One of the things I’ve really grown to enjoy here in northern Thailand are the passing thunderstorms. You can tell that one is coming—at least most of the time— about 30 minutes before it hits because of the far-off flashes of lightning and strong winds that sway trees and rattle windows that come before the storm. However, the actual rains don’t immediately follow the heavy winds. The winds usually die down momentarily before the rain drops begin to fall. This is apparently because the winds that bring the storm front create a partial vacuum in the atmosphere that draws air in from all sides, allowing us to experience the proverbial “calm before the storm.”
One Light Church is now nearing the 3-year mark (as our first Sunday gathering was November 13, 2016), and it feels as though we are in a bit of a “calm before the storm” season as a community, both seasonally and in terms of a longer term outlook. With the hectic summer season behind us, we have a few months of breathing room until the wonderful joys of parenthood hit our community with the birth of 4 new babies. Also, after having seen God be so faithful to us over the past 3 years in terms of planting us in Chiang Rai, there are wonderful signs of fruit and a deep sense of anticipation about the many wonderful doors of opportunity that are before us for making disciples and planting churches.
None of this really comes as a surprise, as we’ve had multiple trusted prophetic voices speak over our community that things would pick up after 3 years or that we will be experiencing a storm season as a community. However, I don’t believe that the season ahead is to be approached with fear or dread. I believe it is going to be a wonderful storm, one that should be approached with a sense of joy and expectation. In the Bible, there are storms of obedience (like what the disciples experienced when they obeyed Jesus) and storms of disobedience (like Jonah’s), and ours feels like what naturally happens when you get swept up in the will of a sovereign and almighty God who is on the move for the sake of His glory.
That said, as when you make a pit stop during a long road trip, this fast during a relative time of calm might be a good opportunity to kick the tires and see what maintenance, if any, God might want us to receive as individuals and as a community.
As I’ve been praying this week about our fast and the season we find ourselves in, God has given me 2 words: realignment and defragmentation.
The normal wear and tear of the road can cause the wheels of a car to become misaligned, leading to uneven tires, veering in the wrong direction, noisiness & shaking, and just general inefficiency for the car. In a similar way, after a computer hard drive is used for a while, the way that files are stored on it becomes fragmented and requires defragging for better efficiency and performance. I wonder if what God wants to do during the fast is to realign us as individuals and defragment us a community in order to help us weather whatever storms He wants to bring our way.
I believe we will need (i) greater precision and accuracy in aligning ourselves closely to God’s will and (ii) a greater degree of depending on each other as a community in the upcoming season.
Andy shared this past Sunday about Jesus being the cornerstone, and us needing to align ourselves to Him. Something in me resonated strongly with that sentiment. It reminded me of 2 passages in Scripture:
19 Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, 22 in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)
10 For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice, and shall see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel. (Zechariah 4:10)
Jesus is the cornerstone into which we are being fitted together, but He is also the builder who builds with accuracy and precision.
As I was praying around these themes this morning, I had a picture of a jigsaw puzzle on a table. The puzzle had been completed, but something had shaken the table so that some of the pieces had been displaced and were missing, out of place, or in the wrong direction. Minor adjustments were going to be necessary to put the puzzle back into order.
The good news was that the top of the box with the guiding picture of the puzzle was right there, standing on its side just above the puzzle, so that you could look at the picture and quickly put the fragmented pieces back into proper alignment.
I look forward to being with you all during this fast as we gaze into the face of Jesus, our cornerstone and builder, to see how He might want us to fall under His plumb line with respect to Him and each other.