Island Change

As we prepared this weekend to get away from metro manila for a few days, i found myself getting disproportionately excited. I realized, it has been more than 8 years since i have gone this long without getting on a plane to go somewhere. It has been almost 4months for me being in the same place without leaving. Sleeping in the same bed without change and i started to realize how much of a routine travel has been for me. Of course we are comforted by our routines but at the same time we are limited by them. If i always take the same route to work, the route is not something i have to think about (that comforts me) but if i never deviate from that route i will also miss a part of the city that is both worth knowing and accessible to me. i realize that my challenge has been to sit still. To stay put in one place and to serve and continue in one course, working at one set of tasks with one group of people. i have grown from it. it has been said that the one constant in life is change. And that is true. The change for me of late has been to embrace a life with less change. And i am learning to be content with that too. We took a short inter-island flight to the island of Boracay. It is everything the brochures said it would be, And this change has meant a respite from the pain and struggle of urban poverty. After a day and a half i am sunburned and revived. I enjoyed several hot showers, air conditioning in my room, and cable television, all for the first time in months. and i am content. Like paul, i think i can say that i am learning to be content in little and in much. Yesterday, i ate Japanese food as the sun went down with my feet in the sand of perhaps the most beautiful beach i have ever seen. I watched a Manchester united soccer match on television (satellite) and ate fresh pineapple for breakfast on the white sands of Boracay. What a contrast to the urban poverty and rush of living in metro manila. It occurs to me that each change, if it is in response to following Jesus, will bring its own beauty and its own pain. when we head back tomorrow i will be equally content to be back on my bamboo bed and severing alongside the people of God in the work of God in manila.
If you are interested i also wrote down some more of my thoughts on community this weekend. The paper is posted on our manila team website. Check it out on the link that says "papers".

manila.tampaunderground.com