I am all out of answers.

Kicking a glass red marble off the ice-covered back-steps, I recall the last time I wrote from this exact place...I was a Newsie... And the weather was warm.
I watch it rapidly descend to the mud below, I sigh and my impatience burdens my soul.
Oh Great Muse - inspiration of this mind that directs my wrist which holds the pen writing daily letters to You...Have You taken the winter off? Closed the doors to Your corridor for a time of rest? Have your children displeased You in such a way that You refuse to speak and direct our noses to opposite corners? Each moment of silent treatment from The Creator of the universe gets longer and longer.
It's a beating none of us can handle.

365 Days ago I gave it all to You.
12 months ago I had no place to lay my head.
1 year ago I found You are my only Home.

I write to You with this short update:
I remain joyous at the thought of Your sovereign hands.
I am not weary, Oh God. It's just the faces of those around me are being pulled further and further to the earth. Gravity has taken it's toll on my brothers' self-esteem. My sisters' look to You and come up empty handed.


I reach for my phone and see that yet another friend is seeking some words of assurance. I close it...I lower my head...

I am all out of answers.

Reveal Yourself this winter.
I am not the Physician. I am just the receptionist. Directing their tired times to the only place of rest for a weary worker.



John 6
“Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever." He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?"
Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, "Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him."
From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
"You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the Twelve.
Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."




Every time I read this I try to place myself in Simon Peter's shoes.
Christ looking at me and saying “What, Nick...aren't you gonna leave me too?”
With desperation and my stomach groaning, I open my tear filled eyes and say, “I have no where else to go...You are my only reason for living.”


I am all out of answers. The only thing I have is a hug for the broken hearted.

The words of Eternal Life come from Jesus Christ.

Seek Him in these times of sorrow.

Prayer Request.

Hey folks - I received this message from my friend Debbi Bean this morning. She is apart of the Maranatha church family in St. Albans.

"Nick will you please pray for and put my Pastor, Pastor Wright, on every prayer list you know of? he's vacationing in sc right now with family and has had a massive heart attack. they had to shock him 6 times on scene to even get him stablized and to the hospital.. last I heard he was stable and in ICU at a hospital in south carolina. but, I'm in spokane right now and am not due home until late july at the earliest. please please pray.
thanks so much"

Please keep this in your prayers as a church family is surrounding one of their leaders. May God bring their family peace and healing to Pastor Wright.And as a whole may they grow closer and stronger as a body.
Thank you all.
-Nick

This was taken from my favorite blog - On The Ground by New York Times journalist Nicholas D. Kristof

6,000 Kids Saved This Year in Rwanda

By Josh Ruxin

Josh Ruxin is the director of Rwanda Works and a Columbia University expert on public health who has spent the last few years living in Rwanda. He’s an unusual mix of academic expert and mud-between-the-toes aid worker. He has made great contributions to this blog for nearly two years. This will be his last entry.

As the media turned world attention to efforts to contain a swine flu outbreak, the headlines reminded us of the unprecedented rate at which infections can travel the globe today. Yet, over this same period, in the small corner of the world I occupy, I was reminded of the extraordinary promise that globalization holds to more rapidly disseminate solutions –- not just problems –- in public health.

On April 25, Rwanda became the first developing country in the world to launch a national immunization program against pneumococcal disease. The program will administer Wyeth Pharmaceuticals’ Prevenar®, a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV), to nearly all Rwandan children less than a year old by the end of 2009 and all Rwandan infants on a routine basis thereafter, free of charge.

This move will start saving approximately 6,000 kids’ lives per year in Rwanda. This is not just good news; it must count as a major development in global public health.

As Nick discussed in his op-ed of May 10, pneumococcal disease attracts negligible investment, making it the orphan of global health. But it is vitally important that this change, as, in his words, in the five minutes it took to read his column, at least 19 children died of pneumonia, more than died in the same period of AIDS, malaria and measles combined.

Pneumococcus is the main cause of pneumonia, which kills more children than any other single disease –- nearly one in five deaths of children under five worldwide. The bacterium can cause other life-threatening illnesses such as meningitis and sepsis; close to one million children under five years old in the developing world die every year due to these diseases. The expansion of Prevenar® use could help save up to 8 million children’s lives by 2030.

Prevenar® was first introduced in the United States in 2000. Historically, 12-15 years pass between the introduction of new vaccines in industrialized countries and their appearance in the developing world. The use of a new-generation vaccine just nine years after its debut in the U.S. and soon after its introduction in Europe was spearheaded by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), a global partnership that includes the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the World Bank, and which is funded by donor countries and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Since its founding in 2000, GAVI has worked to channel funding, optimize product availability and pricing and coordinate planning and implementation of vaccination programs in the world’s poorest countries. GAVI has also developed unique financing mechanisms, such as a financing facility for immunization, which has raised funds for vaccination campaigns through bond issuances in capital markets.

In order to ensure a sustainable future supply of pneumococcal vaccines to developing countries, GAVI recently launched the Advance Market Commitment. This aims to spur development of new vaccines by obtaining donor countries’ pledges to purchase the new vaccines, creating a viable future market. These commitments provide vaccine makers with the incentive to invest the considerable sums required to conduct research and build and allocate manufacturing capacity. Thanks to the work of GAVI, industry, governments and NGOs, Rwandans will now have the same access to the life-saving, new-generation pneumococcal vaccine currently used throughout the industrialized world.

Nine years is longer than it should take for health innovations to travel from the developed to the developing world –- as we’ve all seen, that’s certainly far longer than it takes flu viruses and other potential epidemics to traverse the globe –- but it is shorter than the amount of time required in the past. It’s also a testament to the fact that innovative approaches, undertaken in partnership by governments, industry and non-governmental organizations, can accelerate the spread of life-saving products, processes and intellectual capital to significantly improve health in the developing world.

Subscribe to Nicholas' blog!
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/

"Run in such a way as to get the prize." 1 Corinthians

9:24-27
"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.
Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize."


Our crown will last forever.
Continuing the race eliminates the possibility of disqualification.
So much of the time I feel as though I labor in vain. This passage brings me peace.
I pray that it does the same for you.
Glory to God.

Philippians is one of my favorites.

4:8-9

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you."

****

Today is Memorial Day. I am about to head out to a cookout with my friend Casey. I will be meditating on these verses and sharing them with friends.

Whatever... :)

Read the riot act to a Newsie...but keep swinging those fists.

[This was written on Sunday May 10, 2009 and was posted to my Facebook and Myspace page.]

My words have such little significance. Waiting for Your spirit to intercede.
I've washed my hands ten times now. Still a sinner, bruised, weary and each day the dirt gets thicker.
But You are...The Way, The Truth and The Life.
My soul beckons for the dust kicked from Your feet.

I never thought this winter was going to end, as I stand in disbelief of the early May breeze gracing my tanning collar bone. I am leaning on the back balcony of 2586 3rd Avenue, smoking a pipe and gathering my thoughts to the southern comfort of Lucero. The noise of the traffic fails miserably when trying to shake me of my God sent Joy. I feel that if Christ was in the neighborhood, He would be on His way over to pull up a chair and take in the beauty of life's stillness with me. When I am caught up in situations like this, I miss Luke Backus more than I could ever put into words. It's been almost a year since I have seen him, and not knowing when I will share a brew with him again is near torture.
Or take pictures of the stranger things in creation...
Or eat veggie chili when it's blazing hot out...
Or talk about how much we have learned from Rob Williamson and George Welty...
Or listen to Farewell To Fashion on repeat...
Or...I digress...are you getting the picture that he is a greater part of my heart?
A lot has happened in the last twelve months and I just want to tell Luke all about it.

To put it simple, a carpenter from Galilee wrecked shop on my life. And proved to me that I have been doing things wrong all along. His yoke is easy and His burden is lite. But I still catch myself whispering under my breath... "Can't I just do things my way?"

Surely, these hands that labor in vain can do something of worth?
Yet you prove to me, over and over that all I can bring is filthy rags compared to what flows from the tips of Your fingers - what illuminates Your embrace. I'd faint from exhaustion before I could ever prepare a meal worthy of Your lips.

This is beating the living hell out of me on a daily basis.
I strive to bring perfection.
I fail to see Your masterpiece in me.
I fight.
I fall.

Ephesians 4:28
"He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need."

Your word drives me.
But, no one can understand how much I have stolen. I fill my hands with Your righteousness hoping to replace the hearts I have broken. I have found earthly forgiveness - reflections of God's grace from the mouths of His children. Why can I not forgive myself? Is it because I made this bed by waking up hungover in others? My face is stained with remorse for the animal I once was.

How, Mighty God? Can You see beauty in me?
If You have forgiven me...then You must be the Messiah.
My ankles were chained to a spike buried deep in the ground until the earth began to quake.
Behold! Christ!
The Lion of the Tribe of Judah!

This unending cycle of self doubt may possibly continue. My heals scraping pavement in a dead run from my own salvation.

I long for the day when I stand before Your throne and none of this will matter.

Father, rid me of my works. My meaningless desire to be perfect.
And remind me that even the wind and waves obey You.
Though I'm a whore-like representation of Your kingdom.
I am still a piece of Your body.

And surely that will be enough.

Where it all begins.

I have created this blog to share with you what is on my heart.
I hope to update as often as possible.
I hope to learn from others and make some new friends.
Feel free to share this link with others.
Soon to come: I will post notes I have written on my Facebook page.

I hope you are doing well. I pray for peace on your heart.

The journey begins. :)
-Nick