Toronto Visit

October 15 1994

               
Dear Josh.

    It seems like my letters get less and less eloquent and more and more undone.  There is a part of me that just wants to slip into the woods somewhere and be mindless. I’ll blend in with the brown trees and the yellow grass and be wild like a fox.  I am so tired of all of this.  There is no end to it, and no remedy for it.  It must be the deteriorating flesh. 

    I have heard that there is victory in the blood of Jesus, but who knows how to make this a reality? Please teach me.  Show me. Josh, I am so tired of hearing people preach all around it and watching people make a total laughingstock of your word all over the nation.  Every "church" has its own weirdness.  I just want the truth, the thing that is always true. 

    This whirlwind of knowledge gets worse and worse.  We are all learning like mad, but it never becomes truth. When will I get to come home?  Will I ever get home?  Christ, this is confusing, and if you want me to stay here, show me how to make the eternal my home. 

    I know, I have so little discipline, and I am weak, and easily discouraged, and easily (very easily) confused and lost, all in the name of love.  But I know you are sovereign, and you are God, and somewhere, someday, you are the head of the people--when the church ever becomes a body.  Now it is dismembered and disemboweled.  But it is rumored that you are visiting your people in different places, and it makes us anxious.  Some of us want so badly to finally become what we are supposed to be.  Some of us want so badly to just hold on to what this is.  Some of us can only groan when we think of revival.  Oh, God, the excesses.  The distractions.  The mess.  The sidetracking and tangents.  Oh, God, please not in my lifetime.  But I am saying, Jesus, please come.  Please come.  Please, Lord, please come.  Come, or we will perish.  I die.

    We hear rumors of your presence up in Toronto, and throughout the Vineyard churches.  We hear rumors of your visitations and the wonderful (Is it wonderful?)  peculiarity with which you come upon your people.  Then we go to where this fire seems to be falling, and we are not sure.  We are quiet because something is not quiet in our spirits.