When I was in Rwanda last year one of my favorite parts of the experience was the amount of time I had in solitude. With no electricity everything settled down around 7 o’clock every evening. And so I read, and I read some more. For the first time ever I read strait through the gospels- Matthew, Mark, Luke and then John. I tried to spend time on the nuances and details of each writer as they gave account to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Simultaneously I began reading through the first five books of the Old Testament. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and then Deuteronomy, looking for revelation on God’s character and connections from the Old Testament to the gospels.

During that time one of the things that began to stand out to me was the power of God and the fear that he commanded. When I became a Christian in high school I could not comprehend the idea of fearing God. It made absolutely no sense to me. Love, that made sense. I hadn’t yet learned the important correlation between the two- Fear and Love. But as I was reading I was forced to revisit this idea of fearing the Lord. I remember in all of the gospels, whenever an angel would come it would be met with a strong reaction of fear. Every time. I began to think, if the sight of an angel commanded this much fear, what must it mean for the presence of God to strike fear in us.

I am continuing to learn how intimately fear and love and interconnected. In doing so God is allowing me to see more and more of who he is. The negative aspects that I first associated with God being deserving of fear have begun to dissipate. As I learn about his other characteristics, His justice, mercy and grace, that too helps me understand what a righteous fear of God is meant to look like.

Recently I have begun to think about this again. It started a few weeks ago. A short film series called NOOMA, previously working with Rob Bell, is now working on a new series with pastor/speaker Francis Chan. The first film of this series is entitled, “Fear God.” For a buck and fifteen minutes of your time you can watch it here: http://store.flannel.org/fear-god.html

A passage that Chan quotes from Psalm 111:10 stood out to me.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever!”

Hmmm.

Today I was reading through Acts. I was again struck by this idea of fear, but this time not just on an individual level but on a community level. In Acts 9, after Saul is confronted by Jesus on the road to Damascus and then subsequently baptized and sent out, he goes to Jerusalem. While in Jerusalem he connects with the disciples and then goes out into the city “preaching boldly in the name of Jesus.” Then, in Acts 9:31 it says:

“So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.”

So I wonder, have we lost an understanding of what it looks like to fear God? Are our churches built and growing upon a healthy fear of God? Not a hellfire and brimstone version, scaring people toward the cross. Rather a grounded in scripture, full view of God, humbling fear.

Probably a good question for us to ask.

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I don’t have a lot of time for an update, but am sitting at the same internet “cafe” as I did last year while in the Eastern Province. It is powered by satellite and I am currently hoping this e-mail (being typed ofline) will make it online, this will happen if my Rwandan friend can find me an extra ethernet cable. This could end up being a nice note to myself.

Under the usumption that this will infact get posted. Here is a quick update!

We arrived in Rwanda on Saturday. Sunday was spent in the capital of Kigali. We stayed at a catholic guest house and spent the morning at a local church. It was a beautiful service and I’m always appreciative of the ability of other cultures to let loose and just worship God. We got a good bite to eat for lunch and had a fairly relaxed evening preparing for our departure to the east the following morning. We arrived in the eastern district of Nyagatare Monday afternoon.  Our time has been packed since!

We have been following up on the multiple initiatives of the project including health care, education, business and pastoral training (see video in my previous post for more).

I haven’t had the time to reflect on much of what has happened yet, but plan to do so and post more details. But here are three things that are worthy of mention thus far:

1. There have been a lot of people I have seen from last time. Very encouraging. Also, some which are not here for various reasons. It has been encouraging seeing progress and growth in our absence.

2. I am working on a video for Phoenix Seminary and the various churches involved in this project. It will be used to communicate the project here in Rwanda. It’s my first time doing film on my Canon 7d so it’s been a bit hit and miss. That said I’m pretty happy with the results and eager to give you all a look at what I see here.

3. When John and I were leading a couple hour sesion with secondary school students we opened it up for the boys to ask us any questions they wanted covering litterally any topic. We got a lot of the normal goofy questions, and lots of questions about american culture. Then one of the boys asked us to comment on the 1994 genocide. It was an abrupt dose of weight to the otherwise light hearted conversation. We initially didn’t fully answer the question but about 20 minutes later God had put it on my heart to talk to the 50 or so men about the topic. My fear was that our lack of acknowledgement of the quesiton would feed into the hurt for many Rwandans which feel there has been a lack of acknowledgement of the Genocide by the rest of the world. I spoke to them first asking a simple quesiton. What do you do when someone wrongs you? The conversation lead to the topic of forgiveness at which point I was able to highlight the fact that forgiveness never comes without a cost. I talked about the true reality of what it means to be a man and that the temptation is always to meet wrong doing with wrong doing. God lead me to close the time by bringing it back to the cross. Teaching that the sin driven genocide in Rwanda was evil and horrible, it was genocide and it was not okay. And yet sin also presents itself in the smaller examples we had discussed when talking about forgivness. I told them that there was a price to pay for all of this, and that was the price Christ paid on the cross.

It went longer than I expected but it was the most intimate time I have felt with God or with anyone here. It was a blessing to be used by God to speak into such a sensitive topic. I would ask that each of you would take a moment to pray for these young men an the watering of seeds such as this. That God may build in them strength as a generation desperately trying to move past such a tragic history.

Time is up here! Hope to post more soon. Thanks for all the prayers, its been a huge blessing! Praise God!