WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU HEAR US?!

I was going to compose posts for the blog and have them to be published automatically while we moved; but God seems to be telling me to go ahead and post them now, and readers would wait for me to get settled. so...

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"What do you mean, we don't know how to sing together？" the carp at Lower Bridge seemed to flap their fins and pucker their lips even more. They knew I wanted them to stay on the same song, but they all seemed animated in a different way. But it seemed they gleefully agreed with each other as they looked up at me: "We're singing in 10-part harmony with 5 descants and 3 simultaneous themes, can't you hear it June?!"   Groan. I give up, I thought.

But that's kinda the way it should be with the church too, right? Praising in multiple ways yet in harmony with each other, joyfully looking up in the same direction altho' activities may be completely iindependent and distinct. Sometimes, I think we can learn a lot from the living things at the park.

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Perhaps the reason I post the above is with our move to Okinawa, my sisters and I have been getting excited about the possibility of reaching those who have strayed from God or the church, those who we knew as children and grew up in the same Sunday School classes and participated in ukulele choir together.

And then there are folks like my daughter's family, relatives who do not know him at all, for whom it would not be a matter of returning, but of coming to Him for the first time. Might God use us in any way in their lives? My very limitation of not being able to get out in the summer or of being one who feels more comfortable talking one-to-one may open doors that have been closed before.

Altho' initially, my feeling was to go to Okinawa to get away from the stress of mainland Japan, to retreat to a simpler, quieter lifestyle; it seems recently the Lord has been tapping me on the back, reminding me I needed to be willing to:

"Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stetch forth the curtains of thy habitations; spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes." (Isa. 54:2)

Be willing to throw open your arms--as God does--and welcome anyone in. It seems like people today seem to need someone to listen and just say, "wow. I hear you."