 14Feet will be traveling most of the day to Uzice, Serbia (on the Serbian-Bosnian border) where will be from July 16th to August 16th.
Look for more information to come about our specific Serbian ministry in the next week! Starting tomorrow, we are all required to participate in a 48 hour fast from all electronics (which is tantalizing, given the wireless access in the hostel!) as a way to start to break away from the lifestyle we are accustomed to. May the great and holy God not be forgotten throughout the “ordinariness” of life these next few days!
