Excuse My Absence. I've Been Buried in a Book.

I lost November.

I've been buried . . . in a book.

The month of November slipped into oblivion, and Thanksgiving appeared rather suddenly, turkey, apple pie, and all. I've tried to write two blogs a month, but I guess I knew somewhere in my subconscious when I started my blog that there might be a time when I wouldn't make the goal. Voila! Here it is.

But I had good reason to lose the month and my faithfulness in blogging. I had a job!

"Retired?" you say.

 "Nay, changing focus," I reply.

God, who with His usual grace and mercy placed me in the teaching profession for over thirty years, just keeps loving on me. And He tossed another career, albeit part-time and free lance, into my corner of Layton. Who would think it? Certainly not I, but here I am . . . editing books.

In the first week of the month I downloaded Covenant Teamwork by Dr. Guy Henry, and I've spent the remainder of the month wading through periods, commas, quotation marks, parentheses, subordinate clauses, compound sentences, semicolons, and exclamation points. The publishing company offered me the book with a three week deadline. I've been consumed.

Its intensity became obvious this past week when I attended a church meeting for small group leaders, and as the young pastor scrolled his power point across the screen, my only concerns were the words he failed to capitalize and the end marks he forgot to use. Oh dear! Great grace was lost to grueling grammar, and a young pastor's excellent words of encouragement were sucked up in minutiae.

"Get a grip!" I reminded myself. "Cook a turkey or something."

Dr. Henry's book has a riveting thesis. I read it four times. I think it's the kind of thing I could read every year for the rest of my life. Dr. Henry explains the principle of covenant, the unbreakable bond that God has formed with those who accept and believe in Him. Because of Christ's sacrifice, He has formed a blood covenant with us which He will never break.

Dr. Henry explains covenant in the introduction of his book like this, "Covenant is the term God uses for commitment and everlasting relationships. With covenant there is no turning back. No matter what happens, I am with you to the end. No matter the cost, we are in this together. It is this type of commitment that is the missing piece in teamwork."

That covenant relationship between God and forgiven man is the same type of relationship that Dr. Henry says we should have with any person with whom we are in relationship: spouses, children, other believers, fellow team members. Can you imagine how our relationships would be changed if we took the covenant approach? "I will protect and defend you. I will love you with a selfless love. I will consider you as more important than myself." Is it any wonder I need to read this book every year?

Geese encourage each other to keep going. "Have you ever heard a flock of geese? As high as they fly, we can still hear the 'honk, honk, honk' as their "V" formation passes overhead. What we consider honking is actually the cheerleading squad at work. It seems they honk to encourage the one in front of them to keep going and not slow down." Covenant teamwork works in nature.

Dr. Henry has been a missionary in Honduras since 1996. He has established a ministry called Tree of Life and a school called Plan Escalon. He heads a team there of twenty-five pastors and over 600 live-in students, ranging in age from elementary to high school. Over seventy-five mountain villages are consistently reached with the Word of God and physical necessities as well as visits from medical and dental teams. Their goal is to change Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere, through the love of Christ. Their motto at Tree of Life Ministry, "Feed the Need, Meet the Need, Change the Nation."

The ministry runs on the principle of covenant teamwork, and . . . it works. It's God's plan for relationships. It could change every relationship in our lives. It could change our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our communities, our states, our country, our world. And I think we could use a healthy dose of world change.

The book will be published by January, 2014, and you can purchase it on Amazon then.

So if I should disappear off the blogging radar for awhile, be assured, there must be a good book in the works. Interesting how God moves. I always thought I would be the writer, not the editor. He has a surprise around every corner. I wonder what wonders December will hold? (Where's the editor to fix this final redundancy?)