Another week has passed and it's been another good one. Although it's been business as usual for Ruth and I it's been a busy time for the children. Xanthe has a little tooth budding up from her bottom gum. I'm of the firm opinion that (generally) teeth ruin children but Xanthe carries it off pretty well. Reid has been ruined for a long time now, but we've finally broken the back of the potty training with him. Like Calvin he's gone to being pretty much trained overnight. He's a very clever boy.
As it's a slow news week I thought that today I'd post an excerpt from something written by one of the teaching staff Peter Volkofsky; the Director of Mission at Cornerstone. It's something that I've found really encouraging and gives a glimpse into the sort of thing you can expect from Cornerstone. Read it and then think hard about how you're going to get over here and join us.
I sometimes think that we are too clever in Cornerstone at being flexible and fitting in. There are times when this is a great quality. But we make a habit of it and what with forgiveness and grace and restoration, we forget that there are oceans of could-have-been saints, could-have-been Mary Slessors and Amy Carmichaels who are sidelined by the cool scene and now are just warming pews in a cool church somewhere. Nightclub evangelism and party evangelism is usually a great way for the enemy to wreck the lives of Christian young people. If you read the books of those saints, you realise that the only reason they did not end up as fizzled pew-warmers is because when the others were at parties, they were running kids clubs, youth groups, preaching, praying or studying the scriptures. A lot of us have no idea - the books tend to make it look as if they just had great self control.
It was no accident that Jesus did not engage in the most risky and dangerous part of his life's mission until he was well over thirty. The reason many middle-aged Christian people are doing less dangerous things than they used to is because when they were younger, they disqualified themselves. Their Father in Heaven had no other option but to put them on light duties. Adventure will come! No fear of that. It is the dreadful lie of our culture that you must take the great adventures while you are young. Maybe so in abseiling and Bungee Jumping; but it is not so in the truly dangerous business of the Kingdom. Your youth is supposed to be a time of qualifying yourself for them, let the Father bring them to you in his own careful way. I believe he has allowed you to taste some serious failure because he knows that one of the biggest qualifiers for those later mission tasks is steely and patient obedience. You only get that after years of training your body and soul in lonely places. The enemy knows what you can do and that the Father wants to use you to do a lot of damage to the gates of hell. It's kind of like the way the opposition try to take out a talented sports star in a rugby team. A wise coach will not expose that young player too much at first. He knows that the player's very enthusiasm and passion is in fact a weakness at this point. It is only when that player has submitted to the boring and hard art of building strong defensive skills that he will be truly ready. The lesson of your experience so far is that your defensive skills are weak. It's often the case with talented people...
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