"We are prophets of a future not our own."

It's almost midnight.
I find myself sitting again in my room, hurriedly trying to finish last minute details. My life packed into a suitcase...again...As I reflect now, I think it quirky how this has become, in essence, normal for me. As I sit here, ready to up and leave for five months, to travel to the West Coast (after a pit stop in Minnesota again,) I'm not deterred by the unconventionality and weight of what I'm doing. First, leaving to venture to Uganda, filled with beauty and horrific suffering and conflict. Then, my initial departure for NET in August, leaving everything and everyone to go to a strange place, to live with utter strangers, and to perform a task I often wondered if I was capable of performing. And now tonight...I can clearly see how the Christian life is a pilgrimage, since in this case it's such an overt example. This pilgrimage, filled with many people and places is summed up in one word: Grace.

It's all about grace. Your grace is enough. I don't deserve any of these many blessings. I have come to know for a fact that I alone am not capable of doing the things I have been called to do, save with His grace that meets us where we are, and does not leave us how it found us.

I am not the same person I was in August. I know what I desire most in life, what "career" I want. I want nothing less then to build up the Kingdom of God in our world, in our society. And in do so, contribute in the final things, the ultimate things for which our existence, well, exists. The marriage, the perfect union between Creation and God, between Human and God. Earth kiss Heaven, and become ONE.

The late Archbishop Oscar Romero said the following quote:

"The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own. Amen."

We are prophets of a future not our own.

I know I can't do what lays ahead in the following five months, not on my own. But, Your grace is enough. The job isn't mine to do on my own. The job isn't yours to do on your own. It's His, give it to HIM. Let HIM be Lord of your life, your actions, your worries, your joys, yours pain, your love, your brokeness. Open wide the doors of your heart to Jesus Christ! Pray that I live what I say as well, please. It will be hard, as Flannery O'Connor said , "Grace changes us and change is painful."

But if there's one thing I learned since August,it's that it's necessary and worth it. So please pray for me. That the task given to me will continue to change me and mold me. That I am be able to give 150% of myself to everyone who is placed in my path, in this calling with all of it's beauty, joy, and excitement and all of it's demands.

There's no telling where our sojourns take us. But is it really so much about where as it is about the who?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran Pastor assassinated by the Nazi regime wrote (before his death was even on the horizon) "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."

Indeed, we don't know where He'll take us, but we do know what has to happen for us to get there. We have to make the choice to let your egos, our false selves, our sin, all of our human baggage die. And in do so, then, and ONLY THEN do we really start to live- both in eternity but HERE and NOW. In losing ourselves, we discover God. In discovering God, we discover ourselves as we truly are, as we were always truly meant to be.

As always, friends please continue to pray for me. Because without your prayers I can't do anything.

I send you all my love and gratitude.

Peace and Goodness,
David-
jdavidneira@gmail.com
803-439-1951

PS- Here is my team's (#8) route for this half in the following dioceses:
Denver, Colorado- January 13-29
Las Vegas, Nevada- January 30-February 17
Stockton, California- February 18-26
Oakland, California- February 26-March 5
Los Angeles, California- March 5-April 13
Tucson, Arizona- April 13-April 22
New Orleans, Louisiana April 24-May 7
St. Paul, Minnesota- Wrap-Up Week at the NET Center

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