An Audacious Dream

This week at our small group, we were challenged by hearing N.T. Wright talk about down-to-earth ministries in the economically depressed area of Durham, England where he was the Anglican Bishop for seven years. These ministries grow out of worship that is not just about our personal, individual relationship with God but is also about “sustaining the life is that is going on around” the church in the community. As a school was closed, one man had a dream to provide education and training for persons with disabilities. As they mend broken furniture to make it whole, their own lives are mended.

Over this past year I came to know Buck Cochran through the discernment retreat series in which I took part. After serving as a flyer in the Navy, and then working as a chemist, Buck went to Duke Divinity School and was ordained in the Presbyterian Church. While working as an associate pastor, Buck’s call began to be transformed to working with persons with varying levels of disabilities so that they would have a place to live, and work and grow into the fullest expression possible in their lives.

Buck and others had an audacious dream to transform 89 acres of farmland into Peacehaven Farm, a place where adults with “intellectual and physical disabilities [could] live independently within the embrace of the community around them.” The original idea was to start by building the houses and then to develop the farm. The financial collapses of 2008 intervened. Work began on the farm with many persons of all abilities from the surrounding community working together. This year, the first house, called Susan’s View after one of the founders who died of cancer, is being built through the work of volunteers coordinated by Habitat for Humanity.

An audacious dream has transformed the lives of everyone it has touched. This has really been about being people of faith seeking to “sustain the life that is going on around.” God is calling us to living an audacious life of faith together. This is a life, a dream to which I can give myself—mending broken furniture and broken lives to make them whole, giving glory to God all the while.

[Read more about BuckCochran and Peacehaven Farm.] 

Revelation 22:1-2

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.