Sacred Space

I keep getting questions from home on what is happening with me here in Northern Ireland. I want to write a proper blog, but the reality is that I am in the last two weeks of the semester for my Master's course. I'll get a small break before summer session starts and I can't wait.
It's been a very challenging and rewarding semester.  It course work I am doing became something so much more than I every expected. I realized it as I sat in Sacred Space with others in my church.

The message is all about how we can change our world. Until I can write more about how I am working fervently to change my world, I highly suggest listening to these videos and clips and be challenge as well.


This is the description of Sacred Space.
Sacred Space provides a variety of different environments for those in their 20’s and 30’s to become involved in Causeway Coast Vineyard. Our passion and desire is to gather, equip and empower young adults to be everyday revolutionaries in changing the world around through living radically for Jesus.

Our core values are:

1. A passionate love for Jesus – it all begins and ends with Him
2. Living and cultivating a supernatural lifestyle which demonstrates the kingdom of God in power
3. Pursuing a radical life of generous justice and mercy
4. Creativity that changes the culture around us

April's Sacred Space:

March's Sacred Space:

February's Sacred Space: 

http://soundcloud.com/dave-lynas/20120219-193414

This makes it hard to do work.

The Car's Not Stopping For Me To Get a Better View.

When you're the passenger of a car, the perspective is different than when your the driver. Primarily being the driver in the last 10ish years and not so much the passenger, I've come to find this time in Northern Ireland to be an interesting experience. I'm the passenger but I'm still sitting on the side of the car where I would have driven in the States, but I've no control. I'm on the wrong side of the road, yet traffic moves freely and I'm the only one trying to find comfort every time I get in. Though I know how to drive I don't get to drive. The perspective isn't bad, it's just different. Sometimes I hold my breath or grab on to something because the driver's actions aren't what I would have done. When some one else is the driver you have to trust their abilities, for better or for worse. There are times I think I'd much rather be the passenger in the back seat than in the front. Yet, the back seat comes with it's own issues.

Yet, I've done a lot of sitting in the back seat of a car in the last week as I travelled all over Ireland. A couple of friends just came to visit me from the States and while they were here, we took advantage of the time and a car, and we toured in a ring around the Emerald Isle. I was in the back seat for this trip. These 5 days, while we were traveling, I realized the perspective from the back isn't always great either.

"Look!" yells my friend driving as he sees one thing. With a pointed finger, my other friend who's in the front seat passenger says, "Do you see that over here?" Meanwhile I'm in the back, scrambling to turn my head fast enough, or bend low enough, to see whatever "it" is. Even If I was lucky enough to be on the right side of the car, I found there just no great perspective for anything except the head of the person in front of me.

My multiple views that weren't quite as amazing from the back.

This situation could be anyone, but it describes my friends and I, several times over our holiday travels. As the back seat passenger, I knew I was on this awesome road trip. I had small glimpses of cool things but never the full image.

This is where I've been feeling that life is lingering lately— in this state of trusting, and changing perspectives, and tiny glimpses, all the while knowing that I'm on an incredible adventure.

It's actually been incredibly difficult to sit and write a blog recently for many reasons. I want to but there's been guilt, there's been lack of time, there's been more pressing matters, there's been holidays, there has been fear. Honestly, there's been more than I can write about. It seems like every week, I became excited and sat down to write a blog about the awesome things are happening, but then I'd be struck with a change of thought. It's like I caught the glimpse, and wanted to see and explore more of it, but it went by.  Suddenly the next thing is coming up, and I barely saw the last thing, so I wonder if it was really there at all.

I wrote previously that I was having some reoccurring dreams of crashes and speeding cars. In some of these dreams of speeding cars, I've found myself in the driver's seat with no control, or in the passenger seat/back seat while the car goes without a driver. This is life now currently. It is truly an incredible adventure I'm on. It's one I keep trying to control and I can't. My perspectives are changing constantly.

It's a good time, but it's an unknown time. It is transition. It is forward motion.

On Sunday, during worship, we sang the song "Come Away With Me." It's a Jesus Culture recording. The lyrics go:
Come Away with me,
Come away with me  
It's never too late 
It's not too late 
for you I have a plan for you  
It's gonna be wild 
it's gonna be great 
it's gonna be full of me

This is my reassurance and my constant—God has brought me on this wild adventure. I know he's the driver with the plan.

Lots of new developments

This is a pretty meager post. I know it's been a while since I've written anything, but so many thoughts are juggling in my brain. There are many new developments happening that I am really excited about and really hopeful for. Most are to do with my master's project at the university. I just need the time to really get them down in a written form. Some of them I've also needed to tell people at home first before I post it to the world, but soon there will be something here....

Survey For My Master of Design Communications Project

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Love Your Enemies.

Love your enemies is a phrase I'd heard before. I thought I understood it, but when there's no one I had thought of as an enemy, it was a bit hard to grasp. This week I started to understand it a little more, and it's a hard one to grasp.

The final week of February, it was Thursday and I was trying to arrange to meet for lunch while I was in between lectures with my friend and former housemate from Derry. I didn't get a text from her until later that evening, and it was then she informed me of the trial. It was the dreaded news we'd been waiting on. It was the trial that another previous housemate would be having in regard to his assault on this girl's brother. It was to happen on Monday. She wasn't needed there, nor was I, however her brother had to appear. Because, I didn't need to be there, I shouldn't have been overly concerned, yet the weekend proved a bit trying for me to put it out of my mind. I tried to not think about it. I had some luck but it came back a couple of times.

You see, until a weekend in October, even the way we joke about "the bad guys," seemed irrelevant to me. No one had truly been a bad guy in my mind. But that Friday night, this man on trial became a bad guy. I'd never felt terror until him. I'd never seen violence in my home until him. I'd never encountered answering the door and leading the police into a belligerent man, while my heart beat triple time, until him. I'd never felt like I needed to constantly check over my shoulder from palpable fear until him.

He had terrorized our home and assaulted another person. It is not anything I would ever want to experience again. Although I removed myself from the home, I still must walk by it when I return to the University each week, and I always feel uneasiness.

Throughout Monday, I was waiting anxiously to hear from my friend and her brother. What was the outcome? What would be his punishment?

The text came in the evening—one text then another. The first text said that the trial was over and he'd been found guilty. The second one said that not only had he done these acts to our house, he'd then moved onto another and done it again.

My first reaction was anger. AGAIN? He did it again? Then bewilderment. His sentence didn't seem long enough. Then it came. The sorrow. It was unexpected, completely unexpected. I began crying. I wasn't crying because of anger or hurt. They were tears because I felt broken for him. Trust me, this is not what I wanted to feel. I wanted to be angry. I wanted to say that jail time was what I wanted. But compassion took over.

Why God, why do I feel compassion for this man? And he answered quietly, "Because I do."

This man has made many, many poor decisions that have left his life in a chaotic state. In the early days I had known him, before anything had happened, he'd shared with me about some hurt and pain he had experienced. Whether that led to these poor decisions or not, I will not know, but he carries them. Now, there's more hurt piled on him. My only job is to forgive him for his actions toward me, not to hold them over him, demanding further punishment.

I've struggled the entire week with it. Loving our enemies is hard to do, but when you can recognize who are our true enemies and also who our Heaven Father is, it is much harder to not love them. At least, this is my case. I'm not done learning this lesson yet.

Today I'm in L'Derry. I walked by the house again and I felt the uneasiness. As I walked by, the tears came too.

Work Schedule