Author Archives: Miranda

Hello family and friends!  I wanted to share a few pictures that I caught with my phone this week.  We had a great week spending time with family and celebrating Jesus’ birth.  Some of you may know that my dad dresses up as Santa every year and visits company parties, children’s gatherings, etc.  We made sure to get some special pictures with Santa this year!

Santa with Beast, Nightcrawler, and Wolverine

Santa with Cyclops and Santa with my mom

My sister and I with Santa, and all of the cousins together.

They had so much fun playing on Mom’s ipad that they fell asleep.  Cyclops modeling his new hat with some festive leis.

I hope you enjoyed these snapshots of our holidays.  Please don’t mind the picture quality.

Miranda

This season, we have started to celebrate Advent.  Since I come from a baptist background, I have little experience with the liturgical calendar.  However, the more I experience, the more I find I love the rhythms of the year and the richness and depth it has added to my relationship with God.

I am about to tell you something big.  Something about myself.  Those who don’t really know me might be surprised.  Those who do know me might just fall off their seats laughing, so hang on.

I am not good at waiting.  Not. At. All.

As the shock wears off or the hilarious laughter subsides, stick with me.  When I say, “I am not good at waiting,” it doesn’t mean that I simply dislike waiting or that it causes me frustration.  A closer description might be that waiting makes me crazy.  Something close to knots-in-my-stomach or can’t-focus-on-anything-else might give you a better idea of what waiting does to my system.

I purchased God Is In The Manger and have started reading it.  The first line from yesterday’s entry read “Celebrating Advent means being able to wait.”  Uh oh.  Not a good sign.  I took a deep breath and pressed on.

You see, I want to be good at waiting.  I want my life to echo the psalmist’s declaration, “I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in His word I put my hope.  My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.” (Psalm 130:5-6) When I wait, I don’t want to do the impatient wiggling, worrying, fretting waiting that I do so often.  I want to wait expectantly, longing for God’s promises to be fulfilled.  I want to wait with sureness and confidence, eager to see what is coming but content to rest until it is His time.  I am simultaneously excited about learning to wait and nervous about how this process will stretch my comfort zone.

I am reminded of the story of Elijah and the voice of God coming in the still, small whisper after the storm and fire (1 Kings 19).  Elijah had to wait.  He did not whine or fret about God’s presence not coming immediately.  Rather, one of the most profound moments of his life came when he met the Lord in His time.  I believe that the best things of God may only come after waiting.  These things are experiences we walk away from having been utterly transformed.

Personally, I think the season in which God now has us is teaching me to wait more than ever before.  We are waiting on God to provide partners, wisdom, networks and relationships, and to pave the way ahead of us in Germany.  I am thankful for Advent to guide me as I grow in this area.

I want to leave you with an excerpt from today’s devotion:

“Not everyone can wait: neither the sated nor the satisfied nor those without respect can wait.  The only ones who can wait are the people who carry restlessness around with them and people who look up with reverence to the greatest in the world.  Thus, Advent can be celebrated only by those whose souls give them no peace, who know that they are poor and incomplete, and who sense something of the greatness that is supposed to come, before which they can only bow in humble timidity, waiting until he inclines himself toward us – the Holy One himself.”

My heart longs to be like this.

Bowing humbly,

Miranda

Wycliffe’s World Day of Prayer is today, November 11.  We would like to invite you—our friends, families, and readers—to join us as we pause to pray for Bible Translation projects and Bibleless people groups around the world.  Today is a day on which Wycliffe remembers how we began—with prayer—and we will continue only with prayer. To read more about the history of the World Day of Prayer and how it came to be, click here.

This year’s theme comes from John 17:20-23, as Jesus prays for all believers:

There are lots of thoughts tumbling around in my mind as I tried to decide what to write about this week.  I could tell you about that we are doing in school, how we are preparing to move to Germany, the million tiny details that are begging to be made into neat and orderly lists, and the preparation for our season of “lasts”, but as I sit here with a blank document open on my screen and a blinking cursor begging me to compose something meaningful, I feel conflicted.  I think maybe I will start with some history for today.

Many of you have not known us for very long, so you do not know the history behind our call to missions.  I want to go back to the beginning and share the “why.”  Dale will share his story later as well.

I grew up in a home with godly parents who taught all of us to follow God’s leading no matter the cost.  At the age of 15, I went on my first international mission trip to San Luis Potosi, Mexico with my church.  We had a great trip, did some hard work, and explored a beautiful city.  The last night we were there, we were standing in a public square reflecting on the city and the landscape.  As we stood there looking around, I clearly knew and felt that God was telling me, “This is what I made you for.”  In that moment, I recognized His calling and the tug deep within my soul very clearly.  At first, I thought this meant living and serving in Mexico.  I shared what happened with my youth pastor, my parents, and others in my life.

As I talked and prayed through this “call” experience, what came through was a clear call to missions, but not specifically to Mexico.  Attending Houston Baptist University and studying in the department of Christianity provided me with lots of opportunities to explore and learn about what serving God vocationally really looks like.  I also got connected to Wilcrest Baptist Church where I learned and experienced a biblical missional viewpoint.  In all of these places and more, my sense of calling was challenged and refined.  I know one thing clearly, I have been called to use all that God has given me to bring Him glory.  At Wycliffe Bible Translators, we have found a place to do that where we can add our talents and gifts to those of people around the world working together to bring heart-language scripture access to hundreds of millions who are still waiting.

Over the last 15 years, I have pictured what this looks like in different ways.  Should I go overseas straight from high school?  Should I use my newfound passion for business/marketing to get a PhD so I could teach anywhere and do tentmaking missions work?  Should we go immediately after we got married?  The Lord, in His ever-loving nature, has drawn me to Himself and given me time to grow, develop, and mature as He has shaped this calling in my life.  He has developed passions, talents, and abilities within me from all of the experiences up to today that He will use for His glory.  He has removed my need to be in charge of my life and brought me to a place where I can truly say, “Here I am, Lord.  Use all of me however You see fit.”  Ten years ago, I could not have said that in the same way.  Five years ago as I was struggling with a challenging one-year-old and two others, I did not understand God in the same way.  Last year, I had not begun the process of Partnership Development and the necessary faith-building that goes with it.  My faith was not ready to take this leap.

I hope that in five, ten, and fifteen more years I will be able to look back at 2013 Miranda and smile, thinking, “I did not know God then in the same way I do now.  I could not have begun to comprehend who He is in the same way.”  Right now, my heart echoes Philippians 3:12-14:

12Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, 14 pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.

This is just a snippet of my story, but I hope you all have a little more understanding of where I came from and how God is leading me.

I am working on a post about the wonderful two-sided nature of partnership, building a partnership team, and how God is refining us in this process, but I was struck by the profoundness of this verse tonight and I wanted to share it with you.

Many of you have asked about how Wycliffe works. This video gives an overview of the steps involved in Bible translation. Please take a few minutes to check it out.

One of the many reasons we love being part of this organization is how accomplishing its mission impacts so many areas of a community. We are excited to be joining a team of people around the world who are working together in all of the different parts of this exciting task.

“Be still and know that I am God” Ps 46:10
photo by Dale Peacock

There are many things that I love doing, but anyone who has known me for more than a day would probably agree that waiting is not one of them.  My natural tendency is to act, plan, strategize, and “do” until something happens.  However, God continually brings me back to Psalm 46:10 “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” (ESV).

In the midst of my busyness, I am called to be still.  Sometimes, I watch my children attempt to sit still or wait for something they really want and it reminds me of what I must look like to God.  Their little bodies cannot stop fidgeting and they can’t seem to turn off their minds enough to relax, trust me, and be still.  This morning, I was making our favorite breakfast (peanut-butter-chocolate-chip baked oatmeal) and they were so eager to eat that they could not wait for it to come out of the oven.  They danced, stood around the oven, and begged for it to be finished.  So often, I do the same things.  God has something great in the works and I get so busy anticipating, planning, or “doing” that I fail to be still.

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Prayer is essential to all mission. William Cameron Townsend, the founder of Wycliffe, was discussing the history of Wycliffe when he said,

“We have advanced on our knees…There’s been a lot of action as a result of our prayers, but it’s been prayer that has solved the problems…It’s been through prayer that God has raised up recruits and supplies and equipment when it seemed hopeless. And all we could do, as it were, was to march around Jericho on our knees—just around Jericho. And then finally, the walls fell and we marched in.”

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George Cowan, President Emeritus of Wycliffe, is a very wise and godly man.  This video sums up the reason why Wycliffe exists and why he dedicated his life to heart-language Bible translation. (Make the jump for the video…)

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The Peacock family is now officially part of Wycliffe Bible Translators! We will be working with others around the world to bring the Bible to the Bibleless in minority language communities around the world. Please follow along as we start this exciting new journey.

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