by Elizabeth Carmichael

Dear Charis Family,

Please enjoy this benediction towards authenticity, from the Irish leadership scholar Scott Evans (2014, Failing from the front, pp. 150-152).  This week a dear friend and colleague has passed away suddenly, probably from toxic shock, where she was too remote to receive medical attention in time.  Please be remembering her family and the field workers who are impacted by her sudden death.  She is the mother of four children, the youngest of whom was still nursing.  She gave others all she had and I know she is with Jesus.

Thank you for praying this prayer over her family, her husband, field workers, local believers in Ebony, and yourselves this month.

Much love,
Elizabeth Carmichael

There are two competing stories vying to become reality in our world. The story of the night sky of our broken world and the story of God who seeks to bring about the dawn.  In the story that God is telling, may your name follow the “Meanwhile” as you take your place among the failures and fools who had the audacity to believe that God could use as imperfect a person as “me.”  May you be a star that He sends to light the dark sky as we wait for His Son to rise.

May you have the honesty to share all the reasons, doubts and insecurities you have when He comes to meet you at your burning bush and, when He renders them powerless and irrelevant, may you have the courage to accept His invitation to “Come.”

May you embrace the truth that your heart is a wellspring of life and embrace the challenge of not always listening to it because it can be deceitful and hard to understand.

Before you pull out your map and define your journey to the destination God has called you to, may you have a listening and discerning ear to discover where you are right now.  In a world where the dagger in the hands of the people around you may be more dangerous than the sword in the hand of the giant in front of you, may you know that neither have the power to tell you who you are.

When those with daggers seek to stab your heart, may you know the love of God that will keep you from being [mortally] wounded.  In the aftermath of the bears and lions that have come out of the woods, may you not despise them and the ways in which they have shaped and trained you.  May they have prepared you for the battle of a lifetime.

In the midst of suffering, may you find the comfort of God and, if you should only experience His silence or absence, may He give you the strength to endure.

When God moves and speaks in your life, may you build an altar to celebrate who He is and what He has done.

When your alter is built, may you move on to the next place He is calling you to, lest your alter become your idol.

When feelings of forsakenness, fear and free-fall come, may you sing and keep going.

When you fail, and you will, may you find the God of redemption waiting for you in exile.

May the roads you walked in solitude, shame, and defeat one day be the paths that lead others in beautiful, victorious exodus.

May you be generous as a lover of God and a leader of people, may you have the courage to be vulnerable, the humility to be honest and the confidence to fail from the front.  May you give others the gift of your humanity, fallibility and foolishness that they may know the God who uses crooked sticks to draw straight lines.