Breathe Easy!

Bless the Lord! For he is good. Great and mighty is he.

I just thought I would shoot out a quick blog to say that I am breathing easy now. I was in the passport office today in Castelo Branco where I was able to buy a 90 day extension on my visa. So now I have another 3 months in Shenghen while I work on getting my one year residency. Many thanks to Barbara and the organization White Stone for helping to make this possible…( Obragad para sua ajuda). I am told at the office that I have to return back to the states for this. I will make an attempt first through friends stateside to see if they can grab the paper work and get it all taken care of perhaps through the mail. Regardless, I am looking forward to 90 more days at the Mount of Oaks.

I am having a great time here. It is a time to really rest from all the preparing and hard work over the last four years. If the remainder of my time goes like this last week, then I am on my way into a surprise short sabbatical before springing off into this summer. Apart from the Olives I’ve been picking with Barbara this past week, time here has been slow and quiet. I am filling it up with much needed reading and reflection.

One quick reflection is that rest, while still in this fallen world is rest with a promise. The promise is that such a rest as this is a storing up of potential energy, as one who is recoiling and readying himself to charge. One who gets an opportunity to rest in this life, doesn’t get that just before he dies. There is no point. People do not end their lives after a long period of rest. They generally go out fighting. So this rest is not only a relief to me, but the feeling of a promise that there is a reason to rest… somehow I am going to need it. And this is a thrilling thing. I do not know what this summer holds, but I am continually at awe with the empowerment of the Lord to enable me along this road that in some ways is so clear what is ahead though in most is absolutely bewildering and dauntingly hazy.

So, for the winter, please pray along with me as you never have before, and not just for me only but for yourselves as well, “May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, Oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer.”