Life At Aim High

For all the MIA's

We just got back from our all Japan staff conference and all I can say is: "I love the Japan staff team!" The Shin's, Jun, and Obichi and his family stood out to me the most this year at the conference. But all the others are special too. And times at the conference and driving back from the conference reminded me just how much I love the Utsu staff. God has really created an amazing family of staff here in Japan. Is it perfect? No, and no blood or staff family is. But the love and the struggles and the concern we are able to show for one another is just amazing.

The work we do here is hard and even more so for those who are Japanese. It can exhaust you, scare you, leave you feeling quite lonely. And in some cases the difficulties have been too much for some and they had to leave. But today we were reminded that each of those men and women are still apart of our staff family and always will be. And it was fully in God's will for the difficult moments to come too, because the difficult moments give us the wisdom to help others who are hurting and suffering.

At this conference we saw that being in a place of suffering is actually a place of great honor:
Phi 3:10
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings,

This was something I was really needing to wrestle through. I was flood with many emotion at this conference and it broke through some places where I have been feeling stuck and unable to explain or change the feelings and burdens I was carrying.

I'm not sure that these thoughts makes any sense if you weren't in this moment today. But I just wanted to enter a little something here to publicly express my gratefulness for where God has placed me and the times of crushing that He has willfully brought into my life both now and in the past. And the one that was toughest for me to accept, the times of pain and crushing that God has willfully planned for my future.

I want to think that I have experienced enough pain and therefore God should make the rest of my life smooth and easy and full of justice. Yet that is not assured and is likely to actually be the opposite. So now in that truth I find myself wrestling. Trying to remove my limited human vision and prospective and grow in faith to see life through God's vision and perspective.

posted by Keith @ 11:00 PM