April 2014 - Gina Brenna Butz

What I’ve Learned About Orlando

Post author:Gina B
Post published:April 28, 2014
Post category:transition

After just over a year in Orlando, I’ve learned a bit about my new surroundings:

1. There are not many palm trees. I thought I was moving to a tropical location, but it’s populated by pine trees (especially our area, aptly named Isle of Pines) and deciduous trees. I could believe I’m in northern Minnesota, unless I’m at the beach or Disney, where palms do grow. Ok, technically we do have a palm tree in our backyard, but it’s not natural. I thought there’d be more palms.

2. I can need my sunglasses and my windshield wipers alternately and repeatedly within the span of a few miles, as the weather here is ever-changing.

3. There are no tornado sirens here, even though there are tornadoes, so the impetus is on you, fair citizen of Orlando, to prevent your own demise.

4. There is a lot of wildlife. I am not accustomed to this, as in China there was only the occasional bird or cockroach. Here I’ve seen armadillos, snakes, raccoons, possums, deer, vultures, sand cranes, and one gator. Only one.

5. I’ve said it before, but I was told there’d be gators. I’m so disappointed. I’ve only seen one, and when I did I freaked out like a kid on Christmas.

6. I should have kept up on my Spanish. One phrase I do remember, that I’m hoping I can pull out sometime is, “Ayude! He caido y no puedo levantarme. Y estoy teniendo dolores de pecho!” One of these days, I’m going to need that, and all those years of Spanish will pay off.

7. Orlando likes to build community sub-divisions, like the Truman Show. I expect everyone to pull out of their garages at the same time and drive to work.

8. There are beautiful sunsets here. They’re so common that my standards for what constitutes a worthwhile sunset have risen quite high.

9. I still need a winter wardrobe, but for the indoors, just like in Singapore. People typically set the thermostat at 70 degrees. To me, 90 and above is shorts weather. 80 to 90 is cropped pants weather. below 80 is call for pants. Below 70 requires layers. Hence, winter wardrobe.

All in all, I like it. It’s fun to get to know a new place, to add it to our collection of places we know and love. Come on down and visit – we can sit under the pines, watch the sunset, and look for gators.

Two Battles

Post author:Gina B
Post published:April 17, 2014
Post category:faith

Two Battles – from Thailand, January 20, 2012

I’ve been trying to think of how to share what we’ve been doing this week here in Thailand (aside from trying not to get sunburned, reading Kindles by the pool, and searching in vain for Coke Zero). We’re at a conference called re-LEAF (Leadership Evaluation and Formation). It’s a time to revisit the process that God started when we all went through this conference the first time.

So how do I summarize what it is we talk about here? I thought this excerpt from The Magnificent Defeat, by Frederick Beuchner might do it. He’s talking about “The Two Battles” Forgive me if it’s a little long – I cut a lot out!:

“The first is a war of conquest . . . All our lives we fight for a place in the sun . . . we feel that we must conquer a territory in time and space that will be ours. And that is true. We must.

“What is the armor to wear in such a war? Not, certainly, the whole armor of God here but, rather the whole armor of man, because this is a man’s war against other men. In such a war, perhaps, you wear something like this: Gird your loin with wisdom . . . put on the breastplate of self-confidence . . . let your feet be shod with the gospel of success . . . above all take the shield of security . . . and the helmet of attractiveness or personality or the sword of wit.

“The other war is not the war to conquer but the war to become whole and at peace inside our skins . . . it is the war to become a human being. This is the goal we are really after and that God is really after. This is the goal that power, success, and security are only forlorn substitutes for.

“(What we must be set free from is) the darkness in ourselves that we never fully see or fully understand or feel fully responsible for, although Heaven knows we are more than a little responsible. (Paul identifies it as,) ‘I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.’ . . . The evil in ourselves as individuals is greater than the evil that we choose, and that is great enough. This is the darkness which we need to be liberated from in order to become human.

“It is for this war, not the other one, that we need the whole armor of God . . . He is the truth about who man really is, about what it means to be really human, and about who God really is . . . In the great war of liberation, it is imperative to keep in touch always with the only one who can liberate.

“Even if we do not find our place in the sun, or not quite the place we want, or a place where the sun is not as bright as we always dreamed that it would be, this is not the end because this is not really the decisive war even though we spend so much of our lives assuming that it is. The decisive war is the other one – to become fully human, which means to become compassionate, honest, brave . . . (this) is the war which every man can win who wills to win because it is the war which God also wills us to win and will arm us to win if only we will accept His armor.”

So I guess we are talking about the battles in our ourselves, and where we are putting our energy – are we still putting it into fighting the first battle? Or are we learning more and more to trust in God and His armor to become who we were really meant to be in Him?

What about you? Which battle are you fighting?

Weekly Word – God is God

Post author:Gina B
Post published:April 1, 2014
Post category:faith word of the year

I swear I was not living under a rock for the past decade or so – just 6,000 miles away, give or take. Somehow, during all that time, I managed to live in blissful ignorance of the conversations, arguments, and divides that are taking place in the church today. Either that, or I came back just in time to witness them. Lucky me!

I don’t share much about my personal views on controversial issues here, mostly because I don’t feel led to do so. I watch, though, as others, particularly in the past week, draw more and more lines in the sand intended to separate one faction from another.

It’s discouraging to see, and I can’t help feeling like our energy is being wasted on all these arguments and not on leading people to the Kingdom. It’s enough for me to just say, “Oh Lord Jesus, come now.”

So I stopped last week and said, “God, what does it look like for me to stay in this mess of a church and abide in you?” And the thought that came to mind was, “God is God.”

He is greater than all this. He doesn’t sit afar wringing His hands, hoping we get it right. He is at work, even in all this.

And that’s enough for me. In the end, all will be clear. All theological arguments will be answered. I can believe whatever I want, but in the end there will be truth and maybe I will be right and maybe I will be wrong. I just hope I can say that I lived in such a way that I drew more people to Him. I hope I am known more for who and how I love than what I am against. I hope He will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” I hope He will be pleased.

So today I will abide in this: God is God.