A Philosophical Question

If a pipe bursts in the wall and there’s no one there to hear it, does it still turn the basement into a swimming pool? Yes. That’s why we’re thankful that when a pipe burst Tuesday at Casa Pátria, twenty minutes before honeymooners were due to arrive, Debbie was standing only a few feet away, heard it pop, and watched water begin to gush onto the floor. She turned off the water, diverted the honeymooners across the street to Casa Joaquina which was mercifully unoccupied and we spent the following forty-eight hours fixing plumbing, finishing just in time for the following guests. God doesn’t eliminate all the difficulties from the lives of His kids--what good would we be if He did?--but He’s a very present help in trouble and often handles us with kid gloves. Praise Him.

It’s a long way to Lisbon from Southern California so it’s no wonder Jerry was out of sorts when he arrived Thursday with his wife Susan for ten days at Casa Joaquina. But in his weakened state he didn’t know what to make of the Portuguese man gesticulating and remonstrating from the doorway until he recognized his computer in the man’s hand and the man himself as the taxi-driver who had dropped them off twenty minutes earlier. Jerry had left the computer in the back seat. The driver hadn’t noticed either until he picked up two young men who very quickly—inexplicably—asked him to stop and hopped out carrying a laptop they hadn’t had when they’d entered. “Wait a minute, that’s not yours!” he’d said, and wrested it away. Then he’d made his way back to Casa Joaquina—an heroic effort in its own right, given the labyrinth of one-way streets and unavailability of parking—in order to bestow upon Jerry the computer he had yet to miss. “Nem toda a gente é má,” (Not everyone is bad) the driver said in explanation of his benevolence. Not every Portuguese taxi driver is so gallant either, to be sure, as a number of our overcharged guests will attest, so it pays to make sure the meter is running, but kindnesses like these should not go unheralded.

Blessed week.

The Shaping of Things to Come

Please don’t conclude from my long absence here that we no longer need your prayers. We need them at least as much as ever. Debbie and I continue to pray hard about the form our ministry here in Lisbon ought to take. Our passion for bringing the Good News of God’s love to this culture where it has been largely forgotten is being fueled by Australians Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch through their book The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church which is encouraging us to think creatively about introducing Jesus to people who don’t know Him. Praise God for His promise to direct us. Please ask Him to raise up people to partner with us in ministry.

Drex and I found out yesterday it takes just under two minutes to ride a mountain bike like a maniac from the Castle of St. George at the top of Lisbon through the Alfama, the precipitous, cobbled and crumbling old fisherman’s quarter, down to the Tagus River. UK biking icon Steve Peat won Lisboa Downtown (lisboadowntown.com—cute video! See if you can find Drex in the tree behind the throne.) for the fifth consecutive year, then, when given the last word by the master of ceremonies, said, in summing up the sentiments of his disaffected contemporaries, “Let’s get drunk!”

On a more wholesome note, Drex and I are reading Rascal, the eponymous tale of a pet racoon and his boy, set in early 20th century northern Illinois and Wisconsin. Author Sterling North so charmingly evokes the ethos of the place and time I keep expecting my grandfather to pedal around the bend with a string of catfish dangling from his handlebars.

Good books, warm spring days festooned with flowers, the companionship of the Holy Spirit; God communicates with us in lots of different ways. May He give us ears to hear and eyes to see this week.

Thank you for praying for us.