This afternoon, as I was folding some laundry which had dried on a clothesline in the former apartment of Mrs. Betty upstairs, I found myself in a sort of melancholy mood, thinking about my transition out of New York in a little over a week.

I had made a trip or lived in the Northeast three times before coming to work with New York Gospel Mission a year ago. I knew of Union Square Park where people play chess on crates. I knew of Rachael’s cooking show (by my mother), filmed here on 26^th Street as I’ve come to find out. I never imagined that I’d be driving past these places on donation-pickup runs for an evangelical mission. I never dreamed I’d be interacting, on behalf of the mission, with the Bowery Rescue Mission in Lower Manhattan where Fanny Crosby once worked long ago. But I came here a year ago just after my saintly grandfather’s death and homegoing, knowing in faith that God was leading me here. Last summer, I had a profound moment in prayer one day, while praying about coming to New York. I wasn’t that interested in thinking about coming. As I prayed one day though I had one of those rare moments when God seems to point, as with his very finger, and ministers strongly to a person that “This is where you will go.” I’m not into pseudo-spiritual charismaticism, but I have experienced, at times, such things as I’ve just described above. All I have to say about it is that the LORD is gracious to vessels of earth.

Now, at age 34, I am getting ready to follow God’s leading to the next point in the journey, going back to school to study Old Testament interpretation at Piedmont International University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Tonight I will be starting my first online Hebrew exegesis class. I am looking forward to the blessings of this move. This was another instance in which I prayed for willingness even after coming to believe it was the right thing to do.

This last week at the mission, we enjoyed a visit from a New Hampshire man named Mr. McManus and his two daughters and one of their friends. This family comes down to New York every three months or so to help with renovation and major cleaning projects here. The Jones kids, myself, Galen, and the New Englanders always find some fun things to do while they are here. Yesterday evening we went down to the Battery and took the Staten Island ferry across to New York’s other island borough. The rest of the kids took a train down to the battery. I briskly walked the Hudson River Park and arrived at the Battery only 17 minutes after they did. What a great view of the Statue of Liberty we saw from the ferry yesterday at evening.

Two days ago in chapel, many of my friends from the Tuesday chapel service came up to me and wished me farewell, even though I have one week left here. I gave my e-mail address to the crowd after one or two of them asked me to do so a week beforehand. I will miss them, and they will miss me. Some of the expressions of care, giving, and affection, especially among the elderly Spanish crowd, have been very caring and memorable. During the Tuesday chapels this past year, we’ve been through the books of 2 Peter, Hebrews, Haggai, and Habakkuk in an expository manner. We won’t finish 1 Peter, but we should get through chapter 2 by next week. I think this brand of expository overview preaching with emphasis upon exact meanings of clauses and evangelical forthrightness has been helpful and even salvific to the crowd. I am amazed how the Lord called me here and how He has been using the little bit that I have to feed so many. My desire is to rightly divide the Word of Truth and to sense the warmth and salvation of the Holy Spirit in the heralding of the evangelicum of the death and resurrection of Christ. I am amazed at how the little I have has seemingly gone so far! I am a vessel of clay, and the treasure which we have in these vessels is beyond our ability to fully grasp in all its glory. But the crowd does have a better conception of the Truth, and I am confident they have sensed some of the warmth, glory, and goodness of God. Sometimes, I think they see as much when I tactfully admit that I too am a sinner and come in with dirty feet more often than I’d like. I often quote John Chrysostom to myself when I walk upstairs to preach, usually feeling somewhat decrepit and feverish for reasons I don’t fully know. “Preaching makes me well. Whenever I open my mouth to speak, all my weariness is forgotten.” Who would not want to proclaim the matchless worth, to tell his glories forth — which in our Saviour shine? To do so is to touch Heaven while standing on earth. To exposit Scripture and to show and call to Christ makes well.

And yet as I think of returning to North Carolina, I realize I will need something more than what merely the church or service or education or even family there can offer. “How I need Thee, O Lord.” Whether in New York or in my native home, Virginia and North Carolina, how poor I often feel. But “there is a river, the streams of which shall make glad the city of God, the holy dwelling places of the Most High.” We come to a juncture from time to time where we end up saying that God alone is my comfort.

I will have to find side-work in the Raleigh-Durham-Cary area once I set up in North Carolina and start working for the church that will be paying my way through school. I am working in earnest these last two weeks in New York to bring Pastor Bill’s discipleship course material up to a level where a course can feasibly be offered this fall. People are waiting for the course to start and are asking us about it. Andy Woodard, a native Floridian, has been here at the mission a week-and-a-half and is becoming acclimated to the schedule and duties here. He plans to take long-distance graduate classes this fall as well. Galen is doing well, busy as ever. Tonight he and Brad are working on coloring the kitchen floor. Pastor Bill has worked hard all his life and is having to rest more these days.

When I was last in Virginia for my brother’s wedding, an elderly lady named Mrs. Hawthorne, with whom I visit, read Scripture and pray in a chair beside her nursing home bed, said to me, “They need you up in New York, but we need you here too.” That statement meant a lot to me. In the struggle I have leaving New York, I am hearing refreshing confirmation that my labors, whether here or there, will not be in vain, even temporally.

…Three hour tour, a three hour tour.

I just took my first online Hebrew class through Piedmont. How good it was to be back in the classroom, (well, e-classroom in this case). Afterward, while walking to the Punjab Deli to eat some spicy food and settle my brain, I thought about how the Christian classroom seems to be the place for me at this point in my life still. It feels like meeting up with an old friend. What a blessing.

I plan to write one more blogpost next week about this time, sharing the ten things I’ll miss most about New York and working for the mission here. Actually, I have the list written, but this post is becoming long as it is. I appreciate the kind words I hear from some of our readers who follow this blog. People have told me they are encouraged by reading and that they enjoy knowing what’s going on here. As midnight approaches here in Manhattan, a thunderstorm is coming outside, but we have to put the cardboard out on the curb by midnight, so I will sign off.

Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.