O Almighty God! Glory to Thee! The Immortal Father of all creation
Over all, in all, through all art Thou
O God be gracious unto me, a sinner, and have mercy on me
O Blessed Christ, Son of the Living God, Thou didst come into the world to save sinners
of whom I am the chief

Why do I suppose I can write something new? Why do I think that the past is gone? “I used to be so prideful…”

O Holy Spirit God, what is the depth of my own false truth?  O Spirit of Truth, how I thirst for Thy fire! O Divine Breath proceeding from the Almighty Father, have mercy and save me! O Holy Dove, resting on the Perfect Son, be gracious unto me, a sinner!

My life is drowned in a flood of uses words; in a tide of impure explanations; in a river of rhetoric polluted with sin; in a tempest of pride crashing over the mast! My God! My thoughts are a storm!

O Good Spirit, do you not hover over these waters?
O Merciful Father, won’t you speak your Word and make me Good?

O Father of time, Glory to you
Your Blessed Monarch is enthroned forever
Your Wing you gather from the ends of the earth

All the tree are naked
All their branches tremble
They tremble with the touch of your breath, O Holy One

Glory to you, the God of all
The tapestry of leaves now fall into your earth
Longing to begin again and die with you

All the trees are somber as we shed our pretense
All our days grow dim as we wait for you
We wait for you to clothe us with yourself

And in my soul, O Lord my God!
I longed for your light
Rescue me from the darkness of my sin!
Do not reveal me to myself unless you transfigure these ashes–
once burning bright with a thousand flames,
now dead and lifeless on the forest floor–
for I cannot bear the stark winter of my soul
I will struck dead by a mountain of ice
and I will freeze to death

Come, Lord Jesus Christ

O Immaculate King, glory to you
You who have carried all things by the Word of your power
And filled all things with the Breath of your life

All leaves of Autumn
All beaten grass
You enlighten the will of man with the colors of your love

Glory to you, O Holy One
O Majestic Creator
You who have fashioned before us the heavens and the trees that reach for you

All the branches lift up their holy hands to their Maker
All the leaves dance and sing and weave themselves into the earth
You still the distress of man’s heart with gentle joy

And for a moment, O Lord my God!
You gave me a glimpse of creation’s groan
It lurched out from within me, deep inside
The longing to be clothed with the New Man
The longing to be filled with all the fullness of life in you
O Glory which I take in with every breath!
How marvelous is your throne O God!
“All the earth is your bride, waiting for the Immortal Bride groom.”

Come, Lord Jesus Christ

I have long desired to tell of my journey to the slums of Cairo and my journey since then. However, the journey I have been on since coming back into the States has been extremely difficult. My friend Jon told me the culture shock that I would experience on my way back into America would be way worse than going there. He was right.

But before I get to that point, I want to go back to the beginning and attempt, with God’s help, to tell the important points of this story.

I went to Cairo hoping that I would have some incredible “spiritual experience” just like all those high school mission trips with a bunch of tears and yet another “born again” experience where everyone had a face to face encounter with Jesus and wept together. I was hoping that God would rock my world is some new way and I was really excited to meet Him in Egypt.

But He wasn’t there. For about the first 3 weeks I experienced a total absence of God. He was gone. I couldn’t feel Him, pray to Him, worship Him, because He was absent.

We all have our devotions as Christians. We have our prayers or readings or simply our dispositions towards life that cause us to feel and experience God. Many of us have routines or special rituals that are unique to us that connect us with God. I am no different.

But everything that I used to do in America—as I was doing these things to seek God in Egypt—He wasn’t there! I couldn’t understand it, it freaked me out! It wasn’t that I felt that He didn’t exist, it was as if He had literally left and gone away and I was left alone without Him. Why had He done this? What had I done? What was going wrong? I thought this was supposed to be a spiritual high. Where is God?

My hopes for a great “spiritual experience” were being dashed very quickly.

On top of this, our whole team was experiencing extreme fatigue all the time and at least one of us was sick each day (the first day of work three people were in the hospital). I only worked about 3-4 hours a day and I was exhausted all the time! How could this be? Where was God in all this? This was not what I had hoped for…

And then there was the food: we ate three square meals a day, and lunch was the big one. The bad part was that Breakfast and Dinner were exactly the same. Every day.

Pita Bread

Three Cheeses – Buffulo, Goat, and Cow

Plain Yogurt

Jam

Goat’s meat

(most of the time) tomatoes and cucumbers

So what you’d do is you’d take the Jam and put it in the plain yogurt to make it taste good, then scoop the cheese into the Pita Bread with veggies and dip it into the Jam-Yogurt (I refrained from the goat meat).

Sounds good right?

Maybe the first or second time it was good.

After that, I was sick of it. That got really old really quick. I hated getting up in the morning and eating that pita and yogurt! We’d assemble around the table and solemnly pronounce a prayer of thanks over the meal.

But I was not thankful.

All I wanted was Cracklin’ Oat Bran. Did we really have to eat this for breakfast? I didn’t really think that this would be something that I would really struggle with—but I did. It was probably the biggest struggle for me.

Do I sound snobbish? Perhaps gluttonous or selfish?

Yes.

It hit me: am I such an American glutton that I can’t even thank the God who gave me life for such a portion, when thousands will starve today? Am I such a wretch that when we bow our heads to the Almighty I am muttering under my breath! Oh My God! I’m so selfish, my God is gone, I’m tired as ever and I’m NOT having a spiritual high at all but I’m miserable. When will this end? And I miss my family so much…

]]> http://vaselessuedirect.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/cairo-1-the-fast-and-the-absence/feed/ 1 tim