Well, the rain finally stopped and as the sun began to peek through the clouds, I knew it was time to safely put away the blueprint for building my own personal ark.

Fortunately,the 2nd half of our week in Boston was made to order. It really couldn’t have been much nicer!

We walked The Freedom Trail and learned new things about old things.

4 hours and many stops later, we finally arrived at the end of our trek (the base of the Bunker Hill Monument). Of course, Katinka thought that it was only fitting that one last foto should cap our historic journey, but as you can tell our kids weren’t really on the same page.

We also  toured Fenway Park and got to experience this great chapel virtually empty and go to places in the park we had never been to before. How cool is that?

We walked through Cambridge and visited Harvard. But the best thing by far for our boys was the chance to throw the baseball around in a park (JFK Park) we found along the Charles.  

In the afternoon of our final day, I had a lot more to show them, but the kids were tired of going here and there, seeing this and doing that. So, we cut the sighseeing short and decided to go to the park around the corner from our house. And as we did, I began to think about our time together and about the contrast between my time alone in India and my time with family in Bar Harbor/Boston.

The trips could not have been more different. And at this point you can probably see that reflected in my blog entries.  But as I thought about the two, what I began to realize is that when something profound happens to you, somewhere, sometime down the road, when you least expect it, you will be given an opportunity to put into practice some of what you have learned.

You won’t always recognize the opportunities right away b/c the context oftentimes seems so mundane and disconnected from the original revelation. But if you slow down, look, and listen long enough you will find that God is at work everywhere, showing you something in a non descript house church in Northern India that you may well be able to utilize on a rainy day in a small apartment in the suburbs of Boston. Everything that God gives us is to help us grow and mature into the fulness of the image of His Son. But these things are not only for us to hoard to ourselves and for ourselves. Everything God gives us is to be shared with one another. This is what I have hoped to do through my blogging over these last 3 months.

I am sure that some of my entries have felt more profound and worthy of your taking the time to read them than others. But all of them have been a gift for me. Right now, it is difficult for me to know  how all of my experiences have shaped and changed me and what that will even mean for us all in the days to come?

But know that I am excited and ready to return to you this coming Sunday. However, before I do, I have one final trip this week where I will be entering into a prolonged period of silence, listening for God’s still small voice to me. I always go into these times of retreat with expectation and desire, but I never know exactly what will happen: how God will meet me and what He will show me. The first 24 hours are typically difficult b/c the volume to my life is always louder than I realize it is before I turn aside. But as I slow and become more attuned to quiet, God’s presence always becomes more palpable. 

Honestly, I am tired of being away and just want to be at home with my family.  But this last trip is the one that I hope will help me to make sense of all the other ones. Pray that I can settle in and be at peace with myself and with God in the next couple of days, and that I might finish well what I started as I prepare for reentry in a way that will leave all of us richer and better for the entire experience.