undulation.

A few weeks ago, I volunteered in the children’s department of a friend’s church. She worked every Saturday in the preschool room, so I jumped at the opportunity to join her (a wonderful excuse to get to hang out with her AND play with little kids). We did a lot of free play and a craft, and then we joined another group for a story and worship. The first song was “Happy All The Time,” which if you’re not familiar with, goes “I'm inright, outright, upright, downright, Happy all the time… Since Jesus Christ came in, And took away my sin… (repeat enthusiastically many times over, with corresponding hand movements).”

“I don’t like this song,” my friend whispered to me as we were dancing and singing at the back of the group. “No one is happy all the time.”

The truth of this statement struck me hard.

I thought: here we are telling these adorable little six-year-olds that they will never be unhappy as long as they trust in Jesus… what’s going to happen when life comes and hits them over the head? That picture will crumble to dust and so will their concept of God— it’s certainly happened in my life time and time again.

I was so blown away when I read this in The Screwtape Letters:

“Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal…. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation—the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life—his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetite, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty.” (pp. 37-38, letter 8)

Although the practical truth of this passage is somewhat depressing, I can’t tell you how happy it made me to read! Why? Because in some way it justifies what I’ve experienced and struggled with my entire life.

Undulation. Inconstancy.

Why have I never heard this before?! I thought. These are things that need to be addressed, not ignored, by the church!

Perhaps in part due to children’s songs like “Happy All The Time” (as well intentioned and catchy as it is), I grew up with the notion that Jesus would take away all my problems. It’s that “All you have to do” philosophy.

“All you have to do is accept Jesus into your life and…” fill in the blank. You will be happy. Successful. Sinless.

But in reality, becoming a Christian isn't the end of the story— it's the beginning. In fact, The Screwtape Letters begins with a man who has just become a Christian. In the eyes of the church he’s “saved,” but Screwtape is not overly concerned:

“I note with grave displeasure that your patient has become a Christian….In the meantime we must make the best of the situation. There is no need to despair; hundreds of these adult converts have been reclaimed after a brief sojourn in the Enemy's camp and are now with us. All the habits of the patient, both mental and bodily, are still in our favour.”

Now PLEASE don’t misunderstand. God is our refuge (Psalm 25). Jesus offers rest for the weary and burdened (Matthew 28-30). And through him we are offered peace, joy and hope that does not disappoint (Romans 5:1-5) He has given me more than I could ever hope for or deserve.

But, the Bible also says we must count the costs of following Jesus— it is not necessarily an easy ride: Luke 9: 60,62; Luke 14: 26-35 , Matthew 10:35-39, Mark 13:13.

Here, Jesus is not presenting himself as the gateway to the “good life,” where we live out our days foot-loose, fancy-free and happy all the time— his life was far from easy and he, himself, certainly wasn’t happy all the time (John 11:13). The difficulties of life, temptation and sin all still apply. But luckily, we’re no longer going it alone. Following Christ is a journey, and a difficult one at that. But all in all, it’s more than worth it. :)

laughter = love

I love this photo essay, courtesy of BBC, which chronicles the work of the organization Clowns Without Borders in Haiti.

To me, it's such a wonderful testament to (a) the healing power of laughter, and (b) the ability for anyone to use their particular skills, quirks and passions to make a difference. It doesn't take a lot, just some time and a willing heart.

It reminds me of this similar story of how individual talents can change the world.

this is how i want to live: III

I found and wrote (all but the last of) this near the end of the school year:

This is amazingly cute...




So, my thoughts:

1. I've spent far too much time at the DMV in the past month to not find the "no laughing, smiling, smirking, humor, or general gaeity" sign hilarious! For some reason people get so easily worked up and angry at the DMV. I don't really understand it-- I mean, sure the waiting and bureaucracy can be frustrating, but the people watching is excellent. I have to say though, neither the Winnetka nor the Fullerton DMVs are decorated with such classy baroque fashion. Did you catch the chandeliers?
2. It's so easy to forget how many simple opportunities to show love to others every day. I find it so easy to get wrapped up in the "chores" of work, school, life, whatever. But it doesn't have to be that way!

a divine mystery.

For as long as I can remember I have loved anything with a mystery. I was obsessed with Encyclopedia Brown. I've read nearly every book in the Box Car Children, Sammy Keyes, Hank the Cow Dog, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Nancy Drew (the picture is one of my bookshelves... and that doesn't include the ones I rented from the library) series. I played Clue Finders, Nancy Drew and (I'll begrudgingly admit) Barbie Sleuth games on the computer.

The first time I picked up The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, I was in the 5th grade. I remember sitting and reading it while visiting friends of my parents' and being thoroughly frustrated that the only dictionary in the house couldn't tell me what "pips" were. (For those who are curious, I found out later that night that they're seeds— in the case in question, orange seeds... but read the story!) I got through about half the book before deciding that Conan Doyle's 19th century prose really was too dense for my 12-year-old brain, so I set it aside until high school when I read/reread the whole series.

Then of course there is my love for the old black-and-white Sherlock Holmes TV and movie series... As wonderful as Robert Downey Jr. may be, he will never be able to hold a candle to Basil Rathbone and his dreamy accent. Same goes for Ron Howard.

I know, I'm a nerd.

So why on earth is all this relevant?

Well, I just finished reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis—a wonderful book on so many levels—and out of all the things I could write about regarding that book, I figured I would start by sharing a passage that I feel is one of the most powerful of the whole book. And it just so happens to do with mysteries...

For those who aren't familiar with the book, it's set up as a series of letters from one demon (Screwtape) to his nephew (Wormwood... I know, but this was waaaaay before Harry Potter.) Here, Screwtape finds it impossible to believe that the "Enemy", or Christ, could really love humanity. This passage is from chapter 19 (the bold is my own added emphasis):

The truth is I slipped by mere carelessness into saying that the Enemy really loves the humans. That, of course, is an impossibility. He is one being, they are distinct from Him. Their good cannot be His. All His talk about Love must be a disguise for something else—He must have some real motive for creating them and taking so much trouble about them. The reason one comes to talk as if He really had this impossible Love is our utter failure to out that real motive. What does He stand to make out of them? That is the insoluble question….

Since then, we have begun to see why our Oppressor was so secretive. His throne depends on the secret. Members of His faction have frequently admitted that if ever we came to understand what He means by Love, the war would be over and we should re-enter Heaven. And there lies the great task. We know that He cannot really love: nobody can: it doesn't make sense. If we could only find out what He is really up to! Hypothesis after hypothesis has been tried, and still we can't find out. Yet we must never lose hope; more and more complicated theories, fuller and fuller collections of data, richer rewards for researchers who make progress, more and more terrible punishments for those who fail—all this, pursued and accelerated to the very end of time, cannot, surely, fail to succeed.

I think I forget how amazing it really is that the God of the universe cares at all about me. There is something beautifully nonsensical about the gospel that defies understanding. A divine mystery.

For all my Encyclopedia-Brown training, I can't even begin to grasp it. Fortunately, though, there is a better option than Screwtape's methodology of hypotheses and research (God knows, I got more than my fill of that in AP Bio. No thank you.)

Paul says in Ephesians 3:

"In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, ⁵which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets. ⁶This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.

...¹⁰His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, ¹¹according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. ¹²In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.

...And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

I want that to be my prayer. That I would understand more and more each day the crazy, impossible mystery of God's love. Or in the words of Phil Wickham:

You were the first and You'll be the end
Time cannot hold You down
Why save a wretch like me?
No eye has seen, no ear has heard
No heart could fully know
All of Your mystery

I want to hear the thunder of who You are
To be captured inside the wonder of who You are
I want to live I want to breathe
To search out Your heart and all of Your mysteries

:)

relief: a satire

I believe one of the biggest tragedies regarding the American church today is the general lack of compassionate action on behalf of those whom the Bible identifies as "the least of these." Of course, this is not to say nothing is being done-- there are many examples of people selflessly pursuing God's ideal of social justice-- however, I feel like the general trend is one of both ignorance and inaction.

Maybe it's just the future English teacher in me talking, but I strongly believe that ignorance is at the root of many of society's problems-- especially this one. Sadly, ignorant acts of "charity" are often ineffective and even counterproductive. This is at the root of many of the internal struggles Kent Annan addresses in Following Jesus Through the Eye of the Needle, and it is also the topic of several essays I wrote for my Advanced Composition class last semester.

In light of that, I figured I would share the satire I wrote for that class. I tried to "expose the ignorance that many have when it it comes to philanthropy, and how that ignorance cripples their well-intending attempts to help... [as well as] comment on several of the key misconceptions people hold about poverty." And of course I had a lot of fun in the process. :)

Relief

Meet Joe.

Joe is an average guy. He lives a comfortable life in a spacious suburban home, complete with wife, honor students and safety-rated mini van. A sensible fellow, he always pays his bills on time and routinely clips coupons from the Sunday paper.

But there’s one thing that bothers Joe.

It occurred to him one day while flipping channels on his moderately-sized plasma television—large enough to save face on Superbowl Sunday, yet not so large as to dominate the exquisitely tasteful living room décor, of course— that his life seemed to be missing something.

At first he couldn’t put his finger on it. His cubicle job was all well and good, he loved his wife and kids, and he hadn’t missed a Sunday church service in several years. What could possibly be missing?

As he was pondering, the evening weather report was interrupted by a commercial break, and before Joe could reach the remote to change the channel, something caught his eye.

Cardboard—but not like the boxes in his attic.

Trash—not on the curb shrouded in black plastic.

Dirt—dusty and uninhibited by concrete sidewalks or planter box walls.

Then children. Small children, dark children, dirty children, naked children. They stared back at Joe with forlorn eyes and bloated stomachs.

The face of a white-haired man in a collared shirt appeared. He seemed kindly; Joe thought of his late grandfather and smiled. The man was saying something about “poverty”. He walked across the screen and picked up one of the children, who looked a bit bewildered and exceptionally dirty against the man’s clean-pressed shirt.

“All it takes is 70 cents a day. All you have to do is pick up the phone.”

The chief meteorologist reappeared with his pointer.

“Looks like another sunny week…”

Joe turned off the TV.

Poverty…

The next day Joe pulled out his suitcase. He went through his closet and pulled out all the over-sized T-shirts he had tucked back for casual Friday and days at the beach. Next he went into the attic and pulled down the boxes of backlogged possessions he had accumulated over the years. Cloth baby diapers from when his children were young. A set of flannel bed sheets. A lava lamp from the 70s. He stuffed the suitcase as full as he could.

Later that night Joe booked a plane ticket to Southeast Asia. Normally he would have been shocked at the $3,691 airfare, but all he could think about were the faces of those dirty, hungry children.

The following morning Joe kissed his wife and children and hopped a cab to the airport. Seated in his lumpy, economy-class window seat, he daydreamed pensively. He saw himself in a pressed collared shirt, dusting his brown leather oxfords with a liberal coating of street dirt, lifting sad-eyed children from their poverty-stricken existence. He was going to make a difference.

Fifteen hours later, he exercised caution when retrieving his suitcase from the overhead compartment and exited the plane briskly. He had work Monday morning and there was no time to lose.

Outside the airport, Joe called a cab and instructed the driver to take him directly to the city slums. The driver spoke little English, but convinced he was cheating him, Joe argued fiercely over the final fare and left behind less than a third of what the driver had asked, but tacked on the equivalent of a few cents tip for good measure.

A bit miffed, and thoroughly frustrated that his pressed collared shirt was now wrinkled with sweat and heat, he suddenly found himself in the midst the commercial. A mob of children ran laughing through a maze of lean-to houses. A barefoot woman lugged a baby and a basket of laundry down the street. He breathed a sigh of satisfaction. This was what he came for. This was poverty.

A disheveled child stood outside one of the houses nearest him. Joe walked up and opened his suitcase. He pulled out a few of his oversized T-shirts and a cloth diaper and handed them to the girl. She looked at the gifts, perplexed, then dropped them and held out her hand. “Money,” she said in practiced, though heavily accented English. He laughed, tousled her hair good-naturedly and handed her 70 cents. She pocketed the coins and ran off.

Feeling good about his contribution, Joe then turned to his open suitcase. Struck with inspiration, he pulled out piece of paper, scribbled the words: “Free to those in need” and placed it, along with the entire contents of the suitcase in a pile on the road side. Caught up in the momentum of his generosity, he even tossed the empty suitcase on to the pile.

The next morning found Joe once again in a lumpy economy-class airline chair. He replayed his encounter with the girl from the slums and wondered pleasantly whether he could count the purchase of a new suitcase as a tax-deduction.

***

Joe settled down in his spacious suburban home in front of his moderately-sized plasma television with his wife and kids.

As they sat enjoying a family-friendly movie, a commercial break brought them back to reality. Once more, sad-eyed children and the white-haired gentleman filled the screen. Thinking back to his weekend in Asia, Joe realized suddenly that he no longer felt the nagging sense that his life was missing something. As he nestled in closer to his family, he smiled, understanding now what the man in the collared shirt meant by relief.

a really cool God story.

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. :)

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. :)