Mission Journal: Faithful are the wounds ….. of a friend.

Really? Yes, he'll hurt you yet always stick by you. 'And such are our best missionary and Beninese colleagues that you have given us, Father God.'

But there are other wounds too: wounds that end friendships and who does not grieve over friendships lost? Neglect is the greatest killer of fishbowl goldfish and former deep friendships in the kingdom, both in Africa and North America.

"And how do you plead, Benjamin? Guilty, your honour; yes, guilty, my Lord."

Lord, I know I emotionally crashed this autumn returning from West Africa; wounded in mission action, if you will. 'Lord Jesus, even as I teach Islaamics, getting through each class is a huge answer to prayer. By Your grace, the brokenness in me is recovering.'

Now our eyes are focused back on your field: the mission field for this coming August 2006. But our heart is also waking as out of from a slumber of negligence to our 'parish' supporters. Even as the Antioch parish launched your servants, Paul and Barnabas, so you have undergirded us these past 3-terms of 15 years. Lord, I confess that I feel like a goldfish killer by having let my end of the phone line go dead with my Antioch.'

Father, if suffering authenticates our spiritual life then these past days are baptising us into the final spiritual exams of 2005. 'Sorrow is better than laughter', writes Solomon, and Paul adds: "I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's affliction." Not quite the Christmas stocking filler we are anxious waiting for, aye? Yet, as Donni Stockin said to me after today's Second Advent service: 'the lights on a Christmas tree are only glorious in a darkened room; and so is the light of Christ in our suffering.'

As it pleases you, my Lord, rebuild us as we focus on the wider global vineyard because it is all about You. Even last night as I spoke by phone in Baatonu for 30-minutes to Rachel Barassounon, presently visiting the States with a missionary, Christine and I realise that we love these Baatonu and Beninese people like Paul loved the struggling Corinthian church and to whom he kept going back.

But we must now return in a different way in the next 5-years: for shorter periods moving from campus to campus, country to country, like global missionaries, taking Timothys with us whenever we can. And no issue concerns us more than preparing leaders for the 'Ishmael' agenda in Africa and North America as it calls upon them to answer.

Lord grant us the emotional energy to phone and visit our Antioch.