Lift Up Your Eyes

Stories in the Missional Journey of Bruce & Deborah Crowe

Streams in the Desert

As the weather warms, Deb and I are resuming our walks. It hasn’t rained in a few weeks and the paths are looking quite weathered. I found the cracks interesting, the outer crusty layers breaking open. It’s as if the earth below is preparing to receive, opening up for the coming spring rains.

I’ve been enjoying a season of comfort, and increasing peace. Despite the challenges of carrying Brent through this past year, the ongoing atrophy of a war that continues to hurt those we care about, and processing my mom’s cancer diagnosis, hope is emerging again in the depths of our soul.

Outwardly, I think I still look like this cracking dirt.

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;

    the desert shall rejoice and blossom;

Here is your God…. He will come and save you

Isaiah 35:1,4

When Jesus came, he brought heaven’s rain upon the arid hearts of humanity. The thirsty, they will drink, and be made new again. Today, God’s Spirit is our promise. We are filled, and strengthened. Though we are weighed down, sometimes with burdens beyond our abilities to bear, I’m grateful for the hope in the coming rains.

I’m not yet blossoming, I still hurt. I’m not quite rejoicing, I still grieve. Yet, my heart is open to the kindness and mercy of my God. Fill us, Lord, we who are parched, thirsty, and opening up to you today.

Difficult News

My mom has terminal cancer. What was originally thought to be isolated has spread in her bones. The doctors suggest that optimally, she could live a few more years.

A few months prior the diagnosis, Deb and I were talking during a walk together about the future. We’ve been spared, comparatively, a lot of human suffering. We’ve witnessed loss in other families, neighbors, and friends. Yet, for a large family, at least on my side, with sprawling uncles, aunts, and cousins to fill two barns, most of my adult life has been spared the work of death and loss.

If I’m honest, I began to process my mom’s potential departure from this life when she told me last summer that the doctors found a lump. It took so long for the dreaded Canadian healthcare system to get her in for scans. Too long. My mom, I could tell, wasn’t itching to really know the truth, choosing to believe it would just all be dealt with by the professionals. Something inside me, however, began hurting, and praying for her.. and for my own soul that was gearing up for the possibility.

I’ve always been close to my mom. All of us four siblings have cherished her as our biggest cheerleader. She’s always been in our corner, believing in us, even if she was shaking her head. I’m not blogging a eulogy today, but I am trying to embrace the journey of grief. We will all lose loved ones. Even our Jesus wept and grieved over the loss of friends. I remember the first time I heard the phrase, “Feel your feelings.” I found it odd, even offensive at first. How could faith stoop to such a low estate as our own feelings?

Today, however, my faith is becoming content with pain. My faith is growing in ways I wouldn’t have ever believed in the past, when it simply denied my circumstance and clung to outcomes out of fear. Faith in the resurrection love of Jesus is comforting in the valley, the dining table is set in dark places. I will not fear.

I’m grateful that my mom is a believer, and this journey for her will undoubtedly be the most treasured one of all as she lives into the moments that we so easily take for granted. I pray our whole family learns to love more authentically and hurt the way we should now, so that we can be truly liberated in the freedom that removes death’s sting. To die before we die. To let go before we’re forced to surrender. This is the stuff of formation, and I choose grief, by faith, knowing I am truly comforted when my heart is truly broken.

Praying for wisdom for our family in Romania, to value her remaining time, plan the way we should with trips to Canada, and for the Lord’s mercy to overshadow us all. May she be granted many sweet days, months and years. I love you, mom.

Made for the Storm

Light is a metaphor that Jesus used for both himself (Jn 8:12) and those who follow him (Matt 5:14). Our light in this world, comes from the Light of Life.

Over the years, we’ve huddled around the nature of light as a family, naming our Cafe and mission space Lighthouse as we planted a welcoming, culture-shifting space in the center of our Ukrainian village. That was 10 years ago! Back then, the main street was littered with little bars, and an eery sense of despair.

We were ridiculed at first by local bar owners. Never, they said, would a non-alcoholic place survive. Yet, over time, the bars all closed and competing cafes followed our path. A dirty old nightclub remained a place where midnight fights broke out and bad things happened. One day, the club’s owner, a well-educated man, asked me for coffee. “I need to ask you something,” he said, as we sat in the corner of our cafe. “Do you think I should close my club?” A month later, he started a new business selling purified water.

Light isn’t just a message. It’s embodied hope and meaningful influence. Light directs the heart toward a world that should be, and in Christ, can be, “as it is in heaven.” Light isn’t just about instructing souls how to get to heaven, but introducing neighbors to the humanity of God in the suffering Jesus, who hurts with, and for his creation. Light looks beyond the present trials, and sees the resurrected Christ who is coming again. 

Though we long for Christ’s final return. He is, through the Spirit, in a sense, returning already, through us. The kingdom doesn’t fall out of the sky. Jesus says it’s reality is already within each of us. The darker the hour, the stormier the sea, kingdom’s light gathers the attention of the hopeless. A lighthouse was made for the storm, not for sunny days. 

This past month, we’ve been praying about pioneering another Lighthouse missional space in the heart of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. By God’s mercy, we already have close to 80% of the funding to lease out the property and launch! Yet, my heart is burdened for Lighthouse in Ukraine. We are in need of some financial support this year (about $800mo) to pay all our bills, and keep the cafe open. It doesn’t have the weekly ministries like it used to have before the war, but it continues to hold space for neighbors, friends, and provides a space for some gatherings (e.g. Soldier’s wives meeting for trauma care).

Would you pray for this place of light and love? A friend just returned from visiting her family in the town, and said she was shocked at the level of depression, and hopelessness since her last visit a year ago. The seeming unending war with Russia is taking its toll on the emotional, spiritual and mental health of our friends there. We believe this place was made for shining, especially in dark and stormy seas.

Bruce & Deb

Pausing to Reflect

Positioning our lives to hear the murmuring brook.

For the traveler, the known, worn path is a place of predictability and a sense of safety. Filled with fellow travelers, it’s also a place of distraction and noise. Kierkegaard reminds us that to address the divided heart, the will that is caught wrestling within temporal and eternal realities, the traveler must venture off the common, busy path. There, away from the crowd and temporal noise, the traveler ventures into the solitary forest of contemplation to address inner, eternal longings. “We interrupt our busy lives to put on the quiet of contemplation,” says the Danish philosopher.

When the traveler positions themself away from the crowded highway and bravely departs from the familiar path, a reward is given. The reward, says Kierkegaard, is the “festival garment” of self-awareness.

Self-awareness is impossible without reflection. Reflection, by nature, requires the traveler to stop and stand still for a while. Like a murmuring brook, which flows alongside life’s busy highway, “If you go buried in your thoughts, if you are busy, then you do not notice it all in your passing.” But if the traveler moves into the forest, and pauses awhile, he gives space for the soul to breathe. Then, the murmuring is soon heard, along with many other unspeakable, and invitational sounds.

The eternal, deep longing of the soul arises out of the quiet place, almost introducing itself to the weary traveler.

To venture off the highway then is to pause, to quiet the soul, and allow for the quieting, restorative work of the Spirit. Like rushing past a mirror, Kierkegaard says our busyness serves to mute our eternal moorings. Deceived by the spellbinding nature of the temporal highway, the traveler remains wholly unaware of the deep, potentiality just beneath the surface.

Our perceived paradigm of reality begins to shift as we pause to embrace solitude; we are much more than earthly highway travelers. As Chardin poignantly notes:

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Jesus, we read, regularly ventured away from the crowds, off the beaten paths. Though he lived among the crowds, he was often far from them as well. He valued the murmuring brook with its eternal, nourishing effect. For the wearied traveler, the invitation to solitude and reflection restores the soul as our temporal realities attune to our eternal makeup. As we clothe ourselves with the garments of contemplation, may we experience the nourishing living water that restores our souls. Then, we can re-enter the busy highway of life, filled and at peace, beyond even our understanding (Phil 4:7).

So we enter a new year. We are told to look ahead, and yet, to reflect is to look behind, and within. It is said that the youthful traveler hurries past their experiences en route for new adventures ahead. The mature traveler, however, wisely pauses to gather up the experiences, recognizing their value for the road ahead.

What might you need to gather up from this past year?

The pause, to put on our festival garments of reflection, is to see life as a gift, not a race. Life is a gift of formation, growth, and being made whole. As eternal beings, this takes time, intention, and faith. Any fool can get lost in the crowd. It takes a courageous soul to seek rhythms of solitude, daring to live an integrated life along the murmuring brook.

To all my fellow travelers, be encouraged! You are loved. Seek the One who loves you. “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love…” Zephania 3:17. This is the treasure that our souls seek, to be at rest in this life, not only in the next.

Footnotes: Citations taken from Kierkegaard’s “Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing,” pages 28-29, originally published in Danish 1847. Translation 2019 AC Beirise.

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