The Mission Diaries

Our blog is dedicated to missions in Mexico and Central America, and missiology in general, but this time we’ll take a recess and delve into the field of Apologetics. Since I am Board member of the Apologetics Research Society (www.evidenceforchristianity.org), I try to keep up with topics related to Biblical/Christian evidences. An article in today’s Orange County Register caught my attention. You can read the full article at this link.

A well-known UCI professor, Francisco Ayala, received an award for his scientific work on evolution and for his efforts to bring into dialogue the opposing camps of science and religion. Professor Ayala is a distinguished scientist, so I imagine that many people would listen to what he says and give it plenty of credibility. Unfortunately, in the newspaper interview Professor Ayala commits what my fellow blogger Brian Colon calls “the straw man fallacy“. Read along if you’re interested… (Read the article)

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I was standing by the glass door of our family room, praying. I looked up and took notice of the clear blue sky with a cloud here or there. It was a really beautiful day, particularly after several weeks of rainy days, an unusual occurence here in Southern California. I thanked God for giving us a beautiful day … but I stopped. Yes, we had a beautiful day here, but what about other places? With weather patterns being what they are, and with people spread out all over the planet, it wasn’t highly probable that everyone was waking up to this so-called beautiful day. At that same moment, someone somewhere was probably looking at a cold, dreary morning with overcast skies that promised a few more inches of snow. Somewhere else it may have been a hot and humid day. I remember that February used to be the worst month for pollution in Mexico City, because of a phenomenon called thermal inversion which basically compressed the smog into a dense, toxic, low-altitude layer.

So I thought, if I thank God for giving me a beautiful day, what about all those people who didn’t wake up to the same kind of day? Did God not give them the same gift? Did God decide who was going to benefit from beautiful weather that morning and who was going to end up with rotten weather?

I don’t think so. God created the earth, and with it He set up the physical laws that determine the distribution of heat, and moisture, and air pressure, and all those intricate things that produce what we call weather. Weather is what it is. God doesn’t need to micromanage it every second of every day, and especially not for my exclusive enjoyment. So I decided to change my prayer, because I don’t think God’s gift is a “beautiful day.” I think his gift is the faith that allows us to go through each day, whether it’s beautiful or not.

J De Anda

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I’d like to share with our readers some thoughts from the book “The Gospel According to Job” by Mike Mason. In it the author says and I paraphrase: In most religions, spiritual progress is represented by the arduous path that we have to climb to reach the top of a mountain. The route is difficult, treacherous, almost impassable. This pervasive image projects the impression that spiritual progress is a task that is only achieved by few, and only through this process of individual effort. As a consequence, sometimes we view spiritual progress as a human achievement, much like graduation or promotion or winning the heart of the person you love.

However, the Bible presents the path of righteousness with a totally different metaphor: a level path.

Isaiah 26:7 The path of the righteous is level; O upright One, you make the way of the righteous smooth

Isaiah 40:4 Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain

I imagine that, most of Israel’s land being rough and uneven, with hills, mountains, and cliffs all over the place, and relatively small or narrow plains and valleys, the image of a level path or level ground represents more accurately God’s work of salvation. Righteousness is not attained by strenuous human effort. It is attained by staying on the path that God has made for us!

The author even points out that Jesus had a solution for mountains, and I quote: “Why go to all the trouble of climbing a mountain if by faith you can have it thrown into the sea (see Mark 11:23)?”

J De Anda

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It was sometime in late Fall of 1988. The Mexico City Church was approaching the end of its first full calendar year, having been planted in October of 1987. The original mission team members, plus a few of the new small group leaders who had been converted during that first year, were all gathered at a very special restaurant for a very special celebration. The restaurant was La Hacienda de los Morales. The occasion was the celebration of the young church’s 100th baptism. There was something unusual about the celebration, though: at that point in time we had only seen about 90 people baptized! Nevertheless, the evangelist and leadership group decided that this should be a celebration of faith, not of sight! And so we celebrated that 100th baptism, a few weeks before it actually happened!

Such was the spirit of the Mexico City mission. As we have said in a previous post, the Mexico City Church was planted by a group of missionaries who were deeply convinced about God’s vision for that city. One of our favorite scriptures was Proverbs 29: 18 “Where there is no vision, the people perish”. We didn’t have the Message Bible in those days, but I like the way it renders this passage:

If people can’t see what God is doing,
they stumble all over themselves;
But when they attend to what he reveals,
they are most blessed.

As we approach the beginning of a new year, actually of a new decade, let us try to capture not an abstract vision for our lives, or one that is the product of our own ambitions or imagination. Rather, let us focus on what God is doing and attend to what He is trying to teach us.

May you be richly blessed in 2010!

J De Anda

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In a previous post we gave our readers a study that they could do as a personal devotional. Hopefully it encouraged you to think more about missions. Today we bring you part 2 of the study…
(Read the article)

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