Leave for India Today---Please pray!

“Lord of grace, The world is before me this day, and I am weak and fearful--but I look to You for strength. If I venture forth alone, I stumble and fall--but on the Beloved's arms I am firm as the eternal hills. If left to the treachery of my heart, I shall shame Your name--but if enlightened, guided, upheld by Your Spirit, I shall bring You glory. Be my arm to support, my strength to stand, my light to see, my feet to run, my shield to protect, my sword to repel, my sun to warm.”

Sudden India Trip

This past Tuesday afternoon I (Richard) learned that that one of the team members for the current India trip was to have emergency eye surgery for a detached retina and would not be able to go. Shortly thereafter I was called to see if I could go as a replacement, since I have a ten year visa for such last minute situations, I checked with the elder team and pastoral team. The responses were unanimously positive that I should go since they consider it is part of our commitment to India. So with their input I have accepted the trip as an assignment that the Lord would have for CBC.

There will be about 15 airport transfers on at least four carriers, so with air travel what it is these days these transfers are a matter of prayer. If you would like to be a part of a quickly constructed prayer team for this trip please reply to this email and let Toni know. Also if you would like to have a financial part, please indicate on your gift: India.

Thanks for understanding that this is part of who we are at CBC. We are about reaching our neighborhoods and our neighbors half way around the world! In some ways the Lord is giving us a real life application of some things we discussed in a morning service several weeks ago, when we observed in the life of Hannah that God uses the unexpected and difficult as tools to:

1. Draw us to God as the only solution
2. Craft an honest desire for total surrender
3. Remove prideful self consciousness
4. Produce an engaged faith
5. Cause a believing expectancy
6. Generate a constant mindfulness of God
7. Move us towards “The Big Give”

In the same message I shared this “Puritan Prayer” and I would ask that you pray this prayer for me the next two weeks. “Lord of grace, The world is before me this day, and I am weak and fearful--but I look to You for strength. If I venture forth alone, I stumble and fall--but on the Beloved's arms I am firm as the eternal hills. If left to the treachery of my heart, I shall shame Your name--but if enlightened, guided, upheld by Your Spirit, I shall bring You glory. Be my arm to support, my strength to stand, my light to see, my feet to run, my shield to protect, my sword to repel, my sun to warm.”

“Dem Dry Bones”

Your toe bone connected to your foot bone,
Your foot bone connected to your ankle bone,
Hear the word of the Lord!

Unimagined deep ache in all “dem bones.” Feeling every bone these days. Two more to go: May 9 & 30. Sabbatical little over a week away. Doing a tour of Anne of Green Gables on Prince Edwards Island May 20.

Received a prayer note from a little girl we have never met, who attends a church we have never attended, but who talks to a Physician we know and trust. Now that brings encouragement to “Dem Bones.”

Proverbs 16:24, Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

Thanks Abigail

Toni, I thought this might make you smile- drawn and dictated by 5 year old Abigail for her Sunday School prayer board.

Tough First Night

Expecting the side effects to be more manageable with the new set of chemo drugs, Toni has had her "toughest" first night after chemo. We thought of the Psalmist.

Hear my prayer, O Lord; let my cry come to you! Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress! Incline your ear to me; answer me speedily in the day when I call! For my days pass away like smoke, and my bones burn like a furnace. My heart is struck down like grass and has withered; I forget to eat my bread. Because of my loud groaning my bones cling to my flesh. I am like a desert owl of the wilderness, like an owl of the waste places; I lie awake; I am like a lonely sparrow on the housetop. Ps 102:1-7, ESV

Our Littler Friends are Praying

We got this recently and wanted to share it with you! We have received many over the months to gladden our hearts! Proverbs 12:25, “Anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad.” ESV