Well friends, I am back and I am fired up!!
It is no accident that the movie “Invictus” was playing on the plane as we traveled to and from Zimbabwe. It is the compelling story of Nelson Mandela’s courageous quest for national healing. Mandela’s uncanny vision was to inspire their underdog rugby team to win the World Cup that was being held in their home country of South Africa. It was a gamble for unifying blacks and whites that paid off.
Of course, the soccer World Cup in South Africa is happening at the same this movie has been released and we are traveling through. No accident at all.
In the film, Mandela asks these questions:
How do we get people to be better than they think they can be?
How do we inspire greatness when nothing less will do?
How do inspire everyone around us?
He concludes, “In order to build our nation we must all exceed our own expectations.”
I have much to say about what I saw and did. Thank you for your amazing prayer support. We could tangibly feel your loving arms. But I want to re-enter the conversation by saying to build this Kingdom, “we must all exceed our own expectations.”
The word Invictus means Unconquered. I love that. I need that. So do you. When we face our own personal stories, our national struggles, and the international issues that plague our world, we need to know that “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Romans 8:37
Roll up your sleeves. Get on your knees. There is holy building to be done. We dare not waste another moment in a foggy stupor of fear and indecision. We dare not continue to live little lives distracted by the needs God has already promised to meet.
Now more than ever, I am myself convinced that the world needs you. It needs me. It needs “Christ in us, the hope of glory.”
INVICTUS
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
~ by William Ernest Henley; 1849-1903 ~