Inspired by Antoine Saint-Exupery

I thought it appropriate to base the title of this on a quote by Saint-Exupery.   

The quote goes like this: "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders.  Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."

That's the heart of this space: my longing for the open sea, for the adventure of joining God where He is on the edges and frontiers of Kingdom activity.  

Saint-Ex [as he was affectionately called] had this yearning etched deep into his soul; he's most known -- not for his profound children's book, The Little Prince, but for his contributions in aeronautics.   He flew planes for the experience of finding himself while flying over the Andes, the Mediterranean and the Sahara--  writing books like Night Flight, Southern Mail, Flight to Arras, and Wind, Sand and Stars that detail the spirituality and other-worldliness of flying.  He spoke of flying as passing "beyond the borders of the real world" and wrote poetically of lapsing often into dream-like states while at the controls.   His preference was for flying radio-less and with limited fuel over vast ocean or desert expanses -- buoyed by the risk and undeterred by having destroyed his left shoulder, fractured his skull and experienced a coma in one crash.

Saint-Ex also flew planes for World War II.  And at age 43, with a partially-paralyzed left shoulder, flew on eight missions for the American side in North Africa and Sardinia.  He angled his way repeatedly to stay with the team though a liability at his age.    

His last words written were scribbled on a note to General X: "I do not care if I die in the war or if I get in a rage because of these flying torpedos which have nothing to do with actual flying, and which change the pilot into an accountant by means of indicators and switches.  But if I come back alive from this ungrateful but necessary 'job,' there will be only one question for me: 'What can one say to mankind?  What does one have to say to mankind?'"  

A man with a personal yearning for the open sea yet who understands his duty to humanity.   I admire and relate to this.    

I'm beginning to see that who I am and the experiences in which God has placed me bring me to this place as well: longing for the open sea.  Longing to see where God is at work in the edges of the world -- if it is Indonesia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Sudan, Afghanistan, then that is where I must go.   But it is not about me.   I'm embedded in a whole and am commanded by Jesus to bring others along.

Here I hope to chronicle my journey of longing in the hopes of awakening the same primal longings in many of you.