HOLD THAT PLANE!

Well, the Hughes family re-created some scenes from the cinematic masterpiece Home Alone. That's right, we were the LAST people on both our plane leaving from Newark and our plane leaving from Houston. The first one was because we arrived late, the second...well, we were pressed for time but we decided that a stop at Wendy's was important.

Now, the frenzied dash for the plane stood in contrast to the glory of listening to praise music on my ipod while flying above the clouds. Talk about the glory of the Lord!

We arrived in Guatemala around 1:30 and got settled in at Lauren's house. Her street is VERY STEEP. Now, I have done the BIGGEST LOSER workout DVDs, but I'm going to be honest--walking her street tires me out!

All throughout today we felt God saying...I am with you. His glory was revealed in the beautiful landscape of the country. Personally, I love volcanoes. Love them. A few years ago I was disappointed when Mt. St. Helen's failed to erupt. Gerber, another missionary with Mission Impact, who picked us up, told us that he and some friends hiked to the top of the volcano (a 5 hour trip for fit people...that would take me days!) I now have a new goal: get fit enough to bring some people back here and hike that volcano!

The majesty of the volcanoes here is really beyond description. To me, seeing the clouds wrapped around the top of the volcano just looks to me like what it must have looked like to the Israelites while Moses was meeting with God on the mountain. Of course, those clowns were busy worshipping gold cows every two seconds. When I make fun of them, God like to point out to me that we are often like those Israelites. Worshipping the "golden cows" in our lives while missing the all-encompassing glory that is literally standing right in front of us in the person of Jesus Christ. We long for beauty and yet somehow so often miss the beauty of our Savior. God pointed out to me today in Colossians 1:17 that "in Him all things hold together." The same hand that raised that volcano holds the unborn baby, the poor and downtrodden, marriages, churches, ministries, countries. We so often miss that and like the Israelites seek to make "golden cows" in an attempt to fix things, when we need to realize that God is the one that holds things together not us! We attempt to serve two masters while saying we only want to serve the Lord. If we put half the time into serving the Lord that we do serving ourselves, can you just imagine the possibilities?

Psalm 86:11-12 says: Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth; give ME AND UNDIVIDED HEART that I may fear your name. I will praise you, O Lord with ALL MY HEART. I will glorify your name forever!"

The volcano reminds us that we don't have an UNDIVIDED HEART towards God. We look at God with one eye and fashion golden cows with another. It is too easy to lose sight of what's important. I pray that all of our eyes can be opened to this truth that we may worship the LORD with ALL of our heart!

Tomorrow we will be going to an all-girls school and working with the kids. We'll blog about that experience tomorrow night!

God bless!