I was excited to hear this new song by Josh Garrels. “Watchman” is yet another song that speaks of faithfully waiting even when others fall away, of a stubborn hope that keeps on scanning for the dawn even when the night is darker and longer than we had thought it would be. Praise God for artists like Josh Garrels and Chris Renzema. Those who don’t deconstruct – but instead cling to Jesus – are truly creating some beautiful work.
Here are the lyrics:
If I’m fully honest I’m waiting on Your promise Even through the trauma that swept my friends away The darkness is upon us The death of saints and psalmists But I will sing my song for You anyway
Because You’re all I have Lord, You are the way And I’ll always love You, and I will wait Like a watchman, at the gate Waiting for morning, to break
I can feel the winds are changing Getting further down the range and Truth is looking stranger than the lies Because it’s simple and it’s holy It’s better than they told me Jesus You’re my only guiding light
And You’re all I have Lord, you are the way And I’ll alway love You, and I will wait Like a watchman, at the gate Waiting for morning to break Waiting to hear You say
Come on, enter in to my rest And lay your head upon my chest For I have called you friend Because you kept your lamp burning through the night And you made your garments pure and white By my good sacrifice Yeah, singing now my kingdom is with man So come up to my table and Raise up this glass with Me Oh, singing no more tears and no more pain I’m making all things new again Just like I promised you Sing alleluia all the way And I’ll always love You And I will wait Like a watchman at the gate Lord, I’m a watchman at the gate I’m waiting for morning to break I’m waiting for morning to break Keep my lamp burning Stay awake
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“Don’t you remember? She lost her gall bladder in Turkey!”
“Ohh… right…”
I honestly can’t tell you how many times this conversation was repeated among our kids during our first term. It began as a tongue-in-cheek way to tell our kids that mom couldn’t eat the same way anymore because she no longer had a gall bladder. But it took on a life of its own that eventually had us concerned that our third-culture kids might grow up thinking that people simply lose their gall bladders when they travel – like they might misplace some toy – rather than having them surgically removed. Don’t underestimate the things that can get missed in a TCK upbringing. Until I was sixteen, I thought that spaghetti was grown on farms.
The whole gall bladder saga came about quite unexpectedly. We needed to take a medical trip to Istanbul, Turkey, a year and a half after arriving on the field. There, we would visit a network of hospitals called Acibadem for our needed shots and checkups. Because of these shots, our family came to call this hospital “Ouchy Bottom.”
Before any of our medical work was done, we decided to spend a week of rest in a historic island town near Istanbul where no cars were allowed. It was a good, if very humid, week, dragging our toddlers all over the island. If you are ever traveling somewhere with toddlers where cars are not permitted, always be sure to check that your Airbnb is not a long walk uphill. Also, Turks, unlike our desert people group, seem to think that AC and ice water will make you sick, so these are not nearly as readily available as one might hope in a sweltering July.
During our week there, our daughter accidentally head-butted my wife in the eye, leaving her with quite the shiner – swollen, puffy, and dark purple. I had a lot of people give me the stink eye on ferries and around town that week, thinking that I had something to do with this. I didn’t know enough Turkish to point out the true culprit – the adorable little girl with the pigtails.
All good things must come to an end, and at the end of the week, we left the charming yet sweaty island and moved over to the mainland to commence with the medical work. The kids got their shots and my wife went in for an abdominal ultrasound, something a doctor had ordered out of an abundance of caution. While the area the ultrasound was supposed to focus on proved to be fine, the tech had also accidentally/providentially pointed it at the gall bladder area. So, we were informed that there were some pretty serious gall stones there, and that surgery would be necessary.
One of the strange contrasts between Turkey and our area of Central Asia is that while Turkey is much more developed and modern, and there’s a lot of Western music playing everywhere, there’s actually a lot less knowledge of English in the general and professional population. The doctors had good English, but to our surprise, the rest of the nurses and hospital staff didn’t. In one sense, good on them for being so confident as a people in their own language. But in an age of medical tourism, this can sometimes mean things get lost in translation – like entire organs.
In the consultation, the doctor told us the medical term for the procedure he would do, called a cholecystectomy. Then he blitzed through the scheduling and recovery pieces. My wife and I, having very limited experience with medical gall bladder terminology, thought that this cholecystectomy surgery must entail simply removing the gall stones. We had no idea it meant removing the entire organ. Our Google Translate conversations with the hospital staff didn’t clear this up for us either. Everyone assured us that we were in store for a very simple and normal procedure.
So, a couple of mornings later, the kids and I said goodbye to our wife and mother in her blue hospital gown and shower cap, still sporting her black eye.
After several hours, the doctor told me that the procedure was complete and that I could come and be with my wife when she woke up from the anesthesia.
“Mr. Workman, the surgery was a great success!” the doctor enthusiastically told me as I walked into the room. “Would you like to see the organ?”
“The organ?”
“Yes! I have it in a jar and can show it to you if you like.”
“The stones?”
“The gall bladder, of course, with the stones too. Everything went perfectly according to plan!”
I took a moment to absorb what the jovial doctor had just said. They had taken out the whole thing.
“Oh, right… Um, no, I don’t think I need to see the organ. Thank you.”
“Please excuse me for a moment,” the doctor continued. “Your wife should be waking up any minute now.”
I went over to sit by my wife and thought about the best way to break the news to her. I could let the doctor do it. But no, that was not likely to go well. The doctor was acting far too cavalier for that. I’d better do my best to break it to her gently, but directly.
A few minutes later she stirred, blinking back into consciousness.
“Hey, love!” I said in a low voice, smiling.
“Hey…”
“How are you feeling?”
“Mmm… Okay, I guess.”
“Well, the doctor said the surgery went great. No issues whatsoever.”
The moment had come. I had to tell her. I took a deep breath.
“But… they had to take out the whole gall bladder.”
My wife rolled her eyes over to look at me.
“They what?”
“Yeah, they took the whole thing out. I guess that was their plan all along.”
We both sat there in that hospital room, registering what this meant and wondering how in the world we had missed something like the nature of the surgery itself. In the days that followed, we learned that this had indeed been the medically necessary thing to do, which brought some relief. Still, had we known they were planning on removing an entire organ we would have at least done some more research about alternatives or how this surgery might affect the rest of someone’s life.
In the years since, not having a gall bladder has indeed had a drastic effect on what my wife can and can’t eat, meaning we’ve added that particular organ to our growing list of things we look forward to being made new in the coming resurrection. We do laugh about how it all went down, but it’s a laughter tinged with some sadness also. Our bodies were meant to have functioning gall bladders to help us enjoy the great variety of God’s good foods. Now my wife’s was gone, perhaps still in a jar somewhere in Istanbul, another casualty of the fall.
Despite being the place where we lost mama’s gall bladder, we still love Turkey. A very special part of my calling took place there during a prayer meeting in 2008. My wife and I spent a couple of wonderful days there during our first vision trip to Central Asia as newlyweds. Where else can you can drink chai on a ferry as the sun sets on the Bosphorus, watching the light play on the spires and even more ancient domes of the Hagia Sophia? Or drink some good Japanese cold brew in historic Chalcedon?
Yes, despite misadventures like this one, part of our hearts will always be in Turkey. And now, one of our gall bladders also.
*Spellcheck has made me aware that Americans are supposed to spell gall bladder as one word, gallbladder. But having grown up overseas, I’m with the Brits on this one, so gall bladder it is and shall remain in my writing.
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A number of months ago I was reading the parable of the talents to my kids at bedtime. There was nothing unusual about the night. I was leaning against the doorframe to the bedroom they all currently share, Bible open in my hands. The lamp was turned off in their room to help them settle down and I was relying on the hallway light for my reading. The plan was simple as always. Read a little bit, discuss a little bit, sing a song or two together, pray, give kisses and hugs goodnight, and finally, navigate multiple attempts to get out of bed again for various and sundry reasons. It was a typical night, not the kind of time I would have predicted for the conviction of the Spirit to fall.
We were almost finished our reading through the book of Matthew and that night had come to chapter 25, verses 14-30. The parable of the talents will be well-known to most of you, but if it’s not you can read it here and I’ll also post it below. The summary is that a master leaves on a long journey, entrusting three servants with three very large sums of money (called talents). The first one receives five talents, about 100 years’ worth of wages for a laborer. The second receives two talents, about 40 years’ worth of wages for a laborer. And the third receives one talent, roughly 20 years’ wages. The first two servants spend the following lengthy period investing their master’s money and both double the amounts they received. The third servant goes off and buries the money he received. When the master returns, he affirms the faithfulness of the first two servants and then rewards them with both increased authority and joy. But the third servant explains that he played it safe and merely stashed his master’s money away. He says he did this because he knew his master’s character to be harsh and stingy. The master, in turn, strongly rebukes him, telling him that if he knew this he still should have at least put the money in the bank, where it could have collected interest. He then commands that the one talent be given to the first servant, and that the wicked servant be cast out into the “outer darkness,” essentially into hell. The parable ends with the third servant losing even the amount that he had preserved, while the first two servants receive even more than the enormous amounts they had ended up with.
This is a parable I know well, and have read dozens and dozens of times. But for whatever reason, when I read it this time (and read it for my kids, no less, not for me), clarity and conviction fell hard. The familiarity of the passage meant that I’d never really understood the whole bit about the master’s character. But I suddenly realized that this was at the very core of the parable. The wicked servant says of the master, “I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.” Essentially, “You are a stingy, exacting man, so I didn’t risk doing costly work that would go unrewarded. I played it safe and stashed your money away.” In Middle Eastern culture, then as well as now, stinginess is viewed as one of the very worst vices.
I was struck with a question I’d not thought of before. What was the servant doing all those years when the other servants were busy trading for the increase of their master’s wealth? Presumably, looking out for his own wealth. And why? Because he did not believe that it would be worth it to risk spending all those years and all that sweat, only to have his master come back and take it all from him. If he invested for his master, he would labor and sacrifice and risk, and for what? A stingy master? No, thanks! He would instead do the minimum, follow the letter of the law, try to serve two masters. His master had given him this money to keep safe, so he would do that – and no more.
The other two servants seem to have had a radically different view of their master’s character. We see this from their actions. They do spend a long time using what their master had entrusted to them to generate even more wealth for him. How are they able to do this? Well, the parable tells us that they are faithful. In one sense, this is enough. Faithful servants seek to obey their masters above and beyond what they are asked, as if they are working as unto God, not unto men. But it seems that the whole back-and-forth about the master’s character is giving us a clue that the other servant’s must not have believed that their master was stingy and harsh. Rather, they must have believed that in the end, their master was a rewarder. The end of the parable shows us this was indeed his true nature. But also consider how often Jesus speaks of heavenly rewards in the book of Matthew alone (5:12, 5:46, 6:1, 6:2, 6:4, 6:5, 6:6, 6:16, 6:18, 10:41, 10:42). Then, take the radical statement from Hebrews 11:6 that to please God, one must believe that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. No, this faith in the master’s character is the difference between the two servants’ faithful risk and the other’s wicked self-interest.
These truths cut to my heart because I was in a long season of doubting God’s character. After seven years of costly ministry on the field, preceded by seven years of costly ministry in the US, I felt like we were in shambles. We had worked hard for our master and even seen what he had given us multiplied many times over. A few dozen had come to faith, a church had been planted, hundreds had heard the gospel, missionary teams had been strengthened and served – tens of thousands of words had been written. But our health, our faith, our finances, our prospects? These all looked pretty bad. My heart had settled into a posture where I was counting up the cost, and feeling like God was harsh and stingy. I was no longer open to risking for God in the same way, instead feeling like I needed to take care of myself and my family’s future. Sure, I knew I would keep doing the essentials – trying to pray and read my bible, trying to write, trying to encourage others, doing bedtime devotions with the kids. I wouldn’t get rid of the talent entrusted to me – but I just might bury it.
“Is this really what I think of God’s character?” I thought to myself as read the cynical words of the third servant to my kids that night. “…a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed…”
I finished the parable and paused in my reading, quiet, sad, and somehow grateful to feel the sharpness of the Word after a long season of numbness.
“Dad?” my oldest son asked, wondering about my extended silence.
“Huh?… Oh, right. Um, what song should we sing?”
“The fruit of the Spirit’s not a coconut!” piped up our youngest. Ah, yes, a classic.
We proceeded to finish the bedtime routine, but I knew I would be chewing on Matthew 25 and this train of thought for some time to come. Deep down, I had felt that there was a part of me that still believed that God is not stingy, but instead a generous rewarder. That everything, absolutely everything, would be remembered and reflected in that eternal weight of glory being prepared for us. But this faith had been slowly buried under shovel-fulls of sorrow, self-pity, and spiritual fog.
In the following months the theme of God as a rewarder, and the resulting joy of those who out of this truth risk and suffer (and are therefore the most fully alive of any of us), jumped out at me from passage after passage. I saw it shouting at me from the Beatitudes, from Hebrews 11, from 2nd Corinthians 4, even from grumpy Naaman the Syrian risking seven dips in the muddy Jordan. I remembered how it was the truths of the coming resurrection that shook me out of seasons of spiritual depression in the past – one of the reasons I had initially chosen to highlight that theme in my blogging. Slowly, the faith to risk because of God’s character returned, until I found myself one night hearing my wife telling me she was now ready to attempt a return overseas. In fact, she was playfully kicking me while she said this, asking me what was taking me so long to join her.
There were a number of powerful truths that combined to open my heart again to risk again, whether that means ministry overseas or back again in the States someday. But the first life-giving blow came from the parable of the talents, from a seemingly-normal bedtime with my kids, and with it the resolve to no longer doubt the character of my master.
He is the great rewarder. His commendation awaits. I must not bury his talents, but invest and risk them. Risk them all.
[14] “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. [15] To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. [16] He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. [17] So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. [18] But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money. [19] Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. [20] And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ [21] His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ [22] And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ [23] His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ [24] He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, [25] so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ [26] But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? [27] Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. [28] So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. [29] For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. [30] And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
Matthew 25:14-30
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There are several themes from this song that hit home. I have at times been disappointed that there haven’t been more “burning bush” experiences in my life, like the ones that happened when I was younger. I have also looked back and been tempted to doubt if certain experiences of God’s power and immanence really happened or not, or if I have simply deceived myself. And I have known seasons where the “manna” doesn’t taste as sweet as I remember. But there is a mature faith and a steady hope in this song that I also resonate with and desire more of.
“But I still believe you’re here in the waiting
‘Cus after all these years I still love you
‘Cus even when I’ve lost my taste for manna
It comes from heaven all the same“
A mature wilderness faith believes that God’s acts of goodness in the past really did happen, but it doesn’t demand that they keep happening in the same way in order for God to still be good. It acknowledges seasons of spiritual dryness, where God seems distant and the things of faith don’t seem as sweet as they used to. But it keeps partaking of the means of grace nonetheless, knowing that God is sovereign over all of our seasons – and that mature love means faithful obedience and active hope, even when the heavens seem silent.
Be sure to listen for how the guitar and horns come in just before the 3:00 mark.
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“Can you guess the secret ingredient in this white sauce?” my wife asked our kids as we finished eating our dinner of rice pasta.
Different kids guessed various foods that mom had snuck into dishes in the past.
“Nope. Out of guesses? It was cauliflower. Orange cauliflower.”
My daughter, who had been enjoying her pasta, immediately pushed her plate away from her, noodles unfinished. “Blech!”
“Hey, now,” I said, “you were enjoying it until you knew what was in it. Do you see the power your mind can have over your tastebuds? Your tastebuds liked it, but because you’ve decided in your mind that cauliflower is gross, you stopped being able to enjoy it.”
“It’s important that we regularly try new forms of food that we don’t like,” I continued, switching into teachable moment mode. “You might be surprised at how much you can enjoy food in one form even when you don’t like it in another. I really don’t like green peas or celery. But I really enjoy green pea soup (especially with bacon in it) and cream of celery soup.”
“Mom, do you think you could hide food that we don’t like in our dinners once a week? So that we could trick our brains into liking it?” said one of our sons, playing the compliant child and overcompensating for his sister.
My wife shook her head and wisely refused to commit to some kind weekly system for this. My daughter, to her credit, started finishing her pasta.
Keeping up with our kids’ ever-shifting food preferences, on top of their health issues, has been a difficult dynamic of this season. We talk a lot about food at this stage of our family life. This is partially because we have lived cross-culturally and have had the privilege of enjoying foods from many different cultures – an experience that may explain why we have one child who wants to grow up to be a chef.
But we also talk about food a lot because we have a lot of food issues spread across our family, including type-1 diabetes, gluten intolerance, dairy intolerance, stomachs that can’t eat after 7:30 pm without throwing up later in bed, and stomachs that can only handle a very limited amount of oily or rich food without triggering Montezuma’s revenge. Finally, we end up talking about food a lot because we are somewhat of a foodie family. We really like food, sometimes too much so. Hot drinks, sweets, crunchy chips, or fancy restaurant food can all too easily become a place our family retreats to for comfort or refuge.
“I think it comes down to humility,” I said to my wife later that night, as we processed the dinner cauliflower conversation. “Just like we want to enter a discussion open to there being some aspect of truth or wisdom that we might be missing, we also want to partially doubt ourselves when it comes to foods that we think we don’t enjoy. It may be that we try something again and something has changed. Or that there’s a new way to eat it, or some new way to pair it, that transforms a food from gross to delicious. We want to stay open to that. In this way, there can be a kind of posture of humility when it comes to food.”
“Could you call that gastronomic humility?” she asked.
“I guess we could,” I laughed, “Gastrumility? Gastro-humility?”
The more we talked and the more I’ve since thought about it, there really is an important link between humility and a wise posture toward food as Christians. What follows are eleven expressions of this kind of gastronomic humility. I’m sure this list is not exhaustive, but these are principles and practices that have been helpful for our family as we wrestle with faithful living and parenting in this area.
We confess that our food is a good gift provided by God and others. We are not entitled to our food. Rather, it is generously given to us by a kind God who is careful to feed his sparrows as well as children. This kind provision is mediated. Many have labored to grow or raise the food, process it, sell it, and prepare it. This should make us thankful and joyful when it comes time to eat, and those who continue to pause to give thanks before we eat. (Matt 6:11, 6:26, Acts 27:35)
We try new foods and new forms of foods we don’t like. When we make a practice of trying new foods, we admit that our preferences are not final nor fixed, but fickle things that can flex and change with time and experience. There is real wisdom in the saying, “Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.” An openness to new foods and new forms of foods correlates to a more joyful life, since the spectrum of God’s good creation that we can enjoy is larger. (Gen 1:31, 1 Cor 10:26)
We eat within the boundaries given to our particular bodies. We acknowledge the health limitations that God has allowed for our particular bodies as a result of the fall. As we find these boundaries (often the hard way), we embrace humility by honoring them, even though we grieve that this is not the way things were supposed to be. In this way, we are good stewards of the imperfect bodies we have been given. We also learn to recognize the areas where we are free to partake and others are not, and instead of grumbling, give thanks for them. (Gen 1:29, 1 Tim 5:23, Phil 2:14-15)
We confess that food is inherently good, even if our own bodies react negatively to it. The fact that my body rejects rich melted cheese does not mean that rich melted cheese is inherently bad or unclean. Rather, God has created every food to be good when it is enjoyed in the proper amounts and ways. I may find that even within these boundaries, the brokenness of my body means I am not free to enjoy it. But this does not then make the food itself bad. I will not let myself call something bad or unclean that God calls good, but seek to accurately name the brokenness in my own body (and sometimes in the ways a good food has been processed destructively). (Gen 1:31, Acts 10:15)
We feast and we fast. Following the commands and examples of the Scriptures, we see that God is honored both by his people sometimes feasting, and sometimes fasting. Both can be holy, both can be beneficial, both should be present in the life of a believer (Matt 6:16, John 2:1-11).
We do not judge those who do not eat certain foods, neither do we unduly admire them. The Bible is clear that some Christians will abstain from certain foods because of their conscience, and that it’s wrong of those who partake to then disdain them. This would also apply to those who abstain from certain foods because of strong opinions about health. We should guard against feeling superior to them. On the other hand, this abstention should not mean that we put them on a pedestal or treat them as if they are living on some higher plane of the Christian life (Rom 14:13-23).
We do not boast or find our identity in the foods we don’t like or can’t eat. Our dietary restrictions and preferences are not meant to be a central part of our identity or our conversation. They do not make us more special nor usually more interesting in conversation. They are the result of the fall and human limitation. While we should feel free to acknowledge and name them, they are cause for sober conversation and even lament, not celebration. If I don’t like green peas or can’t process rich melted cheese, that means I am missing out on good things that others are able to enjoy. The way I speak of these things should reflect this and the fact that food and drink is not central to the kingdom of God. (Rom 14:17)
We are careful with foods that tempt us toward gluttony or addiction. We should notice which foods tempt us to push past the boundaries of wise and healthy consumption, and which foods we want to turn to when we are sad, tired, or anxious. We will need to exercise caution with how we eat these foods and may need to consider abstaining entirely or for a season. (Prov 23:20, 1 Cor 6:12, Phil 3:19)
We use food as a way to love others. God has created food as a central part of human relationships. Jesus models this for us in how he intentionally ate food with sinners and tax collectors. Giving and receiving hospitality is an important way to love others and an important picture of the peace we have with God. Food is good in and of itself, but it’s also to be used to win the lost, help the needy, and bless the saints. (Mark 2:16, 1 Pet 4:9, 1 Cor 9:22)
We strive to glorify God and serve others by enjoying as great a variety of his foods as possible. God made a world full of countless combinations of foods, flavors, and spices. These are put here for our joy and for his glory. There’s also a huge variety of how different human individuals and cultures partake of these vast riches. With an intentional, flexible, omnivorous posture, we put ourselves in a better position to enjoy diverse foods with others and to give God glory for each and every flavor we encounter. (1 Cor 10:26, 1 Cor 9:22)
We look forward to the perfected foods and stomachs of the resurrection. Foods and stomachs are flawed in this age – good, yet broken in many ways. We use this knowledge to actively anticipate the world to come, where we will be given resurrected taste buds and stomachs and will be able to enjoy the full range of God’s good food and drink. In this way, each of our limitations now can be a means of strengthening our longing in the coming resurrection, where we will feast will Jesus. (1 Cor 15:35-53, Is 25:6-8)
Consider these eleven expressions of gastro-humility. Are there others that need to be added to this list? A proper posture toward food is such a difficult thing to find. And judging by the amount of New Testament passages dealing with food, it was difficult for the New Testament believers also. Thankfully, into this tricky discussion the Scriptures give us a ballast, a solid and clear compass we can come back to over and over again, even when we disagree with other believers about what to about food:
“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10:31)
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This is the email update we just sent out to our prayer list. I haven’t posted many of these here to my blog, but wanted to do so for this one because it provides a good overview of the road we’ve walked over the past year or so.
Fourteen months ago we left Central Asia for an extended medical leave, not sure if we would be coming back. After seven years laboring to see healthy churches started among our focus people group, our bodies and hearts were showing the strain – even though we had tried hard to find a posture of sustainable sacrifice. One teammate put it best, it was like we had patched most of the many holes in our boat, only to realize when we slowed down that the boat was still full of water. And it would take a long time to bail it out. Our medical personnel, counselors, and teammates told us it was time for a season bailing water, rest, and hopefully, healing.
The year that followed was a strange one. We moved back to Kentucky, put the kids in a full-time school for the first time, plugged into regular counseling, saw numerous doctors, and wrestled with our future. It’s hard to wait. Hard to wait for healing. Hard to wait for clarity. And it was hard to come to terms with the costs we’d incurred as a family. I (A.W.) for the first time found myself profoundly doubting if the costs of mission are actually worth it, if God will actually take care of those who are sent. Sure, good fruit around them comes from their ministries. But what about them? What about their hearts, their bodies, their kids?
In the midst of a season where we felt great perplexity and disorientation, when God himself seemed distant, God’s people were not. We were surrounded by steady, kind, faithful Christian friends and family. I remember realizing that God was showing his nearness to us through his people. In the midst of this community we felt like we could stay in the US, if that was what God would ask. But what if he asked us to go back overseas? Could we do that if he asked? All we knew for a long time was that we did not have enough clarity to commit to either. So we waited some more.
In the meantime, our health improved. And even though we didn’t get complete clarity on the causes of the different health challenges affecting our family, we gained much insight into more effective prevention and treatment. Slowly our hearts began to heal also. During the fall, we received an invitation to return and serve in a city we lived in four years ago. Our response to this invitation surprised us. We were actually open to it! We decided that we’d pray, get counsel, and make a decision by the new year.
On Christmas Eve, we said yes. We feel that returning is the right next step of obedience, the right next step of faith in a God who is truly trustworthy and a rewarder, even in suffering. Some things will be different upon our return. We’ll be going back with one of our partner organizations, though still in close partnership with our former org teams and churches. The role that we’ve been invited into is one of content creation. I (A.W.) will be overseeing the creation and translation of solid local language articles, books, and hopefully also audio and video resources. The aim will be to give the fledgling churches, new leaders, and new believers among our people group true, compelling, and beautiful resources that will help to establish them more deeply in their faith – resources that will help healthy churches get planted and endure, which has been our aim from the beginning. This role will allow my wife to focus more on family during this season, and allow us to find the right posture as a family to support the crucial ongoing church planting work.
We are hoping to move back to Central Asia in August of this year. This time around, we will be raising support. So that means we’ll need a solid network of individuals and churches who will commit to regular support or one-time gifts, and in this way to partner with us. Would you consider supporting us in this costly, yet practical way?
We have immediate need of one-time gifts that will help us transition onto support, and then we will building our monthly support and moving fund over the next six months.
As always, we will continue to be in desperate need of your prayers and friendship as we head back into this wonderful and difficult labor. We know that many of you have kept on praying for us, because we’ve experienced some very clear answers to prayer over this past year. Not the least of which is the recovery of our faith to trust again that the costs are indeed worth it. Worth it now, by faith. And worth it in the resurrection, by sight.
We’ll be sending out more updates soon. But for now we wanted to tell you how God has been faithful to us and how he has opened up a new door of service back overseas. We’d love prayer for the following things:
-For God to continue growing our trust in Him, no matter where we are
-For wisdom in shepherding our kids through yet another transition
-For God to raise up a solid network of supporting individuals and churches
-For our ongoing efforts to help local believers from a distance get theological education, be supported in ministry, and start businesses
-For the church plants that have been started in our region to grow in maturity and health
In Him,
A.W. Workman and family
To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
One of our missionary friends passed away this past week on the field after a long battle with brain cancer. Perhaps in time I will have the chance to write more of her and her family’s story, and how they returned to the field five years ago after the cancer diagnosis, knowing that it would likely be fatal. But for now we grieve and pray for her husband and kids, and for their Central Asian church family.
This song speaks beautifully of God’s welcome of his saints into life everlasting, into the endless summer of heaven. I love how the song speaks of heaven as “The Great Adventure.” Here is what the writer says of the lyrics:
Dedicated to Kimmy, this track was inspired by a life that left the Earth far too soon. The lyrics of this song are taken directly from Kimmy’s last blog post before she passed. It is a beautiful picture into the welcoming arms of the Father as we pass into eternity.
Melissa* sat in a metal chair next to the overgrown pool, clearly distressed. She turned from Farhad* to try to catch her parents’ eyes, looking for reassurance. As a graduate student at an Ivy League school, she didn’t know what to do with what Farhad was telling her. His forceful accented words were not fitting within her worldview, within her moral framework of highly-educated liberal New England.
I was manning the grill nearby and could see the dynamics. By this time I knew Farhad and could have guessed what he was going on about just by his body language. As a member of a minority people group who had suffered genocide when he was a teenager, Farhad harbored a deeply-rooted hatred of the majority Middle Eastern people group who had slaughtered his own. And a deeply-rooted hatred of Islam, the faith they used to justify their atrocities. Farhad was not a Christian, but he was definitely post-Islamic, and had been willing to study the Bible with me and Reza* and even to attend church with us.
Tall, in his forties, with slicked-back shoulder-length black hair and a narrow angular face, Farhad liked to wear a suit to church with a Hawaiian shirt underneath, generously unbuttoned at the top, 1970’s style. He had kind dark eyes and a genuine smile, though he was missing one of his front upper teeth – the result of a mugging incident soon after he had arrived in the US as a refugee.
“I get kidnapped by Al Qaeda. I almost die. But I keep all my teeth. I come to America. I lose my tooth! Why?!” he was known to ask when telling the story of how he got mugged in the apartment complex where he was placed by his resettlement program.
Now, he was unloading on Melissa, who had simply come down to the Louisville area to visit her parents during a school break. Her parents, both professors at Ivy League schools, would come down periodically to the area to stay in their second home, where my mom was a long-term house sitter at the time. Because they lived in the same house as my mom during these visits, our two families had gotten to know one another well and become friends, even though our worldviews were drastically different. We were a family of evangelical missionaries, studying at the Calvinistic Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. They were a family of staunchly liberal Harvard-educated progressives. But there was an openness to conversation, even friendship, with others who were different from them that set them apart from the more radical progressivism that is in vogue today.
This professor couple believed that as much as possible, nature should be allowed to take over the property, hence the overgrown pool from the 1960s, now full of lily pads, algae, frogs, and a snapping turtle. When the weather was warm, we liked to have cookouts on the cement patio next to this pool, and I would often invite my international friends. My mom’s creative cooking was a real treat for them, as well as for me, a college student at the time living on my own. We’d eat by the fire pit, swapping stories from all around the world until long after the lightning bugs had come out. A map on the wall contained pins from all of the different countries where my mom’s many guests had come from.
But swapping stories with refugees can get intense very quickly. The barbecue chicken wasn’t even done grilling when Farhad was dropping stories on Melissa of genocide and passionately espousing his seemingly-racist and Islamophobic opinions. She didn’t know what to do with it. Melissa was a sharp woman, and getting a world class education. But when your education and worldview is framed to believe that racism and oppression can only really be perpetrated by white Christians, by the oppressor class, what do you do with a Middle Eastern society where various people groups have hated and killed each other for thousands of years? What do you do with a brown-skinned Muslim who is eager to convince you of the evils of his own religion, and has first-hand accounts of genocide to back it up? Victims are supposed to be inherently virtuous, the oppressed are not supposed to be able to be racist. But Farhad was calling members of the dominant people group names like “dogs” and “filth.” He clearly hated them. All of them. Islam is supposed to be the misunderstood and maligned religion of peace, but Farhad was pointing to examples from recent history of massacres literally named after chapters of the Qur’an. Of Muslims with power slaughtering Muslims and other minority groups with less power.
Melissa caught her mom’s attention and tried to appeal to her. “But… but… mom… this can’t be right, can it?”
“No, honey, you’re right, it can’t be right, it’s, well, it’s…”
They were grasping, intellectually brilliant though they were. Their moral lenses had taught them that the world was full of people who were basically good, and evil only really exists in the oppressor class, or in those who just haven’t had enough education. But Farhad was a fly in that ointment, a big angry fly, prominently missing a tooth. His logic was strong. There was clear victimhood and suffering in his story. There was also clear darkness in his heart.
I turned the barbecue chicken legs over on the grill and thought about the scene before me. I thought about how adept Middle Eastern and Central Asian refugees are at messing with the categories of popular Western morality. I am amazed at how Iraqis, Iranians, and Afghans can say all kinds of politically-incorrect things and get away with it. What progressive Westerner is going to be so bold as to call them out and risk exposing themselves to accusations of racism or Islamophobia? Some still might, but many, like our friends, will find that they have instead stumbled upon some kind of loophole, some kind of short in the moral circuitry.
I also thought about how grateful I was to be able to live in the real world, the world I had learned from the Bible. In that world evil and darkness are not limited to the few, to the oppressor class. They exist in every human heart. We are all evil, we are all on the spectrum of darkness. So we are not surprised when it shows up in the poor and marginalized, just as it does among the wealthy and privileged. While God’s word is clear about the evils of true oppression, the Bible calls both both the oppressor and the oppressed to repent of their hatred (murder) in their hearts toward one another, and to become part of a new redeemed humanity together.
The Bible has a category for people like Farhad. It shocks him by calling him to love his enemies (Matt 5:44). And when he finds that impossible to do in his own strength, to repent and to cast himself on God’s mercy in Christ. And if he does this, then he will be given the Holy Spirit who will empower him for the first time to do the impossible – to love those who committed genocide against his people. He’ll be able to do this because God’s justice is coming, and because he will know that he was forgiven when he had committed even worse against God himself.
An Ivy league education is no match for the realities of Middle Eastern racism. But the Bible can handle it – yes, more than handle it. It can transform it.
Americans don’t trust sad people. Daniel Nayeri makes this insightful observation in his hilarious and heartbreaking memoir, Everything Sad is Untrue. As an Iranian refugee, it makes sense that Nayeri would notice this. Because in the Middle East and Central Asia, the opposite tends to be true. They don’t trust people who are overly happy or optimistic.
This tendency to trust (or not) tends to be reflected in which kind of stories end up being most popular. For a story to be truly great, most Westerners want a happy ending. The good guy almost always wins in the end. But Central Asians call for a tragic ending in order for a story to achieve true greatness. The Western movies my Central Asian friends like the most are Titanic (where Jack dies of hypothermia), Braveheart (where William Wallace from disembowelment and beheading), and Forrest Gump (Where Jenny dies of AIDS). As for movies made in Central Asia? Dark endings. Almost all of them. I think I’ve only ever seen one with a happy ending.
This orientation toward tragedy vs. comedy seems to reflect the deep-down worldview beliefs of each culture – what each feels is most true about real life. Westerners really believe deep down that life will have a happy ending, that if we just believe and try hard enough, everything’s going to be alright. Central Asians really believe that no matter how good things get, it’s all going to end in tragedy, just as it always has.
Even our histories tend to strengthen these worldview narratives. Think of the meteoric rise of the power of the Christian West over the last 500 years. Then consider the incredible decline of the power of the Islamic Middle East and Central Asia. 1,000 years ago, the centers of global wealth and culture were not cities like London and New York, but Baghdad and Samarkand. Perhaps back then the Europeans would have been the pessimists, and the citizens of the Silk Road those who believed in rosy endings.
When you meet someone whose bearing contradicts the primary narrative of your culture, you tend to distrust them. This is because they seem to be out of touch with reality. Many a Western aid worker arrives in Central Asia bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, believing that with just a little bit of money and some fresh ideas transformation can be a simple thing. Meanwhile, locals just shake their heads at this naive foreigner, knowing that for all their frenetic activity these Western plans will be about as effective as a dirt clod thrown at a passing tank. I have had countless conversations with my friends and students in Central Asia where I’ve been dumbfounded by their lack of belief in the possibility of change, while they in turn are dumbfounded that I actually believe real change is possible.
The West, for its part, and especially America, traditionally believes in the inevitability of progress. And we are deeply committed to the belief that things really will work out for those who work hard enough. Successful people function as our prophets and idols, the ones who confirm for us what we already believe – that the story of life ends in happiness. So we find ourselves uncomfortable with sad people, with those whose lives seems to be a relentless movement from one season of suffering to the next. We don’t trust them to be prophets of the way things really are. We don’t want to.
Biblically, both cultures are wrong, and both cultures are right. The ending of history will indeed be good – yes, as good even as resurrection. But resurrection is impossible unless preceded by death. It’s got to all die before it can all come back to life. Creation must groan, and painfully so, before the revealing of the sons of God. As such, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes go hand in hand. The wheat and the tares grow together. Suffering and death are inevitable. Hell is real. But eternal life is also inevitable for those who entrust themselves to the one who suffered and died – and now lives forever.
Paul speaks of us as being a people who are “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” This means that Christians are those who can be fully awake to the grief and suffering of life, and those who can also be fully awake to the joy and delight of it. This means that a Christian who is shaped by the Bible’s view of reality is one who can be trusted by both kinds of cultures, the optimistic West and the pessimistic East. We know the depths of sadness. So we are not dismissed as naive. But we also know the heights of true hope and joy. So we are not dismissed as fatalists. We are, in one sense, Western and Central Asian at the same time. Or at least we should be.
And yet I find myself very lopsided. I have some idea of what it means to be always rejoicing. But what might it mean to be always sorrowful? And can it be that faithfulness in this age actually involves both at the same time? What might that look like when it boils down to things like daily spiritual disciplines, church services, and our “How’s it going?” conversations with other believers? I at least still have a ways to go in learning how to faithfully lament, not just with my mind, but also with my heart and emotions. I still have a hard time trusting sad people, in spite of spending half my life in cultures where grief and sadness are far more acceptable than here in the US.
Yet I have tasted aspects of this at funerals, when laughter comes easily during stories told of a departed loved one. Or at weddings or concerts, where joy and beauty are so strong they lead to tears. I felt it yesterday at a poetry recitation at my kids’ school. The kind of joy that makes you serious, as Lewis once put it. Joy and sadness intermingled, and something that feels so very right about this.
Americans might not trust sad people. And Central Asians might not trust happy ones. But believers from both worlds have come to trust a man of sorrows who is also the embodiment of purest joy. He holds both perfectly together at the same time, always able to weep with those who weep and to rejoice with those who rejoice. He does this authentically, with no whiplash or disjointedness. He can show us how to laugh and cry at the same time, welcoming both with hearts that are somehow more whole for their embrace of these seemingly-opposite postures.
As we draw near to him the promise is that we will become like him. And that will make us also those that sinners come to trust, whatever their cultural bias. Not because we are so impressive, but because we are the ones who are the most real, those who walk in the truest story. One where grief and joy also walk, hand-in-hand.
Balaam wasn’t saved by an angel. He was saved from an angel. This reversal of the expected formula is made even stranger in that his repeated deliverer is a donkey – one who can not only see the invisible angel, but who can also speak. And Balaam, at least for his first two near-death experiences, was utterly ignorant of the fact that he was being delivered from death by means of his remarkable long-eared servant (Numbers 22).
This is so often the way it goes. Death misses us by a hair and we are completely unaware of it, or at least unaware of what was going on behind the scenes once we do realize the great danger we just escaped. Just the other day we found a copperhead coiled up at the bottom of a rock we had been climbing and sitting on. I and several of my kids had apparently stepped around and right over him, busy admiring the view beyond of a Virginia river valley, taking pictures and peering over the cliff edge, completely unaware that the far greater danger was coiled up at our toes.
What had directed our feet so that they never stepped on the poisonous snake? What had directed the snake so that he stayed still, opting for freezing rather than fighting? Had it all been normal providence, aligning our days and choices just so in order to turn a potentially deadly encounter into a merely interesting one? Or was there direct involvement in that moment, a little nudge to the four-year-old’s foot by an invisible protector here, a word of warning inaudibly spoken to the snake there? Traditional Christian culture has angels invisibly intervening for us on the regular, saving us from calamity just in the nick of time, and often without us ever being aware.
If such guardians do function in this way, perhaps one activity in eternity will be watching one another’s Your Many Near-Deaths: Greatest Hits compilations. I can see it now, chilling with Darius* and Reza* in my room in the Father’s house as we watch one particular nail-biting act of deliverance. They rise to their feet, hand on their heads, yelling, “Bro!!! That was so close! How did you not die?! Look at you, just sitting there, sipping your chai like a complete donkey!”
Occasionally we do realize that something was definitely amiss in a given near-scrape. Something potentially deadly has happened, yet we were rescued, unharmed, in a way that doesn’t completely make sense. People don’t act they way they normally would. Train schedules are inexplicably off. For some reason we make a choice that we would not typically make. Natural elements behave abnormally. Fireballs burn an arc around us yet leave us completely alone.
One year ago I almost blew myself up in our kitchen. I did manage to blow up the kitchen, especially the stove. But I escaped unscathed, with the exception of some jumpiness every time I lit a gas burner for the next six months.
It all went back to to the difficulty of staying warm during the worst part of our Central Asian winters. The nights up in our mountain area often go below freezing, and the government makes its most severe cuts to the electricity during this season also. Two winters ago also proved to be one of the coldest snaps in decades. Add to the cold and the lack of electricity a natural gas shortage as well. All this meant not enough electricity to heat water for showers, dwindling supplies of LPG for cooking and portable heating, and one very cold family who couldn’t stop coughing. As a dad, I decided that it was time to pursue the nuclear option, something I had been chewing on for many a cold Central Asian winter.
With the help of a partner church, we purchased a 3,000 liter LPG tank for our roof and got a gas-powered water heater, a couple of LPG fireplace-type heaters, and all the necessary piping installed. This would mean that even if we had no electricity for days on end, we would have constant hot water, heating for at least two rooms during the day, and gas for cooking and hot drinks. The local workmen who installed all of this for us in the worst part of winter were great guys, and they even showed me what to do if the huge tank ever ran out. Conveniently, I could attach one of our smaller fifteen liter tanks to the gas lines and – voila – have gas in the lines until I could get the big one refilled. But, they stressed, it’s not good to let the tank completely empty. Refill it at twenty percent.
Well, Central Asia being what it is, the next few months were full of lots of ministry drama and various crises, and the big gas tank on our roof ran out without me noticing. It was late at night when this happened. My kids were already asleep and my wife was reading in our bedroom. I recalled what the workmen had told me several months before about how to temporarily refill the gas lines. So I went out back, attached a hose and nozzle to one of our small grill-style LPG tanks, and hooked it up to the house gas lines. But before I turned it on I made sure all the gas appliances were shut off. The gas nozzle I was using was one I was less familiar with, the kind that twisted open rather than a simple on/off lever. Figuring I needed to fill up many meters of lines for this to work, I turned the nozzle as far open as it could go, and heard a loud hiss as the gas rushed into the lines. So far, so good.
But as soon as I walked back inside I knew that something was not right. Another hissing sound was coming from the kitchen. I ran into the kitchen and could tell that gas was rushing out of the front right burner of the stove. I was confused. The burner was not on. But I figured that I’d better make sure. I made a panicky attempt to turn the burners off, forgetting that this stove had an electric lighter function. And in trying to make sure the burner was off, I accidentally triggered the lighter function. That’s when it happened.
A fireball filled the kitchen. Warm air wrapped around me, a shock wave hit my eardrums and rocked me backward, and the entire house shook. When this had passed I saw that the stove was on fire. What had been the front right burner area was now a geyser of flame, smoke, and melting plastic. Somehow I had the presence of mind to run outside and shut off the valve connecting the small LPG tank the the lines.
I ran back inside and was intercepted by my wife who has just run into the kitchen, wide-eyed. She thought our city was being bombed. I must have mumbled some kind of explanation to her that no, it was me. No enemies or terrorists bombing. I had managed to bomb the kitchen.
The next most important thing was to shut off the valve from the pipes to the stove and to grab the fire extinguisher. Both of these were back against the wall, right next to the side of the stove that was on fire. Not the best place for a fire extinguisher, I thought to myself as I strategized how to safely get past the flames. I managed to do it by draping a dish cloth over my head, ducking past the flaming corner, and shutting off the gas line. I also grabbed the fire extinguisher while I was down there and soon the stove and most of the kitchen was covered in a fine grey dust.
My wife went and grabbed the vacuum while I stood there, shocked and surveying the damage. What had gone wrong? Did I turn up the pressure too high on the unfamiliar nozzle? Did some kind of safety mechanism in the stove break, allowing gas to rush out when the burner wasn’t on? This was when I figured out that it was me who had lit the fireball by means of the lighter function in my haste to make sure the burners were actually off.
“Do I still have my eyebrows?” I asked my wife as she walked back in. I was very surprised when she answered in the affirmative. I had learned from friends in Melanesia that when facing down a fireball, the eyebrows usually don’t make it. I looked down for the first time at the hair on my arm and hands. Not singed at all. My clothes weren’t either. Wait, the tips of my thermal socks were crispy. And all around me, a semicircle was melted into the grey kitchen carpet. Other parts of the kitchen also evidenced contact with the explosion. Strangely, the exposed part of the trash bag had reversed itself, wrapping itself up tight around the lid of the bin when it had previously been wrapped over the sides.
We spent the next hour or so cleaning up all the extinguisher dust, and marveling that nothing worse had happened. What accounted for the fact that I was almost untouched by the giant fireball? Why had the carpet all around me melted while even my hair had gone unsinged? Was I protected by the normal flow of providence, or had there been some kind of abnormal intervention which stood between me and the flames? Is that even a valid distinction to make?
It’s unlikely I’ll ever know the answers to these questions in this life. “The secret things belong to the Lord,” as it says in Deuteronomy 29:29. And included in those secret things are many of the workings of providence in both our tragedies and our deliverances. No, unlike Balaam, ours is not usually to see behind the curtain when it comes to our close calls, but to learn from them and to be grateful for them. There’s wisdom there – like how not to nearly blow yourself up next time your LPG tank is empty. And gratitude – like prayers of thanks for the only real loss being a melted stove, and for the surprising bonus of not even one melted eyebrow.
Balaam was saved from an angel by a donkey. Could I have been saved by an angel from the consequences of being a donkey? Perhaps. A few more seconds of that gas rushing out and it could have been a much bigger bomb. But however it went down in the invisible realm, I am thankful for God’s kindness to me when I almost blew myself up a year ago. As I am thankful for his protection this week with the copperhead – and for all those other times that I don’t even know about, included on my tape of Your Many Near Deaths: Greatest Hits.
Entrusted to the Dirt 
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