 |
| Me and grandson Matthew enjoying bonding time at Kenton-on-Sea. |
Beloved Friends and Family,
I am starting this letter to you on 15th January from Hyrax Cabin on the Kariega River on Doug and Edie Galpin’s farm in the Eastern Cape. We can only get here by 4x4 or boat. So the solitude is complete. Magic.
I am just wrapping up my four-day annual retreat and wish I had another week. The cabin in the forest on the edge of the river is simplicity itself – no electricity or flush toilets – just candles and a long-drop up a forest track in the bush! Delicious beyond measure. And I love it.
My companions are birds and bees, insects and butterflies, with plenty of busy little dung-beetles plus an array of little kite spiders who weave exquisite webs everywhere which need modest skills to negotiate. Then the final bit of orchestral accompaniment, behind the chorus of crickets, are the lapping waters of the Kariega just a few metres from my door. The sunsets take one’s breath away (see pic) and the night skies are of such brilliance that they seem to be arched just over one’s head and within reach of an outstretched arm. All this gets one’s doxologies really going.
I am just back from a one hour run through the riverine bush and farm lands and am now about to have a quick swim and then exercise my legendary culinary skills to fix myself some breakfast. Later on I want to add a few extra comments out of my time here.
SOLITUDE
First of all, I want to affirm out of the blessings of this sort of time the importance of our personal relationship and love-life with the Lord.
Whatever else we get wrong, we mustn’t fail here. This has also been my emphasis thus far with all the Barnabas groups. The fact is we are saved to love Jesus even before we are saved to serve others.
So our devotions, our Bible-reading, our systematic prayers for our families, others and ourselves are all critically important. Occasional times of solitude are also invaluable.
I remember during our sabbatical in early 1999 meeting a psychologist at Regent College, Vancouver, where I was studying and reading for some weeks under the guidance of several professors. I told this lecturer and counselor that I would be going back in due course into the hurly-burly of the work in Africa and did she have any counsel? Her reply was immediate – “get solitude.” Never a sounder word of advice. So I want to encourage you with this notion. You may not be able to get several days, as I am privileged to have right now, but the occasional day of “time out” for “just you and the Lord” is enormously worthwhile and important. Do think about it, and try to work this somewhere into your schedule for 2011.
READING
Then something else I want to encourage you with for 2011 is your reading. And I’ve so enjoyed some of my reading times on holiday nearby at Kenton-on-Sea, and now here up river, especially E Stanley Jones’ The Unchanging Person And The Unshakeable Kingdom, and Gordon MacDonald’s The Life God Blesses. I must say, I can never, ever be thankful enough that within weeks of my conversion at university in October 1955 I was encouraged to get into a regular diet of good Christian reading. This can be devotional, theological, biographical, inspirational, apologetic, historical, or leadership stuff. I would also particularly encourage a balanced diet, not just spiritual westerns (you know, thrills and spills and all that!), or just theology, or just biography. Nor just your pet authors. Adventure a little. Including also more generally secular biographies, current affairs, politics, adventure, and even the occasional detective thriller! It all helps to keep not only the soul refreshed but the brain ticking over. Good also to have books recommended, so you don’t waste time on rubbish (and there’s so much around) or in too much unedifying escapist reading.
Anyway, there you are – just a few thoughts out of my reading by the river!
MEMOIRS
Now, a big thing. I have made a huge decision here up river, and after much prayerful reflection, to write my memoirs. Some 12-15 years of encouragement from many people, plus some intensifying urgings this last year (especially since our Highway Episode on December 18th, 20009 finally made me take the decision, thankfully with the comforting feeling also that the Lord was in it. So I simply sat down on impulse outside my cabin the night before last, and with the setting sun before me (and later candles to light me) and the river lapping only metres away, I wrote the first draft of an Author’s Preface. By the time I came to, as it were, it was quarter to 11 pm and I hadn’t even thought of supper! And curiously I got quite excited, even though I had registered this notion for so long, and in spite of feeling my life was not really that interesting that it deserved recording in this personal way. But I also reflected that I have been privileged to live through very, very interesting times and to know some remarkable people. Above all, I had a testimony of a 55-year friendship and adventure with Jesus. Moreover, seeking to do His bidding in full-time ministry these last nearly 50 years in the convulsive context of the unfolding drama of modern Africa has certainly provided a few thrills and spills of its own. Maybe it was worth writing up after all – even if I felt intimidated at embarking on the biggest writing project of my life.
This will also spur me to finish the last six chapters of John 17 and put that to bed. Interestingly enough, I remember Alistair McGrath of Wycliffe College, Oxford, with whom I did some studies on that same sabbatical in 1999 saying to me: “You shouldn’t feel intimidated, Michael, about writing two or three books at once, especially if they are a bit different in nature!” Thank you, Dr McGrath, amazing guy that you are, I am going to take your counsel.
So friends, you have a new prayer project from me – “MC’s Memoirs.” May he finish them before they finish him!!
HOME : 24th January, 2011
We are home now and so thankful for our time away at Kenton-on-Sea. Marvelous having our three kids and their children, though we did really miss Jonathan (Cathy’s husband) back in the States at work and without leave, and then also Gary (Debbie’s husband) bouncing around with his Indian cricket team and giving the South African crowds lots of grand sporting entertainment.
The seven grandchildren were a riot of rambunctious fun and deepening our relationships with these lovely little people was cherry-on-the-top time for Carol and me. (See pics). A particular delight for me was getting to know little Matthew Michael Cassidy, Martin and Sam’s little guy (20 months) whom I had not really got to know before. We really got something going and a big connection! (See pic).
One highlight happening for me was a solo grandpa project with the six bigger kids to search out and cut down a Christmas tree on the Galpin’s farm. As we walked in search through the bush I told the kids just to watch where they put their feet so as not to stand on any snakes or noonoos! “Just walk behind Dah”, (their name for me), I instructed, as I led the charge like Livingstone through an African jungle. At which Cameron Scott (7), one of Cathy’s boys, said: “Dah, do you really think this is a good idea?”
Well, it was a good idea, and a good way of keeping in touch with one’s own inner child! No tigers or anacondas got us, and we had the best and funnest decorated Christmas tree in all Kenton! Hooray for Dah and said work-party!
 |
| The extended Cassidy family on holiday together. |
Now we are back at home and gearing up for the year. For the work it’s a big one with many places across Africa seeing ministry from AE of different sorts. Miles Giljam will be settling into his role in AESA as its new Team Leader. Do pray special wisdom and strength for him. Our International Partnership Board meets in Johannesburg 22-24 February. Pray wisdom also for Steve Lungu, (CEO), Mike Woodall (COO), and Jonathan Addison (new Chairman from Melbourne), as they give leadership.
My Barnabas groups, now comprising some 80 younger leaders in South Africa, get underway this week, beginning with Durban (January 27th) and then Johannesburg (February 2nd), Pretoria (February 3rd), and then Pietermaritzburg, two of them, - 15th and 16th February. Cape Town and George come at the end of March (30th and 31st), and then PE (April 1st). We are waiting to see if East London will come on stream.
Please pray I have wisdom what to share and how to share it in each of these ongoing groups throughout 2011. These are such stunning clusters of leaders and I don’t want to disappoint them.
Also, do lift to the Lord my three sharings on the Lausanne Congress and Contemporary Mission Challenges at the Hilton Baptist Church (January 30th, February 20th, and March 27th).
On Saturday February 5th at 6.00 pm I am showing my Antarctica PowerPoint at the big Hilton College Theatre, this being sponsored by a local church (Hilton Christian Fellowship) and used also as a low-key outreach, jumping from the marvels of creation to the marvelous God of creation, and His Agent in creation, our Lord Jesus Christ “without whom was not anything made that was made” (John 1:3), including Antarctica.
Should be fun.
I mentioned Lausanne a moment ago. I will pick up my reports on that history-making Congress in my next letter in late February.
50th ANNIVERSARY OF AE
A final thing. 50 years ago this month we had the very first Board meeting of African Enterprise in Pasadena, California. This is what I wrote in my journal on January 11th 1961: “Well, the hurdle has been taken, the boats burned, the die cast, and the Rubicon crossed. We had our first African Enterprise committee meeting today. Am too tired and exhausted to write much, but Hallelujah to Jesus, may His Name be glorified. A verse He gave me anew this evening, for I first claimed it long ago, was Is. 54:17. ‘No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper: and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgement thou shalt condemn: This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord.’ I believe this with all my heart.”
Saturday 14th January 1961- “Ed and I went up to the mountains for the afternoon to discuss and pray over African Enterprise. A blessed time when we got many things more carefully thought through and committed to Him.”
Sunday 15th January 1961 – “Restful and peaceful day. In the evening I went out for a grand walk with the Lord and prayed over many things.
My dinner with Bob and Nancy, so obviously blissful together, set my mind thinking on the marriage institution. Certainly in these days of increased responsibility I feel more and more the need for someone to stand by my side and share the load with me. I do pray that the Lord will grant me such a helpmate before too long. Daily I pray for her and how I shall bless the Lord on that momentous day when she walks out of my dreams into my life!”
***
Thus my diary entries exactly 50 years ago! Wow! And how awesomely faithful God has been since then in bringing forth a ministry spanning the African Continent and with links all over the world! Thank You, Lord. And then His special miracle of miracles when nine years after this journal entry He did indeed bring Carol to me “on that momentous day (August 18th 1969) when she walked out of my dreams and into my life.” Last December 16th we celebrated the 41st anniversary of our marriage. Deo Gloria!
Next year (2012) in June or thereabouts we will have week-long 50th anniversary celebrations of the first mission to Pietermaritzburg in 1962. Please pray with us into this turning-point season in the ministry of AE as we seek purposefully and with renewed dedication to launch into the next half-century! May its endeavours exceed anything in the first 50 years.
Must close.
CAROL
Carol sends love. She did such a splendiferous job at Kenton coping with and looking after her own contribution to Planet Earth’s population explosion. Health, for her, to be brutally honest not 100 percent on several fronts. But, man, what a trooper! I am so proud of her. Interestingly enough, she has felt strongly I should embark on these Memoirs while I have at least a shred of ‘memoir’ left, if you get what she means! I know she is so thankful for the prayers of so many of you.
All for now.
Much love from both of us – to all of you,
Michael and Carol
No comments:
Post a Comment