February 1st, 2010


So Gizaw asked me to do the Monday morning devotional this week and I began to think about what I would want to share with you. I am not a theologian or seminary professor like the others who have done this devotional lately. I also have not been a missionary for twenty years, so I do not bring years of insight and experience to speak from. I have been a Christian for a long time and I have been struggling and wrestling the whole time I have been a Christian. So I bring to you my struggles to share with you and the hope that I cling to while I am fighting those fights of faith.


In our family we are encouraged by the bible as the Word of God. And also we are encouraged by historic hymns of the western church that talk about the hope of the gospel for both their time and ours. We will be looking at the bible today at Romans 8, so if you want to open your bibles there, we will be reading from that chapter. Also, I want to share 2 songs or hymns with you that have been very meaningful and encouraging to my wife and I over the years. Gizaw will help me read each song in Amharic, then I will sing for you, look at the scriptures, and sing some more.


Ten Thousand Times Ten Thousand

Ten thousand times ten thousand in sparkling rainment bright,

the armies of the ransomed saints throng up the steep of light;

‘Tis finished, all is finished, their fight with death and sin;

Fling open wide the golden gates, and let the victors in.


What rush of alleluias fill, All the earth and sky!

What ringing of a thousand harps bespeaks the triumph nigh!

O, day for which creation, and all its tribes were made;

O joy, for all its former woes, A thousand fold repaid!


O then what raptured greetings On Canaan’s happy shore;

What knitting severed friendship Up where partings are no more!

Then eyes with joy shall sparkle, That brimmed with tears of late;

Orphans no longer fatherless, nor widows desolate.


Bring near thy great salvation, Thou lamb for sinners slain;

Fill up the roll of thine elect, Then take thy power and reign;

Appear desire of nations, Thine exiles long for home;

Show in the heaven thy promised sign, Thou prince and Savior come.


As of this week we will have been in Ethiopia and at this project for 5 months. In this time I have come to miss my family very much, I miss my friends, and I miss many of the things that I knew as “home”. And as I look out at the people I am talking to I also realize that you are probably not having this same experience. You are probably not far from home and are probably not sharing this experience of being far from your family and friends and everyone you have ever known. However, an experience I think we share on many levels is when we look at our lives and say, “Things are not the way that they should be”.

I may say “things are not the way they ought to be” when I try to call my family and the phone line does not work, or when Christmas is celebrated in a way that is foreign to me, or with people whom I hardly know. That is not how Christmas ought to be to me. Or here at the project we may say that “things are not the way they ought to be” when we see people sick and suffering, or orphans that have no family to spend holidays with or when a parent does not take an obviously sick child to the hospital - “things are not the way they ought to be” .

But, I am comforted to know, that when we look at sickness, suffering, loneliness, isolation, and death and feel bothered, we are not alone. I take comfort in a long line of Christians through history who have written down their struggles in different times and in different places and found their hope, not in fixing all of the problems, but by putting their hope in a God who would come to save them both now and in the future.

In the song we sung at the beginning it is talking about the end of this life, when all Christians are entering into paradise and leaving this fallen and broken world behind. It talks of replacing pain with joy, greetings instead of leavings, bright eyes rather than crying eyes, orphans put in families, and widows no longer alone. These reversals or changes of situation are our “great salvation”, “Christ reigning”, our “coming home” to the way we feel things ought to be. I long for the day when “the desire of all nations” comes and there are 10 million saints singing of the end of death and the end of sin.

If this song were just pretty poetry it would be nice, but it is a reminder of what God’s word tells us. Now let us read Romans 8:18-21

ÐI consider that our present suffering are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not of its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God”. (Amharic version)

It is this tension, this conflict between suffering now and future glory that I find myself wrestling with most every day. As I miss my family and friends, as I get angry at traffic, as I see young children living in broken homes or without parents at all, I groan and feel frustrated, and feel this “bondage to decay” that Paul and the hymn writer are talking about.

But, in all of this I also find my hope. These verses tell us that all of God’s creation is frustrated along with us. And, that we are together hoping for the glorious freedom of the children of God. Or Paul says later in the same chapter – verses 36-39

ÐFor your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all of these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Amharic version).

It is this love of Christ, love that conquers all where I find my hope, where my family finds its hope, and the hope we share with our beneficiaries. So, while I often wish that life were just easy with no problems or no death, it is not that way. And it seems to me that loneliness, sorrow, anger, frustration, and even death are in the end a call to hope in Christ, to embrace Christ, and to hope for his coming and his salvation.

So I want to share this last song with you, that my wife and I often sing in times of sorrow, in times of feeling overwhelmed, in times of thinking nothing will go right, that “things are not the way they ought to be” and death will get the last word and win. I encourage myself with the hope in this song, I pray that it encourages you, encourages our beneficiaries, and that it encourages all the children and youth who come to our offices every week. Gizaw, will you help me to translate it and then I will sing for you and close.



ON JORDAN’S STORMY BANKS I STAND

On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand, and cast a wishful eye

To Canaan’s fair and happy land, where my possessions lie.


All o’er those wide extended plains, Shines one eternal day

There God the Son forever reigns, and scatters night away.


I am bound (girls echo) I am bound (girls echo)

I am bound for the promised land.

I am bound (girls echo) I am bound (girls echo)

I am bound for the promised land.


No chilling winds nor poisonous breath, Can reach that healthful shore,

Sickness, sorrow, pain and death, are felt and feared no more.


When shall I reach that happy place, And be forever blest,

When shall I see my Father’s face and in his bosom rest?


I am bound (girls echo) I am bound (girls echo)

I am bound for the promised land.

I am bound (girls echo) I am bound (girls echo)

I am bound for the promised land.