God is so cool! And I'm laughing as I'm writing this because it sounds so simple, yet for some reason I'm always surprised and re-reminded of this "simple" fact when something like this happens:
For the past few weeks/month, I've really been feeling like God was calling me to work in a youth-group like setting mentoring young girls. Now, this is a bit strange because I have never really been a regular part of any one "youth group" since elementary school. My close friends have always served as my support system and faith community-- both formally with a small group we formed in high school and informally in every other way. But anyway, I felt like I should contact an old small group leader who works with Campus Life. So after procrastinating a good deal, and God reminding me several times, I finally sent a Facebook message to her asking if she knew of any churches in the area looking for interns/volunteers to work with junior high girls.
This is what she sent back: "Amazing that you asked... I was just asked by [[a youth pastor at a church near me]] if I know any college girls who might want to chill with Jr Hi girls .... Um, wow... makes me wonder if there might be a God or something!"
hahaha. You have to love those moments. I don't know why they always surprise me, but I love it when they do. One day I hope to live everyday with the expectation that God will do amazing things, but in the mean time, I just I can't wait to see what He's up to. :)
Monday, May 10, 2010
a million ways to change the world
I am constantly amazed at the ways in which people can use their passions to make a difference in the world— like these athletes who serve victims of human trafficking.
Often times I find myself thinking I'm not qualified enough to really serve people. I think, "I don't have a law degree or counseling training, and I practically pass out at the sight of blood... What good would I be to those suffering from injustice." But this gives me hope that anyone can make a difference, regardless of their "qualifications." In fact, God gave us our random passions and talents for a reason (to bless others, not just for us to enjoy for our own benefit).
I hope one day he'll show me a way to change the world by crocheting or dancing. :)
Often times I find myself thinking I'm not qualified enough to really serve people. I think, "I don't have a law degree or counseling training, and I practically pass out at the sight of blood... What good would I be to those suffering from injustice." But this gives me hope that anyone can make a difference, regardless of their "qualifications." In fact, God gave us our random passions and talents for a reason (to bless others, not just for us to enjoy for our own benefit).
I hope one day he'll show me a way to change the world by crocheting or dancing. :)
Saturday, April 3, 2010
a spot of sunshine.
I love Spring. The sky turns blue again and everything starts to bloom -- it's like God splatter-painted the hills. I miss being able to pick fresh flowers from my mom's garden and bring the beauty inside. So this weekend, I went on a quest for just that. My favorite flowers are daffodils, and as they are almost out of season, I desperately wanted to get a bunch to brighten up my (now exceptionally clean, and somewhat empty, as my roommate is home for the weekend) dorm room. A friend and I ventured to Trader Joe's, but alas, no daffodils could be found. I did, however, buy a bunch of these beautiful sunflowers. They make me smile. :)
In the spirit of enjoying God's beauty, I also thought I'd share a poem I read for my Brit Lit class.
Spring, by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
In the spirit of enjoying God's beauty, I also thought I'd share a poem I read for my Brit Lit class.
Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
i am weak, but he is strong.
So, I did this once before... this is a note I wrote to my friend that probably did me more good than it did her. Again, Jesus continues to remind me of the need for brokenness.
I would encourage you to give into weakness today. It seems really counterintuitive, but then that’s always how God seems to work, no? Stop pretending to be okay – you’re not okay. You’re human, you’re imperfect and without God you’d be nothing. Stop trying to be okay, you can never, ever do it on your own. But the good news is you will never have to. He will lift you up, he will give you strength, and he wants you to be broken. He uses broken people. Until you submit to your brokenness, he can’t be fully glorified in your life.
I would encourage you to give into weakness today. It seems really counterintuitive, but then that’s always how God seems to work, no? Stop pretending to be okay – you’re not okay. You’re human, you’re imperfect and without God you’d be nothing. Stop trying to be okay, you can never, ever do it on your own. But the good news is you will never have to. He will lift you up, he will give you strength, and he wants you to be broken. He uses broken people. Until you submit to your brokenness, he can’t be fully glorified in your life.
Today I pray for you: 2 Corinthians 12:9-10
Thursday, April 1, 2010
a dialogue with the God of the vulnerable.
"How absurd and demanding, beautiful and fragile it is to be vulnerable to life."
-Kent Annan, Following Jesus Through the Eye of the Needle
It's kind of ridiculous actually, how much this has been a theme in my life recently. Clearly I am too dense for God to be able to get anything through to me the first time (I'm sorry Abba, I'm a slow learner).
I remember going to UM a few weeks ago... the message had to do with being humble and open, which is something I already knew I was struggling with. Then during worship we sang this amazing song, (which, to my dismay, I cannot seem to find for the life of me...) and I remember God straight-up telling me: You don't trust me.
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house there are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. (John 14:1)
Ouch, God, that one hit home.
But if you do trust me, you can be bold and confident in that trust. I will provide for you.
And I will do whatever you ask in my name so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask for anything in my name, and I will do it. (John 14:13-14)
Okay, Abba, thank you. Help me to learn to trust you. Teach me!
If you really love me like you say you do, then you will obey me, and I will uphold my promise and draw near to you without fail. Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him. (John 14:21) And that's a promise.
I remember going to UM a few weeks ago... the message had to do with being humble and open, which is something I already knew I was struggling with. Then during worship we sang this amazing song, (which, to my dismay, I cannot seem to find for the life of me...) and I remember God straight-up telling me: You don't trust me.
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house there are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. (John 14:1)
Ouch, God, that one hit home.
But if you do trust me, you can be bold and confident in that trust. I will provide for you.
And I will do whatever you ask in my name so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask for anything in my name, and I will do it. (John 14:13-14)
Okay, Abba, thank you. Help me to learn to trust you. Teach me!
If you really love me like you say you do, then you will obey me, and I will uphold my promise and draw near to you without fail. Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him. (John 14:21) And that's a promise.
a bit of perspective. a some fresh, clear, well seasoned perspective.
So, excuse the Ratatouille allusion in the title, I couldn't resist... The following is actually an excerpt from this fabulous book I just finished, Following Jesus Through the Eye of the Needle, by Kent Annan. I'm sure copyright enforcement officers would look rather unfavorably on me wholesale copying down pages 178-181 and posting them here, but I see it as my own personal endorsement of the book... just add a thorough citation and no harm done. hahaha. So, without further ado:
I'm suspicious of myself: I constantly cast myself as my own idol to worship, resent and serve. I'm suspicious of the politicians: they tell me and the rest of the world "You're either with us or against us" and try to bring us to out knees before national ideals to serve at all costs, even offer human sacrifices of our own eighteen-year-old boys and whole families of people in faraway lands. I'm suspicious of my culture: with its power over me, I'm unclear where I end and it begins as it guides me by ambitions and expectations into banks and malls and theaters to worship. I'm suspicious of religion: it too often simply confirms whatever the community is (whatever its theological or social [or political] bent) instead of leading us, full of awe, to humbly seek and then really act on, "If this is true, what does it mean for us?"
In my early twenties I was sometimes embarrassed about being American when I was out of the country, as I heard the envy and critiques. But I've become more comfortable with that the U.S. has right. Now that I'm here in Haiti, how can I not appreciate the silky concrete on a major highway or the high-tech machines and buckets of antibacterial used in a shiny hospital? Walk into a classroom in all but our very worst schools and try not to be moved to tears by the crayons, trained teachers, desks, lights, books and materials they have compared to the kids (the fortunate ones who get to attend) in most Haitian schools. Sip a cup of clean cold water delivered right through your kitchen tap. And though millions are inexcusably without health insurance, most can pick up a functioning phone and press 9-1-1, and people in a mobile hospital speed down the road and come to your home to do their best to save your life. In the contested 2000 presidential election, American power was transferred (albeit from one party of wealthy, powerful people to another) without a single shot fired.
But I've also become less patient with what's wrong-- using our military for selfish reasons but not to stop genocide, hypocrisy on immigration, exploitation of trade agreements with weaker nations, the growing gap between wealthy and poor, lack of health care for poor children, the inability or unwillingness to see ourselves through the eyes of others, national complicity in politicians' lies, and on it goes.
I gave nothing (except my tiny tax contributions) to put in place what works wonderfully, and I don't know how to fix the problems. But I have decided how I want to think about the problems and opportunities as I do my little part. It's not original, but intimately sharing life with a Haitian family and neighbors has made more real to me how Jesus talked about family and how I want to think about being a citizen.
He said things like, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters yes, even his own life he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26). He said, "There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age ... and in the age to come eternal life" (Mark 10:29-30 NRSV). Talking about throwing a lunch or dinner party, he said, "Do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind" (Luke 14:12-13 NRSV).
So as Jesus redefines family, I take it he's also making citizenship basically irrelevant and telling us we should hear statistics differently. Two billion people who are my family are hungry. How many in Africa have AIDS? Mosquito-borne diseases will kill how many cousins because they're poor? Every 34 seconds, well, something awful surely happens. The number of people who are homeless or clinically depressed or addicted to crystal meth? All of these numbers are important but also numbing.
The way Jesus tells it, though, closes any escape routes when he disallows defining the world as Us/Them or as American/Foreigner. My experience is that the Us/Them is real, with profound differences. Yet for me, shared life and Jesus reveal even more profound unity in which we're all transformed into Us, and all into Them. This doesn't allow the problems of others to be Theirs, which We will help with if and as We are able. The way Jesus tells it, the essential statistics end up reading something like this: I have a sister out there who is being whittled away, from life to death, by AIDS. I have a daughter who lives in a neighborhood where a random bullet might pierce her little body. I have a son who is without parents and is a two-mile walk from water that will keep him alive so diarrhea might kill him. I have a bother who was kidnapped as a thirteen-year-old and then forced to murder as part of a wandering army as he awaits being killed himself. I have a mother who never learned to read and never got to enjoy or share with the world all the talents she could have.
This redefined family, like realizing that I deserve nothing, is a needed antidote to my many forms of idol worship. I fail at it, I retreat to my own country for safety, but repeatedly trying helps me pick up my two-by-four to beat/pray my idols to bits. And when they keep reappearing, then I'm reminded to put my faith in the One who ultimately turns dust to dust and makes life into glorious life. And I think the One who kept Shadrach and friends safe in the fire also wants us to take the two-by-four to our own idols. Isn't this what Jesus was telling the rich young man to do so he could be free to follow?
So, my thoughts on the book as a whole will come later... but this particular passage struck me deeply because I resonated with it on so many different levels. I am, by nature, one of the most critical, skeptical people I know (personally, of course, I wouldn't say I know Christopher Hitchens, and Descartes and Hume are dead...). While many people would find that a good thing, it has been a constant source of struggle in my life (more on this later, as well). Here though, I resonate deeply with the discontent and resistance Annan feels with American society. It was really encouraging for me to hear his thoughts and to be reminded of the brilliant antidote Jesus offers for the problem. :)
I'm suspicious of myself: I constantly cast myself as my own idol to worship, resent and serve. I'm suspicious of the politicians: they tell me and the rest of the world "You're either with us or against us" and try to bring us to out knees before national ideals to serve at all costs, even offer human sacrifices of our own eighteen-year-old boys and whole families of people in faraway lands. I'm suspicious of my culture: with its power over me, I'm unclear where I end and it begins as it guides me by ambitions and expectations into banks and malls and theaters to worship. I'm suspicious of religion: it too often simply confirms whatever the community is (whatever its theological or social [or political] bent) instead of leading us, full of awe, to humbly seek and then really act on, "If this is true, what does it mean for us?"
In my early twenties I was sometimes embarrassed about being American when I was out of the country, as I heard the envy and critiques. But I've become more comfortable with that the U.S. has right. Now that I'm here in Haiti, how can I not appreciate the silky concrete on a major highway or the high-tech machines and buckets of antibacterial used in a shiny hospital? Walk into a classroom in all but our very worst schools and try not to be moved to tears by the crayons, trained teachers, desks, lights, books and materials they have compared to the kids (the fortunate ones who get to attend) in most Haitian schools. Sip a cup of clean cold water delivered right through your kitchen tap. And though millions are inexcusably without health insurance, most can pick up a functioning phone and press 9-1-1, and people in a mobile hospital speed down the road and come to your home to do their best to save your life. In the contested 2000 presidential election, American power was transferred (albeit from one party of wealthy, powerful people to another) without a single shot fired.
But I've also become less patient with what's wrong-- using our military for selfish reasons but not to stop genocide, hypocrisy on immigration, exploitation of trade agreements with weaker nations, the growing gap between wealthy and poor, lack of health care for poor children, the inability or unwillingness to see ourselves through the eyes of others, national complicity in politicians' lies, and on it goes.
I gave nothing (except my tiny tax contributions) to put in place what works wonderfully, and I don't know how to fix the problems. But I have decided how I want to think about the problems and opportunities as I do my little part. It's not original, but intimately sharing life with a Haitian family and neighbors has made more real to me how Jesus talked about family and how I want to think about being a citizen.
He said things like, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters yes, even his own life he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26). He said, "There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age ... and in the age to come eternal life" (Mark 10:29-30 NRSV). Talking about throwing a lunch or dinner party, he said, "Do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind" (Luke 14:12-13 NRSV).
So as Jesus redefines family, I take it he's also making citizenship basically irrelevant and telling us we should hear statistics differently. Two billion people who are my family are hungry. How many in Africa have AIDS? Mosquito-borne diseases will kill how many cousins because they're poor? Every 34 seconds, well, something awful surely happens. The number of people who are homeless or clinically depressed or addicted to crystal meth? All of these numbers are important but also numbing.
The way Jesus tells it, though, closes any escape routes when he disallows defining the world as Us/Them or as American/Foreigner. My experience is that the Us/Them is real, with profound differences. Yet for me, shared life and Jesus reveal even more profound unity in which we're all transformed into Us, and all into Them. This doesn't allow the problems of others to be Theirs, which We will help with if and as We are able. The way Jesus tells it, the essential statistics end up reading something like this: I have a sister out there who is being whittled away, from life to death, by AIDS. I have a daughter who lives in a neighborhood where a random bullet might pierce her little body. I have a son who is without parents and is a two-mile walk from water that will keep him alive so diarrhea might kill him. I have a bother who was kidnapped as a thirteen-year-old and then forced to murder as part of a wandering army as he awaits being killed himself. I have a mother who never learned to read and never got to enjoy or share with the world all the talents she could have.
This redefined family, like realizing that I deserve nothing, is a needed antidote to my many forms of idol worship. I fail at it, I retreat to my own country for safety, but repeatedly trying helps me pick up my two-by-four to beat/pray my idols to bits. And when they keep reappearing, then I'm reminded to put my faith in the One who ultimately turns dust to dust and makes life into glorious life. And I think the One who kept Shadrach and friends safe in the fire also wants us to take the two-by-four to our own idols. Isn't this what Jesus was telling the rich young man to do so he could be free to follow?
So, my thoughts on the book as a whole will come later... but this particular passage struck me deeply because I resonated with it on so many different levels. I am, by nature, one of the most critical, skeptical people I know (personally, of course, I wouldn't say I know Christopher Hitchens, and Descartes and Hume are dead...). While many people would find that a good thing, it has been a constant source of struggle in my life (more on this later, as well). Here though, I resonate deeply with the discontent and resistance Annan feels with American society. It was really encouraging for me to hear his thoughts and to be reminded of the brilliant antidote Jesus offers for the problem. :)
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