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.

Aunt Erma

        Erma Elizabeth Augsburger was born and raised in Adams county, Indian, born on February 10, 1919, born to Samuel and Leah (Shertz) Augsburger. Erma's stories survive her: stories about Leah's soap-making, knitting, meal-prep for the company of thresher's on Threshing day; and her stories about Samuel's hunger for the Bible and diligence on the farm; among many, many others.

I remember Erma as the story-telling minister, ready to offer a word of thanks to God for any little thing; I remember her as a service-ready pianist, always in her heart a melody; and, I remember her as the friend of sinners, ready to make a sandwich to break up any tension or negativity. I can still hear her voice “Do you want something to eat?” "Can I make you a sandwich?" Her appeals were tender and her company, sweet.

Whatever prompted this kind of solidarity? Perhaps it was Samuel's eagerness to get his family to every possible revival and then his intentional, biblically-driven critique of each message. Maybe it was Velma, Erma's oldest sister, who was an exemplar and Christ-exalting care-giver, community-servant, nanny and mother. Or maybe it was the ministry of Ralph Neighbors and the Gospel Temple in Fort Wayne who sent Ivan, Erma's brother, and Erma into the mission field (Ivan to the Dominican Republic; Erma to the rural communities in Ohio and Indiana.). Whatever influences God used, He wooed her to himself and captivated her affections.

As of consequence, Erma left her position at GE for Fort Wayne Bible College in the mid 40's. Her and Ivan were both sent out by the Gospel Temple in the latter half of the 40's. Erma got involved in Bible club ministries during the height of the Bible Club Movement. During which time she ran a club in Fletcher, Ohio where she met a Jean Evelyn Zirkle, who became her best friend, life-long partner and right wing in their later ministries including more club meetings, church work at Mansfield, Brazil, Rockville with the Rural Home Missionary Association, the Bookstores, and finally at Central Baptist Church. Their love for the local church persisted not because they were particularly impressed with the normative structures or the institutions but because they loved the Lord.

What made Erma so attractive was that there was so much continuity between her message and her life; between her affirmations and affections. Two weeks ago through the strains of dementia and age she managed to say two things. I love you and I love Jesus which she repeated again and again and again... I mention this because its indicative of the entire memory that she has left to us. She was unashamedly Christian and in love with Jesus. This was her story and song.

In transit

Mercy flavored coffee begs a deafening advance
and pretends a bigger end than is planned

late and touching passion that divides into a curse
Platonic kind of lovers holding hands until it hurts

Placid kind of friction totaled into yesterday
and dividing those that conquer by the choices that they've made

When you find it hard to breath
You will find it hard to speak
then you will find it hard to leave this one alone

Clarity

You got that sweet smile 
steeped-well taste


You got that hazed-blue,
got you face


You got that good try,
bad guy make




the bottle has spoken to me
the cupid persisting to lead
Sometimes a bonds got you free
Baby, Don't tattle tell on me




You got your smoke screen
Eyes winked black


You got the walled-wake,
pains-baked back


You got the blistered,
embitter mask




the bottle has spoken to me
the cupid persisting to lead
Sometimes a bonds got you free
Baby, Don't tattle tell on me!




You got the daylight,
chide eyed scorn


You got the chapped past,
stead-fast thorn


You got the dark-cloud
skies-loud storm


Sometimes a bonds got you free
Baby, Don't tattle-tell on me
Baby, this jokes told on me...
Baby, this jokes told on me...


Bridge:
And nobody's runnin you through
And I don't know what to do
repeat...

Aunt Jean... Life-lines and Legacies...

   Aunt Jean… logical, hardworking, sensible, practical… winsome, lovely, athletic and calculating… I suppose we all could think of adjectives that would accurately caricature Jean Zirkle at any one point in time along her journey. She girded up the Zirkle’s, arranged the becoming Hague’s, and entreated herself to the Augsburger’s! The last girl of a large clan, Aunt Jean developed a sensitivity and stature that would serve her well over the course of a long commitment to ministry and family…

   81 years and an obituary with a newspaper-limit can muffle off a few accomplishments without ever appreciating the real enduring contributions that a person leaves behind – that Jean left behind. Hers is not an edifice or an endowment, not a bible store or a bike ride – we are her legacy and she was our life-line.

She devoted so much care an attention to our details constantly bugging us about our bills and choices; our friendships and loves; our notions of conservatism and whether or not we were eating well. “You are too skinny”. “You are just trying to get out of work”. “Money doesn’t grow on trees”. “The Bible is not just about Genesis”. She adapted and became for us what we needed when we needed it, saying what she thought regardless of how it might come across.

   Though I have many friends who would grow tired of the stories that were told about war-time, the happy 50’s and so on and so forth. She had a way with her stories, these personal-bits: momma making underwear ‘cause there was no money for it; daddy dying in the factory and leaving us to defend for ourselves; baseball with a stuffed cloth and a stick; imaginations ignorant of boredom; a 25 dollar prize for daring a big-rig bike ride; sisters and brothers fighting over principle; Bible school and Erma; Ministry and Baptists; gossip and gossip that could never dissolve their commitment to the local church; Uncle Ivan’s visits; Mom and Dad, before they grew to love each other; Uncle Richard and the toilet lid; baseball news and church drama somehow proverbial in nature… Stories and stories with big moments and morals…

   These and countless others are the messy-tales told with truisms that have given us all a more attuned perspective to the way things are. After all life is not fair, and whether or not you like your situation you have got to play the hand you are dealt. Her contributions are pent up in her commitments – her commitments to people. No matter how annoying or intolerant or misunderstood, family is family, friends are friends and at some point you learn to love them or risk living without them.

   May God be praised! Here’s to a Christian woman who lived well! May her memory be blessed.