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At home I almost never use an
alarm clock because I usually wake up on my own somewhere between 4:00 and 5:30am
(something my pastor and I do not have in common). When you’re crossing multiple time zones
they recommend that you force yourself to stay up/go to sleep on the new
zone’s time. So last night I made
myself stay up to 11:30pm (6:30pm at home).
Sure enough, this morning I work up at 6:00am. Unfortunately it was 6:00am my time which is 11:00am here in London.
It’s a good thing my flight doesn’t leave until 10:00pm tonight.
During the layover (in
addition to eating and sleeping) I’ve been reading Henry and Richard Blackaby’s book entitled Spiritual Leadership. One area that I immediately identified
with was a comment from page 19 which says, “Certain biblical characters
greatly impacted their society but demonstrated few of the commonly
recognized leadership competencies.
Rather, God chose to use the weak of this world to demonstrate his
strength (1 Cor. 1:26-27; 2 Cor.
12:9-10). I’ve been feeling unworthy
and incompetent for the task before me these next two weeks. Pray with me that we are hearing God
clearly and that he will use my weakness to his glory.
In addition to the above
quote, I thought I might list the 5 elements of spiritual leadership
espoused by the book:
1. The
spiritual leader’s task is to move people from where they are to where God
wants them to be.
2. Spiritual
leaders depend on the Holy Spirit.
3. Spiritual
leaders are accountable to God.
4. Spiritual
leaders can influence all people, not jut God’s people.
5. Spiritual
leaders work from God’s agenda.
The five points above seem pretty
straight forward but I believe that you will find the expansion comments in
the book to be quite enlightening, perhaps even convicting to us in our
understanding of Christian leadership.
Just before I left a client
called up and asked me to prepare a special report for her. I explained that it would be over two
weeks before I would return and be able to work on it. She was pretty disappointed. Out of guilt I brought it with me knowing
I wouldn’t get anything done on it.
But I plan to work on it the rest of the afternoon and, perhaps, get
it finished and emailed to her. (Can
you tell I’m adding filler because there’s not much going on today?)
So much for not much going on
today. Sometime last night 21
terrorists were caught at Heathrow airport trying to get onto U.S. bound
flights with liquid explosives. They
shut down the airport for a while and still have some very rigid security
measures in place. I cannot carry
anything onto the airplane except for my wallet, airline tickets and
passport. These must be in a clear,
plastic bag. This means I have to
check my computer, digital camera and other “precious” items. No books, paper, water, electronics, etc.
can go on the flight. Can you
imagine what parents traveling with small children must be going through? They can carry only the bare essentials
for the babies and have to taste the baby’s milk in front of the security
guards. Please pray that both my
luggage and I get to Monrovia
tomorrow morning at 9:40am and that the luggage (and me)
are in one piece and functioning.
I arrived 5 hours early at the
airport to give the best shot at getting on the flight. Delays are pretty bad. The good news is that my flight is still
scheduled to leave at 10pm (I only have 2 hours between flights in Lagos, Nigeria). The bad news is that I can’t check in
until 8pm (3 hours from now) so I have 150 lbs. of luggage to “lug” around
for 3 hours.
I’ll likely write more a
little later since I’ve purchased 24 hours of wireless internet time here
at the airport. It’s about noon back
home and 6pm here.
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