Fullness of Time

Got this pic here. Jason Upton is coming to Alberta. I've never heard Jason live. I've heard a couple of his tunes. Sounds to me, like he's downloading and sharing secrets of the Father's heart.

This picture reminds me of the single and double rainbows God has given me at key moments this last year and a half. I think some of those pics are scattered throughout my archives. This past year, while on a sabatical from work, under the arches of various rainbows, God gave me these four parameters:

1. Three words: discover, develop, and deploy kingdom leaders
2. Something to do with three million dollars by year end 2006
   
3. Look forward to meeting 10,000 young kingdom leaders
   
4. First: move my family into the mountains of Canmore, Alberta

We have moved to Canmore.

Those three key words: discover, develop, and deploy - surfaced after writing many note pads full of vision and ideas over many hours amidst stacks of books in coffee shops - wincing at my laptop computer screen various mornings at 2 am - sticky notes all over my Bible - sitting there beside 20 other books at a time, wide open and marked - note pads scattered everywhere - scratching my head - rubbing my eyes - coming close to something. I would write and write all of my ideas and dreams, circles, lines, names, different colours of ink, global issues (some glimpses of which you see in my blog archives, much I didn't write publically) - sometimes I felt like I was scratching so close to something. Sometimes I couldn't even write down what I was concluding. I'd throw the pen down in frustration. It all seemed too abstract, not nailed down to earth into anything substantial. Then I'd read the next days headlines!

Most importantly, out of all that digging, I kept the three words: discover, develop and deploy. They were the first three stars in a constellation of meaning that would continue to come clearer with time... words falling like dew upon sacred thoughts.

A few weeks ago, during my first bizzare week in the oil and gas industry, a new aquaintance - a friend of a friend - recommened Joel C. Rosenberg's 2006 book "Epicenter: why the current rumblings in the Middle East will change your future". The next morning I ordered the book from Amazon (along with two of Joel's novels) which arrived a week and a half ago.

At first I thought it was just ironic that I would be asked a month and a half ago to work as a VP of Investment Relations for a good Christian man with 40 years in the Canadian oil and gas industry (my boss and I know both know my main responsibility here is to pray for him and watch his back). This past week, leafing through Epicenter, I thought it was even more ironic that Joel writes about, among other things, oil and gas in Israel.

This past Friday, I was flying to Halifax to share with University students and young professionals there some of the secrets of the kingdom of God. I took Epicenter with me to read on the plane. Between Calgary and Ottawa, I read the first two chapters of Epicenter. I closed the book, looked out into the clouds and wondered if I should meet this guy Joel Rosenberg. I'd only heard of him two weeks earlier. But, who am I to ever sit down and chat with a guy who walks fluently amidst international dignitaries? Why do I even have the desire to be amidst people who walk in such places?

Looking out that window God reminded me of the verse of scripture he gave my mom when I was born from I Samuel 2, "He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor." I was flooded with memories: I remembered year's ago, the time I walked into a hotel lobby in Minneapolis and was bear-hugged by a stranger and ended up becoming instant friends with this Apache Indian Chief, Geronimo's grandson, who had recently found Jesus. And the time I met Stephen Harper, then leader of the Canadian opposition, on a similar plane. I thought, "If God would have me carry Chief in my heart and give Prime Minister Stephen Harper a book of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's on a plane like this then anything is possible. Maybe God will bring Joel and I together sometime in the future for kingdom purposes. You alone know Lord God Almighty."

With that I dove into reading chapter three of Epicenter entilted "Connecting the Dots" wherein Joel writes:

Thus, as December unfolded and I recovered from the initial shock of Netanyahu not running, I began to assess my options. I was still running November Communications, the consulting company I had formed after the Forbes campaign to help business and political leaders "discover, develop, and drive their message."

What!? All three core words in one missional sentence: Joel's words - discover, develop, drive. My words - discover, develop, deploy. My "deploy" and Joel's "drive" seem interchangable. I closed the book and looked out the window again - smiling - knowing I am being whispered sacred secrets and yet still have no idea where all this is going. It feels like things are coming so quickly that they are already happening. The present future. Speaking forward and watching it unfold as it is spoken - anticipating one moment and then realizing it all in the next breath. It's humbling to be called a prophet when everything is happening faster than one can get it out.

Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.
John 4:23

I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.
John 5:25

I walked into the office this morning thinking of all these things and right away my boss invited me to grab a coffee and come into his office and sit down. As I stirred and sipped some brew, I was invited to read an email just received from a guy who my boss first met on the phone yesterday, a guy who my boss has been invited to meet later this week, a guy (as I'm reading his email) who just so happens to be heading to Israel this weekend to meet with the Prime Minister there. I stopped sipping.

I couldn't help but laugh. I guess I'd better finish reading Epicenter so I can give it to my boss.

For some reason, this morning at 6:00 am, I thought to myself, "I'd better bring my passport with me to the office today. You just never know what a day is going to bring."

Just as I am putting the finishing touches on this post I take a brief break to open the book sitting beside me (Londonistan) to page 125 and glance down and read:

Israel is presented in the worst possible light by people who display an eagerness to believe that all its actions are malign, even where the facts clearly refute such assumptions. When Israel went into Jenin in 2002 to root out terrorists, the British media virtually without exception described the operation as a massacre, with hugely inflated figures of hundreds of dead Palestinians. Yet the facts were that only fifty-two Palestinians died, of whom the vast majority were armed men, and no fewer than twenty-three Israeli soldiers. But the false impression of a massacre, which ran in the press for days, has settled in the British psyche as a fact....

But probably the greatest single reason for the obsessive and unbalanced focus on Israel is the prejudice and hostility of the BBC's reporting. Unlike newspapers, the BBC is trusted as a paradigm of fairness and objectivity. In fact, it views the world from a default position on the left. And since it regards this as the political center of gravity, it cannot acknowledge its own bias. The BBC is thus a perfectly closed thought system.

Hmmmm. Thus my digging continues....