LST begins

Here are Blake and Bryn. They survived our time at the French retreat and started their English Conversation classes with different people today. We aren’t yet up to our limit on participants, so please keep these two in your prayers. We’d love for them to be meeting with about 30 people, giving time and energy to each participant and sharing the Good News of Jesus.

We sang and sang at the Ascension Retreat and had several good lessons from Ephesians 3.16-19, which is my prayer for you today.

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

LST arrives

Our Let’s Start Talking team arrives on Tuesday afternoon. Blake is from Fresno State and Bryn from Pepperdine. The poor guys are supposed to get off the plane at 17:45 (Blake will have been traveling for 26 hours already… 5.5 hour layover in Dallas and another 8 hours at Gatwick, London. Who is LST’s travel agent?). We’ll pack them on the train for the 50 minute ride to Lausanne where they will immediately meet 10 to 15 of the people who are going to do the English conversation courses with them. (Who is the guy organizing stuff on our end?) We’ve got to do this straightaway because Thursday is Ascension Day (you knew that…), a holiday in our canton. Most people from Lausanne make it a long weekend, so the team can rest after they meet everyone.

Ascension is the time for our European French churches’ retreat in the beautiful Ardèche area. The LST’ers will go too, and I’m sure they will be Frenched out and ready to give those English lessons next week.

Thank you for praying for these two workers.

Mrs. Dubose

Somehow, To Kill a Mockingbird wasn’t in my High School English curriculum, so I’m reading it now.

Jem’s sister tells about a vicious, bitter, flea-bitten old woman named Mrs. Dubose who insults the two children as they pass by at the end of every day to meet their father. The sick lady literally spits out abuse (she drools) between her clacking dentures… Then one day, young Jem has had enough of it. He storms into her garden whacking off the tops of flowers, a whirlwind of destruction.

When Attica (father) comes home that evening, some explaining takes place and poor Jem is ordered to go and read every day for a month, for two long hours, to the hateful women.

Which he does. She continues her insults as Jem reads. A wind-up alarm clock goes off after a short period of time, the signal that Jem and his sister can now leave.

Insults. Reading. Alarm. This continues for a month, the sole variation being that the alarm goes off a bit later each day (until it’s not used again) and Mrs. Dubose seems more “aware” at the end of each session.

Jem nearly dies when Attica tells him he’s got to do an extra week. But he submits. And then he’s free.

A month later, the spiteful woman exits the story. Only then does Jem learn the significance of his reading and of the alarm clock. Only then does Mrs. Dubose give him his gift.

Jem never grasped what was going on while he obeyed his father. He never knew what role he played in his father’s plan. But because he submitted, even without understanding, he brought freedom into Mrs. Dubose’s life.

The Father asks for your love and trust. He desires your obedience, even if you don’t understand why. This is the way he has chosen to work out his plan in your life and to bless those around you.

Thanks for stopping by.

Rossini

The dress rehearsal took place last night, without the dresses and only rehearsing the pieces the chorus was singing. The four soloists just did snippets of their arias and duets/trios and then sang the introductions to the choral sections where 120 of us joined in.

We’re singing Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle. Some parts are incredibly beautiful (most of them a cappella) and other sections contain a few too many AMENs (21 pages for the last fugue), though even those sections can shine. When the tenor soloist sings the opera-like Domine Deus, the atmosphere lightens and you can’t help but smile. That said, the opening Kyrie makes me want to cry, but I can’t hit the La’s (A) and be teary at same time.

I have been reading the last few days about the formation of the creeds. It’s useful reading but complex, showing that difficulties brought believers to define their faith more clearly, to put into words the mystery of God’s plan brought to completion in his only Son. A plan ultimately visible in our lives.

All this leads me to think that Creeds are truly meaningful when they are sung. That the definite, confining words take on mystery when they echo in church sanctuaries.

Who are you?

Are you Migros or COOP? (pronounced ME-GROW and COE – OPE). This is a real question that any Swiss resident can readily answer.

The question represents the two largest grocery store chains in Switzerland, accounting for about 80% of Swiss sales. That’s where the question comes from because, generally speaking, a family is either Migros or COOP.

Some people, like a daughter of a “friend of mine”, almost refuse to go into a COOP. Allegiances can go deep, breaking friendships, ending romances and splitting churches.

Yes, we are Migros, going to the MM just up the hill nearly every day (fridges are tiny here). M’s are small, with just the basics. MM’s are bigger (that’s why there are two M’s) with more stuff, fresh veggies, books and other necessary items. MMM’s are not Sam’s but they are huge, with electronics, sports stuff, clothing and all the rest.

Some families belong to even smaller sects, such as Migros budget. These are generic items that come in the same M-Budget wrappers, promising you lower quality at lower cost. There are now M-Budget cell phones, vacations, TP, noodles and even M-Budget parties.

Curtain's up

My mom grew up going to the movies. I think they were cheap and it wasn’t a sin yet. She knows all the classics and one of my favorite youth memories is sitting together (with sis “Ducks on a pond”) in the living room watching the afternoon matinees on Summer TV. I don’t know how many times Rock Hudson faked Doris Day into loving him, got found out and dumped, then married just as Ms Day was going into delivery.

There were Bogart films and Hitchcock mysteries (which still get me), Westerns and Happy End love stories (which still don’t get me). Bing and Frank and Dean and, of course, Bob who was always on the road to somewhere. Did he ever get the girl?

Mom knows them all, which still amazes me. “I’ll take Cinema for $1000, please.”

Three things brought this to mind:

Dean Martin, Kim Novak and that guy who was My Favorite Martian were on Swiss TV just the other evening. In English, mind you. Mom, you’d have liked that one.

I saw this in yesterday’s paper, which proves it’s NOT a sin to go to the cinema.
It's by Burki,

And, obviously, it’s Mother’s Day.

Love you, Mom.

Witnessing

The little girl is only 7, and she walked into B’s Sunday school class last week with a smile. One of the Geneva members has been bringing her for the last month or two. During the lesson, activity and singing, she let on that she knew Jesus was married and had had a child with his wife, Mary Magdalene.

Last Thursday afternoon, one of our Let’s Start Talking friends came by. Life's falling apart and she’s faced with difficult questions. Cancer, marriage on the rocks, no job, few friends… G. is hurting. In addition, her son is attacking her struggling faith. “Didn’t you read in that Brown book that the Bible is man’s idea and not God’s, that Jesus was no more God than you or me? How can you believe that stuff?”
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The fictional character Teabing says: “What I mean is that almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false.”

Some people listen to him.

The church says: We know that this disciple's testimony is true (John 21.24).

What have you heard your friends say? How have you replied?

Body parts

I’m not a big 1 Corinthians 12 fan. Sure, I liked the imagery the first 100 times I heard that the body wasn’t just EYE or EAR, and that one body part can’t tell another body part to get lost. I still haven’t figured out a way to tastefully weave “less honorable body parts” into a Sunday sermon.

But as one of our Spanish-speaking members and I were reading through that passage yesterday, I was struck by God’s truth when Paul wrote:

… Para que no haya desavenencia en el cuerpo, sino que los miembros todos se preocupen los unos por los otros… (12.25).

Okay, everyone close your eyes and count to three (and when you open your eyes, the text suddenly appears in English):

… That there should be no division in the body, but that its parts would have equal concern for each other… (NIV)

Just imagine a body, a church body, where each member is esteemed and each member has equal concern for every other member. This is the picture that the Apostle placed in my mind yesterday.

If we take the charge seriously, we will honor members that have received little honor and labor to convince every member to be concerned for every other member.

Que Dios nos ayude.

The risk in loving

J.P. is a neighbor and retired pastor for the Reformed Evangelical Protestant Church in the Canton of Vaud (a mouthful). We first met on one of his walks around the neighborhood.

He has a thousand stories and I’m on story 1113. (He repeats himself a bit.) One of his favorite questions: Do you know the two adjectives that characterize someone from our canton? Then he slowly answers: “Careful” and “careful”.

Careful. I am amazed how hard it is to build deep and fulfilling relationships with people, even brothers and sisters in Christ. Many are those who do not wish to take risks in loving sincerely, loving someone who may, eventually, break your heart.

All this was brought to mind recently when one of our members became very disappointed with the church and, when asked why she had left, had a ready list of faults and mistakes that many of us had committed.

One of ladies at church took it right in the chopper. “Who needs this?”, she asked. “I can do without it. Why should I take the risk of loving only to get it thrown back into my face?”

Yet great love takes great risks. I’m reminded of the words of Bonhoeffer:

God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.

It’s the price we pay if we’re going to love.

It's an iPod

Thought you might want to know that you can get Diesel for 180 CH cents (that’s 1.47 USD for you in the new world). Yes fuel prices are on the rise here, too.

I know, some of you are paying $3.00. Sorry. I really am.

But before you put your SUV on the trans-Atlantic ferry to take advantage of the deal, realize that said price is for 33 ounces of the precious liquid, as in ONE liter. And last time I checked, it takes 3.7854118 liters to make one US gallon ($5.58 per gallon). I know it’s even MORE different (sic) for you Brits. (That’s why a pint is so much more fun there.)

So last Saturday evening, we filled up the van. We had run it dry, an orange “0” on the digital display. It cost us an iPod. Well, not just any iPod. It was somewhere between the Shuffle 1GB and the new iPod Nano 1GB.

That’s right. $120.50. Good thing we could just put it on the MasterCard.

I really don’t want your pity, thanks for offering. But if you want to send cash, that’d be okay.

Or just send us an iPod.

Teaching ideas?

Here’s your chance to learn some French: Code Da Vinci.

Yes, the mania has hit here, so I’m reading through the book and making some notes, trying to think of ways to teach truth through the interest created by the book and movie.

What would you teach on if you were going to use Code Da Vinci as a spring-board? I’d be interested in knowing, so… Why not leave a comment?
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Wife had her b-day yesterday. She received some nice things and appreciated all the calls and emails. Thanks.