Heart Tracks - Living In Nowheresville

    "Living in 'Nowheresville.' "  That's where pastor and writer Greg
Matte said Moses called home as he tended sheep on the backside of the
desert.  His father-in-law's sheep, not his.  It's a place where far
more often than not, I've found myself living.  Maybe you have as well. 
Maybe you are now.
      Maybe you can describe this place.  A place where you feel you're
unseen, unnoticed, perhaps unappreciated.  Pastor's can certainly be
familiar with this place, but so can husbands, wives, children,
employee's, really, just about everyone.  Nowheresville is a lonely
place, and it's also a place where our enemy, if he can catch us
unawares, will seek to convince us that it's God who put us there, and
that He's as unaware of us as everyone else seems to be. The first may
well be true, He may well have placed you there.  He surely did so with
Moses, but the second will always be amongst the devil's great lies. 
There is never a place, never can be a place, where He does not see us,
is not aware of us, and more, does not join us in.
      It is natural, and human, to want to be noticed, appreciated, and
yes, applauded.  Yet, we live in a fallen world, one that will only be
too happy to take and use us, and then discard us when its finished. 
There may be some recognition along the way, but it's fleeting.  The
culture has always been and always will be a "what have you done for me
lately" one.  The church, to our shame, has not been immune.  We can be
as gulity, even moreso, than the culture we seek to reach, because,
tragically, that culture, in so many ways, has had more influence upon
us, than we upon it.  Even so, when living in Nowheresville, there is
still opportunity to see and be swept up into the glory of God.
     Moses, chief citizen of Nowheresville, saw that glory in the
burning bush.  Hagar, driven out of the camp of Abraham by a jealous
Sarah, sat in the desert waiting to die, when the Father came to her,
revealed Himself to her, and let her know that He was not finished with
her yet.  In Genesis 16:13, she calls Him, "the God who sees me......I
have seen the One who sees me."  In her own Nowheresville, she beheld
His glory.  Yet such encounters are not confined to the persons of the
Bible.  Singer and speaker Sheila Walsh, having suffered an emotional
breakdown, checked herself into a sanitarium.  Her marriage had
crumbled, her ministry seemed ended, and in the small room where she
changed into a hospital gown, she felt totally alone, forgotten, and
unnoticed.  Yet at that moment, a nurse she had not seen before, and
would not see again throughout her stay, entered that room and said,
"Sheila, the Shepherd knows where you are."  She too beheld the glory of
God.  So may you and I.  So must you and I.
     In his autobiography, "The Heavenly Man," Brother Yun, a Chinese
believer who had suffered terrible suffering in a number of Chinese
prisons for his faith, could say in the midst of it all, "I am nothing. 
Christ is everything."  For anyone who has read that book, there can be
no denying that Yun saw, so many times, the glory of God, and always, in
his own particular Nowheresville.  I have written in my prayer journal,
that I would have the strength to be nothing.  To live, willingly, in
Nowheresville.  Unknown. Unnoticed.  Perhaps to everyone, but never to
Him.  To see, in that place, His glory, to be swept up into it.  Living
in Nowheresville....with Him. Blessings,
Pastor O