for the Pygmies & the rest of the broken world

Last week, I cried for the Pygmies in Africa.

I was waiting to talk to someone about my car insurance when I found a recent issue of the Smithsonian in their office. I randomly opened to an article about the plight of these precious human beings, treated like animals because they different. Pygmies are a people group that consist of full grown men and women who are no bigger than average sized children. The article said that they were in danger of extinction; victims of slavery, genocide and cannibalism-- their numbers are rapidly dwindling. When I saw their faces, my heart broke for them. While I wondered why God would allow this to happen to them, I also knew that it was His Spirit that stirred my heart when I read that article. It was His Spirit that prompted me to pray for them and to continue to pray for them even now.

I know that God has seen and heard the cries of these people. And while the hearts of men are evil, that there is no one who can please God apart from Christ, I believe that there are those who suffer needlessly. But I am no better than the Pygmies. I am not more human than they are. It is only by the grace and mercy of God that I can sit here, alive and well, without any significant worries.

If I ask God if this is "fair," of course, I know the answer. The Bible is clear about the righteousness of God and that He has the right to do what He needs to do in order to glorify Himself, that He is control of all things. I know that because of Adam's sin, the world is broken and therefore has been subjected to pain and suffering. But knowing the right answers isn't enough. It's easy to explain away such terrible things when my own family is not being eaten or tormented just for being a little different.

God, I know that You are good. You are sovereign, just and holy. You are righteous and set high above the reach of human understanding. Yet by your grace, compassion, love and mercy, You gave us Your Son, who came to Earth in human form, to experience life as a human being even in death, so that we may know Your love for us as You gave us Your Son to die for our iniquities, that once separated us from You, but in Christ, we have been reconciled to You. I confess my sins to You, LORD. I have loved myself too much and loved You too little. Forgive me, Father. In Your name, I ask that You would be with the Pygmies. I pray for comfort for them, LORD. I pray that You would reveal Yourself to them, LORD. I pray that they would know the name of Christ. I pray that You would deliver them from their plight and that You would send people to come to their aid. God, I ask that You would stir up others to pray for them and for the rest of the broken world. I pray that You would help us Christians to take up our responsibility to care for those who are in need. God, may we care for the things that You care about. For to love others selflessly brings You glory. And God, I ask that we would love others out of our heart's desire to obey You. For You are great and if not for Christ, then we labor and love in vain. Help us to rest in Your grace, to dwell in Your grace and to live by Your grace. Help us to show the world who You are, by living lives that reflect the mercy and compassion that You have shown us.

In Christ's name I pray,
Amen.

The Unmarried Life: an introduction

so, i'm turning 25 this Friday. I'm turning a quarter of a century old this week. I admit that that is a pretty dramatic statement. But, isn't it true? And no, I'm actually not bitter. I have no regrets. Still, it's tempting to sort through the "what ifs" that float through my mind and even more tempting to believe that, at the point in time when I had to make a choice, I chose a different fork in the road than the one I had chosen, that maybe things would be different. Hm. But that's not true. I believe in God's sovereignty that somehow works in and through my choices. Where I have been and where I am now is exactly where God wants me. I don't know how, I just believe that that's true. And I'm going to leave it at that.

Of course, the whole marriage issue is bound to come up. "You're in your mid-20's and you're not married." Yeah, tell me something I don't know. When I was 18--fresh out of high school, a sheltered, blissfully ignorant snot--I had my whole life planned out before me and I think I was supposed to be married at least three years ago. This isn't a bitter rant. I am actually very content in my unmarriedness. Does that mean I've given up on getting married? Hellz no. It's my hearts desire to be married, have children, experience life together with another man, and of course, experience the goodness of sex. I do believe that it is my heart's desire to glorify God in all the ways that I could glorify Him in loving another human being of the opposite sex.

The journey to contentment has been arduous and I still have my moments when it's hard for me to be single. I think that's mostly because I've spent the last four months of my life trying to readjust to a life of singleness after ending a relationship that was the best thing that has ever happened to me. It seemed like a cruel joke--only that I know that God's not cruel, but that almost makes it harder to work through all the emotions of losing something (or someone) that I want(ed) so much. That relationship whetted my appetite for marriage even more and I thought that that was it. I was home free. One thing for sure that I've learned: never assume such a thing until there's a ring on my finger.

The unmarried life is what I've learned to call this phase. And really, this may not be a phase, this could be my entire life. The odds are about the same: there's a 50% chance that I'll get married and 50% chance that that is not what God has in store for me. Whatever the odds are, my life right now is what matters. I don't want to just be waiting for Mr. Right to saunter in through the door and sweep me of my feet. I want to continue to live life to the fullest, in serving God and his people and enjoying his presence, whether in time of plenty or in time of need. While marriage is an important milestone in a person's life, I will not give in to the thought that I can never be fully "complete" until I am married. It's been said that a person is already a complete whole in Christ in their singularity, but most people in the Christian circles don't really believe that. If they did, they would stop pitying the unmarrieds and the unmarrieds would stop pitying themselves.

I do believe that I have plenty of time. I'm only 25 after all. And for me and maybe for others who are feeling the pressure of unmarried life, it may not be the question of "if," but the question of "when." And while it's true that those who desire marriage so much cannot merely blockade the thoughts from their minds, I want to encourage those, who are in the same boat, to not live life "parenthetically." Life is not be lived in segments. I pray that if I'm in my 40's and still unmarried that I would still have my hands lifted high, praising Jesus, with my heart and my will completely surrendered to His.

thankful

when Satan tempts me to despair, to hate or scorn my life, I will tell him in great detail, how the LORD has blessed me well and in great abundance.

i am thankful in ways that i have never been before.
i am thankful that the LORD has made me to think and feel deeply, for i have learned more compassion and more mercy.
i am thankful for the ways that i am moved by beautiful music.
i am thankful for the ways that accepting my own weaknesses has helped me understand grace better.
i am thankful for the ways that i have learned how to be honest and transparent.
i am thankful for the way that i have experienced unconditional love in community.
i am thankful for my quirks because they make life more interesting and more tolerable at times.
i am thankful for having loved in a way that freed me from my own self-resentments.
i am thankful for being loved in a way that was more evident in action than in words.
i am thankful for courage.
i am thankful for transitions because it leads to new, exciting seasons of life that hold many opportunities for growth.
i am thankful for prayers being answered after fervently praying for many years.
i am thankful for diversity.
i am thankful for perseverance and patience.
i am thankful for confidence.
i am thankful for hope.

on the privilege of suffering...

Even though I love writing, there are those who say what I want to say so much better than I could...

"In abandoning now even his need for an 'explanation,' Job truly believes, more than ever before, in an utterly disinterested way--for nothing. Francis Anderson offers this summary:

It is one of the many excellences of the book that Job is brought to
contentment without ever knowing all the facts of his case. In view of the
way in which Satan brought up the matter, something had to be done to rescue Job
from his slander. And the test would only work if Job did not know what it
was for. God thrusts Job into an experience of dereliction to make it possible
for Job to enter into a life of naked faith, to learn to love God for Himself
alone. God does not seem to give the privilege to many people, for they pay a
terrible price of sufffering for their discoveries. But part of the
discovery is to see the suffering itself as one of God's most precious
gifts. To withhold the full story from Job, even after the test is over,
keeps him walking by faith, not by sight. He does not say in the end, "Now I see
it all." He never sees it all. He sees God (Job 42:5). Perhaps
it is better if God never tells any of us the whole of our life-story."

re: beauty & perspectives

maybe it is because my emotions are worn loosely on my sleeves,
and i am prone to think with my heart more often than my mind would like to admit
but i find beauty in the least expected places, it seems

i find beauty in perspectives,
i find beauty in the discomfort of differences,
in the ever present shades of gray, knitted firmly
in my life-like tapestry.

differences play a role in redefining, refining--faith.

those who think with their hearts despise logic,
those who think with their minds refuse their heart's cry...
which is right? is the other wrong?
there is redeeming beauty in remembering the tension,
--meant to keep the head and the heart in their proper places

soon enough, it won't matter the wrongness or the rightness of it all,
if the ground swallows them, or whether they are stunned with the parting of clouds,
revealing the brightness of the Son, who was destined to rule them all.

"I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened." [Fyodor Dostoevsky]

the freedom in finding myself

It's still the semester break and I'm up before 9 am. Some may think that I'm crazy for being up so early when I don't have to be, but somehow, the whole "sleeping-in" thing got really old when I realized I could be doing more productive things with my time.

(Blogging, apparently, is more productive than sleeping in.)

I think it's great that I came to dislike my laziness all on my own. That may sound odd, but thinking for myself has not exactly been something I've ever really done until recently. For example, I used to dislike laziness, not because I actually thought I was doing something wrong, but because I feared the opinion of others that I placed highly before mine. In other words, I trusted the wisdom of men (and women) to an unhealthy degree. I had shame and guilt built upon other people's convictions and not my own. My life and thought life was a jumbled mess.

This, of course, affected my relationship with God in that I felt constantly guilty--since you know, you can't please everyone. So, I tried to alleviate guilt by doing stuff, or trying to get other people to take my guilt away through people-pleasing methods. I didn't realize the gravity of the situation until I moved away from home and experienced a not-so-black-and-white-reality, where people believed different things. Faced with diversity of thought and seeing other believers live a Christianity that was so different from what I've always known, I slowly--and painfully--realized that I had no thoughts, or opinions to call my own. Some would say that this is "growing up." It felt more like the ground caved in under my feet and I plunged into a huge abyss of doubt and confusion. Growing up is not fun.

But undeniably necessary. Thankfully, God did not allow me to stay so...abysmal.

I used to believe that any lingering thought to who I was, any focus on the "self" would lead to disaster. However, I discovered that this "disaster" I had in mind would be finding that certain people would no longer--for lack of a better term-- think I was "legit," as in my reputation as a solid, logical person, would be null and void. The trend that I witnessed in my life was that I capitulated the things that I believed, not just because I didn't know what to believe, but because I didn't want to feel the deadening blow of rejection. When one is not confident enough in Christ to risk standing on their own, then rejection--or the mere feeling of it-- is, like, the worst thing ever.

Discovering who our true "selves" are can be tricky. It's understandable that people would fear it so much. It's what Martin Buber calls a "perilous moment." He says that a "real self knowledge leads a person to self-destruction or to rebirth." Yes, I whole-heartedly agree. I mean, I was sort of out of commission for some time, but I was in a lot of ways "re-born." No, I am not implying that I had somehow "lost" my salvation and got it back, nor am I saying that I was never a Christian. I am admitting that I was a confused Christian, but now, I'm not so confused. I knew a "self" that was created by my parasitical dependence on the opinions of others. I think this tends to happen more often than not, since churches are really good at focusing on WHAT people are doing instead of HOW they are doing on the inside. And when I say churches, I mean, the body of Christ as a whole. I don't exempt myself from this at all, by the way. I know that I'm a hypocrite. But I'm trying to be less like one by knowing who I really am and what I really believe.

I've learned that people can't, nor should they try to do something that only the Holy Spirit can do: sanctify me, or make me holy. And I should not depend on them for my righteousness, either. The truth is, at least for me, not looking at who I really was, was a detriment to my relationship with God. I trusted people more than I trusted Him. I wasn't able to enjoy a relationship with Him because I was too preoccupied by what people thought. I was in bondage. It was terribly constricting and lethal to any kind of joy I wanted to have. This was not "freedom in Christ."

I know that now, I am seeking to trust the Holy Spirit to guide me, to show me discernment in how I live my life. Of course, I still listen to people. I love sermons and reading books about God and Christianity--however, I no longer sense the obligation to make their thoughts absolute truths in my life. I am more ok with being wrong, or standing alone, than I have ever been because not only is the Holy Spirit going to correct me, but I know that God is for me, He will never leave or forsake me. God has restored my confidence and I surrender to Him my life and my thoughts and my self.

"Now the LORD is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the LORD is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the LORD, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the LORD who is the Spirit." [2 Corinthians 3: 17-18]

Golden child.

"He knows the way that I take and when He has tried me, I shall come out as gold." [Job 23:10]

I am so thankful. I never thought I would actually get to a point in my life where I can mean this, like, mean it in a "my heart is overflowing with gratitude and love" kind of way: I am thankful for the pain that God has caused in my life because now I can say with confidence that I know Him better.

It is a kind of knowledge of God, that break the bonds of pride and arrogance that comes with an abundance of head knowledge about God and the Bible. My heart has succeeded, where my logic has failed. I am grateful to be humbled in this way. Grateful to read the bible in a way that is not limited to filling my head with facts, but in a way that seeks to know my God, my Father, the One who has saved me from the eternal punishment that I deserve and seeks to have a deep relationship with me, His adopted child.

I am so thankful. So thankful to be more confident than I have ever been of His love for me. As Brother Lawrence once said, "Love sweetens pains." What is even more sweet is a growing understanding of God's infinite grace--that despite my horrible attitude, my pride, my failures and my anger, He continues to pour out His mercy and continues to reveal Himself to me. His grace is limitless! His love knows no bounds! He does not treat us according to our iniquities, and He does not give up on those He loves.

This is the hope that the world needs to know, not just to save them from eternal damnation, but so that they may enjoy knowing the Living God, and grow to love Him and seek to worship Him, now and forever.

Substantial

I don't know why, but I always want to write something that will shake people up. Something that will make a difference in someone's thought normal thought process, something that will make them think outside of their preconceived notions and assumptions. To lay aside their biases and open their minds and their hearts long enough to consider that the world is largely gray, with some black and white instead of the other way around. I am passionate about provoking others to think. Not just to exercise their minds, but to maybe, figure out whether what they think is something they truly believe, or if what they believe is contingent upon a conscious, or unconscious, fear of what others may think.

Or maybe it has nothing to do with any of the above. Maybe I'm just strangely compelled to share my thoughts with you, or anyone who would care (because, statistically-speaking, if you--reader--have managed to make it this far into this post, you actually care. I hope that doesn't come as a surprise to anyone).

With all that to say, here are three things, I am really compelled/convicted/excited to follow through with for the year 2010:

1. Seek to fully rely on the power of the Holy Spirit: While some may freak out and think I've gone "crazycharismatic"... I've yet to find anything remotely un-biblical about utterly surrendering to the Holy Spirit of God--who is present with me and in me, who is supposedly, according to Jesus, better for me than Him actually being here on Earth. I don't have details of how I'm supposed to do this, but I do know it's a day to day thing. I want to commit to pray and ask God everyday to show me the full extent of His power and see what He does in my life and how He uses me for His Kingdom! I'm excited!
2. Find a ministry to be involved in and stick with it: I admit that I've been shying away from involving myself in ministry due to various reasons (school, life, personal conundrums). But I think that this goal coincides with the previous one. I would really love to do something that involves the homeless population, or even something that entails going into the "heart of darkness" of my community. I just want to show Christ's love to others.
3. Living a healthy lifestyle: I've been working out 3 times a week, which I know will be harder to follow through with once school starts, but I want to commit to doing some sort of physical activity (outside of walking to class) at least three times a week. Not only that, but I want to commit to drinking eight glasses of water everyday and eating some sort of fruit/vegetable with every meal. And if that isn't enough, I want to try to decrease my caffeine and sodium intake.

All three goals take quite a bit of intentionality and courage. I am kind of wary because I have never (ever) made a New Year's resolution--mostly because I was too cowardly to commit myself to anything that would make me have to be disciplined. I guess I'm taking a stand against...myself and my cowardice. I want to live more intentionally. And I know that living this way is going to be challenging.

So...here I go.

The Beginning

a journal entry, titled Oz, written on May 31, 2007:

If my life, at this point and time, could be compared to anything, anything at all, I would compare it to “The Wizard of Oz,” minus the encounter with the Munchkins and the witches. I’m having an “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore” experience. I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing in “Oz.” The purpose has yet to be fully revealed to me and that can be quite frustrating.God is the Wizard that I must seek in order to find answers, in order to find my way back to “Kansas.” Even amidst my most formidable trial, yet, I know that God is very real. I know that He is sovereign. His existence is not a mere demonstration of the capability of man’s inventiveness, but He is, without a doubt, a being of objectiveness. No matter what state my heart is in, He is there. No matter how much I may choose to not acknowledge Him, I know that I can’t wish God away. I can’t even escape talking about Him. It’s something that just happens.

So God is there. Waiting for me, at the end of the yellow brick road. It took Dorothy an hour or so to get there, but I think it will take me a little longer. Sometimes, I can’t help but feel that this journey is too big for me. I’ve grown anxious, not knowing where this “road” will lead me. I know it will lead me to God but I don’t think it will take me back to “Kansas.” That’s not my home anymore.