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CCF Missions - South Africa

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Like No Other

9/16/2020

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In 2009, my friends Mingo and Lucy Barron wrote a song whose bridge captivated me. It's been part of my devotional life, and a mini-chorus I've often led in corporate worship, ever since. This August, when ideas started echoing in my head around these four lines, Pastor Mingo gave me permission to recraft a new song around it.
The best part? Charis collaborated with me. So amazing to worship Jesus with my baby girl!

What name could I breathe to make darkness flee
Who else can I call to see giants fall
Whose feet can melt the highest peaks
Whose glory makes the heavens sing
​It’s a name like no other
It’s a love like no other
It’s a grace like no other
Jesus
What love gives its life for an enemy
Who crawls in this ditch just to rescue me
What love would pursue me across the sea
What grace carries me through all my grief
​It’s a name like no other
It’s a love like no other
It’s a grace like no other
Jesus
Jesus
​Jesus
You’re a name like no other
You’re a love like no other
You’re a grace like no other
Jesus
©2009, 2020 Christian City Music by Mingo Barron, Lucy Barron, Mike Noviskie, & Charis Noviskie
CCLI# 7162359

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Quarantine

5/14/2020

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by Charis

​Church doors
Barred.
Locks set.
Guitar strings, silent, strung
Across an empty floor.
Organ pipes
Stopped with cobwebs.
All locked, all empty.
Cancelled.
Windows boarded.
Bibles stowed away.
Spiderwebs in the pulpit,
And floors forgotten
By human feet.
Dirt on the windows.
Dust on the shelves.
Silence rings, not bells
And only insects hear.
But:
Picture
Unless our hearts are shut and locked,
And our voices are silent,
Unless our lights are snuffed out,
And our eyes are shut with fear,
The inner sanctums of our hearts have gone cold,
And we’ve clogged the valves of kindness,
There is church today.

​​Instead of making excuses,
We make a way in the desert
Instead of stockpiling,
We give of God’s heart

And we wash our hands of bacteria,
But we don’t wash our hands of our neighbours.
And we might wear our masks,
But our eyes are wide open.
​Church is now.

© 2020 Charis Noviskie. All rights reserved
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Living Room Worship

5/13/2020

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by Charis

​Well, we’re stuck inside our houses
With the people we claim to know and love best
And now, with televisions, laptops or radios tuned in
We discover something called worship, online.
And it’s not the same
Picture
​Weird without the coloured lights
The sound of a hundred speakers
And people—hundreds or more—just beside

​But now:

There’re no dimmed lights

No loudspeakers
No crowds
​

Instead we have dizzy sunlight,
Gleaming through familiar frames
And tinny sounds from only one speaker
A couple of people—family
And nowhere else to go

​Suddenly
The sounds of family nearby
Are loud
We can hear every breath
And the exact way that they might sing
And the sound of clothes rustling
No more big, dark, comfy spaces to throw loud voices into
No more forests of raised arms to secure our own hands
No more dimmed lights to hide expression
And, suddenly
My soul is vulnerable
In a different way than before

Can I still worship in such a way?
When the world,
The people around me
Refuse to fade away?
When even closing my eyes seems wrong
And engaging is suddenly so much harder
Because I can hear the kids next door playing
And construction down the street
Someone sneezing
Somebody laughing too loud
I can hear cars and sirens and neighbours
And I can hear dishes clanging in the kitchen
I can smell the spices of home food
I am too distracted to worship!
But all these distractions
Aren’t they just the simple things that were always there?
Gifts
That we’ve forgotten in spectacle—lights, crowds, stages
Picture
Maybe I am learning to appreciate
Richness

​
The copious aroma of life

​Spicy, sweet, tangy
Salty, savoury, tender flavour
The taste and touch and feel of life--
In everyday moments

​I can no longer block out

That the people around me are more precious than spectacles
And that God can be worshipped by us too
Together, in a way that doesn’t deny

This rich aroma
Of our everyday lives
Now I share with God
The kitchen cooking, dishwashing, couch-sitting, pillow-fighting,
Debating, laughing, crying, smiling,
Secret handshakes
Nicknames, chores
Pet projects, pet peeves
Smallest thoughts
Biggest dreams…
The smell of home-cooked food
My everyday life
Because God loves to see life
​Life
Is Richness

© 2020 Charis Noviskie. All rights reserved.
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Blessing

10/21/2017

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a poem by Dan Erickson

Our friend and fellow missionary Dan Erickson wrote this poem for a missions conference early in 2017 and read it at Hatfield's missions conference this afternoon. We are sharing it with his permission.

Blessing

We are goofy, unstylish, odd. 
Most of us.
We drive the worst cars 
if we have cars. 
We wear what fits, 
we fit in, eventually, 
      almost. 
We eat what is put in front of us, 
      and find we relish it.
We speak with accents and stutters. 
Sometimes we are not understood 
even in the places we were born.
We are the weird redheaded cousins 
to our families, the black sheep, 
some of us, others the glowing saints, 
      sometimes on the same day. 
They think we’re clumsy, muddy, 
tainted, pure, scrubbed, antiseptic.
We are placed on pedestals 
or in the jumble closet, 
depending on the mood and fashion.
But when there is an explosion 
we run into the smoke 
we run towards screaming 
while others run away.
We compare scars sometimes 
matching stab wounds in our backs, 
some of us. Burns, scrapes, blisters, 
bruises in all the same places.
We have beautiful feet though. 
That’s what the old prophet said.
People who bring good news 
have lovely feet.
So I bless your feet in Jesus Name. 
      Every calloused toe, 
      you explorers, you pioneers, you aliens, 
      travelers with only one true home, 
I bless your feet.
I bless your hands in Jesus Name. 
      Your fingertips feel for the pulses 
      of your worlds, finding, God willing, 
      heads to touch, hands to squeeze, 
      brothers and sisters to embrace. 
I bless your hands.
I bless your lips in Jesus Name. 
      You speak life, peace, healing. 
      Fear is afraid of your voices 
      because they are full of the Gospel, 
      full of love. 
I bless your lips.
​I bless your hearts in Jesus Name. 
      They are overgrown, overflowing, 
      they hurt for foreigners, refugees, 
      children, for the least stylish, 
      the least influential, 
      the least. 
I bless your hearts.
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The Old Shepherd

12/24/2016

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When he talks about it, he still goes white.
Vivid, fantastical flashbacks of a long-past night
Whose tales keep skeptical hearers mystified.
Yet, looking in his eyes, the man is terrified.
​Then wonder comes with color to his face.
The heralds sent him to a lowly place
Where something struck him deeper than the giants in the skies:
He saw the face of God as he knelt before a child.
Picture
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Here

11/21/2016

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This ground that drank blood of hate and fear,
Vanquished, torn, divided at our hands,
Massacre-soaked and riot-quaked: here.
Here, we dance.
Weary ages, speckled red from war,
Brought at last to rest, but not by sword.
Beyond some fragile truce: real peace, secured
On a Cross. By a Man.
The. Man.​
So, we dance: because we cannot fly! ¹
Red and yellow, black and white,
We are dancing in His sight. ²
We dance.​
This bloodstained, sacred, common ground
Revels in our dancing wake.
The grace-cast shadow of the Cross,
The living glory of the Lamb,
Cascading justice on this land.
Forgiveness-soaked and mercy-quaked:
Here, we dance.​
Notes
  1. A quote, and subsequent book title, from the founder of Betel International.
  2. Adapted from "Jesus Loves the Little Children" by Clare Herbert Woolston​
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Love Run Over

5/29/2016

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​To learn how wide, to see how far
to feel how deep and reach the heights
of Your love for me

I  drop my guard, fall in Your arms
to face the unrelenting power
of Your love for me

Father, I'm here with no reservations
Lay bare my heart with no hidden places
Here I am

Let Your love run over me
Search my heart, chase my fears
Love, invade my wildest dreams,
    highest hopes, deepest pain
Love, run over me
Picture
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Before

5/7/2013

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Picture
I wonder if--were I to somehow see
The workings of God’s unsearchable mind
Before a single star began to glow--
Could I believe the pictures I would find?

If I could glimpse before the land and sea,
Before the planets with their moons and rings,
Or comets, nebulae, or galaxies--
Before that, what did this great Mind conceive?

What would I do with the discovery:
The very first thing that God planned was... me?
​
--Ephesians 1:4
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Mike & Chandra Noviskie,
​missionaries to South Africa

CCF Missions is a ministry of Christian City Fellowship.
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