Ryan & Jordan

with Pioneer Bible Translators

Month: July, 2015

The Edge

by ryan

Inching toward the edge of the high dive, there was always an increasing sensation of something like an anxious weightlessness. You know, when it feels like your stomach is falling into the water but you’re just kind of hovering there, starting to shake with the board?

Well, that’s where we are right now. We’ve been climbing the steps a long time; we’re ready for this. But we can’t really see the water below. We just hear: “Go ahead.”

So we’re going to jump. I’m sure we’ll feel a rush as the air whisks by, as we fall.

vanautu-islands

credit: airvanuatu.com

And as our plane lands in Vanuatu, we’ll have no idea what lies ahead. I guess that’s how the future is for all of us: always unfolding, always different, always unseen.

So we endeavor to make the most of the present, together on the high dive.

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Emmanuel

by Jordee

A lot of times I’m glad people can’t see my insides, because if they could, I might as well be walking around flailing my arms and stressing people out. A lot of times life feels like too much.

The other day I was driving on the country roads where I grew up, a place where I can’t tell you how many times God has quieted my soul. I turned off the radio because the way the sun had made the sky a deep warm pink made me think God wanted to say something. I tried to listen and I heard, “I’m here.”

Photo Jun 09, 8 47 24 PM

Right now is one of those times when life feels too full. There are too many wonderful and lofty things to think about, things that overwhelm me. My heart is pulled in too many directions, and we’re trying to immigrate to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But He is here. Maybe if I were better at listening, I would have heard more. But maybe that was all, because it is all I need. He is here, his hands wrapping and cradling the world and my whole life like the thick pink clouds hovering over the earth.

He is here as I write and my thoughts settle; He is here when I get up to an ever-growing to-do list. He is here when I start to grieve leaving my family, when I cry tears of gratitude for the way God is lovingly standing guard over my dad’s life. He is here when I sit with the weight of what this stem cell donor has done for him, for someone he’s never met. He is here when I break because there is just one too many things to do. He is here when I sit and when I rise. He discerns my thoughts, searches out my path. Even the darkness is not dark to Him. The night shines like the day. He hems me in, behind and before. And if we settle in the uttermost parts of the sea, which is the plan, even there He will lead us. He is here.