Greetings and Update

Advent Blessings! I have been state-side for a few weeks now looking after a few family and personal matters. Having finished all the requirements for my Masters of Arts in Biblical History and Geography, I am now looking to lead trips to Israel and to get more involved with the Olive Branch Institute. The Olive Branch Institute is an Israel based ministry providing a network of support services for Sudanese refugees, Bedouin, single-parents and orphans, which includes: providing food coupons; counseling services; skills training; support groups; children’s camps, and much more.

My family has been going through all kinds of transformation - two funerals, a wedding, and a new born. All of my brothers are hitched and the kid-count is up to 5 with 2 on the way – niece and nephew fun!

I am experiencing my own kind of transition coming back to America. I am not convinced there is a suitable way to prep for re-entry, as it were. Often the challenge is trusting that God will provide in his time and in His way; this, in the face of all kinds of questions.

           

Here as a representative of the Olive Branch Institute, I have been traveling around meeting with Pastors, teachers, colleagues and friends. After being home for a time, I have taken to the road again. My latest adventures have taken me through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Washington and British Columbia, Canada intentionally seeking counsel and support of friends and ministries along the way.

While I don’t have this next chapter figured out, I am learning day by day to trust that God will finish what he started. The exciting bits about this advent season are the barrage of reminders that God condescended in His Son, a redeemer providing real means of real escape from the consequences of real sin. The affects establish grounds of faith we can live in… even when so much is unknown and hard!

Thanks so much for your support and prayers.

It is all very meaningful,

Blessings and Love,

Grace and Peace,

Seth Hague 

December 25, 2011

(Psalm 139 ESV)

O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.
Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
O men of blood, depart from me!
They speak against you with malicious intent;
your enemies take your name in vain.
Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!

(Psalm 139 ESV)

Something I found somewhere...

Its over... situates endings in an uncomfortably personal sense... its terse and final... gone. The concession commits itself to the irredeemable, its drama and death. The last goes finally... griping the jugular in order to feel the pulse break.

Tell me what to make of the silence... save the whispers... or when you hear her voice as if she were near you only to realize she pushed you away... off the ledge to watch you fall...

your journey down wouldn't have been so long had you stop the cycle before it swallowed you up... tally the investments only to find that at one point everything you had was signed over... makes the fire hotter... the fire she started just to watch you burn...

thing is you still love her... why? just as much rational as she gave you when she told you she didn't want to see you anymore... the day after she told you she wanted life with you... complexities will themselves to irreconcilable endings... nothing good... nothing good...

Only sense... primitive and surviving looks for breath above the buried... scratches the surface and builds on these last strings... sad for the cut-off... more difficult to pray that mercy is granted to those who purposely handed you the hell you have had to live in... Its the catch that you either get or you don't... Getting it keeps you alive... at least for now.