Welcome to Florida

It was tight, very tight, but last night, after travelling for almost 24 hours, I arrived in Fort Walton Beach, Fl, before being whisked away to Panama City, Fl. My plane navigated the circuit for landing as two airforce jets screamed past below us and scrambled onto the landing strip before disapearing into a crowd of similar fighters. Sedately and almost comically, my small plane landed smoothly and taxied to the opposite side of the airfield. Welcome to the U.S.!

Earlier in the day I had to run from terminal 2, to terminal 4 to make a connection to Dallas. Thanks to some pretty rough air over the Pacific we were late in, and then as seems to be standard for me, my luggage was one of the very last onto the carousel. I was still waiting for luggage 5 minutes before I was supposed to be boarding my connection. I still don't know how it happened, but running, resigned to the fact that there was no way, I made it through the full body xray scans, and with boots still under my arm squeezed through the doors as they tried to lock them.

So, I reckon I should get a recognition of prior learnng credit for this training. Watch out Amazing Race, here I come.

I am here to do some Security and Safety Training with World Vision, a requirement for working in the countries for which I am responsible, but particularly Afghanistan and Pakistan. So over the next 5 days I will be 'learning' what to do in the event of... you dream it up and they probably have too.

Sometimes You Just have to Jump

I remember arriving in Sri Lanka as a young kid and “helping” my Dad build furniture for our house. He taught me how to handle a hammer - how to build and how to paint. I wanted to be just like him. In my Salvation Army Officership I would have been proud to be just like him. I wished I could be like him, but I never could, he is an amazing Pastor, I am not! I have my own gifts and abilities but I can’t measure myself against my Dad.

There have been others that have influenced my life and my ministry; people I have copied, people I have wished I could be like. At the same time, others have told me to be like them – these people made me feel like who I am was just not quite good enough! (My Dad never made me feel like that.) But sometimes, I did compare; sometimes I did take their critique to heart; sometimes, I did measure myself, and try to be like ‘them’.

A rabbi named Zusya died and went to stand before the judgment seat of God. As he waited for God to appear, he grew nervous thinking about his life and how little he had done. He began to imagine that God was going to ask him, "Why weren't you Moses, or why weren't you Solomon, or why weren't you David?" But when God appeared, the rabbi was surprised. God simply asked, "Why weren't you Zusya?"

In the last few months my ministry has taken an unexpected turn. I find myself in an appointment that is simultaneously fulfilling and overwhelming. The writer Annie Dillard wrote: “You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.” At the moment I feel like my wings are only partly formed and that I am still in partial free-fall, but I am also feeling energised by the clear, fresh, icy wind blowing against me – but I feel like me!

The lessons my family taught (and teach) me and the qualities I have seen in others continue to influence who I am – but right now I feel like God would see Daryl. God designed, equipped and taught Daryl to be a partner in the ministry of transformation and an ambassador of reconciliation. (The example of my parents and the encouragement of my wife and daughter bear witness to God's equipping.) So, (for now) World Vision is the agent through which I get to partner with God in this - God’s latest appointment.

Victor Hugo wrote: “Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet”. This unexpected (and still scary) turn is just the latest divine-detour that is helping me to define my dream and shaping me to be the person God designed me to be. Right now God would recognise me from God’s own blueprint. (But most days I still feel like I am faced with another cliff and another jump!)