The Phil Files

Okay, so last Thursday I promised I would start blogging about Communidad de Niños Segrada Familia. (Note, the website is dated and there are now 800 children now there!) So far, I have not blogged. There is a good reason. In fact, there are several.

1. We were exhausted. Donna and I spent last week there with a group of 75 others who did a Vacation Bible School and spent time with the children of Sagrada Familia. There was simply no time or energy to appropriately say what is in our hearts.
2. We want to offer you the opportunity to do more than just learn about this incredible opportunity with great needs, but doing such a powerful ministry with the most forgotten of Jesus’ “little ones”! To do that appropriately, we need to get some things in place.
3. We want to provide you with pictures and video to get more an experience of the event. With the help a friend, we will have both and hopefully will be able to launch an English website that shows you how to help and become involved.

Bottom line, Donna and I will never be the same.

There are hundreds of children in our hearts, but several will be carried in our souls and dreams and prayers and waking thoughts, for as long as we live.

So while the blog promise is delayed, be assured, it is coming. We don’t want you to miss it. In fact, we want you to get caught up in something that is smack dab in the middle of the heart of Jesus.

I will let all of our Heartlight.org community know about the blog pieces on Sagrada Familia as we get closer to the time we go live, but just believe me when I say, “You don’t want to miss it!”

Until we go live, please pray for these precious children in Peru and pray for the work being done to make sure they are housed, fed, educated, and loved! These children have always been precious to Jesus … and now that we have held them and taught them them and played with them, they are more than precious to us!

I am not a patient guy. When things don’t happen quickly enough I start pushing, poking and prodding instead of waiting for the LORD’s timing. I know this is a weakness. I am impatient about learning to be faithful to God and to the dreams I believe that he has placed in my heart. So as I read this, it smacked right up alongside my face!

It is better to be patient than powerful; it is better to have self-control than to conquer a city (Proverbs 16:32 NLT).

I am hoping now that my heart can believe what my head knows is truly valuable.

Well done! Thank you Coach, enjoy your homecoming and your greatest victory.

See also: “Happy Birthday, Coach!”

Here’s a video of Ron DiCianni and his soon to be released painting of Jesus’ resurrection. It is worth your time to think about how much of Biblical history hinged on this one moment and Ron’s painting emphasizes this. Jesus emphasized this when He ate fish to show his doubting disciples that He had really been raised and was not ghost or a figment of their imagination. He then told them the following:

He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”
Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” (Luke 24:44-47)

Hope you are inspired by the concepts and are reminded of how much of everything important to us hinges on Jesus’ resurrection!

Paul summarizes his ministry this way, and puts an exclamation mark on what is depicted here:

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God —  the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David,  and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 1:1-4)

At our Monday morning ministry meeting, one of my teammates, Jack, said the following:

I’ve got more stuff in my garage than most people in the world have in their entire lives.

Having been to Uganda and seen the tens of thousands of “houses” that the non-poor live in — 40-60 square foot houses shared by 7-12 family members of 2 or 3 generations — I know what he says is true. While I’ve been in poor neighborhoods in Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, and large U.S. cities, the folks in Kampala neighborhoods weren’t the truly poorest of the poor.

So today, I’m trying to take stock of my blessings. As our ministry teams has read through Good and Beautiful God, we have been taking time to thank God for the mundane, the everyday, the often overlooked blessings that are ours. Simply listing these — the touch of a loved one, the smile of baby, the laughter of a child, the humor of repeated stories in older family members (or maybe myself), the feeling of the soft breeze at sunrise, and … the junk in my garage, attic, closets, and pantry.

If you haven’t done it in awhile, pray like a three year old — with your eyes wide open, thanking God for everything you see, especially the stuff you hold as inconsequential. When you do, and if you let yourself get really carried away, I think you will be surprised at how many blessings our gracious Father has poured into your life everyday that you take for granted.

Many years ago, I had an closet in my office that had a small poster of a little boys eyes as they lit up with excitement. It said something like, “See as a child sees: the joy, the laughter, and the wonder!” Today, I would would urge us to thank God as a child does, and be caught up in the laughter and wonder of it all.

A friend finished a note to me with the following tag:

Duct Tape is the “Force” … it has a Light side and a Dark side, and it binds the universe together.

At first, I saw this statement as clever — it even gave me a bit of a chuckle. But then another realization set in. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I need some of that duct tape for broken things that the world can’t see. I could put the dark side out to seal out the darkness and its painful effects, and I could put the light side in to hold together what is broken, stuff that needs a little light to keep hopes alive.

Down here in Texas, we fix everything with duct tape, superglue, and a sharpie. The first two are used to tape and mend, the sharpie is used to write our name on it so folks know who owns what’s broken. I don’t know why it is so hard for us to own what is broken about ourselves. All I do know is that I’m thankful that when I look at everything of mine that is broken that I signed with my name, given a few days, my signature is transformed into Jesus’ signature. If I let him, he will own my brokenness. He’s my duct tape. He’s faced the dark side and yet darkness could not claim his light and he really does hold the universe together.

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,  and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (Colossians 1:17-20 tniv)

So, Lord Jesus, please use a little duct tape on me!