mountainsofspices

Thunder of an 'age-old anvil'

2011-12-20T09:33:00.019+08:00

"Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing-"- Hopkins

Today, like every day, is history. But today is the kind of history that is printed in textbooks and which college students study as part of the cause and effect leading up to colossal events; the kind of history one does not see every day of the year. Today, news of Kim Jong Il's death was released, plunging North Korea into frantic grief, and the world into frantic trepidation. This announcement has struck the pond of world events like a well-aimed pebble. It is too soon to tell, yet, how far the ripples will go, or when they will strike the shore.
One little ripple which a Chinese friend showed me on Facebook today is this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSWN6Qj98lw.
For me, it is the most poignant sight of the year. As I watched, I suddenly realized that the most tragic love, most tragic faith, is that which is utterly misplaced. Men who cry out in despair to deaf idols are not merely guilty of sin, they are the great voice of hopelessness in the universe, they are the blackest depth of soundless grief revolving in the bleakest cell of unapproachable pain. And so, I found myself weeping with this people. An oppressor, torturer, and madman tore terrifying tears today from his people. Not the usual tears of hunger, of fear, of injustice, of pain, of loss which have haunted North Korea for so long, but strange, unnatural tears. Dignified Asian men of solemn ages and high position are here seen sobbing and convulsing before the nation like little children. As I watched the writhing mob, it were as though every woman wept for her child, every man for his beloved, every child for his parents. My heart is still shaking; the emotion, the rawness of it, clawed at me from the screen as the video played.

God have mercy on this people, for they are "...a people plundered and looted, all of them trapped in pits or hidden away in prisons. They have become plunder, with no one to rescue them; they have been made loot, with no one to say, 'Send them back.'" (Isaiah 42:22)

In only a week we will celebrate the coming to earth of God in the flesh, of the King of eternity who throws off the slavery of the heart and soul, and beckons the world into the kingdom of light. In only a week, well fed and surrounded safely by all we love, we will sing with smug satisfaction the soaring hymns of hope and joy. And while we sing, and eat, and laugh, Korea mourns. While we marvel at the glorious mercy of God, North Korea is dying in starved, brutal ignorance. While we luxuriate in 'holiday cheer' the few people of that nation blessed with the knowledge of, and faith in, Christ, are laying down their lives in starkly joyous surrender, 'That the Lamb who was slain might have the full reward of His suffering.'

May God have mercy not on North Korea only, may God have mercy on us, the sleeping church. My own callousness is hideous to me, my selfishness more than I can bear.

Today, like every day, is a solemn one in the history of the world. Tomorrow, still, is an undiscovered treasure in our hands. Faced with this great and terrible world, swaying in the agony of its pain, how will we live? How must I live my daily life?

Reading List for Christmas Break

2011-12-18T12:56:00.003+08:00

The best part of Christmas break is the possession of hours and hours to read. Something tells me that this Christmas break will be a bit too busy for that, as I prepare to fly out for Angers, France at the beginning of January. However, the other best part of Christmas break is creating unrealistic, beautiful goals, so I made a reading list anyway. It is as follows:

'Factory Girls'- Leslie T. Chang (I already started this, and it's so, so excellent. :-) )
'The Gay Genius'- Lin Yutang*
'Le Petit Nicolas'- Sempé/Goscinny
'Vacances du Petit Nicolas'- Sempé/Goscinny
'Les Récrés du Petit Nicolas'- Sempé/Goscinny
'Cultural Literacy'- E.D. Hirsch
'Persuasion'- Jane Austen*
'Graded French Reader'-
'501 French Verbs'
'From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya'- Ruth Tucker*
'Too True To Be Good'- George Bernard Shaw*
Assorted poetry with a heavy slant towards Gerard Manley Hopkins, Kipling, and Christina Rossetti.*
'Muslims, Christians, and Jesus'- Carl Medearis
'I Chose Freedom'- Victor Kravchenko*
'At the Heart of the White Rose: Letters and Diaries of Hans and Sophie Scholl- Inge Jens
'The Short Life of Sophie Scholl'- Hermann Vinke*
'The Great Divorce'- C.S. Lewis*

Realistic expectations cannot be too highly applauded. :-P
Marked items are those which I have already read (4-5 times ;-) ), or those which I have nearly finished, and simply need to come back to. These are the 'low priority' listings.

Technically, I could check 'The Great Divorce' off the list, because I read it yesterday in my first act of Christmas Break Independence, but I already want to go back and re-read it.
It offered a lot to ponder, and it helped me come to terms with some ideas I'd been struggling with. Accepting the goodness and justice of God in a world that makes a mockery of both concepts, and, what is even more difficult, applying these known characteristics of God to certain agonizing instances in the Old Testament, has kept me awake... way too many nights this semester. I've felt heart-broken and confused, frustrated and angry as I try to make sense of the world and its Maker.
Seeing though, through Lewis' clever device, just how deceptive and self-serving, how empty and enslaving human arguments are against the overwhelming Holiness that is God, I was painfully broken and humbled. As I listened to the querulous questions and demands of the ghosts, who obstinately refused to enter Paradise, who were unable to recognize how much better God Himself was than the shabby ephemeral concepts of him, and themselves, which they insisted upon retaining, I recognized myself, and my own pride- my own intellectual falsehoods and stubborn, egocentric opinions... and healthy, shamed humility rolled in. It was like a breath of fresh, cool air- sharp, but invigorating and sweet with life.

You should read 'The Great Divorce' too, and if you're not convinced, the following excerpts will prove it to you:

"'Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried.'
'The saying is almost too hard for us.'
'Ah, but it's cruel not to say it. They that know have grown afraid to speak. That is why sorrows that used to purify now only fester... [Y]ou and I must be clear. There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.'"

"Everything becomes more and more itself. Here is joy that cannot be shaken."

"'What some people say on earth is that the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved.'
'Ye see it does not.'
'I feel in a way that it ought to.'
'That sounds very merciful; but see what lurks behind it.'
'What?'
'The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should veto Heaven.'"

"Ye must distinguish. The action of Pity will live forever: but the passion of Pity will not. The passion of Pity, the Pity we merely suffer, the ache that draws men to concede what should not be conceded and to flatter when they should speak truth, the pity that has cheated many a woman out of her virginity and many a statesman out of his honesty- that will die. It was used as a weapon of bad men against good ones: their weapon will be broken."

"[The action of Pity is] a weapon on the other side. It leaps quicker than light from the highest place to the lowest to bring healing and joy, whatever the cost to itself. It changes darkness into light and evil into good. But it will not, at the cunning tears of Hell, impose on good the tyranny of evil. Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured: but we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on still having jaundice, nor make a midden of the world's garden for the sake of some who cannot abide the smell of roses."

"Time is the very lens through which ye see- small and clear, as men see through the wrong end of a telescope- something that would otherwise be too big for ye to see at all."

"That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory."

"Milton was right... The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words 'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.' There is always something they insist on keeping even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy- that is, to reality. Ye see it easily enough in a spoiled child that would sooner miss its play and its supper than say it was sorry and be friends. Ye call it the Sulks."

"There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organiser of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all the snares."

"Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it already."

"...no natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God's hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods."

I think I'm a little in love with C.S. Lewis all over again... Then again, how could anyone help being so? :-) #christiangirlproblems

Paradox and pain

2011-11-11T15:12:00.007+08:00

"Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth"- Jean Paul Sartre.

In my linguistics class, we have been talking for the past week about the relation between language and ideas, the concept of language as a vehicle for culture. Our final project is to construct a message in the medium of our choice which we would choose to send to inhabitants of other planets as a representation of human life on earth.

So, I've been thinking, what is human life on earth?

Actually, all semester, no, even longer- almost, it seems, for as long as I can remember, some such question, vast and indefinable, has been smoldering in my heart, furious as suppressed lava, threatening to erupt and leave me empty and utterly cold.

How to define the human experience, the purpose of human existence? The answers I've accumulated fail to satisfy, somehow. I barely can explain my own past and place in the world, and my story is a pleasantly uneventful one. In those homes where pain is daily nearer and more vital than I can imagine, in those lands "where life is evil now", what is the unifying thread? What pattern can be traced in senseless suffering?

Sometimes, like a fever in the brain, I'm haunted by the contrast surrounding us everywhere in our world- the shining displays in department stores against the crowded disease and filth of a refugee camp, gleeful, laughing children beside tottering skeletal ones, bright eyes smiling beside blank, horror-shadowed faces. Smug materialism beside raw, hoarse desperation. The deep, simple naturalness of love allowed to run its course unobstructed beside the despair of loss, of separation, of sudden devestation. And I ask myself, which is real? Children weaving daisy chains in a May meadow, or a bus blazing in a Palestinian street? Clear northern lakes reflecting the unruffled majesty of mountains, or grass whispering over the nightmare secrets of Babi Yar? Man defying injustice, or Man breaking under torture?

And I wonder, is no one else wondering the same thing? How can we go about daily life so calmly? I have been waiting all my life for someone to snap under the weight of it all- to stand up in the middle of a crowded room, and shout aloud "Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Nanking, Dresden- Oh, God, let it not be true, or let me die!"

I can't help but feel that, when we think of these things at all, we are instinctively idealists. The nightmare is everywhere, does not have to be searched for, but the happy ending is like buried treasure, sparkling in some secret cache beneath the smoking rubble of earth. Journalists dig for it, optimists paint it in sweeping strokes on the blank canvases of the public imagination. The truth is that we cannot grasp the things that happen in the world every day, especially in nations like the U.S. where life wears blinders and death is neatly sanitized, respectably whisked away from public view. Lurid newspaper articles have the flavor of science fiction; we read them with something that is almost pleasure, because, at our core, we do not believe them to be true. We are ahistorians. We do not believe in history- if we for a moment comprehended it, we would go mad.

And yet the beauty cannot be argued away. The world is fiercely full of life, flourishing, replenishing, dazzling. Vegetation billows and races like green wildfire over the killing fields of Cambodia. In China, the grandchildren of the Cultural Revolution and famine go to the movies, chat online, and discuss sports and celebrity gossip. Normalcy sweeps with merciful rapidity over the indescribable and incomprehensible years of each nation. I am lost in this paradox- the rosiness and darkness of mankind, the cruelty and kindness of nature, the inescapable horror and irrepressible delight of the world. And I have, as yet, no complete answer to my question. What has man done? Why does man continue?

I have always been seized, when faced with the dangerous and fractured state of so many other places, with the desire to leave this semblance of sanity and go there, to face down the lurking nightmare and know, once and for all, what this other half of reality is, if any ointment can soothe it. To effect even a small change for good, to live and die for something difficult and deeply right is a leaping instinct, more powerful than cowardice.

A scene from 'The Robe', a favorite book from high school has haunted me for years. On the road to Jerusalem, two Roman commanders fall into a discussion of the ideal God- what God would be like were they allowed to create Him for themselves. Demetrius, a Greek slave, is listening, and begins pondering the idea for himself. He thinks of the destruction of his home and family, of his enslavement, of the injustice and suffering he's witnessed over the years, and decides:

"This nobler god- if he had any interest in justice, at all- would appear, at such a tragic moment, and sternly declare, 'You can't do that!'"

For me, this has always been the essence of human need. For God to sweep in and disperse evil in one breath, crying out in a voice which would echo beyond the universe, 'You can't do that!'

Western culture is inundated with the chivalrous ideal of the knight in shining armor galloping up at just the right moment to rescue the helpless and imprisoned. Somehow, my vision of God seems to tangle itself inextricably with myths of Camelot and the slaying of dragons.

But the true story is something better, bound in the hearts which accept it with iron cords of loveliness and anguish. All-powerful Creator God, beyond human logic and understanding, made man. This I do not understand. Man sinned, and was divided implacably from God, is falling and sinning still. This, also, I do not understand. This God, this eternally existent I AM did not simply disperse us into non-existence, nor did he prevent our initial act of self-destruction. My mind reels uncomprehending in the face of it. God became man, and suddenly, some irresistable force became clear and evident in the world. How could God become an intimate participant in the strange sordid beauty of pregnancy and childbirth, live as God and child, God and man, in seamless holiness and humanity, embrace in humble, selfless obedience a brutal death, and something deeper in realms beyond human ken? How could the appalling wickedness and screaming agony of every man in every time be concentrated on the willing body of this Son of Man, this innocent one? This story I could not have written, is deeper and more wonderful than the simple, elemental 'You can't do that', which my heart is still hungry for.

At Chinese Bible study the other, night, while discussing a Gospel video, a dear Chinese friend explained to me "Actually, I feel that this cannot be the story of a god. I feel that a god should be somehow great, should be immortal, above man. But this story, it is a man born in shame under shameful circumstances, of ordinary parents, and in poverty, a man who grows up and dies the death of a criminal before he has accomplished anything- how can you call this a god? How can this be God?"
Sweet comrade, how can I tell you in words, this truth that I cannot understand myself- that this God-Man born in shame has taken away the shame of all who love Him, that this God-Man born in poverty, has brought light and hope, waited for in desperation and anguish over thousands of years, to an impoverished world, that this God-Man who, innocent, died the death of the guilty has bought all of us, guilty, the right to His own guiltlessness, His own utter rightness? How can I tell this wonder that dazzles my feeble mind, that the death and suffering and hatred I cannot accept are answered in Him, that dying, He crushed death forever under His feet, that in Him, Life and Love meet at last and are perfect, are conquering forces irresistibly reshaping blood, horror, and weeping. Faced with the question "How do we explain the existence of such suffering in our world if God exists and is good?", another Chinese friend answered, laughing "Obviously, the gods have no power."

It is with hesitation and trembling, but also with confidence, that my searching heart answers: 'No, it is not God who has no power. It is darkness which has no power. It is death which has no power. It is madness, and war, sickness and terror which are coming to an end, while God in His incomprehensible Goodness will go on forever, carrying we weak and foolish ones who were privileged to be His followers into eternity with Him.' This does not silence the tumult inside of me, or the rage of confusion, or the tears which won't stop falling- the instinctive cry of my heart 'But you can't do that'. But it is a rock which life is built on, a wall against endless falling into nothingness.

A message to another world, what would it look like? I search, and I answer, and I can answer only this: "The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'He did not make me'? Can the pot say of the potter 'He knows nothing'?" "Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore, stand in awe of God." Satisfied to wait unsatisfied, resting in acceptance of restlessness, turbulent and soothed, stumbling and upheld, we live in the light of this, or die in the rejection of it. This, at last, is the meaning of man. And so, when torn by the double-edged sword of reality, of beauty and hideousness struggling within one another, we are not disenchanted, but rather enchanted all the more by the Lord who placed Himself in the whirling center of it, and gathered us into the shelter of His arms.

Pre-Culture Shock :-P

2011-11-03T02:32:00.008+08:00

If I had to put into words (but which words?) the reasons behind this semester's difficulty, I would have to say that the cause is that every day makes me more vividly conscious of speaking another language- not only in the physical sense, but mentally, culturally, metaphorically. I sit in a room with family or friends, talking with them in English, but in my head, I'm translating to French, with exclamations and scattered words in Chinese. To hear one symphony is exquisite, but three symphonies at once is a cacophany. My ears are ringing at every moment with a cacophany which only I can hear. When I was a five year old entertaining myself by chanting the two or three French words my father taught me in a smug sing-song, when I was eight years old promising with reckless naivette to learn every language in the world, when a three year brush with Latin became a window for me into fairyland, I didn't know what it meant to pursue such a dream over years and years. I still don't. But they never told me, then, what we were giving up- that the price of belonging everywhere was to belong nowhere, that the more we could express to the globe, the less we could explain even the simplest things to the ones left behind at home, what it would feel like to have a head swarming and teeming with thoughts in three tongues, like paints on an artist's palette, mingling and flowing together till colors were formed that exist nowhere in reality, and are invisible to all other eyes. To be fluent in multiple languages has always been for me, the most magical thing in the world, but it's a terribly desolate magic at times- a one way ticket into Narnia. The end, I begin to realize, of persevering through culture shock, and finishing what I've begun, is to dwell on the fringe of multiple universes, and have no part in any of them. After choosing a life of wild adventure, there's no way of trotting cozily back home and returning to normalcy as though nothing had passed.

'That the Lamb who was slain might have the full reward of His suffering', the creations of the culture-creating God choose a lifetime of culture shock gladly. It is because of Him, and not because of this, that we will never be the same. It is a people transformed by joy who choose the agony of transformation across cultures and languages. No retreats- No reserves- No regrets.

The City of Old Hundred Names

2011-10-11T12:31:00.005+08:00

I'm not (I promise) behind on my China reading yet, although I certainly am in nearly everything else, and blogging is always near the bottom of the list.

A couple of weeks ago, I finished Peter Hessler's 'River Town', definitely my favorite among the three I've read, and I'd like to share some highlights, as well as things I learned.

First, I loved his discussion of literature and politics:

"There was an intenseness and freshness to their readings that I'd never seen before from any other students of literature, and partly it was a matter of studying foreign material. We were exchanging clichés without knowing it: I had no idea that Chinese poetry routinely makes scallions of women's fingers, and they had no idea that Sonnet Eighteen's poetic immortality had been reviewed so many times that it nearly died, a poem with a number tagged to its toe. Our exchange suddenly made everything new: there were no dull poems, no overworked plays, no characters who had already been discussed to the point of cynicism. Nobody groaned when I assigned Beowulf - as far as they were concerned, it was just a good monster story.

This was the core of what we studied in that cramped classroom, and on the good days we never left. But there was always a great deal that surrounded us: the campus and its rules, the country and its politics. These forces were always present, hovering somewhere outside the classroom, and it reached the point where I could almost feel the moments when they pressed against us, when some trigger was touched, and suddenly the Party interfered. Occasionally students wrote about how Shakespeare represented the Proletariat as he criticized English Capitalism (because of this theory, many Chinese are familiar with The Merchant of Venice), and several pointed out that Hamlet is a great character because he cares deeply about the peasants. Other students told me that the peasants in A Midsummer Night's Dream are the most powerful figures in the play, because all power comes from the Proletariat, which is how Revolution starts.

I had mixed reactions to such comments. It was good to see my students interacting with the text, but I was less enthusiastic about Shakespeare being recruited for Communist Party propaganda. I found myself resisting these interpretations, albeit carefully- in light of my students' backgrounds, I couldn't bluntly say that the peasants in A Midsummer Night's Dream are powerless buffoons who provide comic relief. But one way or another I always tried to answer the readings that I felt were misguided. I argued that Hamlet is a great character not because he cares deeply about the peasantry, but rather because he cares deeply and eloquently about himself; and I pointed out that Shakespeare was a Petty Bourgeois Capitalist who made his fortune by acquiring stock in a theater company.

For the first time, I came to understand why literature so often slides away toward politics. I had struggled with this before; at Princeton I had majored in English, and after graduation I had spent two years studying English language and literature at Oxford. My original plan had been to become a professor of literature, but over time I became less enamored of what I saw in English departments, especially in America. Part of it was simply aesthetics- I found that I couldn't read literary criticism because its academic stiffness was so far removed from the grace of good writing. And I could make very little sense of most criticism, which seemed a hopeless mess of awkward words: Deconstructionism, Post-Modernism, New Historicism. None of it could be explained simply and clearly- just as my Fuling students stumbled when asked to define Historical Materialism or Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.

But mostly I was disturbed by the politicization of literature in the West: the way that literature was read as social commentary rather than art, and the way that books were forced to serve political theories of one stripe or another. Very rarely did a critic seem to react to a text: rather the text was twisted so that it reacted neatly to whatever ideas the critic held sacred. There were Marxist critics, Feminist critics, and Post-Colonial critics; and almost invariably they wielded their theories like molds, forcing books inside and squeezing out a neatly shaped product. Marxists turned out Marxism; Feminists turned out Feminism; Post-Colonialists turned out Post-Colonialism. It was like reading the same senseless book over and over again.

And I resented the way that English departments constantly tinkered with the canon, hoping to create a book list as multicultural as the fake photographs they put on the covers of their undergraduate brochures. It had always seemed to me that with regard to literature there was some value in establishing and respecting a cultural foundation, and now in China I saw what happened when these roots were completely ripped up. For years the Chinese had mined literature for its social value, especially during the Cultural Revolution, when all operas were banned except for a handful of political works like The Red Detachment of Women. Even today there was much that had been lost. All of my students knew Marx; none of them knew Confucius.

But at the same time I came to see the reason for such politicization in a more human light...It's natural to want Shakespeare on your side- and if he doesn't fit perfectly, you can twist his words to serve your purpose. Or, if he absolutely refuses to come to heel, you can expel him from the canon." (Hessler, 44-45)

Hessler says more, and I want to type it all, because as a literature lover, and, once-upon-a-time English major, something in me was standing up on my chair to cheer as I read this. It cemented for me yet again some of my reasons for fleeing the English department in favor of foreign language study, a choice which many people I know still question and criticize. It also gave me a new burst of excitement for ESL and teaching overseas. I can't wait to be a student of my students, learning from their assumptions, stories, and fresh perspectives, encountering a China I have only caught glimpses of so far in a few of the best books.

'Old Hundred Names':

Hessler makes repeated reference to this group, essentially the peasantry or common people, in his book.

"A woman... told me that she didn't understand the issue, because she was simply Old Hundred Names. That was the best part of being Old Hundred Names- they were never responsible for anything. It was the same way in any country where the citizens spoke of themselves as the 'common people,' but in China there was a much higher percentage of Old Hundred Names than in most places. Virtually everybody you met described himself as such, and none of them claimed to have anything to do with the way things worked." (Hessler, 207)

"The differences between these countries [America and China] interested him. 'All Chinese like Americans,' he said, a while later. 'But many Americans think there are problems with human rights here. In fact, Old Hundred Names doesn't care about that. Old Hundred Names worries about eating, about having enough clothes. Look out there.' He pointed out the window- a dusty village, garbage beside the tracks, a skinny donkey followed by a peasant in blue. Old Hundred Names. 'Do you think people like that worry about democracy?' he said, 'They need to improve their living standard and then they can start thinking about other things. That's the problem with America and China- you can't compare them in the same breath.'"

This last quote brings up another idea referred to throughout River Town, and which I am still mulling over. That is the idea that much idealism and reform are essentially luxuries- that people who are deprived of basic needs and comforts are hardly likely to waste time worrying over lofty definitions of human rights, or the various environmental, artistic, and moral issues of the hour. Discussing the damming of the Yangtze river, which would change its historical course and destroy countless ancient, marvelous monuments and landmarks, Hessler admits that, in the winter when he periodically lost electricity, he also lost interest in the dam's logistics or the need for historical preservation. He simply wanted warmth and light. Hessler writes, "Cold was like hunger; it had a way of simplifying everything." (115)

Can life really be simplified so quickly? From a purely human standpoint, it seems obvious to me that men under duress would feel so. It must take some force beyond the human will, superimposed upon the human nature, to produce courage and sacrifice which disregard hunger, shame, and exposure to the elements. My reckless generalizations about politics and China seem hopelessly naiive and two dimensional in the face of this reality. So, I conclude that I have a great deal more to learn, and, for now, nothing more to write.

'Oracle Bones' and Sinophiles

2011-09-13T10:08:00.008+08:00

For some time, I have resisted the urge to make this a China blog. My life has progressed to the point, however, at which this blog could only escape Chinese domination by ceasing to be mine. And since no one else is volunteering to write it, I hope that any readers I have left are interested in the Far East... :-)
This weekend I read Peter Hessler's book 'Oracle Bones', which is intended to capture China's transition into a 'modern society'. Hessler, a St. Louis native, spent two years teaching English in Sichuan province through the Peace Corps, then went on to live and work in China as a student, journalist, and (occasionally) not-exactly-legal tourist.
'Oracle Bones' follows multiple different story threads, but the balance is exquisitely delicate and Hessler succeeds in creating a unified tapestry of life in China today. Some figures which stand out are:

Polat: A middle-aged Uighur man who leaves his native Xinjiang due to political pressure and becomes a black market trader in Beijing. Hessler documents Polat's life in the Beijing underground, and transition to the United States as a refugee, while telling the greater story of the Uighur people, and other threatened ethnic groups who consider themselves 'in but not of' China.

William Jefferson Foster (English name): A fiercely enthusiastic young English student who, with his girlfriend, Nancy, leaves Sichuan to become a migrant worker in a wealthier province. Willy's coarse sense of humor is not entirely palatable, but his intelligence and raw passion for knowledge are both haunting and appealing. Willy and Nancy's story was one of my favorite threads in the book. This excerpt is an example:

"She [Nancy] tried to be patient with his obsessions. Earlier that year, Wenzhou television had started broadcasting China Central Television's Channel Nine, which is in English. Every night, Willy stayed up late, glued to the television, writing down new words. Nancy's sleep deteriorated into a haze of flickering light and Special English [simplified English], and then, just when she thought they might need another room, the broadcasts stopped.

For a few days, Willy assumed that there was a technical problem. After a week he telephoned the Yueqing Broadcasting and Television Bureau, whose representatives told him that Channel Nine had been canceled because of a lack of local interest. After another week, Willy began calling and impersonating a Beijing accent. He claimed that he worked for an international trade company whose foreign representatives often traveled to Yueqing, where they had been deeply disappointed to find no more of Channel Nine. The foreigners, who were investing heavily in Yueqing, would be thrilled to see Channel Nine again. For weeks, Willy waited hopefully- nothing. If Nancy was relieved, she was tactful enough to keep it to herself." (Hessler, 316)

Emily: Like Willy, Emily is one of Hessler's former English students. She too leaves Sichuan to work in another province, in this case, at a factory. A bright and creatively independent thinker, Emily is tormented by depression and a sense of emptiness, feeling a constant vague dissatisfaction with her life. She is disillusioned by the corruption and falsehood that surround her at school and the factory, and with the deceptive political system. In one letter she writes,
"I hate political cant because I used to believe in it.", and goes on to describe the grief of her father who came to realize the unreliability of his adored leaders only as an old man.
She maintains a special friendship with her former teacher, but is haunted by a sense of unsatisfied longings, telling him,

"Your appearance lightened up my college life. It's you that let me know that a teacher could get along with his students that way. You never know how much fun I took in reading your feedback in my journal book. It could ease my worries and make me think. I always enjoy talking with you, you are the one who knows my everything... But everytime you went back to Beijing, I felt the panic of hollowness. As if I had given everything out but gotten nothing in return." (Hessler, 424)

Emily's phrase '...the panic of hollowness...' will stay with me for a long time. I hope to leave my students one day with true peace and fulfillment, not simply an empty, temporary comfort.

Chen Menjia: The pre-eminent scholar and archaeologist involved in the study of oracle bones, bronzes, etc... from the Shang and Zhou dynasties. His tragic suicide during the Cultural Revolution continues to echo throughout archaeology and academia in China, profoundly impacting many students and researchers of his generation.

Jiang Wen: A controversial and flamboyant film maker whose WWII movie 'Devils on the Doorstep' was celebrated at the Cannes festival, but banned in China. Jiang Wen has much interesting commentary on life and art in China, but one thing he said stood out to me particularly:

"In the distant past, the country was peaceful and stable, but now it changes so fast. Certainly that's been the case since Reform and Opening, but to some degree the past two hundred years have been like that. We don't know where we are. We haven't found our road. In the early part of the twentieth century, the Chinese tried; some of them tried to find it in our own traditions, while others looked outside the country. This debate is still going on. Chairman Mao is a perfect example. He often said that he didn't like Chinese history, and the Communists initially succeeded because they were untraditional. But Mao used traditional Chinese language to oppose the old things, and he became a traditional emperor. It's not as if he decided to do this, he just didn't know any other alternatives. He's a tragic figure- the most tragic in Chinese history. He's like a seed that grows big, but in a twiste way, because the seed can't overcome the soil... I want to make a movie about Mao. Mao was more tragic than Hamlet. Mao was an artistic person, not a political person. He should have been a poet and a philosopher; he should have been creating things instead of dealing with politics... I think Mao has something to do with every Chinese person. He represents many Chinese dreams and many Chinese tragedies." (Hessler,349)

Throughout these discussions about the sense of confusion and disconnect felt by many Chinese young people, I'm reminded of Guobin Yang's assertion in 'The Power of the Internet in China' that, "Change is the cause of today's identity crisis, not the basis of hope." (Yang, 37) The generations following the revolution, while disillusioned by communism/authoritarianism, have found no adequate replacement, only new fads to dabble in. One Chinese professor I know says that the high-school and college students in China today seem completely foreign to him; their behavior and culture is unfamiliar, and even their appearance and style are confusing. He suggests, (in what, coming from a Chinese person, is almost certainly not a compliment) that, "They don't really seem like Chinese to me. Maybe they are like Japanese instead."

To conclude, if you would like to know more about China, or the world in general, I recommend this book highly. One thing I especially enjoyed about 'Oracle Bones' was the emphasis placed on ordinary people and everyday life. I felt like my understanding of Chinese culture and history was deepened considerably. Some points of interest for American readers might be:

1. The description of experiencing the aftermath of 9/11 in China, and of the reactions of Chinese citizens.
2. Frequent allusions to Chines perceptions of American people, government, and foreign policy.

A note to the concerned: This is the first of an interminable series of China book reviews, and other Asian musings. This semester I will be continuing to work through the reading list I started on last year, and as I'm now bursting with information, ideas, and sweet quotes, this hijacking of my blog is a necessary step towards the preservation of sanity. You haven't seen the last of Hessler; I picked up his first book, 'River Town' at the library this afternoon. ;-)

'And ah, for a man to arise...'

2011-05-04T03:43:00.007+08:00

It is instinctive to blame great evil, like great good, on great men.
In the name of simplicity, Hitler becomes the Holocaust, Stalin the face of Soviet brutality, and Mao the Cultural Revolution. These generalizations do contain a measure of truth, but they obscure the greater terror- the fact of millions of ordinary Germans, Russians, and Chinese who, in the examples above, abandoned the accepted bounds of decency, clawing one another to pieces in the frenzy of fear and self-interest. In every great historical tragedy, the wise observer sees not the transcendant power of an evil man, but the transcendant power of evil in man. It is this that causes us to turn away in horror- because wherever we see the force of human callousness and cruelty surging forward, we find the same darkness mirrored in our own minds, and in the faces of those around us.
The great source of trouble in the world is not a series of malevolent masterminds, but the sin and rebellion against God in each human heart- the pride, selfishness, and lovelessness which surge restless and eternally dissatisfied there. A correct response to evil is revulsion, and hatred of evil; the only just response to the hatred of evil is not self-righteousness, but the most profound humility.
One of the most well known faces of evil and human cruelty in our generation is now dead. Why should his destruction be made a cause for rejoicing? It is only by undeserved mercy and grace that we are any different. Many men of the same stamp are eager to fill his place- like the sea welling up where one digs in the sand.
It is no wonder that Paul cried out to be freed from 'this body of death'. It is unfailingly wonderful that he was able to cry to One who could hear, and who not only heard, but answered! There can be no answer for universal corruption and crippling of the soul save the whole, purifying power of Christ. He is the Light by which we see darkness, and the Conqueror who defeats it in us. Christ remains the eternal image of the invisible God, and the source, the essence, of all that is good in man. What would it look like were we to spend less of our time in wondering when a new hero will arise, or when the previous tyrant will fall, but rather delighting in the one who is able to replace hearts of stone with beating hearts of flesh?

'And ah, for a man to arise in me,
That the man I am may cease to be.' -Tennyson

Matthew 27:45-46

2011-04-24T01:07:00.003+08:00

Like a great noise wrung from the ages it rose up within me, men of every nation crying out in a million tongues of anguish, 'Even God has forsaken us!'
But then, over all these voices, came the terrible cry of the Messiah,
'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'
And His flesh was torn and His heart was broken as he stood in the place of all mankind- enduring the agony, the shame which should have been my own. And the question consumed me: 'What God is this who has not forsaken us, but has been forsaken for us?'

Tiananmen, Tiananmen, Tiananmen...

2010-11-16T02:26:00.001+08:00

The images are burned on my eyes now- I see them constantly- sleeping and waking- the faces of those people on the square- wide eyed, pathetically innocent enthusiasm- grim determination- anger- hope and hopelessness. Thousands of Chinese faces, Chinese voices, crying out for progress- for freedom- for impossible things.
I guess I’m a sucker for lost causes and dead heroes. Maybe with China burning in my blood like a fever, it’s inevitable that Tiananmen should shatter my world.
But I’m trying to organize my thoughts, because I think it’s more than that- and I think that whatever’s tearing me into pieces right now has universal elements that you all should consider.
Tiananmen, Tiananmen, Tiananmen. The movement on the square two decades ago was more than a revolution. It transcends the political realm, though the millions involved may never have known it. It was a symbol of human striving towards… something- of that wild bird impulse which can bear, and bear- and then, suddenly is free, standing in defiance of tanks and trucks and automatic weapons, unable to back down- weeping, terrified, furious, but beyond retreat.
And yet, if revolutions are the goal- if an overthrow of power- or even new liberties are all that’s accomplished, this eternal hope can only end in eternal hopelessness.
Movements end. Revolutions are crushed. The saviors of the people today are their oppressors tomorrow. Nations rise and fall and are forgotten. The dead at Tiananmen are just that- dead. One man stood unarmed on a Beijing street, blocking the progress of a line of tanks, and yet, the man is gone, and the tanks rolled onward. To be an icon may be wonderful, but when beautiful emotions and symbolic status accomplish none of what you gave yourself for, then surely, nothing could be emptier.
So when I weep for Tiananmen, I am not grieving for a movement. I am weeping for millions of people who reached out for something- something- and who were flung bleeding back into their prison. I am weeping because I know they could never have satisfied their longings by overthrowing Deng’s government, by gaining the liberty they demanded, or by grabbing the attention of the world. I am weeping because true freedom- freedom which cannot be suppressed, whose voice cannot be stopped with bullets, whose hope cannot be destroyed- is found in one man only. Jesus Christ.
And when I am moved to tears by this- by the pointless suffering of millions in the nation that has all of my heart- by the crushing of the people who are bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, life of my life, it is not only because they are pouring themselves out at all the wrong altars- because they are giving their lives to dead idols and screaming their petitions into silence- it is because THEY DO NOT KNOW! They are living in a cave with no view of, any whisper of the sky. Oh, I know Romans One. They have the clues to God’s existence before them. But God is adamant that, although this leaves them no excuse, this is not the way in which they will learn to know Christ.
How will they hear? Us. His body. His ambassadors. We are to be the image of, the action of His love. Certainly He would want to include the most populous nation on earth in that mandate!
So I ask myself the question: ‘What am I doing for China?’ and the answer is unsatisfactory. I can’t go yet, though the longing is terribly strong just now. I have access to a limited pool of Chinese students and professors here, and yet, I can PRAY. I can fast. I can petition. I can refuse to be silent about the sufferings of these people. I am not giving nearly enough time to doing so now- but with His help, I hope to change. Will you do the same?
The facts of Tiananmen cannot be erased. One generation silenced. Another woefully deceived. In the United States, our generation is ignorant, passive, and often indifferent. Millions of Chinese victims, both in history and today deserve recognition and support, so I am determined now to educate myself as much as I can, and to be a voice for China here. Will you dare to be informed? Will you dare to speak out? It matters- it really does.
And more than anything, will you go? If not to China, then to the Chinese in America! If you don’t know any, find them. Start studying Chinese. Make contacts in the expatriate community. Those of us attending secular universities, especially, have tremendous responsibility! God has brought the world to us. If we aren’t living and sharing the Good News here, I doubt we’ll be much use anywhere else.
If China is such a tearing pain for those of us who love her, imagine how God, who created these precious billions, who paid their ransom in His own blood, must yearn over them! Dare to share God’s heart for China! Dare to give yourself for China! Thousands are dead- imprisoned- destroyed because of Tiananmen. The taste it leaves in my mouth is grief. Hopelessness. Finality. But a new generation is coming of age, and a new hope may arise if we are faithful.
Are you willing to bring the revolution of Life? The Truth that can NOT be silenced? The Light that cannot be quenched in the darkness of a prison camp or the smoke and chaos of a massacre? The Life that will never be reduced to a twisted young body tangled in its bicycle, bleeding the blood of a nation?
If you are not, who will? If I am not, who will? If we, the slaves of Christ, do not proclaim Christ, who will? The people rise up, and fall down, and gunshots rattle near the ‘Gate of Heavenly Peace’, but we who carry the peace of Heaven in our hearts are silent.
This must change.
This MUST change!

Fragrance of 'The White Rose'

2010-10-13T09:18:00.004+08:00

"The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn."
— Sophie Scholl

"I know that life is a doorway to eternity, and yet my heart so often gets lost in petty anxieties. It forgets the great way home that lies before it."
— Sophie Scholl

"I will cling to the rope God has thrown me in Jesus Christ, even when my numb hands can no longer feel it."
— Sophie Scholl

How can we expect fate to let a righteous cause prevail when there is hardly anyone who will give himself up undividedly to a righteous cause?"
— Sophie Scholl

"Isn't it a riddle . . . and awe-inspiring, that everything is so beautiful? Despite the horror. Lately I've noticed something grand and mysterious peering through my sheer joy in all that is beautiful, a sense of its creator . . . Only man can be truly ugly, because he has the free will to estrange himself from this song of praise.
It often seems that he'll manage to drown out this hymn with his cannon thunder, curses and blasphemy. But during this past spring it has dawned upon me that he won't be able to do this. And so I want to try and throw myself on the side of the victor."
— Sophie Scholl

"Many people think of our times as being the last before the end of the world. The evidence of horror all around us makes this seem possible. But isn't that an idea of only minor importance? Doesn't every human being, no matter which era he lives in, always have to reckon with being accountable to God at any moment? Can I know whether I'll be alive tomorrow morning? A bomb could destroy all of us tonight. And then my guilt would not be one bit less than if I perished together with the arth and the stars."
— Sophie Scholl

"Just as I can't see a clear brook without at least stopping to dangle my feet in it, I can't see a meadow in May and simply pass by. There is nothing more seductive then such fragrant earth, the blossoms of clover swaying above it like a light foam, and the petal-bedecked branches of the fruit trees reaching upward, as if they wanted to rescue themselves from this tranquil sea. No, I have to turn from my path and immerse myself in this richness . . .
When I turn my head, my cheek grazes the rough trunk of the apple tree next to me. How protectively it spreads its good branches over me. Without ceasing the sap rises from its roots, nuturing even the smallest of leaves. Do I hear, perhaps, a secret heartbeat? I press my face against its dark, warm bark and think to myself: homeland, and am so indescribably happy in this instant."
— Sophie Scholl

"It was a sunny day, I was carrying a child in a white dress to be christened. The path to the church led up a steep slope, but I held the child in my arms firmly and without faltering. Then suddenly my footing gave way ... I had enough time to put the child down before plunging into the abyss. The child is our idea. In spite of all obstacles it will prevail."
— Sophie Scholl

"Who would have thought it possible that a tiny little flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply wasn't room for any other thought...." ~
-Sophie Scholl

"The sun still shines." "God is my refuge into eternity."
-Sophie Scholl (these statements are both reported as her last words before her execution on February 22, 1943

The quotes above are a sample of the writings of Sophie Scholl (one of my biggest heroes), a young college student (having formerly been a member of the Hitler Youth) who was murdered at the age of 21, along with her elder brother, for their role in the German resistance organization known as 'The White Rose':

The Ashes of Our Idols

2010-09-14T09:05:00.002+08:00

I thought about Exodus 32:20 a lot this summer. Assumptions, friendships that I'd centered myself on collapsed, and when it seemed like all my ideals were in powder at my feet- were a choking taste in my mouth- I couldn't help but be reminded of the Israelites' experience.

Picture it- sunrise in the desert. Cold sand rolling beneath your feet. Perhaps a carpet of grey mist lurking at the base of the towering, rugged peak of Mt. Sinai. Rocky outcroppings lit to gold as the sun looms on the horizon. Scarlet streaks burning across the lightening sky. Behind a newly built altar, the crude figure of a calf, molded of fine, heavy gold, glints in the icy morning light. People threading their paths like spectres through the rocks. The bellowing of terrified livestock. The sick-sweet smell of blood as the ritual sacrifices are performed. And then, the smoke of thousands of cooking fires rising across the camp as the day of feasting begins. It says in verse six:

"...the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry."

Hundreds of drums thump and echo among the rocks. Long wailing notes are blown. A shower of music jangles from tambourines. Bare brown feet dance rythmically, pounding the sparsely planted earth. Laughter rings out from swaying leathern tents. Children chase each other gleefully in the open spaces. Eager, loud, excited masses mill about.

Moses struck this holiday crowd like a tornado.

Exodus 32:19-20
"When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. And he took the calf they had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it."

Sooner or later we always 'drink' the consequences of our sin. Israel tasted the bitterness of idolatry right down to the last of its very literally bitter dregs.

I wrote the following poem this summer, intended to be from the perspective of a young Israelite woman in Moses' camp:

They poured the shimmering stream into the mold
I watched, in nervous awe
To see in that bright rush of molten gold
The dimming of the Law-
The flash of seeming power-
In that hot brilliance, pleasure taking shape;
The form of my desire.

I watch the fire
Flare up and die, recalling how he came
A thunderclap from God, a storm of rage
And sick disgust- the crash of broken stone
That shattered my hard heart- his words of scorn-
A flicking lash which all at once laid bare
My vain pretensions, and my childish fears.
I still can taste
That terrible, glittering draught of molten shame;
It mocked me with its gleam
Oh God, my God!
The ashes of my idol are bitter in my mouth.

Asleep in the Light

2010-09-04T22:52:00.002+08:00

This was written by John Zumwalt, a Taiwanese missionary who is now a church planter in Oklahoma and the director of Beautiful Feet Boot Camp. You may not agree with everything he says here, but I found this article very thought-provoking and convicting:

"Watch out for little boys named Samuel. Little Samuel had his hand raised, and he was poised to answer the question. My wife, Jamie, and I were in Sheridan, Wyoming for a weekend of meetings. One was a local Christian school's morning chapel service. As we talked to the kids about Taiwan, I watched Samuel's eyes light up with what I thought was normal excitement about the exotic and far away places, but now I think that there was something more.

As we explained the daily fear that the Taiwanese experience from "ghosts" and evil spirits, the children began to understand the Taiwanese people's need for Jesus. I talked about the idols that were made of stone and wood which sat in the temples never moving, and how the priests would beat on drums or bang on gongs to awaken their god. I then asked the children, "Do we have to wake up our God?" "NOOOO!" the children yelled back (Ps.121).But Samuel had his hand held high . . .

Quietly he said, "No, we don't have to wake Him, but sometimes He has to wake us." Suddenly it wasn't Samuel, the boy, talking to me, but God speaking through Samuel, the prophet.
Prophets come in different shapes and sizes, and different levels of obedience. Take Jonah for example. He heard God's command to go to Nineveh, and yet he ran . . . as though there was some place to run. Who can flee from the presence of God? As the story unfolds, he tries to hide in a ship going the wrong way, and God sends a mighty storm. The waves were towering and crashing upon the ship enough to alarm this sea-hardened crew. In sheer terror, they began to make offerings and sacrifices to their gods, begging for mercy and protection. As the storm raged, they grabbed all the merchandise that they were hauling, all that was to be their source of profit, and cast it overboard trying to help the ship stay afloat. Still death was imminent. All this while the prophet of God, the one who knew the Maker of the land and the sea, the wind and the waves, slept unconcerned in the hull below.
Have you seen the planet lately? I have. I've watched as people smash spiked balls into their faces and slice their backs open with swords, all in honor of their idol. I know of children's summer camps to which parents send their kids just for the purpose of becoming demon possessed, so they can then return back home with profit potential through healing, fortune telling or demon exorcisms. I've read of cyclones smashing into Bangladesh killing hundreds of thousands in one blow. I hear of entire ethnic groups wiped out because of hatred and others starved to the brink of extinction. All of the world's peoples are caught in the giant storm of life. It inevitably signals their death. In sheer terror, they rush to worship whatever deity they have, sacrificing and begging for survival. All of their cries go unheard and unheeded, so in greater desperation they throw everything they own and care about to their false gods, and still the storm rages unabated, destroying young and old alike. And those who know nothing about Jesus, those who have never even had the opportunity to hear of Him, die; fifty-five thousand of them every day fall into eternity without Jesus.

Jonah was asleep in the hull. The captain came down and roared, "Is now the time to sleep?" Our Captain is calling to the Church today in no uncertain terms, "IS NOW THE TIME TO SLEEP? I gave you the commission to go, yet you run, covering your ears with petty concerns and little ambitions for your own well being. You get into a vessel of your own choosing for a destination of selfishness. But I gave everything, left security and My comforts that you might have life. Why then do you, who call yourselves by My Name, refuse to rescue the perishing? Why do so many Christians honor Me with their lips, but refuse to imitate Me with their lives? With half the world knowing nothing about Me, is now the time to sleep?"
Some years ago a minister was traveling in a car; his wife and a young son, a boy eight years old, were with him in the front seat. They were traveling through hilly country, and the road was wet. A car going in the same direction passed them at a terrific rate of speed. As they came over a hill, they saw the car again, just as the young man driving it lost control, and it turned across the highway. Coming from the other direction was another car, also traveling at a high speed, and it crashed into the first one. In a moment the highway was littered with debris and with the torn, broken bodies of the occupants of both cars.
The little boy saw the catastrophe. He became pale as a sheet. He did not speak a word the rest of the way. In fact, none of them did. They had nothing to say.
When they arrived at their destination, the parents were disturbed at their son's nervousness. They put him to bed. Ten o'clock came; then eleven; then twelve; then after twelve-and still the boy remained awake.

His father sat beside him, trying to calm him, and said, "Sweet-heart, won't you try to sleep?"

Suddenly the little fellow's emotions overcame him. He burst into tears and said, "Daddy, when people die, can we sleep?"

It seems we can. Like Jonah we seem to sleep without regard to the terror the unreached peoples face. Because we are in our eternal security, we have nary a thought as to their predicament. We sing Sunday after Sunday about the great salvation that is ours and only occasionally, and begrudgingly at that, give a week over to "them" and their concerns. Keith Green, who passed away in 1982, said it best, "He rose from the grave! And you can't even get out of bed."

One day, while I was not sleeping, I had a dream. Some would call it a vision. I was standing on cracked and dry earth that stretched out before me like a giant plain. The sun beat hotly on me as I surveyed the three figures in front of me. You have seen them before: three starving boys. Victims of a famine. Crouched weakly on the ground, all three were in desperate need of life-giving sustenance. The reddish hair, the protruding belly, (all tell-tale signs of malnutrition) struck an eerie contrast to the skeleton-like bodies, too weak to lift a hand and chase away the flies that crawled about them.
Each of the three boys had a plate. On the first boy's plate was an unbelievable sight. It was piled high with food. Roasted chicken, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, carrots, peas, bread and more. So much food was on this first boy's plate that some of it had spilled off and was now on the ground around the plate. It was literally full and overflowing. The mystery was that although he had plenty of food to survive and regain health, the boy was still starving. It looked to me as though he had not eaten anything, though if he wanted to, he clearly could.
On the second boy's plate was a healthy serving of food. It wasn't a pile like the first, but enough to sustain the boy and provide his body with all the much needed proteins, vitamins and nutrients. But just like the first boy, the second boy wasn't eating. There it was: everything they needed for life! Yet, they would not. Instead, they sat there getting worse with each passing moment. It was then that I noticed the last boy.
I don't know why I didn't look to him sooner, but he was the last boy on which I fixed my attention. This third boy was dying, even as the first two were. He also had a plate before him, but there was no food on it. There wasn't even a crumb. It was empty. I looked at that precious third child and knew that he didn't even have a chance at food. His dark eyes looked back at me and still do.

I suddenly knew that I was not alone in this vision. Jesus was guiding me through it. He stood behind me and gently touched my arms as He spoke, "Who will you feed?" I looked down at my hands, and in them I had food ... not a pile ... only enough to give to one of the boys. All three were starving, but the first two had an option. They could choose to eat. The third boy had no option. As it stood right then, he would starve to death without ever having a chance at food. My decision was obvious. My food would go to the third plate.
The third plate. I think that most of us look at it last or give it last place on our priority list. I know of many well-intentioned churches and individuals who will talk about it, but they never practically get around to seeing any food getting to the third plate. Somehow it all ends up in the first or at best the second plate.
Am I talking a mystery to you? Let me speak clearly. I quote Oswald Smith, the founder of Faith Promise, when I say, "What right do we have to preach the Gospel to anyone twice, while there are those who have yet to hear it once?" How can we continue to turn a deaf ear to the cries of those who are looking into a night with no dawn, a future without hope, an eternity without Jesus. Dear friends, Jesus always places us between Himself and the multitudes. His command is still the same, "You feed them." "

(This article is an adaptation of a sermon by John W. Zumwalt.)

Waiting for the Lilies

2010-09-03T10:10:00.005+08:00

"The girl looked round her ravaged garden, seeing only the torn soil, and gaping hole where her Rose had bloomed, and feeling the fearsome smart of her gashed hands.
"I am not sorry", she said- but wept.
That night, her head throbbed with a leaden ache, and the tears came even in her sleep. She seemed to wander through a terrible maze of dreams, and always awoke grief-stricken, and with a keen sense of loss. It was as though she had held the world in her hand, and watched it trickle through her fingers and out of reach over, and over again.
And yet, the morning dawned at last, and she awoke to find a delicious perfume wafting through the garden in an almost tangible cloud. She sat up and looked round- and there, at her feet, and all throughout the garden, were springing up tall, graceful lilies of burning white, with starry glowings of gold in their slender throats, and a sweet, spicy fragrance breathing from every flower. There was an irresistible sense of GROWING in the air- she almost expected to find herself shooting upward as rapidly as the lilies. A strange, joyous melody began to play through her head (which did not ache now at all!)- and then words came, until at last, the song went like this:

'Awake, awake, O Northern wind,
And come, O Southern breeze!
Blow now upon my garden- send
To Him that holds its keys,

My garden's fragrance, spread abroad,
So that He will make haste-
My garden's gate's unbarred for Him-
Its choice fruits He must taste!'

Within an hour, the lilies had blanketed every bare space in her garden- all but the crater which had been the Rose's bed. This lay as darkly as ever amid the white sea of flowers. But she thought of the terrible scars in the Master Gardener's hands, and so, was content to have it left so, a 'wound' upon her garden- blooming there like a crushed and broken blossom from the sunless land of grief and thwarted hopes.
And so things remain.'"

I wrote these words several months ago in my entry 'The Gardener and His Servant'.
It has been a long while, and there are still days when I feel like nothing will ever grow in the 'garden' of my life again. The lilies bloom for elusive moments here and there, and are gone, leaving the torn and gaping soil desolate. It seems, some days, that I have been waiting all my life for lilies. Will the lilies ever take root and stay?

Today, Autumn rushed across the campus in a blast of cold wind. No 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness' was this afternoon, but something wild, and sad, and fiercely elemental. I suppose it captured my imagination because, just now, I feel much more attuned to Autumn than to any other season. Not the burgeoning, tingling hope of Spring, the lazy happiness of summer, nor yet the bleak despair of winter, but wistful, vibrant, half-regretful Autumn, savoring its memories with cool-misted wonder, and packing them away for eternity between golden leaves.
I walked out to the 'Secret Garden', an old homestead near the campus. All the trees were tossing their heads in preparation for a storm. Yellow walnut leaves swirled across the gray, racing-clouded sky and over the wet fields and wet gray road like snow in a snowglobe. When I reached the homestead, I stepped through dark blue, rain-drenched cedars, across the silver-pearled grass to the gnarled pear trees.
The best pears in the world grow here- tart and electrifyingly intense, spurting juice in your mouth like nectar. And they taste so much better when you look up and see them hanging in clusters, gold and brown speckled glopes framed in shining green leaves, and reach up through the wet branches to pick them, with cold raindrops shaking down onto your face.
As I stood in the drenched grass, munching my pear, I began to turn this thought over in my mind: 'Fruit trees bear their fruit in season.' I know that's kind of a 'duh', right? But it's so true! This Spring I reveled in those same trees with their fluttering wedding-cake profusion of pink and white blossoms. That was the season for budding, for flowering and pollination. I watched them, cloaked modestly in green, looking like 'ordinary' trees during the summer, while the tiny pearlets swelled and slowly began to ripen. I have stood beside their shivering, naked silhouettes in sober desolation during the cold months. All of these phases are necessary and good to the pear tree. Why should I rebel against the 'seasons' in my life?
Maybe this is not the blossom time for me. Maybe the fragrant, lily-brimming moments seem few and far between. Every garden needs its Winters as well as Springs. Flowers are not the goal- fruit is. God promises in Galatians that 'at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.' Therefore 'let us not become weary in doing good'. Let us not break our hearts for dead roses or elusive lilies. I am not intended to spend the energies of my heart in waiting for the lilies, but rather to spend my life in eagerly expecting my Savior, loving Him with heart, soul, mind and strength! I am shaken and humbled by the power of that truth.
The God who conquered death and shattered the power of the grave- who paints breathtaking landscapes and wrenches me to tears with the beauty of His skies loved you and I even before the foundation of the world! In Him I am a new creation, a lovingly designed Eden flourishing again beneath His skilled and tender hands. I accept the plans of my wise Gardener. 'Now the Lord God had planted a garden...' (Genesis 2:8). Who am I to doubt that His garden will bring forth its fruit in the proper season?

John 15:1-4, 16
'I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you....' 'You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit- fruit that will last....'

That promise is a 'lily' that will not slip between my fingers. And when He comes, then, oh THEN what a riot of flowers there will be!

The Currents Of His Grace

2010-08-12T04:21:00.002+08:00

It was far past midnight. We stood, speaking with quiet, nearly hysterical intensity in the lighted doorway, Mrs. Sims, barefoot and in her night gown, short white hair rumpled about her drawn, tired face, and I, sunburned and pajamaed, exhausted from a day of teaching clubs. The conversation began with an offhand question, and suddenly became a bewildering torrent of only half realized ideas and concerns. The whole summer- no the past two summers seemed to have been building up to this point, to the things being said in this still room, in that sleeping house.

The phrase kept cropping up between us: "We just aren't REACHING them!"
The 'them' referred to was the kids we had been ministering to. The 'we' was CEF, and more specifically our 5 Day Club team for that week.
We talked for several hours that night. We continued to talk and pray over the next few weeks, as we kept on encountering situations that confirmed our convictions.

I won't try to write here about the happenings that precipitated this late night/early morning conference. I probably will never write about some of it, because, well, some things are very, very complicated. But to put it in a nutshell, we felt (and I am convinced that we are right) that many parts of the way we minister with CEF are unrealistic and ineffective- that change is imperative, and that the means for the beginnings of change are in our hands. We felt that we were seeing very little fruit in our ministry to the children, and that (I can only speak for myself here) it could largely be traced to an arrogant or lazy habit of prayerlessnes. I don't mean not praying at all, I mean praying half-heartedly, as a last-minute formality. Seeing the presence, and consequences of that sin in myself was heart-breaking. We also were concerned by the rigidity of the 5-day club material, and the fact that it was leaving devestating gaps in the understanding many Biblically illiterate (and sometimes wholly illiterate) children were piecing together of God. But we also realized, with a dawning wonder, that what we saw of the situation was not the whole, or even a fraction. Spiritual forces were at work in us, and in the hundreds of children contacted this summer, of which we are utterly unaware. We are terribly blind to God's working, to the wonders He performed beneath the deceptive surface of Appearance. Reality was progressing on a plane almost wholly out of our reach- a plane whose height and majesty we could never have dreamed of but for His mercy and graciousness.
I visualize it as a river, or perhaps a sea. When you stand within sight of a river, you can see its surface glimmering- perhaps guess at some of its currents by watching seams and whorls catch the light, but you really can't guess at all that's happening beneath its surface. Even by jumping in and attempting to swim it, you would only encounter a few of the currents and obstructions in a wild rush of sensation. You would have no clear idea of the whole, of all the hidden things in the water. Life is like that, and I clung to the image while I was teaching.

I also wrote this, after that late night discussion with Mrs. Sims:

'We are but tiny ripples on the surface of the sea. We appear a moment and vanish again in the eddying water. But beneath us are stirring great and mighty currents whose force we cannot fathom, and whose depth and power are beyond our farthest imaginings. We look about us at a physical world where spiritual pictures are barely traceable, and beyond the reach of our own nature. Our blurred sight, and prisoned brains strain toward the concept of majesty which is indescribable and inconceivable. On occasion we feel, oh so faintly, the power of the Spirit of God at work in us- but we cannot see it, touch it, or hear it. It is merely (gloriously!) an almost subconscious sensation, crashing in upon the dull little boundaries of our physical existence. It is a thing we can neither explain, nor create (in ourselves or others)
It is even more rarely that we are allowed to glimpse the action of God in someone else. And yet- and yet- when my own life seems as dry and infertile as a desert- when the hearts of those around me seem impenetrably hard, or hopelessly shallow, still, those great and mighty spiritual forces are working, somewhere, deep beneath the surface.
It is irrelevant that I cannot see them now. He Who emblazons all eternity with the story of His glory is faithful, and will show as much as is necessary of His depths. Until then, I must rest in the knowledge that my identity- the things I see, hear, and touch, are but ripples on the surface of His sea- that my deepest knowledge hardly reaches the shallowest beginnings of His majesty and grace.'

What a truth to exult in! I put the idea into a poem a few weeks later, after driving over the Missouri river at sunset:

The river poured in mellow fire
Its sunset broadness round the bend.
On either side, the hills rose up
In swinging treetops; at the end
A wide horizon swelled to meet
A landscape like a rumpled sheet-

A sheet of darkly ruffled leaves,
And water spreading in an arc
Of shining gold, and silver whorls
That glimmer through the creeping dark-
The river's shining surface hides
Strange depths of darker things besides.

So much of life is darker still
Than that which grapples far below
The molten river's gleaming face-
Things swim there that I cannot know
By watching here upon a bridge
Or long black outline of a ridge.

And currents move and work unseen
Mere ripples show a mighty gain-
Deep sludge is stirred, and ancient bones,
Beneath the dimpling of the rain;
My wavering vision strains to trace
The deeper currents of Thy grace!
Where work Thy Spirit, and Thy Word?
Enough to know Thou workest, Lord.

The Good Hunger

2010-06-04T03:50:00.003+08:00

There is an ache, a longing, a void, which should be ever present in me, and which I all too often lose. If only I could always say, as Amon Wilder wrote in 'No Language But A Cry:

'I have a heart that cries to God
Abandonedly across the blind
Imperfect avenue of mind,
I have a heart that cries to God...

I have a heart that cries to God
Immediately and must dispense
With faltering through the world of sense,
And calls across the mind to God.'

But, instead, I have a heart that says "What should I cook for dinner tonight? Can the grocery budget be stretched any tighter? How many more phone calls need to be made? Which child was supposed to be on dish duty for lunch?..."
And when I'm not rushing around the house playing Martha, I too often throw myself into the garden, or an art project, or the center of a book. Some great, haunting, hardly definable question keeps rising in me, to be hastily pushed down. I told my mother last week: 'There are just some things I need time and space to think through', but this isn't really the issue. The problem is that there are things I'm using every available shred of time and space to AVOID thinking about.
And in all of that turmoil, where can God reign? Where is the good hunger, the crying out for Him?
Mercifully, after periods of terrible dryness, resentment, and confusion, He has restored it, but I still feel, many days, like I'm tiptoeing through a quagmire of impossible questions, and even more impossible answers.
I wrote this last night:

The Promise:

"You weep as one who had a right to weep.
So state your case."
'It is but this:
I cannot love Thee, Lover, as I would.'
He laughed then- such a laugh
Of sorrow and mirth- exulting tenderness-
"You weep for that?
Child dear, did you but love me as you can
You could not love.
Nor long to love at all!
But you do long-
You yearn, you ache to love.
Whence does that yearning spring,
If not from Me?
My daughter, if I have
Planted My love, and will to love in you,
Caused it to grow, tumultuous, in your heart
It is because I know
How to complete, perfect it,
And will bring
Our love to lovely flowering in My time
Until, as in Love's last extremity
I served my Father, and humanity,
You too shall love!"

It is a promise to hold to, even when this, written a little earlier, seems far more descriptive of my state:

'And Love- Torn, broken, bleeding Love
In me.
Has not that gushing wealth of blood
Has not the anguished hue of red
That was Thine own.
But is a sickly-pale, anaemic thing
Shrinking from all its wounds
Quaking with dim fears, with a horror of pain
Peculiar in a soul too craven, flaccid
To suffer mighty agonies at great events.
It is as though
They'd pierced my side- those haggard men with spears
Looming through lurid sunset, swirling fog-
And drawn forth not a rush of blood with water
But water, trick'ling, with a tinge of blood.'

High calling- Low response:

2010-05-23T04:48:00.003+08:00

This morning- the family scrambling to grab breakfast and make it out of the house by 8 am. Suitcases strewn everywhere, as we arrived home from St. Louis last night. Squabbling children, worried parents, stress you could cut with a knife. It seems to be the story of my life these days. To top it all off, I entered the kitchen this morning to discover (unfortunately not before I'd stepped in it) that someone had thrown up all over the floor (which Lex JUST scrubbed) during the night. Ah, how I love Lysol... :-D All of the children swear they have no idea who got sick or how this unfortunate occurrence occurred. The dogs and cats are not releasing any statements at this time, but we have a detective on the case... ;-)
Yeah. Life is messy. And boy, is it EVER messy!
Andy Kauffmann, a missionary, and aquaintance of mine once said though: 'When you live in the mess, you learn to cry out to the King!"
I haven't been learning this 'crying out to the King' business very quickly. Crying- yes. Crying out- no! Self-pity is so insiduous, and creates the ultimate 'Slough of Despond. Lately I've been uptight, emotionally volatile and brittle, frustrated with everything. And it's not because circumstances are truly intolerable, it's because I, in my determined self-will, have been intolerant of circumstances.

The Christian walk is such a beautiful thing on paper. 'We rejoice in our light and momentary troubles', 'What is seen is temporary, what is unseen is eternal', 'Just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also, through Christ, our comfort overflows.' 'Take up your cross and follow me.'
Such a high calling is ours! To walk and love and suffer with an all-sufficient Savior! But the minute this doctrine leaves the realm of theory, I am tempted to enter the realm of 'rage and pout and sulk'. Oh, I know better, but I do it anyway! It seems that everything in human nature wells up in resentment when desires are balked, troubles are piled on, and things cease to go 'according to plan'. MY plan, of course! :-P
Such a high calling we are given. Such a low response seems to be within our grasp. God says 'Surrender these things to Me', and all too often we whine 'But I CAN'T!' (Which is usually code for 'But I don't WANT to!' ).
Fortunately, He can, and will, where we are incapable.
God, give me the humility not to whine, or snap irritably my protestations of 'I can't do this!', but instead, to come humbly, say brokenly 'I can't do this.'- longing and hungering to see YOU do it IN me. Believing that it WILL be done, regardless of the tumult clamouring all around.

A couple of paragraphs in 'Still Higher for His Highest', by Oswald Chambers, convicted me deeply this week:

The Snare of the Sentimentalist, Worldly Sorrow, and The Deepest Longing:

"Lord I will follow Thee, but..." The wish ought to be followed by immediate obedience. I must take the wish and translate it into resolution, and then into action. If I do not, the wish will translate itelf into a corrupting instead of a redeeming power in my life. This principle holds good in the matter of emotions. A sentimentalist is one who delights to have high and devout emotions while reading in an arm-chair or when in a prayer meeting, but he never translates his emotions into action. Consequently a sentimentalist is usually callous, self-centered and selfish, because the emotions he likes to have stirred do not cost him anything; and when he comes across the same things in the domain where things are real and not sentimental, the revenge comes along the line of selfishness and meanness, which is aways the aftermath of an unfulfilled emotion."

"It is a terrible thing to say, and yet true, that there is a sorrow so selfish, so sentimental and sarcastic that it adds to 'the sin of the city'. All sorrow that arises from being baffled in some selfish aim of our own is of the world and works death. Those who sorrow over their own weaknesses and sins, and stop short at that, have a sorrow that only makes them worse, it is not a godly sorrow that works repentance. Oh that all men knew that every sentiment has its appropriate reaction, and if the nature does not embrace that reaction it degenerates into a sullen sentimentalism that kills all good action."

"You are getting tired of life as it is, tired of yourself as you are, getting sour with regard to the setting of your life; lift your eyes for one moment to Jesus Christ. Do you want, more than you want your food, more than you want your sleep, more than you want anything under heaven, or in heaven, that Jesus Christ might so identify you with Himself that you are His, first, last, and forever? God grant that the greatest longing desire of your heart may begin to awaken as it has never done, not only the desire for the forgiveness of sin, but for identification with Jesus Himself until you say, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."

Oswald Chambers pulls no punches, but he's truthful. And I recognized far too much of myself in the 'Sentimentalist' he describes. Do I also identify in that all- consuming, overwhelming, overcoming hunger for Christ? Not always.
So, Lord, where I fail to desire You, 'desire in me'.

Something Like a Summary:

2010-05-13T01:44:00.001+08:00

How do you put a year into words? How do you take the pieces of it and stitch them, as you would scraps of fabric for a quilt, into a unified whole? How can I tell you about the year that was the best, and worst in my life, when there's so much to say- when all the darkest and brightest things are too precious, or too tawdry for me to give to you? I don't know. I've been trying for a while now to think of something like a summary. Something that would tell you enough to be worth saying, without saying too much. And it comes down to this: I can summarize my year quite well. This is all that's worth keeping from the twelve months that have elapsed since I graduated from high-school last May:

God is sufficient.
God is merciful.
God is powerful.
God is glorious!

Now, I realize that's a pretty generic summary, and although it's all you really need to know about my life up until this point, there are all sorts of things you DON'T need to know that I rather feel compelled to share with you.

I had my last final today, began packing to move out of the dorms, and spent some time with friends I won't be seeing much of this summer. Have you ever had days that, from just looking at the bare details of events, you know should have been good, and yet they were... not? This was one of them. The only truly lovely thing I can remember is walking through the chill of grey morning and listening to a robin calling in a cataclysm of sweetness. How can such a small song slice the air so?

The rest was deeply tinged with bittersweetness. I suppose, if I had to give today a name, I would call it 'wistful'. I dread the endings of things, and to have such a great season of life ended is disconcerting. Foolish as it sounds, there's a deep ache in it. I seem to be putting the semester's labor, and ideals, and dreams away into boxes in more senses than one.

So what is it, like, this packing? Well, first, the walls are stripped- photographs of family and friends, missionary prayer cards, poems and Bible verses on sticky notes- all are pressed between the back pages of my scrapbook, now, along with the memories that overwhelm me when I look at them.
The 'covenant stones' come down too- the once rain-drenched leaf that I placed on the Altar one black night, and its song:
'O Lord, I wish Thy way.
And when in me myself shall rise
And wish for something otherwise
Bring sword, and slay!' -Carmichael

The other, small leaf, white as bone that I found nestled in the lush new grass, reminding me of Aline Kilmer's poem. It has a story too:
'The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever!'

The locket, which opens upon the stern question: 'At what point is Jesus Christ not worth it?'

The slender red twig, plucked from a hedge on a rainy day when I stumbled through the field in a haze of confusion:"As for God, His way is perfect... And if His way be perfect, we need no explanation."-Carmichael

The great, cruel thorn, broken from a locust branch: "All Christ's life was a cross and a martyrdom; and thou seekest for thyself rest and joy?"- The Imitation

All of these nestle now in the bottom compartment of my jewelry box, along with other mysterious treasures. As I pull off the last of my pictures and trinkets, I feel the friendly walls receding into blank, inscrutable whiteness. The ceiling rises silently away from me as the room grows in emptiness. In my heart lurks a feeling that is almost grief.

Next, heroically, I attack the bookshelf. Now, you must understand- I am an unashamed bibliophile! I came to college with a loooot of books! Due to a random combination of gifts, text-book hoarding, and used book sales, I now have even more books- many of them large and heavy. So this book packing is still a bit tricky. Especially since I keep stopping to read them, trying to decide what to leave at home, and what to bring back with me next fall...

That is where things stand at the moment. I will have to finish the job tomorrow.
But I have to finish this summary tonight. After tomorrow, I will never again walk down the hall to Leaverton 2018 C. I will not sleep- or lie awake puzzling over life- on that hard, slippery blue mattress with its striped sheets. I will not sit typing at this desk. I will not sing in that shower. I will be gone so completely that I might as well have never come. And when I think of this- that tomorrow I will walk out of this room for the last time, a flood of detail sweeps over me, and the tears are springing to my eyes again. Not so much for the room, but for the life I lived in it. For the friends who've come and gone here- the things I've learned here- the lessons burned on my heart here. When I leave tomorrow, my last physical connection to all of these things will be gone forever. Something- I hardly know how to say what- will have ended, and vanished into memory, or, perhaps, forgetfulness.

On Monday, during the storm, I was sitting cross-legged on the bed with my notebook, trying to explain my feelings about the semester's close. This is what I wrote:

"I see the wind-tossed maple tree just outside my window- its leaves bunched like wet, green ruffles, fluttering with a wild and frantic charm. And all that great expanse of sodden grass, stretching away into a dark wall of trees. Rain falling from the grey sky to lash against the grey road. A pooling of glimmering, cloud-reflecting droplets on the pane. These are the things that bound my world today. I dare not think beyond them- the helter-skelter of the bookshelf, Shakespeare leaning in drunken cameraderie on George Bernard Shaw- 'Jane Eayre' jockeying primly against Maugham's 'Complete Short Stories' for space. The crazy, childish colors in the quilt Aunt Caroline sewed. Papers strewn everywhere. Lightning flashing from time to time on the prisoning walls. Thunder rumbling, like a crescendo of percussion, in time with Ralph Vaughan Williams' 'Folk Song Suite for Millitary Band'. Here is the last safe, famliar place in the world, and I am leaving it forever in two days. For what? For a farther venturing into yet another unkown? On Wednesday begins the mad transition from one reality into another. If only life had some halting places! Spots like stepping stones, on which one could pause and consider the next jump. But it doesn't work that way, and still the stately, mysterious procession of Circumstance continues its intricate dance.
So what can be said about this year? There were days of miraculous strengthening- days when I felt too ill and tired to walk across the room, and yet was able to walk all over campus- days when my heart was trampled to pieces- when I was torn in half by my own uncertainties- when I was drained dry and wrung empty by the world's hunger, and yet, somehow, when God opened the opportunities for sharing, He gave me what I needed to give as well. I learned things- both in and out of the classroom. I caught glimpses of a Love so burningly exalted above mine that I could only fall to my knees before it.

There were those special, piercingly sweet moments- the week I was sunk into discouragement and self-reproach because people kept on talking about what a 'good person' I was, and how 'moral' I was, with never a word of Christ, the consuming passion. I was convinced I must have failed utterly as a missionary, that whatever I was doing had only drawn attention to my own efforts rather than God's power, and was depressed and broken to tears over it for days, pleading for transformation; then a girl, not a believer, but a seeker, came to me needing encouragement and a hug, and after we'd prayed together, and cried a bit together, she put her hand on my arm and looked me in the eye and said: "You are the only genuine Christian I have ever met in my life. I don't know if what you believe is true or not, but you live it- and you don't just do good things, either, I SEE your God in you. I SEE Him in your face. I see you doing things that you could not possibly do on your own. You have wisdom that none of the psychologists and specialists they took me to knew about. You have been loving in a way no person could be, and I know that your God is powerful in your life, and truly your Lord."
I was dazed. I knew, all too well, that what she said was not true. There was so much sin in me of which she was unaware- so much pride creeping into my efforts. There had even been frustration and lovelessness toward HER that God had been rooting out of my heart. But I WANTED to be the person she described- and moreover, my agonizing doubts about my ability to be light in darkness, and plead the cause of Christ rather than my own merit suddenly fell away. It didn't matter how weak and clumsy I was- she had seen Christ in me! Surely He could show Himself through me to anyone else as well! That was one of the glory days.
Another came when, as, under a great deal of stress and discouragement, I was feeling that I didn't 'fit in anywhere', that there was no ministry or work that I was really 'suited' for, and I wished desperately that God would show me what I was able to do, not even daring to ask Him for the explanation of it all- and then, my TESL professor took me aside and said, "You were created to teach children. It's in your blood to teach children. God gave you an instinctive gift for teaching that I have encountered very rarely. Don't give up!" It answered so few of my questions, and yet, it was just the thing I needed to hear in order to get through the disappointments of that week.
I could talk for hours about God's faithfulness this year, about the things He is teaching me. There were days when it seemed His training was too harsh- even days when I resented it. But, seeing the year in review, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the humbling, for the heartbreaking, for the cutting away of the human supports I leaned on, and of my own self-sufficiency. At the beginning of my first semester, a friend sent me an article about Samueul Rutherford. Here is what Rutherford wrote while imprisoned for his beliefs:
"If God had told me some time ago that He was about to make me as happy as I could be in this world, and then tell me that He should begin by crippling me in all my limbs, and removing me from all my usual sources of enjoyment, I should have thought it a very strange mode of accomplishing His purpose. And yet, how is His wisdom manifest even in this! For if you should see a man shut up in a closed room, idolizing a set of lamps and rejoicing in their light, and you wish to make him truly happy, you would begin by blowing out all his lamps; and them throw open the shutters and let in the light of heaven."
After reading that, I went out into the field and prayed, "Lord, blow out all my lamps!"
I didn't know what I was asking. I don't know if I could have had the courage to ask such a thing if I had. I don't know, even now, if I have the courage to continue on with it- this grinding process of lamp-extinguishing, and I have only tasted the edges of an answer; God is very merciful in His dealings with my weakness. But I will close my freshman year with the prayer that began it: "Lord, blow out all my lamps! I would see Thee in all Thy radiance!"
This drab dorm room- my haven against storms and attacks for the past eight or nine months is the lamp which will go dark on Wednesday. A new set of roots are being torn up.
Yet I finally realize, marvelling, that it is a place more soaked in prayer than tears. That my memories of this once faceless room- returning on Wednesday to facelessness- are more of unimagined glory than of unimagined pain. And I know too, in this brief flash of perception, that there could not have BEEN the glory without the pain, the prayer without the tears, the victory without the breaking. It is finished, and He was sufficient! And I? What can I be but thankful for His chastening love? So let the years come!"

The Undiscovered Country:
'Lord, for the erring thought
Not unto evil wrought:
Lord for the wicked will
Betrayed and baffled still:
For the heart from itself kept,
Our thanksgiving accept.
For ignorant hopes that were
Broken to our blind prayer:
For pain, death, sorrow sent
Unto our chastisement:
For all loss of seeming good,
Quicken our gratitude.' -William Dean Howells

Jottings and Meanderings:

2010-05-13T00:42:00.003+08:00

For anyone who leads an incredibly boring life, and would therefore like to read the rest of the poetry that was scribbled into odd corners of my notebook during this year- this post is for you. I thought of giving this some really impressive title, such as 'The Complete Unpublished Works of Sharon L. Moore', but I fear, gentle readers, that you will see all too clearly why the various artistic efforts of 'Sharon L. Moore' remain unheralded and unpublished! So, here they are, a scrambled collection of jottings and meanderings, to be enjoyed or ignored as you please:

Lamentations 3:22

And yet- (O praise Him for that yet!)
I call this promise to my mind
Though every hope I may forget,
Still happiness in this I find:
By His great love we still prevail
For His compassions never fail!

3 A.M. View From My Window in January: ( That sounds impressive! :-P )

A dreaming haze of pale azure
And golden lights rests on the snow;
Dark tree-shapes cast a blue allure
Where shadows stretch along the glow
Of sleeping ice and frozen street.
They strain, elongated and slim
From deeps where tree and shadow meet;
Arch past the realm of shade and dim
To burst in brittle lines of bloom-
Strange fragile bones of gilded blue-
A skeleton of flame and dew-
Shivered to powder at a touch;
No living hand can finger such.

The Question:

And what is Love? I found it at His hand
When every other love of mine had failed
And left me crushed- do not misunderstand;
I did not come to Him a supplicant
For grace or tenderness, but rather, railed
Jeered, spit into His face- wholly rebelled,
The more He wholly loved- I never meant
To rest upon His strength, and yet He quelled
Hatred in me, and spite, and He has nailed
The gate between us to the side until,
My Love, He could cross over unto me
And bring His captive over into Him!
My Life, My God, Belovéd! dwell and fill-
Work, praise, abide in me- hads't Thou not moved
The walls that parted us, I had not loved!

~~~~~
But here I stumble at the rim
Of dizzy heights; my prayer will be
Since I lack strength to cry to Him
'Lord, cry in me!'

Lord cry in me, I cannot call
My eyes burn, ache, but do not see
My God, I cannot come to You at all
So come to me.

Lord humble me, chasten and rend
My knees are stiff, and will not bow.
I have not any love to give,
Love in me now.

Lord pray in me; my heart is cold.
Replace the stone with flesh and fire
I cannot yearn for You- then Lord,
In me desire.

An Informal Sonnet:

The saying goes, 'Love does not dominate;
It cultivates.' My face is hot with shame
To think of all I've gilded with Love's name
That did not bear Love's Spirit, or its trait
Of self-forgetting- how can I but blame
My soul-corroding pride, or too much hate
This seething love of Self that did create
Such lovelessness, which childishly I called
My 'love'? Was that indeed such 'love' as I
Thought worth receiving? Thinking now to buy,
And now to grasp- which sought to elevate
Itself, and not its object- love that mauled
The very name of Love- O, God create
THY Love in me, that I might imitate!

~~~~~~~~~

A rushing murmur is the creek;
The quail burst from the grass a whir
Of stuttering wings- the things I seek
Are but a ripple and a blur.

I may cup water in my palm-
I cannot cup the greenish pool
Nor every golden light and stone
And mossy branch that makes the whole.

I may pluck feathers from the grass
Or let the wind rush past my arm
I cannot pluck the speeding birds
From out the wind; their wild alarm

Their frantic wings, and wilder flight-
Are beyond reach of touch or sight
Neat-patterned plumage, coat of gloss
But flashing memories of loss.

A rushing murmur is the creek;
The quail burst from the grass a whir
Of stuttering wings- the things I seek
Are but a ripple and a blur.

~~~~~~~~~~

"And so they melted all their gold
And cast it in a bovine mold
Where now their offerings they bring
To bow themselves before the 'Thing'.

And when by prophets they are governed
Yaweh as their lawful Sovereign
All that the silly creatures crave
Is, "Kings, like OTHER nations have." "

History has not treated kindly
Israel, she who followed blindly
Hand-fashioned gods, and sinful men
For this was wrong- but then again,

We of today are not much better-
Israel balked when Yahweh led her-
Still the ancient impulse lingers-
We want a god in reach of fingers.

Man, who cannot see much beyond
Himself, forever must be fond
Of asking ('if it's not too much!')
For gods that he can see and touch.

Man, who must play the ages' fool
Chafes at his wise Creator's rule
Favors abuse and subjugation
Under a human domination.

Well may we laugh at Israel's blunders
Yet, there come moments when one wonders
Why we should deem ourselves exempt
From this we treat with such contempt.

Moderns, eschewing wood and stone
Hunger no less for gods their own
Humbly exalt, with reckless vanity,
Struggling and sorrowful humanity.

Often we fill our 'obligation'
Toss God some phrase of approbation-
Rarely will foolish man commence
With worship and obedience.

Humans instinctively disdain
Life underneath their Maker's reign-
We're glad, of course, that Christ would die
But will not call Him Adonai.

From the beginning we've colluded
Plotted and schemed (myself included)
For the illusion of control
Over the sorry human soul.

Lord if I come now, brokenhearted
Back at the point from which I started
Sickened to death of self and sin
Will you receive me yet again?

Lord, I'm afraid I still am fighting-
Even this moment, as I'm writing
Longings to throw off bit and bridle-
Take to myself another idol.

Knowing from trial that the conclusion
Surely will shatter my illusion
Still I go hungering to find
Solace from one of 'my own kind'.

Help me to keep to this decision:
Though far beyond my hands and vision
Vast though You be, though broader, higher-
You will I make my sole desire.

Every heavy hanging minute
All of my life, and all that's in it
Loneness, bewilderment, and pain-
All that I am is Yours again.

View From My Window On a Blustery May Afternoon: ( :-P )

A flash of butterfly-winged
Leaves- in a lime-bright whirl
Like a storm of stars
Flutter between the mystic gaze
Of an April sky and me-
Sunlight bursting
In fiercely yellow blooms
Sprinkled in glints across
Leaping ripples of grass-
I lean
Into the boisterous air,
Past the thrust of the wall, and
The decorous bounds of the window
To catch
The glad heels of the romping wind
Painting the gold-green world
Cerulean blue.
The horizon
Rushes before me- a barricade of towering trees
Stamping and tossing their heads
In their earth-bound fury
Of root-anchored, green-swelling
Impatience- the world swings upward, then down,
Patterned with billowing shadows.

~~~~~~~~~

The night was a slavering Thing of shadows
and fever- the pillow hot with it. Night
was a claustrophobic weight- a smothering of darkness
a suffocation of darkness like blankets
Heaped upon blankets- Life, Sound, Wind, Liberty, Light and Coolness
Were words from another realm whose meaning jarred
Upon low-ceilinged, black realities. Parched lips muttered
And cracked with soreness. Fought to draw air
in- gasping with flattened lungs- then silence.
The nightmare prospect of years stretched in a grim line
Where leaden feet must stumble.

It was some writhing hours later I stood
A cold, broad plain stretched out before me, rose
A slope. Where sparks teemed in the stillness- flung
Wonder into a gaping sky- then music soared
Passion and tenderness, eagerness, loveliness
For You came gladly singing, Morning Star.
Beginning and end for me- You, never begun nor ended.

Your promise brightens on the clouded rim
Of earth- dawn sweeps horizons, and I gaze
At that white creeping radiance- a glow
Lights up my farthest sight- the whole world lifts.
It turns its head to catch the throb of drums
And pulsates as the sunrise, thundering
Rolls crashing past the black-edged wall of hills
And over greyish fields- the promise holds-
Eternal, Morning comes.

The Echoes of His Peace

2010-04-29T01:03:00.004+08:00

'And now I hear Thy mighty "Peace, be still,"
And wind and wave are calm- their fury, froth.
Could wind or wave cause Thee to break Thy troth?
They are but servants to Thy Sovereign will;
Within me all is still.'(Amy Carmichael) :

Those are the wondrous moments in life. Not when the water is a happy, playful, breeze-ruffled thing dancing along between myriad sun-glintings, but when the waves rise up in a great grey rage, and strike like walls- when the wind is a roaring beast, and the depths swell, and billow, and crash over with irresistible force- and then, miraculously, are quelled. It must be worth years of storm-tossing to feel that glorious storm-halting once!

The past few weeks have been a hurricane. I just felt driven helter-skelter before an icy blast of inadequacy, and hurt, and betrayal, and, anger, and rebellion. I didn't know the world could really be such an absolute howling wilderness, and that one could keep smiling, and studying, and chattering away as though nothing were the matter.
Pride was in a fury, and idealism was struck to the heart. Was it possible that I could really be SUCH a miserable failure as this? Were people really so corrupt and untrustworthy? Would I ever have the grace to love them as unselfishly as I wanted to? Did I really WANT to love them at all? Was there any point even in trying? I was writhing in the grip of absolutely poisonous emotions- and I hated the feeling- and I couldn't stop it, or see more than a few inches beyond pain.

It simply went on like that, until I was teetering at the breaking point. Life was a seemingly endless round of dully staring into space, of crying, of lacking the emotional fervour to cry, of praying listlessly in circles- knowing I was stung only by a hundred 'little things', and suffering as though they had been great and terrible ones. It's awful to feel oneself grieved beyond logic and reason- no one watching from the outside can sympathise or comprehend it.

And then, one night, kneeling through the crashing wonder of a thunderstorm, I talked and sobbed it all out with God in rain drenched hopelessness at the Altar Place. And I woke up the next morning, and it was... gone. I hardly recognized myself. I had been frozen before- often unable to feel at all, but this was not freezing or numbness- this was PEACE! Pulling the blankets closer around me, I curled up beside the window and looked out. The tawny-grey lace of branches and twigs on the nearest tree- just beginning to be touched with green at the tips (it is a tree that steps cautiously into Spring) were jeweled with with dangling rows of diamond droplets. The bark of the farther tree was black with rain- the asphalt was shining with it- puddles were flashing at me here and there. A wild panorama of green began to rush past- lush, joyous emerald grass- a great canopy of treetops rising in the near horizon- a silvery cascade of paler green falling over the closest maple. And the sky was soft, gentle, awash with clear grey light- the whole scene singing exquisite morning-ness! I was so glad! I think I learned all over again what gladness is!
Beautiful God! Beautiful morning! As though the Maker of all THIS could be at a loss to guide me, and the people he'd placed about me! I was laughing- happy, childish, unsarcastic laughter, and it was unspeakably good. It has been good ever since- transcending final projects and impending finals- stress, worry, and discouragement. Peace is such a glowing thing- and suddenly, all the love that I couldn't manage at all is overflowing almost effortlessly in generous fountains of grace.

It sounds so strange- is such a miracle, to me! I've felt gradual change before, but never a sudden, utter transformation like this. I only know that a faith which was completely impossible to me when I went to bed was mine in abundance when I woke up- has stayed, like a weight of brightness on my heart all week. At first, I only began to know, as an accomplished fact, that joy was a thing entirely independent of happiness- and then I found that happiness follows on the heels of joy! Every truth in the world was suddenly new-minted. Circumstances are unchanged, but life is far, far, better than alright! And He is glorious!

A few months ago, at the rocky beginning of the semester, I jotted this verse down (during math class, of course.)

He laid a hand upon my inner gale.
One sighing splash denotes collapsing waves,
Then all is still.
And silenced is the clamour of my soul-
Its plunging- frenzied, wild,
Rests calm within the chambers of His will,
Is chambered in the circle of His calm.
No other sound intrudes upon us, save
The waters, breathing like a drowsing child,
And rocking in the echo of His "Peace!"

I'm still a little bit dazed by the stillness. It came so suddenly, and stayed so completely. But since the echo of Christ's "Peace, be still!" is still throbbing here along clear, rainbow lines of light- like the sun bursting through rain-slicked glass- why, what can I do but radiate peace as well?

A Small Beauty

2010-04-12T22:04:00.002+08:00

The sanctuary- which does double duty as our pastor's house- was hushed. Skirts rustled. A shoe scraped. Two throats were cleared. It was the 'prayer' part of the service, where we share concerns, and then take some time for everyone to pray as/if they feel moved. We were all waiting, in the throes of an awkward pause, for SOMEONE to feel moved- begging the silence to break. Then Mr. King stood up in the back of the room. He said:

"We thank You, Lord, for this 'small beauty' we live in. We thank You for showing us a small beauty, so that we can conceive of a bigger one. We thank You for Your promise that one day, there will be no more 'small beauty', or pieces of beauty, but only Your great Beauty transforming all."

I love that thought, and that wording. It's true- we live in 'a small beauty'. Sometimes, I just feel so drained and weighed down by the ugliness surrounding me- by the ugliness WITHIN me, for that matter, that I forget there is ANY beauty in the world! At other times, (and it happens often in Spring!) I'm so carried away into ecstacy by the beauty burgeoning and blossoming everywhere that I can hardly conceive of anything superior, nor feel strongly enough my need of it.

But we live in 'a small beauty'. Not a complete one. Beauty in patches. And it would be as terrible to not see it at all as it would be to see nothing else. Only the recollection that fractions of an infinite beauty are the most- and least- that we are able to see can guard us from either extreme.

So I just content myself with writing poetry about it in math class... :-)

I watched the rippling fires
Of rumpled grass; flame tumbling over flame.
The wind blows up a silver blaze, whirls higher,
Extinguishes in green; begins the game
A second time; goes dancing through the trees
And meadow, painting with a silvery sheen
The ruffled leaves, then swiftly as it came
Is leaping back; advances and retires
And spreads the fields in sighing green again.

The breeze falls slack-
Drifts in shaded hollows of the wood.
The sun begins to shine in earnest- heats
The meadows with a flood-
Of heavily rippling warmth- a skylark sings
Above the panting field; a lone bird beats
A path into the glaring sky, its wings
A whir of silence. She and I, we stood
Welded to noon-stillness of sluggish blood
Limp fingers linked in drowsy wondering
At Summer burning through a veil of Spring.

The Moon Is Round!

2010-04-03T01:42:00.002+08:00

I was skimming through Jim Elliot's journals last night, and found, under the entry for Dec 26 these cryptic words: "The Moon Is Round!"
An explanatory note in the margins, written by Jim's wife, Elisabeth, explained:

"This refers to an experience which Jim told me about years later. He had been depressed, doubting the sovereignty of God. The moon seemed to show him that there is wholeness, that all things are complete in Christ, even when they appear to be partially shadowed."

How often things 'appear to be partially shadowed'!

And yet, even when I look at the dark sky, and see only a dim white sliver of the light and beauty I hoped for; even when I look at my life, and see only a miserable thread of the glory or satisfaction that 'ought to be' present (or nothing at all!) it should not be a cause for despair.
The wholeness, the fullness, the glory of the moon are not lost or extinguished. Only 'partially shadowed'. And shadows cannot alter the reality of the things that are.
When we gaze grief-stricken on a world where 'nothing makes sense', where 'everything goes wrong', where 'everything under the sun is meaningless', we must keep in mind that we are looking at vast shadows, and seeing only wee snatches of realities. "The Moon Is Round!" Darkness may seem to halve it, or obliterate it entirely, but it is still there, unchanged, as round and massive as ever.

My favorite song at Chinese fellowship (partly because it is one of the only ones accompanied by an English translation) is 'The Sun Above The Clouds.' The gist of the song is: 'I walk about sometimes and see the sun shining brightly, and at others cannot see it at all. But this does not mean that there is no sun, only that clouds are getting in the way. I will still be joyful because I know the sun is there, whether I can see it or not.' And then, the chorus basically says: 'No matter what the clouds do, the sun does not change. Ah! It stays the same!'

The sun, the moon, the Son, His power and love- they stay the same. No matter if our view is sometimes limited.

So, if you're feeling overwhelmed by shadows, or lost in clouds, remember: The sun above the clouds is still shining, untouched by the lower things. And, 'The Moon Is Round!'

Where 'there was not any wall':

2010-03-30T03:22:00.003+08:00

It seems to me that this year has been far too full of crisis. The family has vaccillated between medical emergencies and financial emergencies, sometimes throwing in both at once for good measure. Less than a year after our last move, we are considering moving yet again. Some days, I feel like a puppet being jounced about on a string. People, governments, and circumstances outside of my control seem to be running the show, and it's really, really scary!
But that's only a 'seems like'- and seemings are nothing!

Here is the reality:

Psalm 18:28,30-36
"You, O Lord, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light." " As for God, His way is perfect; the word of the Lord is flawless. He is a shield for all who take refuge in him. For who is God besides the Lord? And who is the Rock except our God? It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights. He trains my hands for battle; my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You give me your shield of victory and your right hand sustains me; you stoop down and make me great. You broaden the path beneath me, so that my ankles do not turn."

Psalm 31:8-9a
"You have not handed me over to the enemy but have set my feet in a spacious place. Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I am in distress;..."

Psalm 33:9-11, 13-22
"For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded and it stood firm. The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples. But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations." "From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind; from his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth- he who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do. No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength. A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot save. But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love, to deliver them from death and famine.
We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you."

Have I put my hope in Him?
If I have, is there any earthly reason to give stress and worry a foothold in my life? Faith doesn't say "LORD???? What are you THINKING??? How could you let these things happen to us? Where is this going? Why? Why? Why?" Amy Carmichael summed it up neatly: "Faith never questions why."
Faith is not fearful, nor resentful, nor rebellious.
Sometimes it appears to me that the world is a total mess. Completely crazy, completely rotten. Out of control.
And we DO live in a fallen world, full of messed up people doing messed up things and making stupid decisions. But NEVER out of control! He who 'forms the hearts of all' and 'considers everything they do' is Sovereign. All things are working together for His glory. He is the Deliverer, and His love is unfailing.
It's just that sometimes, deliverance seems far away, or, when it comes, is nothing like my expectations. Oswald Chambers wrote:

"The things that happen do not happen by chance- they happen entirely by the decree of God. God is sovereignly working out His own purposes. If we are in fellowship and oneness wih God... we will no longer strive to find out what His purposes are. As we grow in the Christian life... we are less inclined to say, "I wonder why God allowed this or that?" And we begin to see that the compelling purpose of God lies behind everything in life, and that God is divinely shaping us into oneness with that purpose. A Christian is someone who trusts in the knowledge and wisdom of God, not in his own abilities."

It's true- but sometimes I forget, or at least, drift away. Then I find myself where I was this morning- drooping Mondayishly in math class, battling the throbbing beginnings of yet another headache, and scribbling sub-par poetry in the margins of my notebook.
Here is this morning's effort:

'Time placed a chain of silence on my tongue
Binding my weary thoughts with rings of steel;
A weight of leaden armoring which hung
Massive and grim, too dense to fear or feel
beyond- Tomorrows writhed throughout the cell-
Whose heavy doors shut out the clear Today;
Only three scattered bars of sunlight fell
From miles above, to waver, not to stay.

Dizzy, I heard the rushing far below
Of angry waters- ringing in my ears
Came doubt, and pain; futility also-
The torrents grew, and were the roar of years.

My God- I cannot see beyond this wall
The window, too, is high and out of sight.
No key of mine can turn the lock at all
No flame of mine could penetrate this night..."

Here, I stopped, wondering dully what I was trying to say- and suddenly realized that I did not need to find an ending for my poem, because Amy Carmichael has written it already:

But "...a light shined in the cell.
----And there was not any wall
----And there was no dark at all
----Only Thou, Emannuel!"

There IS not any wall! Nor is there any darkness! Nor is there any prison of Despair, save in my own fevered brain. There is only Him.

My friend and teaching partner, Maggie, shared this with me yesterday:

"Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but only empties today of its strength.” - Charles H. Spurgeon

Do fear and worry accomplish anything? If they are, as they were this morning and last night, undermining my confidence in God rather that driving me to Him for comfort, they are destructive, and should have no place in my life. We can say with the Psalmist 'my times are in Your hands' because He is ABLE to keep our 'times'- our dreams and our tomorrows.

So, contrary to the ferment of 'what if...' and 'it seems like...' thoughts attacking our brains, we should maintain this attitude:

"I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure." (Psalm 16:8-9)

And may 'the God of peace' give us His peace!
Amen.

If this is love...

2010-03-25T11:40:00.003+08:00

She stood in the doorway, fingers rattling nervously over the keys of her phone as she typed a text message, face tense, a few mascara streaked tears wandering down the soft brown of her cheek. She wasn't talking to me, but to her best friend who was in the other room.

"I just don't get it", the girl choked. "It didn't used to be this way with him and me. I never thought this would happen to us."

I'd never seen her so subdued. The girl talking is one of my suitemates- her best friend is the other. Usually, Kiki is brazen, brassy, carefree- impossible to embarrass or disconcert. She laughs at things which would offend or grieve anyone else- I would have said that NOTHING was sacred to her- yet here she was, weeping all over her carefully applied makeup, convulsively toying with her phone, arms folded as though to shield herself from hurt- or to hide a wound. Maybe the coarseness, the shrillness are a front- a bold face against all the inexplicable terror and cruelty of life? Perhaps that hardened exterior is really a protective shell enfolding a sensitivity I was too dull to guess at? Perhaps...
Do we ever really know anyone? Even the people we live with?

But she was still standing there, stammering out through pauses a rather hysterical jumble about the issues she is having with her boyfriend. Then, at the end, as I was leaving for class, she said something that I don't think I'll ever forget.

"Love aint s'posed to be like this. He say he love me. Well, I say, if this is love, I DON'T WANT IT!"

And something in me, which had been hard and unforgiving towards them both, melted in a rush of anguished pity. I longed to jump into the conversation and tell her all that was burning in my heart. But, instead, afraid of 'meddling', afraid of 'offending', afraid of being rejected yet again, I walked out the door, and off to class. I don't know quite what else I could have done, and yet, there is so much which I desperately wanted to say to her at that moment. I don't know if I even have words for the feeling, but I will write it here:

" 'If this is love...', you said. Do you know what love is? Have you ever felt it? Ever seen it? You know about shootings. About abuse. About discrimination and betrayal, about drug dealing, and streets where no grass grows, and skies without stars. But love- love? Do you know about that? Would you even recognise it if you saw it?
'If this is love...' But, oh, Kierra, Kierra, that isn't. I don't know what's gone wrong for you, I don't know why you're upset, but I can tell you that what you're describing isn't love. Not that I'm an expert- and yet, I KNOW Love- and He is nothing like that. May I, can I show you what LOVE has to say for Himself?

Exodus 24:6 '...The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.'

1 Chronicles 16:34 'Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.'

2 Corinthians 13:11 '...And the God of love and peace will be with you.'

1John 4:8 'God IS love'

So who is Love? HE is love!

But WHAT is love?

'This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us....' (1 John 3:16)

'Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.' (John 15:13)

'Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails... (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

'...Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up....' (1 Corinthians 8:1)

Kierra, does that sound like any 'love' you have ever experienced before? I know I'VE never received it, not from the dearest people in the world- but it overflows from Him! It's His nature, His identity!

Maybe you don't think you deserve it, and of course you don't. No more do I. Yet, still, He gives anyway, and gives, and gives!

'THIS is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.' (John 4:10)

'But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.'

'If this is love...' you said. If you had any idea what love is, and where it comes from, such a statement would be ridiculous. Perhaps what you're embroiled in is 'romance'. It might be 'relationship', or 'admiration', even 'friendship' after a fashion, but love? No! Never!

Of course, romance, admiration, and friendships can be remarkably pleasant. You know that as well as anyone. They have ups and downs, though- sometimes, even fall completely apart! Where do you go then? What can you cling to? Who stays near you?

There is a verse in my Bible, marked with a date, and with the still stinging memory of heartbroken tears:

Isaiah 54: 10 'Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed, says the Lord, who has compassion on you.'

I read that verse now, and I cannot fathom what it was to me at the moment I marked it, and held onto it for dear life. I remember the confidence that swept over me- that the things happening all around, and the things that MIGHT happen, and all the millions of things I don't understand were NOTHING in the face of His unfailing love, and His covenant of peace, and His compassion for me- for my weakness and brokenness, nearsightedness and confusion!

Do you really want to replace the overwhelming peace and comfort of that passage with the temporary 'fix' of a movie or a new dress?
Do you have anything better?

Hosea 6:3-7 'Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth. What can I do with you, Ephraim? What can I do with you Judah? Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears...I desire mercy [Hebrew 'hesed': right conduct, loyalty.], not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings. Like Adam, they have broken the covenant- they were unfaithful to me...'

'If this is love...' But of course, it isn't. A shadow, perhaps. A cheap imitation, at best. It won't ever satisfy you. Won't sustain you. Won't last. His love- the love of the one Who IS love- is entirely different.
The best we have to give of ourselves, either to God, or to the people around us is love that is like the morning mist- which trembles into nothing at a ray of sun or a breath of wind- like dew that is vanishing almost before it is fallen.

That is not the kind of love He is offering you. That is not the kind of love you are hungry for.
Proverbs 19:6 says: 'What a man desires is unfailing love...'
And Psalm 33:5 assures us: 'The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.'

Amy Carmichael once wrote:

"It is a safe thing to trust Him to fulfill the desires which He creates."

Do you think the Creator could not know that His creatures desire unfailing love, and cannot be content with less? Do you think He expects that beings created for eternity could settle for love that does not endure forever also?
Nothing of the sort is true. He has given us a gnawing hunger for His kind of love- for the love that only He can give. And He WILL give it, if only you will let Him!

He doesn't want you to go through the motions, to make more effort, to clean up your life. He isn't primarily concerned with your cigarettes, or cussing, or promiscuity. Because you could turn your back on all of that, and still it would mean nothing at all. We've all failed Him, from Adam on down. We've turned our backs on love, TRUE love, even while we were crying out for it, frantically trying to fill up the void.

Kierra, He wants YOU- your heart- pitiful, corroded as it is! Holiness- sanctification- those follow. They're terribly important. But it's not the point. You, your goodness, your badness, are irrelevant. You'll never be good enough to win His approval. You'll never be bad enough to forfeit His love. God isn't primarily concerned with the language you use, or the drugs you put in your body, or who you're sleeping with. Because, until your heart has been opened to a deep, consuming, operative faith in Christ and His atonement, it's irrelevant! He doesn't WANT you to 'clean up your act', or 'get your life back on track'. He wants you to fall before Him, broken, and let HIM do what needs to be done.
And that is love- the continuous pattern of our brokenness, and His redemption.
Are you very, very sure that you don't want it? Anything else will leave you here, right where you started, weeping in anger and disillusionment; forever nursing wounded affections and wounded pride. And that's a pretty miserabe place to dwell in.

So, '...Let us press on to acknowledge Him...'

And someday, I hope you will say to Him:

'Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its ardor unyielding as the grave. It burns like a blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away.'(SS 8:6-7)

THAT is Love.

'...I pray that you... may have power... to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge- that you... may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.' (Ephesians 3:17-19)

Daisy Chains

2010-03-12T14:00:00.010+08:00

"No calamity so touches the common heart of humanity as does the straying of a little child. Their feet are so uncertain and feeble; the ways are so steep and strange." -William Sydney Porter

I guess a lot of people would think it odd that I spent three hours today browsing through the children's section of our University Library.(or, perhaps, as I do, think it odd that a University has a children's section at all! :-) )

I KNOW that a lot of people thought it odd, because I got some extremely strange looks from students at tables, and even passers by. Personally, I maintain that, considering the general eccentricity of your average college student, they should not begrudge me a few hours with Child and Young Adult literature during the peak of mid-term frenzy.
But, be that as it may, to put the concerns of these narrow-minded folk at rest, I will hasten to explain that my hours with Amelia Bedelia, and Bill Peet, and a staggering selection of 'folk tales from around the world', etcetera were for the purpose of completing a mid-term in my TESOL class- I was hunting down read aloud fodder for my 22 imaginary second graders, in order to finish designing a lesson plan on Critical Thinking and Reading strategies.

So, I see nothing to peculiar in the fact that I spent my afternoon with children's books, in the library. Nor in the fact that I enjoyed it. But, even I have to confess that there is something a bit unusual in the fact that a large portion of this time was spent curled up between two aisles of books crying.

There is a certain, rather morbid class of books which people are always writing for children, which probably has some technical name of which I am unaware. Were I going to name it, I think I would title this genre something lke 'A Child's Garden of Coping Strategies'. Maybe you have never seen these books? I will try to explain.
I encountered them for the first time at the age of or seven or eight, in the Lee's Summit library, where I was wandering about after a reading program.
As I crawled blissfully from shelf to shelf, a title caught my eye. I pulled the book out, and began to thumb through it. I was riveted, with a sort of shocked fascination. It was horrible! All about a little girl whose parents fight, and then get divorced, and how she has to live traveling between two houses. Of course I knew, in a sort of vague, theoretical way, what divorce was- but this was just AWFUL! How could things like that happen?
So, trembling, I shoved the 'awful book' away, and pulled something else from the shelf. That's when I discovered the 'coping genre'. Because the next book was supposed to teach children about death, and help them come to terms with it. When I looked more carefully, I found that this whole section of shelf was full of books about children dealing with abuse, divorce, lost pets, grandparents with alzheimers, loneliness, bullying, betrayal, sickness, etcetera.
"Weird." thought I, and moved off in search of fairy tales, and animal stories, pretty pictures, and adventure- REAL children's books.
After that, I nearly forgot about the 'coping books'
Reading to siblings at the library, I occasionally saw them, but we always passed them by.
Until I blundered into the Children's Section today.

It started with a shabby brown book entitled 'No Time for Me', about a little boy named Tim. Tim's parents both work outside the home, and never have time for him and his sister Lydia. But they have promised to take him to a baseball game on his birthday, and he is counting down the days. Until they tell him that they've decided to go on a business trip to Hawaii instead! Tim, unsurprisingly, has a meltdown. The rest of the story chronicles Tim's attempts to deal with the letdown, and his parents' (belated) attempt to make amends. His father (thinks) he (might) be able to eat breakfast with Tim on Wednesdays. His mother agrees to come home an hour earlier (most) Thursdays. Tim takes what he can get.
I think there's supposed to be a happy ending, but I couldn't find it.

The next book was even worse. It's about a little boy who hates Father's day. Why does he hate Father's day? He hasn't got a father. This one is memorable, mainly because so wrenchingly pathetic.
It tells, in first person, the story of a little boy making a Father's Day project in class, for a father who left so long ago he can't remember. By the time I reached the third page, I was crying. The child's teacher is insisting that everyone has a father, and that the little boy should just mail the card he's decorating. And the child points out that he doesn't know where his father lives.
He adds wistfully to himself,
"Of course, everyone has a father. They tell me I have a father. But I wish I had a father I could KNOW."
Everything in my heart was shouting "Oh, but you DO! You do!"
The book ends with the child putting this father's day card away with all the others he's made over the years, concluding,
"Maybe someday he'll see them, and know that I love him."
The moral of the story, according to said 'coping book'?
'It's ok to be different.'
Even as a secular coping strategy, that's pretty lame.

Which is maybe why I couldn't stop crying once I'd started. Because, for that child, and for so many others, there is a well-intentioned but blind author attempting to apply a band-aid to the unmendable depths of the human heart, and no one- NO ONE to open sympathetic arms, to share the miraculous truths of Psalm 68:5 and 1 John 3:1

"A father to the fatherless... is God in his holy dwelling."

"How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!"

I continued to read- not just the infamous experiments in applied child psychology, but the ordinary children's books. There were lovely, laughing ones, (Did you know that Tolkein wrote and illustrated an enchantingly ridiculous story called 'Mr. Bliss'?) and sweet ones, and folk tales, and illustrations in everything from watercolor to collage. Many brought back memories- we are an extremely book oriented family, and read EVERYTHING aloud together, so I grew up on a wide variety of children's lit.
Some, too, were just sickening. Like 'Daddy Has A Roomate', about a little boy whose parents get divorced so his Dad can move in with his boyfriend. Worried? Don't be. It's ok (the book tells us) because Mommy and Daddy and the Boyfriend all agree that this new word 'gay' they are trying to explain to the child, means just an 'extra kind of love', and 'love is the best thing in the world.'
By the time I'd reached this point, I was sick and dizzy with a sort of headache-induced nausea. Palmistry, reincarnation, witchcraft, animism, ghosts, idolatry, Humanism, Buddhism- was there ANYTHING not being fed to little minds?
I tried to imagine the confusion facing a child who attempted to find answers about life in such a place. And television, the more common source of information, is even worse!
But, then, where else can they go? To parents who never learned? To teachers? To peers, equally confused? Will no one stand in the gap? No one?

Here's what Amy Carmichael had to say:
"...At my feet a precipice broke sheer down into infinite space. I looked, but saw no bottom... only unfathomable depths... Then I saw forms of people moving single-file along the grass. They were making for the edge. There was a woman with a baby in her arms, and another little child holding on to her dress. She was on the very verge. Then I saw that she was blind. She lifted her foot for the next step... it trod air. She was over, and the children over with her. Oh, the cry as they went over!
Then I saw more streams of people flowing from all quarters. All were blind, stone blind; all made for the precipice edge. There were shrieks as they suddenly knew themselves falling, and a tossing up of helpless arms, catching, clutching at empty air. But some went over quietly, and fell without a sound.
Then I wondered, with a wonder that was simply agony, why no one stopped them at the edge... I saw that along the edge there were sentries set at intervals. But the intervals were far too great; there were wide, unguarded gaps between. And over these gaps the people fell in their blindness, quite unwarned...
Then I saw, like the picture of peace, a group of people under some trees, with their backs turned toward the gulf. They were making daisy chains. Sometimes when a piercing shriek cut the quiet air and reached them, it disturbed them, and they thought it rather a vulgar noise. And if one of their number started up and wanted to go and do something to help, then all the others would pull that one down. "Why should you get so excited about it?...You haven't finished your daisy chains. It would be really selfish," they said, "to leave us to finish the work alone." ...
One child caught at a tuft of grass that grew at the very brink of the gulf; the child clung convulsively, and it called, but nobody seemed to hear. Then the roots of the grass gave way, and with a cry the child went over, its two little hands still holding tight to the torn-off bunch of grass...
Then came another sound like the pain of a million broken hearts wrung out in one full drop, one sob. And a horror of great darkness was on me..." -Amy Carmichael

Daisy Chains... are so many things. Why is it that the Church in the U.S. is, as a whole, more concerned with new carpet, and lighting fixtures, and the latest sound systems, than it is with discipleship, with discipline, with the sacrificial commitment to reach human souls? Why is it that your average Christian is expending so much of his energy agonizing over political battles, and elections won or lost (or even football games won or lost!), yet gives so little of himself to battling principalities and powers, and winning human souls? Why is it that in America, the wealthiest nation in the world, we have money for new cars, exquisite home decor, and namebrand clothing, yet can only spare a few dollars, if that, to support those who DO wish to go out and serve? Why do we have time for televisions, and computers, and magazines, and newspapers, and a staggering range of hobbies, yet only moments to spare for studying God's Word- much less for actually teaching it to others- even less for building the relationships, for investing the interest and affection which make God's love a visible reality?

It's a hard question to ask- and, although sometimes I'm desperately frustrated- long to grab the American church by the shoulders and SHAKE it into wakefulness- the truth is, I'm equally guilty. As sinful people in a broken world, none of us will ever do 'enough'. I'm willing to bet that Peter and Paul and all the rest of the Apostles made mistakes, missed opportunities, lost focus, and got sucked into the seductive pastime of daisy-chain weaving at some points in their lives. And those guys were SOLD OUT to God. So, our chances at perfection are somewhere below nill.

BUT WHY ARE WE SO SATISFIED WITH THAT?

I sat weeping among the children's books because of all of the loose ends in the picture the world was painting, because of the crushing weight of those millions of lives, shattered from their very beginning, because I sit in class with those children every day, and pass them in the halls, and for most of them, it's too late. Oh, I know- it's never over till you're dead. But there is a spiritual deadness and hardness that increases over time. And in so many of the people around me, I see that a window which was open ten, fifteen years ago, when they were facing the world wide open and full of questions, is now tightly shut. Who can say when, if ever, it will open again?

But I was also crying because of the deep, heartbreaking realization, coming yet again, that my own hands, on a day to day basis, are filled with daisies, and my fingers, with the force of long habit, are weaving stems and leaves in and out, in and out, as though nothing on earth were more important! I cried for the thought of that child, falling into endless emptiness with nothing but a grass-tuft to cling to, which, had I been more faithful, might have stood safely on the solid ground of Truth. There is no balm for this kind of ache. But, neither is there any 'if' in God's Kingdom!
There are only the present and the future. What will I make of them? What will you?
It remains to be seen. I pray that God will show us the gaps to stand in, subordinate the thundering, importunate 'WHERE?' to the stern discipline of 'HERE!', wherever 'Here' is.
What terrifying, wonderful responsibility it is to guard the gaps for little folk whose "...feet are so uncertain and feeble...", to stand where "...the ways are so steep and strange.", to serve a God who said: "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children."(Matt 11:25) "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." (Mark 10:14) "From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise." (Matt 21:16).
I cannot begin to comprehend it! We follow a King who not only

'clothed Himself in vile man's flesh that so
He might be weak enough to suffer woe." (Donne), but who

"...took the children in his arms..." (Mark 10:16)

Most days, I just feel a huge aching in my heart because MY arms aren't big enough. I can't reach far enough. I want to hold them all, shelter them all, and instead, am constantly letting go, watching their lives brush against mine, and slide away again.
And yet, in Texas, shattered by the pain of 'deserting' a truly special group of kids, and not merely saying goodbye, but of sending them back at the end of the week into brutally abusive and hopeless homes, I realized that even though my arms AREN'T enough, even though I can't protect them, can't train them, can't LOVE them the way I long to, HIS arms are eternal and limitless- His power to protect, His faithfulness to shape and instruct, His love and comfort are an unfailing source.
And even though I only have a week, or five days to impact them, HE has a lifetime!

It seems to me, in this precious moment of clarity, that for a God not merely so mighty, but so tender, we can afford to let go of our 'daisy chains'; the thousand everyday, useless things that fall to ashes, or less, at the least searching glance from Eternity, and hold to- or rather be held BY- the One "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." (Colossians 2:3) [You will NOT find 'the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in the Children's section of MWSU's library.]

"For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever." (Romans 11:36)

Flight And Flame And Melody

2010-03-07T09:40:00.003+08:00

When Grandpa was diagnosed with cancer a week or two ago, I asked my mother how Grandma was dealing with it all.
"She seems to be holding together pretty well," Mama replied. "But this is a bittersweet time in her life. Having him with her now- not knowing how much longer she will."
I was struck then, because, had I been describing someone's emotions upon realizing that the person they love most is terminally ill, I think I would have said only bitter, and left out the sweet. And then I thought about it more, and realized, especially as things were shifting wildly about in my own life, that she was right. These are bittersweet times. Not only for Grandma, but for us all.
Of course, when a person is sick, we are immediately reminded of the transience and fragility of life, but the truth is, that element was always there, whether we were noticing or not. Grandma has Grandpa now, but doesn't know how long she will. My family is together now- but a year from now, who can say? Tomorrow isn't a promise, and today, even, is a strange and solemn mystery. So, the times are always, always bittersweet. It is why Shelley wrote:

'...We look before and after
And pine for what is naught
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.',

why Francis Thompson, in describing a chance encounter with a girl commented:

'She went her unremembering way,
She went, and left in me
The pang of all the partings gone,
And partings yet to be.

She left me marvelling why my soul
Could mourn that she was glad.
At all the sadness in the sweet,
The sweetness in the sad.'

Springtime, too, is a bittersweet season- perfectly attuned to the bittersweetness of this season in life. I spent about three hours today hiking around outside (in SHORTS and a T-SHIRT!!! :-) ), and all the world was dim, and fresh, and maddeningly new, but clouded with uncertainty. The sodden turf, dark and rich as an oil painting, the trees bursting and swelling with the very beginnings of leaves.
Geese swung out across the cloud-mottled sky, their lines and formations endlessly crossing and recrossing, stragglers winging in to join the keen heraldry of hoarse, wisful bell-cries. And all I wanted was to join them, and go somewhere, anywhere but here, with the work to be done, and the decisions to be faced. I felt a wrenching hunger for that grace, that beauty, that adventure which geese are on their migrations. To be able to FLY! I ran along the ridge of the hill as far as I could follow, but they were gone, with new flocks sweeping into sight, like a dark, smooth-feathered armada, long necks curved out in purposeful expectancy, black wings beating the air. And then, I could have wept with the frustration of it! Only imagine- to race forever into the long grayness of the sky today- to leave melting snow and muddied earth below like a distant tapestry- questions and confusion and indecision miles beneath, and feel only the sure guidance of an inner compass, and the wind-currents bearing one up! How can one stand to be always earth-bound and ground-crawling?
But as I perched on the log known as the Thinking Place, and watched flock after flock vanishing into the distant cloud-walls of the horizon, awash with the unbearable longing for impossibility which characterizes Springtime, I recalled (and I realize this is an impressive source) a scene from 'The Sound of Music', in which Maria, overwhelmed by confusion has fled back into the Convent. The Mother Superior says to her (and I had always thought this was painfully trite- as it probably is):

"You can't just run away from your problems... You have to face them."

It strikes me now as stingingly true. I can't run away from my problems. Nor can I fly away from them. Somehow, they have to be faced, in spite of my indecision, and second-guessing, and irrational terror of commitment to any course. I am beginning to realize just what terrible responsibility it is to be a woman, rather than a little girl- though I still can't understand which category I fall into.
This is such a transitional, 'middleish' time.
It seems now that even at my most serious I was merely a child playing games- and I shudder to think of what damage that child's happy carelessness might have done.
So, bittersweet.
But even in these mad, yearning Spring moments when I am only a bird without wings, terribly earth confined; a fire without burning- no quick, hot, dancing loveliness of light; a song with no tune, no notes to rise and fall and soar on, in all these times- in the strange, incomprehensible bittersweetness of life, HE is flight, and flame, and melody to me! He, and He alone! Could a God who made Springtime and the burgeoning mysteries of cool wind and reviving life be any less?

"My faith burns low, my hope burns low;
Only my heart's desire cries out in me
By the deep thunder of its want and woe,
Cries out to Thee.

Lord, Thou art life, though I be dead;
Love's fire Thou art, however cold I be:
Nor heaven have I, nor place to lay my head,
Nor home, but Thee." - Christina Rossetti

"In the shadow of His wings
I will sing fo joy;
What a God, who out of shade
Nest for singing bird hath made;
Lord, my Might and Melody,
I will sing to Thee.

If the shadow of Thy wings
Be so full of song,
What must be the lighted place
Where Thy bird can see Thy face?
Lord, my Might and Melody,
I will sing to Thee." -Amy Carmichael

'Wait' Is An Answer

2010-03-01T14:26:00.004+08:00

When we taught five day clubs this summer, and we were teaching the children about prayer, we would ask them "Does God ALWAYS answer our prayers?" And sometimes they said yes, and sometimes they said no- but if they said yes, we would often go on to ask: "What if I prayed that God would give me something, or show me something, and NOTHING happened? Did God still answer my prayer?" And, once again, sometimes they said yes, and sometimes they said no. But, hopefully, by the time we had finished teaching, they had all recognized and understood the fact that God DOES always answer, and that His answer might be 'Yes!', and it might be 'No!', or it might be 'Wait!'.
'Yes' is always an exciting answer to receive- and even the finality and clarification of a 'No' can sometimes be a relief, and a way of moving on ahead to something new. But 'Wait' is slippery. It hardly feels like an answer at all in many situations. Fortunately, feelings have nothing to do with it. 'Wait' IS an answer, and God has a right to give whatever answer He knows is best. It is for me to learn to embrace the wild, terrifying liberty of accepting that I DON'T need to know any more than He chooses to show me, or see any further ahead than He illuminates. Simply to 'Wait upon the Lord.'
And even when things seem to be in a desperate muddle, His 'wait' is all the clarification and information we need.

Confusion tightened at my throat:
Should I forbear, or should I gain?
The answers that I gave by rote
Were distant miles away from pain.
They fell upon my anguished ear
As songs the deaf but strain to hear.

I gazed and gazed, with clouding sight-
Once, wept a bitter haze of tears-
Once laughed, although my throat was tight,
And head was dizzied by my fears.
I could not guess, nor could I see
Which way the knots were leading me.

But He who weaves the tangled strands,
And sorts confusion, drew me near.
He took my knotted hopes in hands
Which gently worked the tangle clear.
My answer comes not soon, nor late:
The clarity He gave was, 'Wait!'

Oh, God, when my life seems one mass of desperate tangles, teach me to remember that You, and not I are the weaver. I look about me, and I see only the nearest, shortest sections of thread, seemingly of conflicting colors- of no pattern at all, or of no pattern which makes sense. But I cannot see very far. You have the loom, and the whole tapestry before you, and every thread is in its place. I know that You make all things beautiful in Your time. I am willing to WAIT- to be woven into a place, and in a manner which I cannot understand. It is not for me to squirm out of position, or dictate to You the proper manner of working Your loom.

Be our focus, God.
Not that we are confused, but that You are the Sorter of Confusion.
Not that we are hurting, but that You are the Comforter.
Not that we are harried, or worried, or stressed, but that You are Stillness, the Prince of peace.
Not that we are sinful and weak, but that You are Holy, and a transformer of sinners.
Not that we feel uncertain and directionless, but that You are THE Way.
Not that we are bewildered and conflicted, but that You are unchanging, and eternally in harmony.

'Just to love You'

2010-03-01T12:02:00.003+08:00

"Sometimes in Dohnavur, we, who dearly love the little children about us... have looked up... to see a child beside us, waiting quietly. And when, with a welcoming hand held out to the Tamil "I have come," we have asked "For what?" thinking, perhaps, of something to be confessed, or wanted, the answer has come back, "Just to love you." So do we come, Lord Jesus; we have no service to offer now; we do not come to ask for anything, not even for guidance. We come just to love Thee." -Amy Carmichael

I read this story in Amy's book, 'Rose from Brier', and passed over it without much thought. But this weekend, at the Laborer's conference, something said (and I cannot even recall what) brought the phrase "I have come...just to love you." forcefully to my mind. Since then, I have been thinking about it constantly.
How often do I come to Jesus 'just to love Him'? It seems that I am always coming to complain, or to confess, to share, to question, to thank, to argue, etcetera- but how often to love- to simply adore, wholly, and nothing else?
There is a time and a place for coming and saying "Father, my heart is breaking- oh please, please, give peace, give comfort, or I cannot bear!" There is nothing wrong with coming to Him to say "Lord, give wisdom, give guidance- there are clouds over my path, and I stumble through a dark place, and cannot see where I should go! I am bewildered, God- show me Your direction!" And even, sometimes "Lord, my desires are before Thee- either give me that which I long for so desperately, or give me the strength to go without!"
But, do I always come to tell Him this, and beg Him for that, and never simply for Him, and for nothing else? Am I always the five year old asking incessant questions, rather than Mary, sitting at His feet to listen? Am I the crowds demanding advice, demanding blessings, demanding miracles, demanding healing, and never the woman who came and poured out perfume, who clung to Jesus, not expecting anything, but wanting only Him?
Not nearly often enough, I'm afraid.
Early on in this semester, we discussed at Navigators the difference between following Jesus for what He could give us, rather than for Himself.
I really like what Thomas A Kempis wrote on the subject:
"Many love Jesus as long as they meet with no adversity; many praise Him and bless Him as long as they receive some consolations from Him. But if Jesus hide Himself, and leave them for a little while, they either murmur, or fall into excesive dejection. But they that love Jesus for Jesus' sake and not for the sake of some consolation of their own, bless Him no less in tribulation and anguish of heart than in the greatest consolation. And if He should never give them consolation, yet would they always praise Him and always give Him thanks. Oh, how much is the pure love of Jesus able to do, when it is not mixed with any self-interest or self-love! Are not they all mercenarie who are ver seeking consolations! Do they not prove themselves to be rather lovers of themselves than of Christ who are always thinking of their own advantage and gain? Where shall we find a man that is willing to serve God dsinterestedly?"
Where indeed? In all honestly, I am not that person who is willing and able to serve God with no thought of self. I am far too prone to make my primary concern MY mistakes, and MY challenges; MY uncertainties, and MY needs; MY desires, and MY questions. And yet, I WANT to be different. I want to come to You, Master, not for anything You can show me, and not for anything You can give me, but only for You. 'Just to love You'!
God is reaching out across the world, individual, by individual. I don't have to have all the answers. I don't have to figure out the future or the past. All I need is to keep COMING to Him- for guidance, for conviction, for wisdom, of course- but most of all, before anything else, for Him! At His feet 'Just to love Him'. Not to tear my hair in confusion, but to open myself to His love, and serve Him completely and openly where I am TODAY!
If I will only keep coming, coming, coming to Him, at the proper time He will go through me as He sees fit.
The center of God's will is wherever I am, whenever I am sincerely worshipping Him and glorifying His name. It is safe to rest in His special promise to me ( "I, who made all of these, am perfectly able to direct them in My time"), safe to come to Him 'just to love Him', and for nothing else- not for any of the things I keep thinking that I 'need', or 'need to know'.
If my stresses, and worries, and concerns for the future make me introverted and introspective rather than extroverted, Christ focused, and unselfish, they are destructive, not valuable, and the argument that says 'You have to think about this now so that you'll be ready to make a decision' is merely a Hellish lie!
I want to love Him. I want to be a faithful servant where I am right now, right here, and let my tomorrows rest in His hand, where they have always been.
Lord, teach me to come like a child, wanting nothing, asking nothing, but 'just to love You.'

"If what we call love doesn't take us beyond ourselves, it is not really love. If we have the idea that love is characterized as cautious, wise, sensible, shrewd, and never taken to extremes, we have missed the true meaning. This may describe affection, and it may bring us a warm feeling, but it is not a true and accurate description of love. Have you ever been driven to do something for God, not because you felt that it was useful or your duty to do so, or that there was anything in it for you, but because you love Him?" -Oswald Chambers

As The Misty Bluebell Wood...

2010-02-26T06:21:00.011+08:00

This is one of those blog posts that keeps on happening lately- or maybe is the only sort that ever happens. That is, it is a post created not so much for the reader's sake, but for my own. Things keep occurring that need to be analysed, and labeled, and sorted out- or perhaps just EXPRESSED- and somehow, many of them find their way here. And, that being said...
I am writing this, partly for those of you who knew that I was planning on leaving the country this summer, and will be shocked to learn that this has changed- and partly for myself, because I knew that I was leaving the country this summer- and every other summer for the next fifty years or so. Not to mention Spring and Fall and Winter! And now, my shock at the changing nature of things is equal to, if not exceeding your own!
Let's start at the beginning, shall we?
When I was at CYIA last summer, I met a Taiwanese woman. We talked a bit, and she was excited to discover that my greatest dream was to go to China- her homeland- as a missionary. We continued to see each other from time to time, and after a while she broached the possibility of taking me with her to China on one of her trips back, to help her teach English. It sounded like a fantastic plan- to spend a month in the place my heart most yearned towards, with someone fluent in the language and culture, doing the thing that I would quite possibly be doing for the rest of my life! What could be better? So, I gave an enthusiastic yes, though I expected it to be two years or so before our trip actually took place.
In December, my Chinese friend approached me and asked if I would be open to going with her to China THIS summer, for the month of July or longer.
I could probably say quite honestly that this December was one of the worst months of my life. Things got more confusing afterward, but the very newness of all the hurt, and dawning uncertainty made it nearly unbearable then.
Perhaps some pieces of a journal entry I wrote later that month sum it up best:

Dec 21, and Dec 23:
'Something has changed... and I can't go back. It's not that God's calling seems to have changed, but rather, broadened. I feel that I'm standing in the middle of a wide open space- one point from which a thousand narrow paths are radiating, and He has said that I may follow Him in any of these directions... I'm afraid of this seeming crossroad, whose inexorable answer is 'patience'. And afraid as well of myself- I dare not choose- or even take a step in either direction! I haven't the courage, or, much less, the wisdom for such staggering responsibility! I'm afraid of my own eagerness to snatch at the life I want, and afraid of learning what HE wants! But what DOES He want? If only He would thunder it from the heavens and leave no doubt!...Instead I sit here, straining to catch the phrases in His silence. Is it possible- IS IT- that I really am free to follow either path? And if so, WHICH????... What terrible in-betweenness this is! A sort of... purgatory...'

So, when my friend approached me about China this summer, I only felt more confused. My first, internal, reaction was 'Oh please- not now! Not now, of all times!' But then I was ashamed of the weakness- and of myself- and sick of the confusion. I remember sitting there thinking, while she watched me, patiently, for an answer, that here was a way out- a swift thrust of the knife- biting the bullet- no more wondering, and pacing, and pondering. Here- now- I could cross my Rubicon, and there would be no going back. Only the simplicity of a certain wound. One aches for closure after a while. I lectured: 'Sharon- here's the opportunity of a lifetime- the thing you want to do more than anything in the world! Don't be foolish! What does it matter that your current state of being is 'emotional puddle'? Things will get better- just decide, and get it over with!' So, when I turned to my fried, and said, in a strained voice, that I would love to go to China with her this summer, it was about much more than this summer only. It was a symbol. A gate I had finally found the strength to shut, and lock behind myself- or so I thought. In actuality, it was only the beginning of a very wild, and bewildering ride.
Things DID get better- for a little while. Many of the external issues which had dogged my steps in December were peacefully resolved. The tumult died down a bit. I found that I was able to feel a certain sense of excitement about the adventure of spending a summer in China. But some part of me- that part which had thrilled, and sang, and swelled to aching wonder- which I most longed to invest in prayer and anticipation for the trip seemed utterly limp and dead. Some vast portion of my heart was lifeless, detached- more joyless than I'd been in years. It didn't make sense! But I couldn't lecture myself into joy- or argue, or persuade, or harangue. Joy seemed so distant as to be entirely out of hearing. So, I bit my lip and reminded myself that emotions were irrelevant and misleading. (Which is true.) I turned back to the letter I'd written in my journal the previous January when I first began to feel drawn towards Asia, and repeated the words over and over again 'feelings have nothing to do with commitment', 'feelings have nothing to do with commitment'. The letter said, in part:

"...You and I are such transitory things against God's kingdom- in no way to be weighed beside eternity for billions enslaved by darkness. It seems to me that Jim and Elisabeth Elliot achieved something far greater with their 'brief tragedy of flesh' than any Hollywood happily ever after could have. And really, the Church and her Bridegroom are to know a happily ever after so joyful and eternal that the tears of this earth signify no more than the villain's doomed efforts to 'get the girl'!"

I wanted so desperately to be again the girl who'd written those words with such stern assurance of direction. And yet- and yet-
I couldn't shake the relentless feeling that something was wrong. And I didn't know WHAT was wrong! Logically, it should have been right, and more than right! Friends experienced in ministry had been advising me during the past year to start spending as much time overseas as possible. This was the PERFECT opportunity. I was pretty sure that the finances would fall into place, and had some money of my own saved to make support raising more feasible. It was a clear, logical, intelligent, wise, and beautifully simple plan, at least in its abstract construction. And my friend was sure to flesh out the details at the right time. So, I kept ploughing ahead with it, painting on the smile and confidence I knew I OUGHT to be feeling.

But then, one night, I was lying in bed remembering and praying for my 5 day club kids (something I don't do often enough, by the way.) And that slideshow of 'moments' began playing through my head. I could see little Elizabeth peering up at me through long lashes as she finished asking Jesus to forgive her sins- Rebecca jumping wildly as she recited a memory verse, 4 year old Christian enfolding my hands in his chubby ones and whispering 'DON'T go away- I'll miss you too much!', Evan and his small friend rolling their eyes at me when I got 'too silly', Gracie shouting 'Australia!' when we asked her what sin was, the hurt in eight year old Rachel's face when she said she hated herself, and asked why God had let her be fat, Patrick clambering in the branches of a tree, Jamal stumbling across the parking lot with slumped shoulders, his Bible clutched against his chest (one of the darkest memories), the kids at Margaret Ree's giggling at my inability to spell their names for the attendance sheet, the thrill of triumph when Eric, who has Down's syndrom began trying to do the song motions, and answered a question about the lesson correctly, 16 year old Jose asking shyly if you could come to club no matter how old you were, and, for some reason most unforgettable, the sight of little Juliano, one of my 'problem children' peeking at me from around the corner of the apartment building when we were packing up our materials. "Juliano" I called, "Aren't you going to say goodbye?" He glared, and shook his head, and I turned away- but the next moment he had catapulted himself into my arms. I spun him around in a circle, and then, laughingly, said 'I'll miss you'. But I looked down and he was crying, his tiny face scrunched into excruciating seriousness. "Why do you have to leave?" he muttered. "I hate you for leaving!" Then he tore himself loose, and one of the most ornery, unpredictable, precious seven year olds in the world ran behind the building, and out of sight...

At that point in the 'remembering', I sat bolt upright in bed, and nearly blurted out loud: 'I want to teach five day clubs this summer!'
Lying down again, with a sigh, I reminded myself 'Ah, but you're going to China this summer instead.'
I then admitted something which I had been fighting for weeks not to accept. 'I DON'T WANT TO GO TO CHINA! I want to teach clubs!'
Once it was out in the open, I was shocked. That couldn't be true! It wasn't in 'the plan'! What was wrong with me? Why did I not want the thing I wanted more than anything else? All I could say was, helplessly, 'It's just not RIGHT somehow! I need to teach clubs!'
I held out for nearly two weeks (stubborness is a virtue, right? :-D ), then tentatively broached the subject to my parents. To my relief, they were enthusiastic. My mother admitted that they had not been happy at the thought of my leaving the country this summer, but hadn't wanted to disappoint me.
So, after hovering, and arguing, and agonizing for yet another week, I emailed my friend telling her that God wanted me to be somewhere else this summer, and this wasn't the right time for me to go to China, with her, or with anyone else.
She was very supportive, and for a few days I felt relieved of a huge weight.
But now, questions have begun to set back in again. I can't seem to let well enough alone! Did I make the right decision? I was so sure, at the time. Was I guided by feeling, rather than Biblical wisdom? Could I have been wrong? How could I NOT go to China? My old friend, 'Confusion', is back, and leaving chaos in his wake.
You see, although I know I shouldn't look so far ahead, I can't help but feel that whatever is going on is about more than just this summer. I suppose I had made this summer's visit to China such a symbol of so much else I was willing to leave behind, that I can't untangle it enough for my decision to NOT GO to not seem equally symbolic and significant. But, as this just goes to show, so much can change in a year! I guess that right now, all I can do is continue to stay in the Word, focus on Christ, seek Him faithfully, do my best during what's left of the semester, and when I teach this summer with CEF, strive to teach to the heights of my ability and far, far beyond.
A quote from John Piper, which I shamelessly stole from a friend tonight after being painfully convicted by it admonishes:

“When we are trusting Christ most authentically, we are not thinking about trusting, but about Christ. When we step out of the moment to examine it, we cease what we were doing, and therefore cannot see it. My counsel for strugglers therefore is relentlessly: Look to Jesus. Look to Jesus in his word. And pray for eyes to see.” - John Piper.

So, even though I find myself increasingly struggling with two, seemingly conflicting sets of desires, and two, apparently mutually exclusive futures which both demand attention, it surely is safe to say as David did:
'All my longings lie open before you, O Lord... My times are in your hands...in your light, we see light... since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me... I [say] to the Lord, "You are my Lord; apart from you I have NO GOOD THING!' (Psalms 38:9,31:15, 36:9, 31:3, 16:2)

And as for next summer, and the next summer, and the summer after that- GOD KNOWS WHERE! Be it Iowa, or Czechoslovakia, Texas or Sierra Leone...

Oh- by the way, for those of you who are glancing back at the title and wondering what bluebells have to do with all of this, here is one of many marvelous poems by Amy Carmichael, which has been convicting and encouraging me lately:

'As the misty bluebell wood,
Very still and shadowy,
Does not seek for, or compel
Several word from several bell,
But lifts up her quiet blue-
So all my desire is before Thee.

For the prayers of human hearts
In the shadow of the Tree,
Various as the various flowers,
Rest at last in silent love-
Lord, all my desire is before Thee.'

Christ, teach me to 'rest at last in silent love'. 'All my desires are before Thee'. What do I have to lose?

'But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink, cried out..." (Matthew 14)

2010-02-20T10:19:00.009+08:00

I'm sitting down tonight, to preach myself a sermon. I know that I certainly need it- but I don't know, yet, what I ought to say. So we will see where this goes. I guess, to begin with, I should figure out what the problem is, that requires such urgent sermonizing...

It's hard to explain.

I know, I know- I always say that- but that's because so often it is! And even if I understood it entirely myself (what's wrong, that is), and could put it into words, there are things buried in one's heart that are too fragile, too raw, and too painful to post on a blog.
I could list symptoms, to start: Restlessness- wandering from one thing to the next, pacing furrows in the carpet of my room, hungry for change, constant change- and, simultaneously, for SOMETHING unchanging!
Fear- panicky moments of almost convulsive fear which I don't understand. Little things- and big things- happen, and I feel... anchorless... I don't know where to go. Or, perhaps more accurately, cannot go where I want...
Loneliness- surrounded by crowds of people, and yet drifting in a steel-bound shell of isolation. They aren't the people I'm longing to see. Maybe it's homesickness. I get hungry for people who really care- not giving ten minutes, or an hour out of their 'real' lives, but people who are a part of mine, whose reality is bound up with mine. There's something stifled, and terrible in love which is not only untended and unserved, but which is deprived of any outlet for tending and serving its object. A deep sense of claustrophobia, and suffocation.
Inadequacy. Weakness.
One half of something wobbling about the world lopsidedly.
Letters buried, instead of sent.
Most of all confusion. Confusion about the past- about exactly what's happened, and what it means to the present and future. And confusion, dizzy, sickening confusion about the present and future themselves, and the future especially.
Lastly, tears that keep coming, unasked for, and inexplicable, at odd times. I cry for seemingly no reason- and I mean really CRY- not just choke up, which normally doesn't happen. And it's even worse when the tears won't come, only hang on the spirit like a cage, or the dull, heaviness of lead.
So, there is the illness, and now, as the physician, I must diagnose, and prescribe for the patient.
It would be too easy- too trite- to pass it off as simply a bad case of spring fever, or the blues, or growing pains. It would be unfair to glance over such genuine, though ludicrous distress, and laugh, and say 'Oh, she must be in love.', 'It's just because she's so young.', 'She'll recover on her own.'.
I happen to be well aquainted with this particular patient, you see- and am convinced that the problem is more serious, even, than she is willing to admit to herself on most days. I could not say for sure without running some more sophisticated tests, examining the patient's thoughts and behavior in more detail, and perhaps bringing to light some emotions that she is still clinging to, quietly, secretly, in her heart-of-hearts. But, based on my current knowledge of her condition, I feel confident in saying that we have before us today a young woman with a serious case of...
Idolatry
Selfishness
Lack of faith
You may be thinking that sounds harsh. Even I am tempted to look at the craven, miserable girl and say 'She's a college student, away from home for the first time, struggling in a hostile environment, separated from the people most important to her. Give her a break, ok?'
Fortunately, I know the girl well enough to be sure that she doesn't NEED sympathy, or praise, or pats on the head. She needs a stiff lecture. And, since no one else has volunteered to give it (and since she would probably be crushed at receiving it from anyone else, I suppose the job must fall to me.
But, first, I will explain my diagnosis.
When I say 'idolatry', you must understand that I don't mean that she has a jade Buddha on her dresser, or asherah poles set up in the back yard. I mean that she's allowing God to become the secondary focus of her mind, and emotions, and energy. Every once in a while, there will be a blinding flash of clarity, and she will be back on the right footing for a few days. But then, the heartache, and the isolation, and the nagging worries begin again, winding the same slow, weary circle around and around in her head. An outsider, if she trusted him enough to tell, and he gave her time (which has never happened, yet) might blame the disease on the heartache, or the worry, or the general 'up-in-the-air'ness of her life and plans- but the outsider would be wrong. Those things, all, are neutral- the disease feeds on them, but they could not touch a healthy soul- might even strengthen it! The problem is that, instead of being willing to say 'My life is no longer taking the direction I expected. And I don't know what that means, or if it's right or wrong, or what direction I AM taking. And there are things in my life that I wish were not there. And, more importantly, it seems, there are things in my life which I wish WERE there, that are not- and yet, Christ IS my life, and my sustenance, and I remain unshaken in His grace and in His Word!', she too frequently pouts like a disciplined child. If she could only say that- and not only say it on Tuesdays and Thursdays, for instance, or only in the evenings, or only on weekends- but say it consistently, and with conviction at all moments, both the blackest, and brightest, she would not be ill, and I would not have to be examining her case and writing her prescriptions.
But she IS 'ill', and she IS refusing to place Christ in His rightful place in her heart at all times- which brings us to the second important element in her ailment. And that is, selfishness.
When I first began to study this particular patient, even though I know and understand her more nearly than I do anyone else on earth, I was confused. Idolatry, obviously was present- God was not first for her, nor was He all (especially not all), and yet, what had taken His place? It was a mystery. At first I thought:
'Aha- she has made an idol of her ministry. She is concerned with locations and methods and results. This is why she is driving herself half mad out of concern for the future- because ministry has become a 'hobby' and a consuming passion, and is more about her than it is about God.
But, the puzzle piece didn't fit.
So, I dug deeper, and I said to myself: 'Oh, I see! She has made a sort of 'religion' centering around the people she loves- more particularly, is idolizing one or two specific relationships- has reached the point, even, where she is sometimes more concerned with those people than with God!'
But, once again, it wasn't the right answer. It left too much unexplained.
Then, I realized- it wasn't about ministry, or future plans, or relationships. It was about her. And THAT was the problem! There is nothing so destructive as self-love. Of course, she was by no means ENTIRELY governed by it yet- but it was gaining a foothold. The patient had allowed it to sneak into a great many of her thoughts, and even actions! Ministry, relationships, whatever. They were important as things that made HER happy, that satisfied HER self-perceived needs- the need to be 'useful', the need to be 'loved' (not with God's love, but with something more seemingly 'safe', more 'solid'- that is, more HUMAN! A love not quite so VERY perfect- that has tangible arms to wrap you in when you're desperate for something to hold onto.)
Much of her distress stemmed from the fact that both her ministry, and relationships were tiring, and disappointing, and unsatisfactory- not surprising, considering how much support she had begun to demand from them!
Those desires are by no means unnatural- but, if she CONTINUES to give them a free rein in her life, disastrous results will ensue.
The patient knows all of this as well as I. Despises it in herself- and yet- and yet- There's still a part of her that struggles to trust that, if she lets go of her 'rights' and 'wants' and 'needs', that God will be as sufficient as, deep down she knows He is, and that things will bring themselves to some sort of resolution.

Which leads to the last, and most important segment of my diagnosis: Lack of faith.
That's really what it comes down to, in the end! Faced with some very real, and serious issues to resolve- some genuine griefs and joys, and hurts and blessings- and finding herself unsure what to do with them, and vaccillating from day to day- at one moment, feeling as wide open, free, and defenseless as a cloudless sky- the next, experiencing that sort of narrowed down confusion that Jim Elliot described when he wrote in a letter to Betty: "The question is whether or not I should marry; marriage and you are synonymous." Faced with, and attempting to sort through all of this, she ceased to feel that God was truly 'the giver of all good things'- began to be bewildered as to what He INTENDED to give her- was even more desperately bewildered when the things she thought she had resigned completely and given up to Him suddenly swung back within reach.

And, sometimes, the confusion and bewilderment drive her to her knees before Him- remind her to live for Him wholeheartedly one day at a time, because the rest is so uncertain- teach her to say, as in Psalm 16:2 'You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.'
But, at others, she begins to look elsewhere for security- to focus on the instabilities in her life, to worry, and brood, and reach out for anything, ANYTHING solid! And it isn't only futile, it's deadly!

Which is why, as both 'doctor' and 'patient' I have spent my evening here typing away, attempting to clarify my cloudiness and vast uncertainty in words.

That's only the diagnosis, though, and I promised a solution. Fortunately, it's simple. (sounding)

1. Be renewed, and immersed in God's Word. When I'm tempted to worry, I should GO THERE- not allow the stress, or just attempt to distract myself! Leonard Ravenhill said that 'Entertainment is the devil's substitute for Joy!' -and it's true!

2. Be faithful in prayer. If any thing, or person, begins to absorb my time or overwhelm my day, I should immediately lay it at God's feet in prayer, rather than wandering off on my own, empty, tangent. This is the single biggest weapon against selfishness- against both work, and relationships that are likely to become walls between God and I, rather than tools in His hand.

3. Cry out for patience. Focus on Him, and take things one step at a time. This is only possible if the first two things are in place.

So, there's the checklist, and, expert physician that I am not, I freely instruct the whiny patient that I am to take all three of these medicines in liberal measure. They are only bitter to a soul that has allowed itself to work 'out of joint'- and are amazingly sweet once the cure is effected!

And, maybe they will be the 'oil on troubled waters' needed to smooth out these mercurial, tempestuous, incomprehensible moods and yearnings of mine.

For all of you who have been praying,and have given me advice, and who take the time to read this overly wordy late night rambling, thank you SO MUCH! I don't know how to tell you how much it means, any more than I know how to tell you exactly what's going on! :-) But you are loved.

And, hopefully, we will all learn to say- you, to your problems, and I to mine: "'..."I am troubled; O Lord, come to my aid!" But what can I say? He has spoken to me, and he himself has done this. I will walk humbly all my years because of this anguish of my soul. Lord, by such things men live; and my spirit finds health in them too. You restored me to health and let me live. Surely it was for my benefit that I suffered such anguish. In your love you kept me from the pit of destruction; you have put all my sins behind your back...' (Isaiah 38:14-17)

Matthew 14:27-31 'But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid."
"Lord, if it's you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water."
"Come," he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came towards Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!"
Immediately, Jesus reached out His hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "Why did you doubt?"

Teaching The Nations A New Song

2010-02-18T04:45:00.003+08:00

Psalm 57:9-ll
'I will praise you, O Lord among the nations; I will sing of you among the peoples. For great is your love, reaching to the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let your glory be over all the earth.'

Psalm 98: 1-2
'Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things... The Lord has made his salvation known, and revealed his righteousness to the nations.'

Song of all songs the nations sing,
New, and yet echoed through the past.
Song of the anguished offering-
Song of eternal bridal fest.
Song that my soul still strives to learn-
Song of descent, and of return.
Song of my heart, I pray to be
Sung to the earth, a song of Thee!

Song of all songs the nations know,
Song that supplants the dragging night
Soars above worthless gods, also-
Song of the day, and blinding light!
Song that awakens, still, the dead-
Song that is drink, and living bread
Song of my heart, I pray to be
Sung to the earth, a song of Thee!

Song of all Songs, the nations cry-
Sing to them springs that cannot fail!
Sing to them life that will not die!
Teach them the Song that must prevail!
You, who are Word, and Staff, and Vine,
Pour to the peoples, Christ, as wine!
Song of my heart, I long to be
Sung to the earth, a song of Thee!

"But I looked up- and she was still there. And she was still coming..."

2010-02-14T03:59:00.002+08:00

Today was supposed to be ordinary. I had it neatly planned out: Breakfast, French class, math class, lunch, music practice, homework, supper, homework, and then bed. Pretty straightforward, right?
Only 'ordinary', somehow, never seems to work out for me. Up until lunch, things went according to plan. Things were as 'usual' as they ever can be.
But then there was lunch. When I arrived in the cafeteria, I put together a bowl of chicken and broccoli to be cooked on the Mongolian Grill (my favorite thing about our caf.), and then sat down with my friend Kristen, who was already eating. I chatted, and ate a banana to pass the time. I was last in a long line, so the food took awhile. Kristen left for her next class. Finally, I got my plate of food, some chopsticks, a napkin, etcetera, and was returning to my seat when a stranger said:
"Hello there, young lady!"
"Hello sir", I said.
There, seated at the table I had been passing by, was an elderly gentleman. I would guess that he was in his fifties or sixties- but he had not aged gently. He had a grizzled gray beard, still lightly threaded with black- wiry hair of the same color, mostly covered by a black baseball cap, bushy eyebrows, and a deeply lined face- dark, like tarnished metal. His gray eyes squinted at me through spectacles. His smile was sardonic.
At first, I thought that I must know him from somewhere, and was hesitating, unsure what to do, when he spoke again.
"You're a Pentecostal, aren't you?"
I nearly laughed! Of all the questions to ask a total stranger! But, I smilingly told him that though I was not a Pentecostal, and did not belong to any particular denomination, I was a follower of Jesus Christ.
"You sure LOOK Pentecostal", he said suspiciously. "Long, long hair, a skirt, a blouse, no makeup- and a real pretty girl, if you'll forgive me for saying so."
A compliment, even an undeserved one, is something few women refuse to forgive, so I stayed to reassure him that I was indeed a non-Pentecostal- and also, to confess that I WAS in fact wearing makeup. I think it was this information that persuaded him to believe me! :-)
Since he'd expressed such a surprising interest in my religious affiliations, I thought it only fair that I should ask for his. And I did, and he told me the following story. I am half afraid to write it here, because it is shockingly ugly, and unredeemably horrible- and yet, the details of it are already fading from my mind- and I find that I cannot bear that it should be forgotten, any more than I can bear that it is true. But the story, as I heard it, is this:
"My father was a Pentecostal minister. Growing up, the Bible was in every nook and cranny and corner of our house. Dad had a chart showing everything that happened in the Bible, in chronological order from Genesis to Revelation. You couldn't get away from it- and me, I never wanted to! When I was a kid, I knew that all I wanted to do was be like Dad- to teach people about God, and how to follow Him. I expected to spend my whole life serving Christ. So, when I graduated from high school, I headed off to seminary to become a pastor. I was there for nearly four years- was five months short of receiving my diploma, and becoming an ordained minister when fate, or providence, or Uncle Sam, or whatever you want to call it intervened. They drafted me, pulled me out of school, and shipped me off to fight in Vietnam." He grew quiet, staring at his plate. "I lose track of how many people I killed there. A lot, I guess- sometimes you don't even know for sure. But while I was in Nam, I saw some stuff- and I learned some stuff. And the time came when I decided that it was to HELL with God!" I must have looked surprised, because he tried to explain:
"I was in a situation, see, where I needed guidance- needed Him more than I'd ever needed Him before- and He let me down. He wasn't there. I asked Him something, and He didn't answer my prayer. Maybe there is no God. Maybe there was no one to hear me- but if there is, then He's got a hell of a lot to answer for! He can put me in hell for eternity- why should I give a rip? He's already put me in hell for the past thirty or forty years. Maybe I wouldn't know how to live anywhere else! But I know this for sure; if there is a God, then He owes me an apology! The things I've seen, the things I've been a part of- how DARE He allow that? If he were a man, and were within reach, and would meet me face to face- ah, I swear, I'd KILL Him!"
The man's hands were shaking- his shriveled old mouth contorted with grief and fury.
Of course, I had to play 'smart', I tried to be gentle, and soothing, to explain how much higher God's purpose and understanding is than ours, and the importance of trusting Him even when we're hurt, and don't understand.
The old man listened to my little sermon- perhaps as patiently as Job listened to the wisdom of his 'comforters', and then, fixing me with a glance half of malice, and half of pity, said: "I'll bet you're wondering what happened that time when I asked God for help to make me doubt Him- to make it impossible for me to trust His goodness, or power, or even existence any longer. Well, I'll tell. you. I don't tell a lot of people, but I'll tell you. It happened like this:
I was on watch that day. I was standing there with my MC13- do you know what an MC13 is, young lady? No? Well, just remember that it's a gun. And anyway, I was standing there, when I noticed a tiny little girl walking towards me. I would guess she was about six years old- black, silky hair- big brown eyes. She was walking towards me, saying that she wanted to sell me some fruit. I don't know how much you know about the way things went back there in Nam, but we couldn't trust anybody. Women, children, animals- they were all weapons, and used against us. We had to do some pretty horrible things, but I don't need to talk about that right now. The point was, this little girl- and I don't think she was more than six years old- was in an area she wasn't supposed to enter, approaching me. I wanted to give her a chance- you know? I told her to 'Halt!' in English, but she kept on coming- just faltering her way along real slow and nervous. So, I yelled at her to 'HALT!' in Vietnamese- and she kept on coming. Well right now, I began to be really, really afraid. I didn't know what to do. So I closed my eyes and prayed: "Lord, You are the God who said 'let the little children come to me'- You are able to guard and guide the little ones. You love the little, helpless ones Lord. I am asking, that in Your power, you would turn this child around, or stop her, and not let her come any closer." I kept my eyes closed a few seconds longer- but finally, the suspense was too much- and I looked up, and she was still there. And she was still coming."

He paused for breath, his face stonily expressionless. I could feel my stomach beginning to twist, and the tears blurring at my eyes as a realization of what might be happening began to dawn on me. The man sipped his water and resumed in a flat voice.

"She kept coming- closer and closer and closer- just inching along, staring at me with those wide eyes, like my face was a book whose letters she couldn't quite make out. A real small, cute little kid. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't let her come any nearer- it would compromise everyone's safety- and I couldn't get her to leave. My hands were going all sweaty.
You remember, I told you about my MC13- that it's a kind of machine gun?"
"Yes."
"When I fired, it sliced her in half- just split her into pieces. One side of her face was completely blown away. She was a real small, skinny little kid."

I felt like everything I'd ever eaten in my life was fighting to come back up again- as though I could start vomiting, and never stop. I had both hands pressed over my mouth, trying to hold it in. He continued in the same expressionless sing-song voice- as though he'd told this story over to himself a thousand times, and had forgotten that I was there. I was crying for real now- the tears battling their way out, and stumbling down my face.

"When I went over to see if she was dead- well, I mean of course- it was obvious she was dead- but when I went over to see- sure enough, there were the wires strapped to her little wrists, and the explosives. She'd been intended to be used as a bomb.
So what could I have done? If I hadn't shot her, she'd have killed us both- and maybe a lot of others! But, there was that moment when God could have turned her around- when He could have protected not just her, but protected me from having to know that I'd murdered her- from seeing that tiny, gory little body splattered against the ground. He could have stopped it, and He didn't. I hate myself, but young lady, I HATE HIM MORE! You asked me if I'm an agnostic- well, I guess I am. I don't know if there's a God. But if there is, He sent me to hell already thirty years ago- I guess eternity just couldn't come soon enough for Him. He stole my life, and my mind, and my faith, and threw my love for Him right back into my face-" [His voice was quavering now with suppressed emotion] "and I HATE Him! Oh, God, I hate Him!"
His eyes returned to me, and they were cold, like ashes of a fire that has burnt out, and cannot be rekindled.
"So, that's my story young lady, and I told you it wasn't a pretty one. Thanks for taking the time to listen to an old man. Be glad you can be silly enough, still, to believe in something."
I timidly ventured that I would pray for him- and left, trying to hide my tearful, horrified face behind my hair on the way back to the table.
And when I got there, I looked at my plate of food- still warm- waiting for me, and felt a deep, wrenching nausea. I wanted to hurl it across the room. Shudderingly, I gathered up the dinner things, shoved them onto the trash tray, grabbed my backpack, and fled.
The old man held the door for me.
"Weren't you going to eat, young lady?"
"I'm not- hungry-" I said shakily.
He looked at me with the detached,distant kindliness of a stranger- in fact, he was growing more distant by the minute- being swallowed up in the dark mist which was beginning to swim before my eyes.
"Yes, you are a real pretty girl! Only nineteen years old! What I wouldn't give to be nineteen, still! It was nice to meet you."
He vanished down a hallway which was growing wavy as the hot tears forced their way up to the surface again. I stumbled down the opposite hallway blindly, students sliding by on either side of me like fish in an aquarium.
When I was safely out of view, I began running, the tears building faster, until I reached the altar-place, one of my secret, special spots in the fields. And I huddled in the snow, and sobbed myself empty- and when the tears began to run out, forced myself to weep, still, because it was a thing that could not be too much grieved over- because I knew that now, while it was fresh and real was the only chance I might have to pour out a fraction of the grief which the event deserved. Finally, I walked on further, and prayed, and the only words that would come through the sobs were 'I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand. Lord, I DO believe- pardon my unbelief! But I don't understand...'
I realized, with crushing force, that I did not want to live any longer in a world where such things happened- where perhaps a little girl in Iraq, or Colombia, or anywhere in Africa might be undergoing the same thing, or something worse, even as I was standing here. In a world where men strap explosives to six year old children and send them out as bait. In a world where young divinity students destroy these children, and themselves in so doing. In a world where, even in my native country, countless children are victims of abuse.
The words 'HOW LONG, OH LORD?' seemed a cry of desperation wrung from history. 'Let Your Kingdom come' had never meant so much to me before. Oh, LET Your kingdom come! Lord, I don't understand! I'm bewildered by the evil lurking in the world! And yet, you came to a world as completely dark and sinful and broken as this- and You came, and You loved, and You healed- and by Your death, You bore God's wrath against evil. And by Your resurrection, You presented Your people to God, wholly and flawlessly righteous in His eyes- because You bought us, and clothed us in YOUR righteousness! Surely, where sin increased, grace increased all the more! You are mending so many 'broken hallelujahs', restoring so much that was created for beauty, and has been degraded to hideous filth. I am willing to say that all is to Your glory. I am willing to concede that the world, and myself, are Your creations, and that You may dispose of them as You please! Lord, where else- to who else can I go? YOU HAVE the words of Life!
And even on these days- these days when life is a nightmare from which I keep waiting to wake up, if You will teach me Lord, I WILL praise You! I will trust, not in my emotions, nor in human wisdom, nor my limited knowledge and vision, but in Your character, and the truth of Your Word.

'Thou art O Lord my only trust
When friends are mingled with the dust
And all my loves are gone.

When earth has nothing to bestow
And every flower is dead below,
I look to Thee alone!'
-Christoph von Schmidt

'Children'

2010-02-14T03:46:00.000+08:00

'Father, hear us, we are praying,
Hear the words our hearts are saying;
We are praying for our children.
Keep them from the powers of evil,
From the secret, hidden peril;
Father, hear us for our children.
From the whirlpool that would suck them,
From the treacherous quicksand, pluck them;
Father, hear us for our children.
From the wordling’s hollow gladness,
From the sting of faithless sadness,
Father, Father, keep our children.
Through life’s troubles waters steer them;
Through life’s bitter battle cheer them;
Father, Father, be Thou near them.
Read the language of our longing,
Read the wordless pleadings thronging,
Holy Father, for our children.
And wherever they may bide,
Lead them Home at eventide.' ~Amy Wilson Carmichael

The Gardener And His Servant

2010-02-10T05:33:00.013+08:00

Have you forgotten, love-my-love,
Those heady days at Spring's beginning?
Lovely days of gleamy gray
When all Eternity awoke-
Dancing rain to wash away
The lingered grime of Winter's cloak
From Earth's green, velvet underpinning-
Have you forgotten, love-my-love?

It was half the imagining of an anguished hour, and half a dream- and the dream, and the images, and the words that later poured into my notebook all somehow meshed together, and became this:

The Gardener and His Servant:

'...He looked, with pained tenderness at the trembling creature at His feet- at her wet cheeks, and grief contorted face.
"Child, why do you weep?"
"I weep", she choked, "for the garden of my own planning, which now will never grow- and for the fragile little plants, which now I shall never tend- and for this Rose, which I have loved so much, and whose thorns are now tearing at my heart as I try to root it out."
He stooped to raise her to her feet. "It is a lovely Rose. I crafted it, you know."
"I know, my Lord."
"Do you think that I would create such beauty without purpose? This Rose, like all others, may only come to its fullest flowering in the gardens of my choice."
The girl was silent. Together they watched the wind flowing through the heavy treetops, the iris nodding in sun-warmed, iridescent purple- a fat bumble-bee humming and fumbling at its heart in cheerful contentment. At last, she answered dully.
"How should I know? You have come into my garden asking me to crush its loveliest flower, to not merely yield up the plant which gives me beauty and fragrance beyond all others, but to kill it- to destroy all of its glowing color and burgeoning life. You would leave the choicest bed in my garden, nourished and watered so carefully, a barren, empty hole. I do not know Lord what You intend for this Rose, but only that I do not wish ever to live in a garden where it does not bloom."
He stretched a hand to one full, creamy, pink-flushed blossom which dangled near Him, framed in glossy leaves.
"Sweet, will you trust Me to give you flowers ever so much better than this one, if you only obey Me in this?"
With quivering hands she pushed back the heavy hanging hair from her tear blotched cheeks, and gazed at Him with bluely swimming eyes.
"I do not WANT better flowers- I want only this one! Lord, I do not love it because it is the best, but because it is itself!"
He gazed levelly at her, and she turned away, frightened by both the sternness, and the compassion she read in His face.
"My child, do you remember when I promised you that I withhold NO good thing from those that love Me? There is a beauty and usefulness which I long to achieve in your garden that will never be brought about until you have learned to abide by My wish in such matters. You CANNOT reach your fullest potential while tending this Rose- it cannot reach ITS while tended by you. That which I created for harmony will be reduced to a strident Weed! I am not an arbitrary Gardener. I do not ask you to perform any task which I have not been willing to perform Myself, but this flower you ARE NOT meant to have. It is not intended to bloom in this time and place. Dear heart, believe me when I tell you that, grasped against My will, these petals which seem so rich to you will become the bitterest poison- that these shining thorns will be a hundred knife-thrusts in your rebelling heart."
"But- I cannot bear to give it up."
"Love, you CAN bear! As I bore all for My Father's glory, and for you."
He stretched scarred hands to her in supplication, pierced with the terrible torn marks of nails, and there was something terrifyingly exquisite in the sight of that Rock of strength humbling himself before the ragged girl- in the way He freely cloaked His glory that He might meet her weakness.
Without a word, she turned, and began to yank at the rose bush with desperate vigor. The crimson-green thorns caught cruelly at her hands, and the long, barbed canes lacerated the softness of her arms. But, the bush remained firmly rooted in the garden's soil. Tearfully, she pleaded again:
"My Lord, I cannot."
"You must."
She returned to the wrenching labour, but made no progress. At last, face scratched, and arms bloodied, she collapsed before Him, sobbing.
"Master, I am willing to follow You- I am willing, willing to submit to You- even in THIS, my Lord- but I am too weak! Unless You help me, I am unable."
He stroked her tangled hair, and replied:
"No- you do not have the strength- but rest, love, and see what I will do!"
With that, He strode grimly to the place where the Rose bloomed on unconsciously in the deep, rich soil of its bed. Kneeling beside it, He braced Himself, and began to pull.
The great, curving thorns sank into His arms and hands, and blood gushed again from the old scars. And as she watched, wincingly, she saw His face tensing with pain, until a dew of sweat was beading on His brow, and His face was white with a paleness that was the very mask of Death. For a while, He halted- and it seemed that, rather than straining against the Rose, He was resting, leaning on it for support.
She began to be frightened, thinking: "If this flower stands in the way of His Purpose- and if it is beyond my strength to uproot it- and if not even He is able, then surely this Garden is a mockery, and I have been following only a dream."
But, just when she had begun to utterly despair, she saw Him drawing His strength up for one great heave- and in a moment He stood, tall and powerful- eyes blazing with the pride of victory- holding the verdant shrub aloft in His arms, its creamy blossoms scarlet with His blood, the crumbling dark loam trailing from its maze of silvery roots.
"It is finished, Beloved!" He said, and was gone.
The girl looked round her ravaged garden, seeing only the torn soil, and gaping hole where her Rose had bloomed, and feeling the fearsome smart of her gashed hands.
"I am not sorry", she said- but wept.
That night, her head throbbed with a leaden ache, and the tears came even in her sleep. She seemed to wander through a terrible maze of dreams, and always awoke grief-stricken, and with a keen sense of loss. It was as though she had held the world in her hand, and watched it trickle through her fingers and out of reach over, and over again.
And yet, the morning dawned at last, and she awoke to find a delicious perfume wafting through the garden in an almost tangible cloud. She sat up and looked round- and there, at her feet, and all throughout the garden, were springing up tall, graceful lilies of burning white, with starry glowings of gold in their slender throats, and a sweet, spicy fragrance breathing from every flower. There was an irresistible sense of GROWING in the air- she almost expected to find herself shooting upward as rapidly as the lilies. A strange, joyous melody began to play through her head (which did not ache now at all!)- and then words came, until at last, the song went like this:

'Awake, awake, O Northern wind,
And come, O Southern breeze!
Blow now upon my garden- send
To Him that holds its keys,

My garden's fragrance, spread abroad,
So that He will make haste-
My garden's gate's unbarred for Him-
Its choice fruits He must taste!'

Within an hour, the lilies had blanketed every bare space in her garden- all but the crater which had been the Rose's bed. This lay as darkly as ever amid the white sea of flowers. But she thought of the terrible scars in the Master Gardener's hands, and so, was content to have it left so, a 'wound' upon her garden- blooming there like a crushed and broken blossom from the sunless land of grief and thwarted hopes.
And so things remain.'

"Sometimes life is quite naked and stripped. It offers nothing but thorns; but after a while, the season will again come when it shall be decked anew in foliage, and robed in the most beautiful flowers. This is now for me the time of thorns; but God forbid that I should be cast down by it. I believe your word, best of Fathers. Perhaps I shall yet see in my life when 'patience produces roses.'" -From 'A Basket Of Flowers', by Christoph Von Schmidt

The Chasm of Confusion:

2010-02-09T04:46:00.005+08:00

You are my way, O Lord, my narrow bridge
A slender silver cord that threads across
The chasm of Confusion, gaping black
Beneath my wavering feet- the farthest ridge
My eyes can glimpse, the barren range of Loss-
Half scraggled with the stunted trees of Lack-
A desert where I find no bread or meat-
A wilderness where water skins are slack.

And yet, my King, You chide me to recall-
This waste which is the limit of my view-
Is but a breath of Yours, and not the whole-
Shows naught except how little, still, I see-
A fraction of the journey- not the all
And clearer sight is found alone in You-
In You, O God, Who've walked this path in full
And scaled the distant peaks of Victory-
In Thou, who soon will Loss and Lack annul!

Cloud-Shapes

2010-02-08T11:44:00.006+08:00

When I was a little girl (Oh, SO many years ago! :-D), my brothers and I had a game called cloud-shapes, a game which is probably as old as clouds- and certainly has been around for as long as there have been children! There were no rules, really, but the object was to watch clouds, and find as many shapes as you could- sometimes arguing a little with the other players before deciding what a certain cloud REALLY resembled. It was a game generally reserved for long car trips and boredom.
The habit of watching clouds, however, has a way of invading one's life at odd, and unexpected times. For instance, the day, when I was 11 or so, when I stepped out of our front door, and stopped aghast to see that a mountain range had sprung up on the Eastern horizon overnight- great, shadowy, charcoal peaks were looming, touched with a white gleaming of morning sun, where before there had only been a level stretch of trees. I have seen real mountains which looked less real! I felt as though an hour's walk would have brought me to their feet. Yet, even as I stood there, a brisk wind sprung up, and, before my eyes the 'mountains' blurred, faded, and were gone.
Years later, while riding in the car one evening, I looked out, and saw, stretched out ahead of us, a great, glowing lake of sunset fire- yellow quartz and opal flamed with ruby. All about it, hung misty fir trees like pillars of amber, and their reflections burned brassily on the burnished surface of the lake. Beyond, and beyond, and beyond drifted a mighty forest of shadows, warm breaths of terra-cotta fading at last to impenetrable, dusky blue in its depths. It seemed to open out into a land of such fiery, magnificent grandeur- one felt that forgotten riches lay beyond those hinted hills shimmering on its seeming horizon. I expected the highway at any moment to melt away, and pour itself into that flamy golden country just ahead. But instead, the night came on, and the glimmering horizon faded, and blackness stole over the cloudy forest tree by tree, until their inky reflections in the lake quenched its shifting allure of fire. And soon, only a few lone sparks burned through the ashes of the sky. And the land of cloud was gone.
My dreams and plans seem so often to resemble the shapes I see in the clouds- they drift awhile, shifting, and changing, forming, and re-forming, until at last I cannot recognize them myself- like roses, as time goes by they open, and change, and bloom into an entirely new, and different beauty. Everything is static. And sometimes, if I have been walking a while with my eyes on the ground in front of me, when I direct my gaze 'skyward' again, I am astonished- because the pictures I find there are unfamiliar- far from the things I had formed- but sometimes, arrestingly lovely. And I am bewildered. Childishly, I expected THOSE clouds to hold their shape, to rest unchanging in the long blueness of the sky- and they have betrayed me.
I can despair then, realizing that the old clouds can never be had back again. I can go on, convinced that THESE clouds, are different, and may be relied upon, unlike the last. (And, knowing the ever changing nature of clouds, and human directions, one can imagine where I will end up!) Or, I can, discovering the inadequacy of my own dreams and plans- not only the 'RIGHT' ones, but the 'WRONG' ones- the personal loves and longings I'd often striven to eradicate, deliberately choose to follow not any longer after clouds, but rather, after the MAKER of clouds, and of me. The truth is, people never end up where they expected. Hudson Taylor's ministry was not at all what he planned- but it was just what was needed. Jim Elliot's great achievement was far from his personal hopes and expectations. Amy Carmichael, 'Amy of India', began by being called to Japan, and then to China! Dohnavur never entered into her farthest dreamings. Marie Drown expected to translate the Bible in China- and ended up raising five children in the jungles of Ecuador. Yet, their ultimate goal- that the Lamb who was slain might have the reward of His sufferings- that Christ, seated triumphant in eternity might be glorified- THIS was unchanging- and THIS was achieved.
So where do I go from here? When the wind comes up, and blasts my peaceful clouds into shapes and directions I didn't expect, and only half hoped for- when thunder crashes, and I realize that the direction I thought I was heading has faded completely out of view, and that something entirely new- half alluring, half terrifying is sweeping into my sky- what can be done?
I wondered last night, when I realized that my cloud-shapes had changed, for better or for worse. Part of me, sheer stubborness perhaps, protested, and still protests that I've 'put my hand to the plough'- that I PROMISED God to follow Him no matter what, and am now 'going back'. But I never promised to follow Him there- only to follow wherever He led. And the path has begun to veer. It seemed though, as I was lying in bed, that the path did not swerve, but rather, split, and I could not tell which way to follow.
It was then, at the heighth of the agony of it- when, tossing and turning on the pillow, I had begun to despair of ever finding an answer, that the answer came. I happened to glance up at the VOM world map on my wall. I saw the dark shapes of the continents in the dim light from the window, and someone seemed to be asking me "Who made all of these?"
"Why, God did", I replied.
"Did He create the people who live there as well?", the voice queried.
"Yes, all of them."
"EVERY tongue, tribe and nation? The children? Even the children?"
I began to be annoyed with this persistent questioner. "Yes, I told you, He made them ALL!"
"And all of the ministries that reach out to them- are those from Him as well?" I nodded.
"You, Sharon, did He make you?"
"Of course. He created me."
"And did He even make..."
"Yes, oh yes, He did! All, all, all of it- He made us all!"
"Then," (and here my questioner began to sound very stern) "Do you think that He is not able to guide each of you, and guide you wisely, and guide you to His glory? Or do you suppose that the One who made ALL of this is unable to dispose of it?"
"Promise me, promise me, Lord", I begged, "that You will lead us in the right direction, and not let us be turned aside, and be with me in all of this bewilderment of shifting plans- promise, or I CANNOT go any further!"
"My love, I promised"
It's true- He promised. His Word is one great, tumbling stream of promises- and He has kept me thus far. But He promised again. Have you ever felt the smoothness of a sympathetic hand on your forehead when you are burning up with fever, or shaking with chills? It soothed like that. I laid my hand on the map, repeated the promise, and finally, fell asleep.
"Happiness is never shipwrecked, or sacrificed, or stolen. It's chosen. And it's You. And oh, sweet Lord, I WILL CHOOSE!" No matter what pictures I am seeing today in the clouds. No matter where they lead me. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: "God doesn't grant all our desires, but He does keep all His promises."

'Run the straight race through God's good grace
Lift up thine eyes and seek His face;
Life with its way before us lies,
Christ is the path, and Christ the prize." (!)- Monsell

Drawn From Desperation

2010-02-06T09:27:00.005+08:00

This has not exactly been the best week of my life. It began, on Monday morning (at an hour earlier than I would normally wish to be awake) with the loss, and apparent theft of my wallet- with suspicion pointing towards my suitemates. Strike one. In between trying to straighten things out with the bank, and filing police reports, and replacing things like my campus ID and debit card, the stress level shot up. Then, the confusion and sense of betrayal began to sink in, as I tried to wrap my head around the thought that the people I lived with every day would really have done something so... low. I still can't comprehend it. There was also our continuing concern over my dad's fragile health, a sudden burst of homesickness, and, strangest, and most disturbing of all, an outbreak of 'admirers'. Guys are one problem I'd been almost entirely free of before, and so I didn't, and still don't know exactly how to deal, both graciously and firmly, with their wholly unwanted attention. I remember feeling attacked from all sides- as though things were literally flying at me from every direction, and I just wanted to creep into some dark, quiet place and never come out again. I topped it all off by getting sick myself- at least I think that's what it was. Frequent headaches, dizziness, a jumpy stomach, fever and chills, etc... I think it may be as close as I've ever come to serious depression. One morning I sat in bed and cried because I didn't want to get up and leave the room- it felt like the last safe place in the world.
So, not the most incredible of weeks! :-) I can't help but wonder if it wasn't a serious Satanic attack, considering that this was the week we were supposed to be setting up our dorm Bible studies, and not only did I have all of my lovely distractions, but one of the other girl leaders lost her grandmother (much worse than anything I had to deal with!), and others had various stressful things come up- and we all were on edge emotionally.
I think that God always provides consolation for such things, but that it often is not what we expected, or even wanted. God's blessings certainly never fail to be as surprising as they are good! I know, for me, that things began to look up on Tuesday, when I was able to have a serious spiritual discussion with my Thai friend, Prueksa. As we were talking, she asked how the death of Jesus could take our sins away, and I explained how He had taken the punishment for our sins (this astonished her, as she has a very strict 'eye for eye, tooth for tooth' view of eternal retribution). Then I told her: "Because Jesus Christ was willing to be punished in the place of the people in the world, when God looks at those of us who have believed in Him to have our sins taken away, He doesn't see our sinfulness, or rotteness, or any of the shameful things we've done- He sees His own Son, Jesus, standing as a shield between us and punishment- and when He looks at me He sees not me, but Jesus and His perfect Holiness. Because of Jesus, I am able to come before God, clothed in the righteousness of Christ!" (I think the English I used was simpler when I was talking with Prueksa!) As soon as it came out of my mouth I was totally blown away. I'd never thought of it in exactly those terms before! It's not so much that Christ eliminated sin, but rather that He overwhelmed and engulfed it through His own blinding holiness. I'm beloved by Him, not as the lamed and plain-featured 'Much-Afraid', but as the lovely 'Grace and Glory' He intends for me to be! And when He looks at me, THAT IS WHAT HE IS SEEING! The thought became a little well of joy throughout the miserable week- a gem to be fished from its case and admired whenever things became intolerable.
So, in conclusion, what have I learned? Well, first of all, to be careful where I leave my wallet! :-P But also, that God truly is faithful in the midst of distressing circumstances- and that when I allow myself to wallow in self-pity, I cut myself off from the sweetest consolations of His faithfulness! Last of all, the importance of encouragement and fellowship with other Christians. Wednesday night, I was able to talk to my two closest friends on the phone, and both vent, receive exciting 'outside' perspectives (Things are happening across the world that are much more important than my cramped little campus 'cage'; surPRISE!), and some helpful lecturing and advice. That was the beginning of the end of the 'No good, terrible, very bad week'. It was rather like the soothing of a plunging horse, or the calming of a storm- my head stopped spinning, heart resumed its normal beating, stomach stopped tensing- the whole body was just like 'Ooooh, ok, nobody's dying yet after all! Never mind!' It must have been receiving some pretty catastrophic memos from my brain! :-) And a genuine, face splitting smile is a pretty good tonic for a troubled spirit! Then, on Thursday, a British Christian and author came to speak on campus about the Resurrection, and its role in the Gospel, which was also pretty encouraging- and afterwards, my friend Anna and I began chatting, and agreed to begin going through the book of Romans together in our daily quiet time so we'd have more fellowship and accountability. Which is always a good thing.
... And which leads me to wonder whether my week was really as awful as I thought... :-)

"Be still, be still you silly, trembling heart
Be still and wait for day!
Think you to break a single bar apart
By quaking so away?
If lost in darkness, and its prisoning
Why then, like Paul and Silas pray and sing!
Be still, my love!"

"I cannot, cannot still this freezing terror
Nor halt my quivering
Nor have sufficient strength to ever bear
Such fearful buffeting
I lack for wisdom, Lord, and without light
Will soon be crushed by all this weight of night!
Come near, my God!"

"Be still and know, you fragile, craven thing
I swear, I will restore
Child, weeping for your lack of comforting
No servant ever bore
The cross alone- why care that mockers jeer?
Why huddle in such agony of fear?
The fight is won!"

The Condemned

2010-01-31T04:15:00.003+08:00

O God, I stand
Half in, half out of every laughing crowd
And strain to smile,
The lost on either hand-
With rising guilt, I hear them scoff aloud
From bitter mouths which mock the terror that chokes-
See death behind their camouflage of jokes-
A little while, and all these faces glad
Are cloaked in dust- frail shadows slip away.
Their smiles are horror, their endless laughter mad,
And I condemned, who met them but in play
And warned them not- my fingers seared with blood.

They would not heed a Jeremiad cry-
Or would they heed?- Lord teach me what to say!
How can I bear that judgment should destroy
These hungry souls- my silence is a lie
And hides Your truth- O, spur me on to pray,
Your yearning love, and living Word employ,
That some of these should not forever die-
That You'd supplant their mockery with Joy!

The Future...

2010-01-30T06:40:00.005+08:00

The Future flees
Before me- I pursue with faltering feet
Afire to sieze
That gaily mocking echo-
But, tis fleet,
And I, a cripple driven to my knees,
Can chase no more; athirst for guarantees-
For that which one can KNOW-

I dimly sense
This mystery of Time will not arrive
When summoned hence.
Not all my eager grasping
Can contrive,
That I, who see not clearly, Lord, nor far
Should pierce that cloud,unlit by any star.
And it is better so.

Prayer For An Invisible Journey:

2010-01-28T03:58:00.005+08:00

So often the temptation comes to arrogance. "Wow- I'm enduring this heartache- if only anyone else knew, how impressed they'd be with my nobleness." Sometimes, one is even tempted to pride by imagining future marvellous feats of faith and courage!:-)
This is worse than nonsense- it's deadly. The greatest heights, and most desperate struggles of my spiritual journey will be invisible to all but God- and rightly so. He intends to reward me at the end- but not to exalt me, or set me in a special position, and the same goes for life along the way. I don't have to worry because I'm misunderstood, unnoticed, or alone. That's the way it's meant to be.
It's delightful to feel that others are following one's progress, cheering at one's successes, and sympathising with one's setbacks, but even this is deceitful. People will come and go in my life, and I will need to continue on. It is for me to trust Him, and to patiently root out every impulse to seek admiration or recognition, or even to be sustained by human encouragement. Comfort and superficial happiness are not what it's all about. That's not how races are won.

Lord, let me be content to pass unnoticing, and unnoticed in and out of human approbation and attention. Let me be impervious both to the traps of praise, and of unjust criticism. Thank You that through these weak feelings of loneliness, and abandonment, I am able to have a greater understanding for the other people in my life, and for all of the hurts which they quietly carry. Teach me to translate this into mercy and encouragement for those You bring my way.

Father, the merry rivers dance
Into the sea without a trace
In all that swelling, vast expanse
Of how they won their arduous race.

O let me leap, as glad as they
Through ev'ry barrier and descent-
Uncaring that the crowd who stay
Will never know which way I went!

Echoes Of the Goal:

2010-01-27T09:00:00.008+08:00

As members of the human race, we're not exactly famous for our long attention span. I mean, I've never been anything BUT human, so obviously I can't bring a completely objective, outside-of-the-box perspective to this topic. But I know this: It's difficult for people to focus on any one thing for very long at all. We are distracted by everything, ranging from the weather, to our own day to day comings and goings. One burning passion or interest seems to succeed another as regularly as the changing seasons. I'm that way, at any rate. One week, I eat sleep and breathe Classical music- the next, all I want to do is write poetry. When this palls, along comes a new friendship, or a stack of books, or gardening, or Civil War re-enacting- you name it, it's happened. And all of my former hobbies and relationships melt away into the background, making way for the glory of the New.
But, in all this shifting morass of life, there's something which is never intended to change. Mind you- it does, more often than I like to admit- and yet, it is the anchor, the center of my existence, something which I am always brought face to face with again, and unable to wholly abandon, even in my foolish distractibility. This is my relationship to Jesus Christ. My only purpose in living on earth is to follow Him, to seek Him, to study, mimic, and absorb Him. It may seem, for a flashing moment, more exciting to read Shakespeare, or make quilts, or talk on the phone- or even to write this blog! :-) But there is no doubt that these are phases- passing interests- passing temptations. My goal, still, is Christ.
Back when I spent a lot of time studying Greek and Roman mythology, I learned this story. I've forgotten most of it, but here is how the important part goes:
'Once there was a beautiful girl, who was also a fleet runner. When it was time for her to be married, princes from every kingdom came to seek her hand. But, her father made one stipulation: the man she married, would have to be able to beat her in a footrace. Those who lost would be killed. Now, as it happened, the girl herself objected to being married, and had, as a gift from one of the goddesses, three beautiful golden apples. If any young man began to gain on her in the race, she would simply fling one of these apples along the track- and when he stopped to pick it up, she gained the necessary distance to defeat him. Countless young men tried to win the girl, and died in the attempt.'
Of course, there's more to the story- but, to me, this is most memorable.
Even as fiction, it's kind of astounding, isn't it? Here are all of these men, engaged in a life or death contest, focused on, as their prize, the deepest desire of their hearts- and yet faced with an unexpected and attractive novelty, they are unable to resist the urge to abandon the race in order to seek a useless, but shiny object which can bring them nothing but loss and death. I'd like to call the story improbable- and of course, it is, on many levels. But, it's true as well. True far too often in my own life. Fixed eagerly on Christ as my goal,(and He is not fleeing, but LEADING me!)running hard after His character and transforming power, my eye is caught by something gleaming at the edge of the path- and all of His love, all of His glorious beauty is forgotten in the sudden desire for THAT thing! Not even fear of punishment is enough to detain such an impulse if allowed to take possession of my heart. Ridiculous? Of course! And yet, it happens!
Why is it? What is the appeal in these 'lesser lights', in these dead baubles of cheap metal which enables them to momentarily overwhelm all of the burningly beautiful glory of heaven? I don't think I know the answer. The best I can figure is that, at least in my own life, I allow myself to have a faulty image of God, to form unrealistic expectations. Quite simply, there are desires, and heartaches, and struggles right now which it is no part of His plan to whisk out of my life. Even more- I have an inner, longing hunger for His kingdom, my true home, which is not meant to be truly satisfied here on earth. I stray from the path towards lies because they promise me a fulfillment which He has no intention of giving to me in this life. I demand that He protect me from pain and frustration- and he sends new trials. I convince myself that He will immediately crown my efforts to serve Him with success- instead, He allows temptation, and failure and dryness to come crowding in. My focus tends to be on the externals- how I am interacting with the world around me, what impression I'm making, what affirmation and support I'm receiving. But His perspective is eternal, and internal. He is ever so patiently striving to develop and strengthen in me new life of the sort which will one day thrive forever in His light. It is hard for me to see that, hard for me to not eye enviously any god promising a safe, climate-controlled year of plenty, to not querulously beg Him for 'a king to lead [me] and go out before [me] and fight [my] battles' (1 Samuel 8:20)- or even, to not pursue anything offering enough seeming beauty and excitement to stifle my 'dizzy heart-hungerings', the needs which only He can meet. The trash lying beside the path succeeds in drawing me aside from my goal, not because it is different, but because it is so deceptively like. It has no life of course. No real power or beauty or substance. But it is an echo of the beauty I'm pursing- a shadow of the glory I've been promised, but am weary of waiting for. It claims the ability to satisfy the love and longing which were previously driving me onward after Him. It is frequently so entirely innocent- so wholesome and appealing- no one will rebuke me if I embrace it. But it is empty , valuelesss, temporal air- and worse than that! Acting in such capacity, it is death, a potent spiritual poison! A moment of hesitation in my race- the faintest touch of laxness or laziness- and Satan is crying his wares from every side. Will I press on after Him, through the deadly weight of dryness and discouragement and distraction. Will I cry out to Him in the tangle of confusion? Will I '...[look] round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and [ask] why [I have] been forsaken, and still [obey]"? (C.S. Lewis)
The things I appropriate for myself bring no fulfillment. "The beauty or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things- the beauty, the memory of our own past- are a good image of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are NOT the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited." (C.S. Lewis)
Lord, give me discernment in how I use my time, and engage my emotions. Don't let me be 'spent in non-essentials'. Oswald Chambers wrote: "The greatest characteristic a Christian can exhibit is this completely unveiled openness before God, which allows that person's life to become a mirror for others... Beware of anything that would spot or tarnish that mirror in you. It is almost always something good that will stain it- something good, but not what is best."
It is so hard sometimes to differentiate what seems to be fun and healthy amusement from that which becomes a distraction and a stumbling block in my race. It is especially confusing to find the balance between devoting adequate time to human friendships and relationships, without giving them priority over my friendship with You. Let it be my firm commitment this semester to 'consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me- the task of testifying to the Gospel of God's grace... forgetting what is behind, and straining toward what is ahead, pressing on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.' (Acts 20:24, Phillipians 3:17) Help me to keep in mind the words of Susanna Wesley: "Take this rule; whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off your relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind; that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself."
Lord, don't let me stop and listen to the faint and misleading reverbrations of this shouting triumph I'm seeking- draw me onward through my land of echoes, and shadows, and flickering lamps- this dark wasteland where I see only 'through a glass, darkly', until You are ready to bring me into to the unending splendour of Your light. Until then, don't let me settle for empty promises, or for anything less than my goal. In the overwhelming cacophany of praise which I will one day join, there will be no room, or memory for the wistful plea of echoes!

Hiking Thoughts:

2010-01-26T07:58:00.001+08:00

Why do You love me? I must ask.
Searching myself for any worth
Or outward beauty that might mask
My naked soul, with all its dearth

Of virtue, Lord, when shadows mock:
“Could He have chosen such a one?”
And doubts come crying in a flock-
Dark wings- see how they block the sun!

I hold my heart with quaking grip
Small trade for all the marks I miss-
And answer with a trembling lip,
‘He loves, because I gave Him this!’

“YOU gave HIM?”- how the mockers roar
With frenzied laughter at the thought.
“He loved you, creature, long before
Such hideous sacrifice you brought!

Why HE bore nails in either hand,
And made HIMSELF an offering
In order merely to demand
You yield to Him the filthy thing!”

‘Why DOES He love me then?’ I say,
‘What can I give Him in return?
I have no gift which might repay
This gift of His I could not earn.

My doubts all nodded, satisfied,
“You see, your claim is very light
What can you give Him, Crucified
Which was not His before by right?”

Oh what indeed? My heart is naught,
My soul is nothing, to that price.
My service, weak, already bought,
My face too much marred to entice

The King’s bright eyes- and yet I come
My Love, I bring You empty hands
I pour out all my zero sum-
A bitter stream of barren sands.

For verdant Life- my stony soul
For radiant Light- my darkened ray
For jewel-crowned, brimming golden bowl-
A shattered vessel built of clay.

I have no hidden wealth to send
I am no diamond in the rough
Yet hark- this answer of my Friend:
‘I want you, darling. That’s enough!’

The caustic doubters slink away
The sun sinks earthward, unobscured
Red shafts light up the ending day
And I go on my way, assured.

Enjoying Him Forever

2010-01-25T06:39:00.002+08:00

"The chief end of man is to glorify God, and enjoy Him forever."
So often I'm tempted to stop at 'glorify God', and forget the rest- but it's equally important.
If I just say 'God's glory', I tend to make my own interpretations, to focus on 'now I will do X, Y, and Z, and He will be glorified- when, in fact, for His glory REALLY to be known, I must be delighting IN Him, united TO Him in worship at every moment... FOREVER! Lord, teach me to enjoy You forever that Your Name might be glorified!
"...Often God meets us in the moment of weakness rather than strength. He doesn't always wait until we feel spiritual, He doesn't always wrap life up in a nice little present with a bow on the top. The life of discipleship, the life of deeper commitment includes ongoing battle and ongoing struggles. It will include fear, worry and anxiety at times. But Jesus is always there."- George Verwer
The sermon today, on Colossians 3:15-17, was an important reminder. Pastor Hund said: "He's still there. He's still working. He's still molding. He's not leaving. He is not going anywhere. There may be agonizing circumstances in your life. Things which you long to be rid of. And He doesn't promise to change that. But He promises to use it all to polish and transform you. 'Let the peace of Christ reign in your heart.' So often we lack peace, because we reject it! We insist on worrying, when He asks us to trust, on having our own way when He asks us to follow. But you're not the 'umpire' in your life. It's not your job to call the strikes. Your job is to accept His Lordship in your life, and His peace. Wherever that leads you."
It's hard to be happy with the place that I'm led today. And it's hard not to be afraid of where I might be led tomorrow. But I'm not the issue. He is. And He has promised a peace that has nothing to do with circumstances or location. And a strength 'made perfect in weakness' Which, if weakness, and willingness (or the longing for it) are His only criterion in selection, means that I am a prime candidate for the perfecting of His strength! :-)

Words, Flesh, and Vapor

2010-01-23T03:11:00.003+08:00

Words, Flesh and Vapor by Dell Cook

King Solomon’s description of his pursuit of wisdom and understanding constantly resounds with this seeming lament: “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” So much so, that a student of mine once commented that in reading Ecclesiastes, he felt like he was reading a suicide note. But nothing could be further from the truth.

One reason for this misunderstanding is a problem with translation. The Hebrew word that is variously translated “vanity” or “futility” literally means “breath” or “vapor”. Now, please don’t misunderstand. It is abundantly clear that at times Solomon is calling us to consider and remember the transience and insignificance of things in which we so often place our hopes and trust. But on another level, Solomon is giving us some profound insight into the nature of things.

All is vapor. All is breath. The computer you hold and manipulate. The chair on which you sit. The huge rock that we call Earth on which you walk. Scientists tell us these things, all matter, are basically empty space. The solid things are spoken things. They have been breathed, that is to say spoken, into existence. Your body is a sentence beginning with “Let there be…”.

So, with this in mind, we may be able to understand Solomon’s conclusion in a different way. On at least four different occasions in Ecclesiastes, Solomon says something to this effect, “There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good.” (Ecc. 2:24) Seriously? Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die? Isn’t that what the one with no hope says (1 Cor 15:32)? The difference between Solomon and the despairing Epicurean is that he understands that this vaporous existence is a gift. A word. A word of “glad tidings”.

The Word became flesh and now the vapor makes sense. There is nothing better for us than to enjoy the present work, receive the present good pleasure, and perform the present sacrifice of love. This present moment is the present incarnate kingdom. This present moment is the gift from God’s hands.

Past Costing Point

2010-01-21T12:33:00.001+08:00

"They had the Death car there... they piled the faggots round it. They lighted them, and a wild, wild wail rose up to the God who looked down and saw it all. Then the horn blew loud and long, and as the fire flamed, one part and then another caught, and as the terrible sound which they called the head-split cracked through the crackling of the wood, they seemed to put all the dread and horror of it into one intense yell. Why do I tell it so? Why break the pleasant scenes of home with this bit of the fiery barbaric? Why? Because it is true! IT IS TRUE! It has gone on like that for thousands of years. It is going on today. Is there nothing in it which speaks? Has it not a voice for you? A voice, yes, and a Cry. The cry God heard when He said long ago, 'The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto Me from the ground.' Some of you are not much giving, not much caring... You who can resist the half articulate pleading of many and many a heart today, can you resist this? From millions of voiceless souls, it is rising now- does it not touch you at all? The missionary magazines try to echo the silent sob. You read them? Yes, and you skim them for good stories, nice pictures, bits of excitement- the more the better. Then they drop into the wastepaper basket, or swell some dusty pile in the corner. For perhaps 'there isn't much in them.' Very likely not; 'there isn't much in' the silence any more than in darkness, at least not very much reducible to print; BUT TO GOD THERE IS SOMETHING IN IT FOR ALL THAT. Oh! you- you, I mean who are weary of hearing the reiteration of the great unrepealed commision, you who think you care, but who certainly don't, past costing point, is there NOTHING will touch you?" -Amy Carmichael
There is the eternal question: "Do I care past costing point? Is anything less caring at all?" I am asking you, because I find that I must continuously ask it of myself as well. Interest and approval are nothing- it is when you begin to give sacrificially of some part of yourself that you truly become a participant, and not an onlooker in any task. But what is the task? And what will the completion of the assignment demand from us? The answer comes blazing down across thousands of years of human history: "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations..."- and the cost? Everything! "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. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple." It is the passionate desire of God that His name might be glorified among all the peoples of the earth! As a warrant for His imperative 'Go', Christ proclaims 'All authority on heaven and earth has been given to me.' And why? '...because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.' We might be tempted to say 'But God is so very powerful; the victory is His already? What possible use could WE be to Him?' That is beside the point- the issue is not God's power, or our lack of it- the issue is what He is asking of us. Again, it is so very easy to protest: 'But the world isn't seeking God! Even when they cry out at the barest extremities of anguish, it is not to Him- they are His enemies, enslaved to His enemy, bound in opposition to Him. Why should we battle to give them truths they don't want? And if only He can plant that wholly unnatural desire for regeneration in their hearts, how do we come in at all? What is the use of our going? Besides, they are so depraved- it's not worth the sacrifice-they don't deserve it.' And we would be right of course- they don't! But, Beloved, did you and I? Did we seek our Creator before we were sought by Him? Were we not depraved? Were we anything except His enemies? Were we worthy of the sacrifices others made to see us brought into the kingdom- sacrifices we may not even be aware of yet? For that matter, were we worthy of the ultimate sacrifice made by our Lord? Is there any sacrifice WE could make of which HE is not worthy? In honesty, we can answer without hesitation that we have been set free from a prison of foulness and hopelessness not a degree different from the perishing World's- no matter if the furnishings of the cell were different! Once again, we are dodging the crucial question. What did God command? Did He have a right to ask it? And in response, the unwavering imperative is 'Go'. Go to all nations- panta ta ethne (every family/people group) that they might '...fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgement has come. Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water.' What is He not able to ask of us? Is there anything in the heavens or on earth which is not His handiwork? Is there any one of us who was not 'bought with a price'- does the slave halt to quibble with his Master when every moment is vital?
"Only think of all these fragile ships decaying towards death from conception, bearing immortal souls poised over the fires of hell and eternal punishment- ETERNAL SEPARATION FROM GOD! Only stop to consider for a moment what it means! How can we become callous to such infinite horror? Even if the beauty of our mission is forgotten, surely the terror of what our failure must mean to them should drive us on." God never asked that we be successful. The Bible contains no 'salvation quota', makes no promise that in ourselves we are able to win men's souls. But He demands obedience. He doesn't ask you to rise to any mark, or be anything, except faithful in carrying out His will. And His will is unmistakeably that those who have not heard should hear- and that we should be His voice, proclaiming it to them! His love for you, and for His scattered sheep in the far corners of the globe cannot be satisfied with anything else! "But this is a people plundered and looted, all of them trapped in pits or hidden away in prisons. They have become plunder, with no one to rescue them; they have been made loot, with no one to say, 'Send them back.' "We look for light, but all is darkness; for brightness, but we walk in deep shadows. Like the blind we grope along the wall, feeling our way like men without eyes. At midday we stumble as if it were twilight; among the strong we are like the dead" 'They rely on empty arguments and speak lies...their cobwebs are useless for clothing; they cannot cover themselves with what they make.' Leonard Dober wrote, " Even if no one should be benefited, and no fruits follow my efforts, yet I will go, for I must obey my Savior's call." In eternity- when all is complete, and earth is only a memory, will it matter that you got a good job? Lived in that dream home? Got the right education? Married according to your inclinations? Had a safe, comfortable life? Where in Scripture are we called to safety, much less to comfort? What does that have to do with 'taking up one's cross'? Once again, I'm asking these things of myself more even than of anyone who reads this. If someone joins the millitary, it is expected that he will have considered the risks and sacrifices involved. He goes into every battle with the realization that he might be injured, that he may lose his life, or be imprisoned, that he may never see his loved ones again. And that is only for an earthly conflict- from men who may well be in the wrong! Yet if it is suggested that such strenuous discipline might be required of a follower of Christ, the idea is shoved uncomfortably away as extreme. In what way extreme? Are we not sent into the world as He was- to bring redemption to men at whatever cost God appoints? Should servants expect to fare so much better than their Master? Do we actually justify such arrogance on a daily basis, simply because it comes 'naturally' to us? NATURAL- to US! And don't we know what WE are?! Someone, I can't remember who, once said "Count the cost by all means- but do your arithmetic at the foot of the cross.' Face to face with Him, the language of sacrifice must necessarily vanish from our lips and hearts to be replaced by utter, joyful surrender- we have nothing to give Him, after all, which is not more than His by right! There is nothing we could consider giving up for Him that He hasn't already given up for us! Contemplate that for a moment- and then, open your heart, still fixed on His love, to the vision of the lost world. NTM estimates that there are 2500 unreached people groups remaining- peoples with their own language, and culture- but in no less need of the truth than you and I once were. NTM's figure is low- elsewhere I have found estimates that there are as many as 6,000 unreached people groups remaining, 4,000 of them unengaged, and that two billion people are included in that category. Who will go to them? Will you? Will I?
Our generation (I am speaking primarily to high schoolers and college students with this) is placed at a unique point in history. The communist block in Asia is rapidly opening up to foreign involvement- nations such as Vietnam, China, Cambodia, and North Korea, considered nearly inaccessible only a few years ago, are now rapidly developing, eager for educators and English teachers. According to the Joshua project website, 80% of the people groups of North Korea are unreached. Is it worth the "sacrifice" of a few years to "risk" your fragile life in the infinite hands of God in order to take the light there? What about Africa, wracked by poverty and disease, and home to so many of the world's unreached peoples? Or Indonesia and New Guinea, with wild tribes scattered through their jungles like pockets of jewels in a mine. The Muslims of Indonesia don't think that it is an 'unreasonable' sacrifice to go to those tribes with their religion; can no one be bothered to go to them with the truth? And there is the Muslim world- much of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Do you think they are all bomb strapping terrorists? Have you ever stopped to recognize them as ordinary people brutalized by extraordinary violence and fears, and dying in their sin? DYING IN THEIR SIN! With all the deserved penalty of that sin to be faced for eternity! Does it not move you at all? Is that knowledge, combined with Christ's power, not enough to lift us out of ourselves, of our petty hopes and plans, to the level of giving 'past costing point'? It is not an unrealistic aspiration. Do you think God created any heart that isn't His to mold and redeem? More Muslims have come to Christ in the past twenty years than in all of history! God is working powerfully in their culture; will you be a part of it?
Perhaps you are saying now, "Well, of course, if that is what God wants me to do, I'm willing- but I haven't been called yet." Would we give credence to the idea that some are not 'called' to purity? That there are people not 'called' to honor their parents? That it is possible to be a follower of Christ while not being called to love God and one's neighbor, to forgive those who hurt us, to refrain from hurting others? Are any of God's universal commands selective in their application? God called those who are redeemed by Christ to 'Go, and preach the Gospel to all nations'. Your part in that will differ from mine. He isn't calling you to go where the world thinks you should go, or the church thinks you should go, or where I think you ought to go (And I have to admit- a part of me wants to see every missionary hurl himself into the vast, gapingly empty, hope starved continent that is Asia) Your 'Go' may encompass the people next door, or the people on the other side of the world- but make no mistake. If you are a disciple of Christ, and following Him, you WILL go somewhere, or else be disobedient. And don't be too hasty in saying, "Oh, but I'm sure that God will be satisfied if I just stay here and share my faith. After all, doesn't our country have needs too?" America does have needs; we are in no position even to comprehend the needs of the world! For instance, while only four out of every one hundred Americans can be described as having no church connections, there are places in the world where there is the equivalent of ONE evangelical minister for the population of nearly the entire midwest! In North India there is one missionary for every 500,000 people! In North Africa there is one missionary for every two million people! That would be the same as having only 120 Christian workers, and seven SMALL churches to serve the ENTIRE population of Canada and the United States COMBINED! We have more evangelical churches than that in the Kansas City area alone! China has 400 languages and tribes with no access to the Gospel, and not a word of the Bible in their own language! I am not saying that America doesn't need workers, or that no one should minister here- but we are glutted with light compared to the rest of the world! Can you stand before God one day and say without shame that you labored to spread a feast before your own countrymen while billions starved outside your borders? Out of every 140 Americans who go into full time ministry, only one will go to the unreached world! Are you justified in following the other one hundred thirty-nine? Out of every dollar given to the American church, only one cent goes to the unreached world! Is that what we call 'strategy'? Is there any balance in that? Why are we so concerned with carpets and landscaping and lighting fixtures when a life or death battle is raging just out of earshot? I am not saying that God 'needs' you or your money. He is not a beggar, unable to provide for His own work. He will claim the victory in His time, in His own way- but will YOU be a part of it? Who has more joy in a victory- the one who gave everything to help make it possible, or the indifferent watcher on the sidelines? Exciting things are happening! Approximately 155,000 people entered the kingdom of God today! (Mainly in Lafricasia) In twenty-four years, unreached people groups went from 60% of the global population, to 30%! That means that fewer than thirty years from now, there could be a church plant in every known people group in the world... So what if you aren't sure exactly where He would have you go? Focus on Him and His leading. The worst thing that could happen is that the 'wrong' people might get saved! :-) Amy Carmichael worked in Japan and China for several years before she was brought to her life's work among the child prostitutes of India.
And what part will you play? God has given you the calling- He has equipped you with the power, even though you may not think so now. There is no useless ability: Computer technicians, doctors, nurses, farmers, teachers, scientists, mechanics, aviators, dishwashers- there is work for everyone! Only open yourself up to be placed where He wants you! There are so many who are eager to stay at home. So many who would like to give a few dollars and forget. So many who are closing their ears to the shriek of blind, uncomprehending agony rising up from the blind, STONE BLIND peoples of the globe- do you really want to be one more? Or will your life be different?
"But those generations passing away at this moment! They must hear of the Savior! How can we wait! O Lord of Harvests, do send forth laborers! Here am I, Lord. Behold me, send me. How deaf must be the deafness of the ear which has never heard the story; how blind the eye that has not looked on Christ for light; how pressed the soul that has no hope of glory; how hideous the fate of man who knoweth only night! God, arouse us to care, to feel as He Himself does for their welfare." -Jim Elliot
"And if we answer the call to discipleship, where will it lead us? What decisions and partings will it demand? To answer this question, we shall have to go to Him, for only He knows the answer. Only Jesus Christ, who bids us follow Him, knows the journey's end. But we do know that it will be a road of boundless mercy. Discipleship means joy." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Lessons From A Prayer Walk:

2010-01-20T11:00:00.005+08:00

On Monday, some of the Navs met to prayer walk the campus. Jeremy and the rest of the group read and prayed together for a while in the lobby of the Blum, and, afterwards, we split into pairs. I went with Margaret.
Margaret and I walked to several places. In each spot, we paused to examine a passage of Scripture, and then to pray it, applying it to whoever/whatever we were focusing on- students, faculty, Christian groups.
At the first stop: Psalm 68:18-20
'When you ascended on high, you led captives in your train; you received gifts from men, even from the rebellious- that you, O Lord God, might dwell there. Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens. Our God is a God who saves; from the Sovereign Lord comes escape from death."
Lord, we stood outside of the dormitories, then. Christ, You have ascended on high- You have conquered all that stood between us and You, now break down everything that is a barrier between these students and an understanding of You. Lord, I know that I am a captive in Your train. Thank You for Your love in claiming me, for Your grace that means that I am, as Chambers exulted: "...in the procession of a conqueror, and always led in triumph." God, You are worthy of all gifts and all glory- and You have received gifts, even from the rebellious. These buildings are full of the rebellious, Lord- and all too often I am one of them. Work in each of our hearts. Bring wisdom, bring understanding, bring the utter brokenness of repentance. Bring Your Spirit, Lord, down upon Missouri Western's residents. Thank You, Lord, for being our Savior, and a God who daily bears our burdens. Free us from the crippling pride that tempts us to insist upon carrying all burdens ourselves. When faced with heartache, God, let us seek refuge not in independence, but DEPENDENCE on You- not in self-sufficiency, but in the faith and humility that is willing to throw itself entirely upon Your sufficiency. Through You we have escaped from death, for You are the way of escape. So many of these before us, and all around us daily are trapped, condemned, still under a sentence of death. Father, be their escape- overwhelm their rebellion, their objections, their self-will, and ennable them to freely give to You the gifts of surrender, and worship. Amen.
At the second stop: Isaiah 54:2-5
"Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left... Do not be afraid; you will not suffer shame. Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated...For your Maker is your husband- the Lord Almighty is his name- the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; HE IS CALLED THE GOD OF ALL THE EARTH..."
Lord, we prayed this last while standing in the Blum, preparing for the outreach of today and tomorrow. You have been so faithful today- so many people filled out the Spiritual Interest surveys- so many contacts were built- so many good discussions were had. Thank You so much for sending the group from Northwest to help us get our new semester 'off the ground'. You know, Father, how nervous we were- it was completely new to some of us- and, even for me- well, let's just say it's nothing like children's ministry! :-) But You carried us through! Please don't let us be concerned about the good opinion of others- if we look like absolute fools patrolling the Student Union with the Gospel, then, oh, let me be a fool, Lord! Thank You for Your promise that we will NOT be humiliated! But let us say, as Much-Afraid did, when the Shepherd asked her "Do you believe that I will let you be put to shame?"
"I don't think that I mind so very much if You do; only have Your will and way in me, Shepherd. Nothing else matters."
No, NOTHING ELSE MATTERS. This promise will be fulfilled in Your time- but let us also remember that You Yourself were willing to be stripped naked before a jeering crowd, flogged beyond recognition, nailed to the very symbol of wrongdoing, and judged for all of the sin of mankind. Humiliation is not the issue. Saving face is irrelevant. Saving souls is vital. We will be justified one day. Until then, Lord, we are willing to bear the same scorn which You aroused in the hearts of Your enemies. Embolden us to enlarge the place of our tents this semester. Do not let us be satisfied, God, with a 'comfortable' ministry. Lord- send revival! Send growth! We trust that You will swell our ranks, ennable us to spread out to the right and to the left. Send us out, O God of all the earth, INTO all the earth with the good news of Your salvation! Amen.
The third stop: Ephesians 3:16-20
"I pray that out of His glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fulness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to hm be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!"
Lord, this is the prayer of the Navigators, for ourselves, and for our group, and for the entire body of Christ here at Missouri Western.Amen.
The fourth stop: 2 Corinthians 10:3-5
"For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."
Lord, thank You for arming us with spiritual weapons. Encourage us in faithfulness to train ourselves in their use. Lord, we lift up to You the strongholds of Your enemy on this campus. Demolish them, Lord- equip us to battle in Your cause. Remind us that the victory is already Yours, and ours, through Jesus Christ. Let us be gentle and loving with those we contact- but for those pretensions which set themselves up against the knowledge of God, may we have no mercy. Let us recognise them in professors and fellow students, and battle against them there. Let us give them no foothold in our own hearts and minds. Teach us, Lord, to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ. Equip us with discipline, and perseverance in Your Word, that every element in our lives and thoughts might be pleasing to You. Amen.
After the walking teams all arrived back in the Blum, Jeremy finished up with some discussion and prayer. He closed his prayer with this, and as he talked, I felt the tears stinging at my eyes:
"There are so many days, and weeks when it seems that all of our words and actions are falling upon dry, and rocky ground. Lord, we know that it is only through Your Spirit that this hard soil will be broken, and made soft- God, grant us faithfulness in scattering the seed of Your Word."
I would so like to say of myself that, although I had very minimal spiritual impact last semester, I was still faithful in scattering seed- that I was faithful in prayer, faithful in fasting, and even faithful in my own friendship with Christ. But I can't. So much time was wasted, so many opportunities ignored, so much pride, and sin, and self-love allowed to intrude into our fellowship. Maybe this semester won't be any different, and maybe it will. But, either way, may I remember that it isn't about me- not even about my own sin and awfulness- but about Him. His work, His glory. And my pride must have so little place in that, that even the consciousness of desperate unworthiness is insufficient to separate me from my Love and His plans for my life.

Snow poem for a SNOW DAY: (inspired, like all works of genius, by the combination of coffee, and lack of sleep)

2009-12-10T04:02:00.002+08:00

'The white wind snakes its way across the snow
Coils, hisses, and is gone.
And starkly perfect ridges wait to catch
The meager light of dawn
Casting shadows where a watcher sees
Snow, bluely mirroring trees.'

That's how it seemed at three o' clock this morning anyway- so I scribbled it down in the margins of my notebook, and kept pegging away at Sartre. When I made a coffee run to the C-store at 11, the snow was falling in downy tufts of crystal so thickly I could barely see. The whole campus is transformed- there's something faintly artificial about it, as though one were wading across a vast stage, carefully decorated for a play, but not appearing in its true character. The cedars flaunt their costumes majestically, but the poor ornamental dwarf trees in the landscaped patches seem rather sheepish about it all. It's beautiful, and, somehow, not real. I lobbed a few snowballs at a walnut tree, with pathetic results- I'm a lousy pitcher! :-) It was somewhat depressing when I realized that there isn't a single person here on campus with whom I would feel comfortable starting a snowball fight. Considering my throwing abilities, however, it's probably all for my own good...

Thoughts on Frogs, Inspired By Finals

2009-12-09T15:03:00.002+08:00

Sharon Moore: ""O to be a frog, my lads, and live aloof from care." -Theocritus. It was not explicitly stated, but it is nonetheless indubitable probability that when Theocritus penned these immortal lines back in the third century B.C. what he had in mind was that, frogs never yet having been known to engage in collegiate pursuits, much less, to embark upon research papers, they must therefore, lead lives of singular beauty. It was Plutarch who had to be a spoilsport in A.D. 100 and point out that: "Though the boys throw stones at frogs in sport, yet the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest." Way to rain on my parade, Plutarch. Don't y'all think that I would have made a lovely frog?"

Abigail Joy Williamson: "Yes, yes you would. (:"

Sharon Moore: "Thank you, Abby. Your confidence and encouragement are heartwarming. Actually though, considering my difficulties with concentration, I may resemble something lower on the food chain than the frog. The phrase "Attention span of a gnat" comes to mind- but when it comes to MY mind, it is displaced almost immediately by the sight of the books on my desk, or a pencil on the floor, or even the soft, relentless sound of falling snow. Sigh."

Karen Emerson: "Except if you are a frog in Fellsmere Florida and about to enter the annual frog leg eating contest . . ."

Sharon Moore: "Well, yes, it is times like those which try the souls of frogs! :-)"

Psalm 65, and Psalm 69... to music?

2009-12-05T05:28:00.007+08:00

Psalm 65:
Lord, You who hear our prayers
In You will men confide
When we were overwhelmed by sins
Forgiveness You supplied,
And praise awaits You!

You answer us with power-
With power and awesome deeds!
Thou Savior, hope of all the earth
Who stilled the roaring seas,
All praise awaits You!

You call forth songs of joy
Abundant harvests bring!
The hills are clothed with gladness, and
They shout for joy and sing!
And praise awaits You.

Psalm 69:
Save me, O God,
For the waters have come-
The waters have come to my neck and I sink
In depths with no footing to rescue me from
The rage of the floods, the rage of the floods
And the deep waters pulling.

My guilt, and my folly are plainly in view
My wandering heart is before You.

Save me, O God,
For the waters have come
The waters have come to my neck and I sink
In depths with no footing to rescue me from
The rage of the floods, the rage of the floods
And the deep waters pulling.

And zeal for Your house, yes zeal for Your house will consume me.
And the insults of those who insult You will all rest upon me.

I pray to you Lord
In the time of Your favor;
In your great love,
O merciful Savior...

Save me, O God,
For the waters have come
The waters have come to my neck and I sink
In depths with no footing to rescue me from
The rage of the floods, the rage of the floods
And the deep waters pulling.

"Then, for no reason, an old dream makes one sober..."

2009-12-01T07:52:00.002+08:00

'Many a dream makes riot in the dusk.
One dream ousts the dream before, then is driven off by the next.
The ousted dream is black as ink: so is the one that stays.
Both seem to say, "See what a fine colour I am.",
Fine they may be, but in the dark you cannot tell.
Nor can you know in the dark which one is talking.
In the dark you cannot tell, with your fever and headache.
Come, clear dream, come.' ~Lu Xun

"Then, for no reason, an old dream makes one sober;
Alone, and out of the light I think of sorrow." ~Lu Xun

...which I shamelessly stole from Jeanne Hulme's facebook...

2009-11-21T13:22:00.001+08:00

The Stupidity of Unbelief
Sunday, September 28, 2008 at 8:11pm
I do stupid things all the time because of unbelief and I really wish I didn't.

I woke up this morning and thought: why did I do that? I pulled the covers over my head because I didn't want to face my own stupidity. I tried to go back to sleep, to stop my racing mind, but I couldn't. Instead, I reluctantly opened my Bible to Luke where I've been reading lately. I asked the Lord to help me understand, but not too much, I asked for the Holy Spirit to bring conviction, but not too much. I read about the servants and the talents which were assigned to each of them. When I got to the part about the faithless servant, I cringed because of two little words: "you knew...". You knew, but you acted like you didn't. Too much conviction for so early in the morning, I decided to see what the morning's sermon would bring.

I went to church and sat absolutely stunned as my pastor preached on Sarah and her long wait on God. My pastor talked about how, by the time it was the time for Sarah to conceive Issac, she had given up on the promises of God. She had walked away in bitterness and unbelief; the reality of God's promises didn't touch her heart anymore. My pastor talked about being faithful, even through the waiting time, even though the hard times, even when I don't understand what's happening, or more likely, what's going to happen. I sat like a statue throughout the whole of the sermon; I never moved. Perhaps I was afraid that God would take even more notice of my faithless heart. I'm sure I reminded Him of someone: Peter sinking on the sea, the Israelites grumbling in the desert, or Sarah laughing in her tent. After the sermon I fled through the back doors, and didn't look back. I avoided eye contact with other friendly church-goers and sat in dejected silence on the drive home.

What is my sin? Lack of faith in the promises of God. My continued displays of faithlessness toward Him. Lately, I've been really convicted about living according to God's Word. I understand that having faith in God means living in obedience to His commands and letting Him take care of the consequences, whatever they may be. I don't want to waste the opportunities which God gives me to obey, but I do. I am a coward and I live with my eyes too much fixed on this world. I live so far away from the REALITY of God. I don't know how to explain this except to say, this is my Father's world, and yet I live as if He has completely abandoned it, as if He doesn't really mean what He says, as if the revelation of Himself through Jesus Christ is somehow a moot point today, instead of the greatest reality of my life.

My heart is a little bit broken today. My wings are all worn out. But I don't believe this is just the case for me either. I believe we are all a little sin-sick and weary. Our lack of faith in the promises of God is causing all of us to lag behind and - the worst thing of all - to compromise. I can't forget the dejected look of a friend who, earlier this week, asked me if I thought any of it was worth it. "It" being the effort of ministry, of life, really. He said "I think it's all useless sometimes, all the time..." I could only stand there beside him and ring my hands, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other and say "you know that's not true, you know that's a lie..." But I couldn't really say much more than that; I was broken and frustrated too.

I want to have "a long obedience in the same direction", that direction being Jesus Christ Himself. I want to prove that, while it may not be easy, through the power of the Holy Spirit I can live a life of faithfulness to God's Word, a life of no compromise. God is so merciful to me. I would have given up on me a long time ago. I would have left me in my bed, with the covers pulled up. But He doesn't do that. He picks me up, brushes me off, and says: "let's try that again, shall we?" He sends pastors and friends and books and verses to remind me that I am loved and forgiven and fought for and that the promises are true.

I am fearful of the next time I face that great giant of unbelief. I am afraid I will act in ignorance and stupidity and unbelief. Again. But my prayer for myself (and you too) is that I will let the reality of the great I AM shape my behavior. I believe that I have nothing to lose and everything to gain by living according to God's standards and "keeping the faith".

And so I do.

Classroom Quotes:

2009-11-18T14:57:00.004+08:00

From the classroom of Dr. Jeney:

"Clarity doesn't mean simplicity. There are difficult concepts which can't be summarized clearly. If you've ever looked up existentialism in a dictionary you know what I mean."

"We live in Missouri, which is the empirical state. 'Show me, show me, show me'."

"Horses... are not easy to housebreak. And how many people would you let step on your foot who weigh 850 pounds?"

"From the perspective of grass, human beings are merely lackeys and pikemen in the war against trees... We are simply the instrument of grass, carrying out its evil plot to take over the world."

Jeney: "There's a line to be drawn between disliking babies, and discriminating against them."
Student: "We should make them use separate water fountains."

"Babies look like Winston Churchill to me. I didn't get the baby liking gene. But your friends will ostracize you if you hate babies. I still can't say the things like, 'Aww, she's so beautiful! She looks like her father." Because she looks like Winston Churchill. Or Gollum. Or a larvae. If I were to be brutally honest, I would say, "Ewww- I'm sorry you have one of those!""

"Don't you tell me you aren't going to be here on Tuesday! I'll go 'Lalalala, lalala'."

"...But use words like 'please', and 'my grade is at stake', and 'I have little children at home.'... Oh- and you should walk in on crutches. I'll loan you mine."

From the classroom of Dr. Okapal:

"Philosophers are just annoying little six year olds, with really big vocabularies. 'Why? Why? Why?'"

Okapal: "Actually, that's how I met my wife..."
Student: "Which one?"

Okapal: "You aren't cold, are you?"
Student: "Yes, I am."
Okapal: "It isn't cold, you know. People in St. Joseph are just wimps."
Student: "Oh, then I guess it must just be my subjective perceptions, which may or may not correspond to a reality that may or may not exist, which are signalling to me that I am cold?"
Okapal: "Your perceptions are wrong. I'm not cold at all."

The Fear of Being 'Frost-bitten':

2009-11-18T14:16:00.008+08:00

'O! That a man might know
The end of this day's business, ere it come;
But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known.' -William Shakespeare

Lord, help me to be patient with those around me- to love the unlovely, and, even, to truly LOVE those whom I already 'love'. All of my attachments and affections seem poor things in the inexorable light of reality. I'm afraid that I've chased after too many soap bubbles, erected too many pedestals, and when, as now, I'm angry and dissatisfied with them, the blame rests with me- it's certainly not the fault of my unwilling heroes. Nothing's the way I expected it to be, and the whole world seems turned inside out tonight. In all honesty, I might as well admit that I'm frightened- that I'm facing the prospect of walking away from everything familiar all alone, with no steadying comrade, and quailing at the thought. I promised You that nothing was too great a sacrifice, that I was prepared to 'die before I came', and I meant it then, but just at this moment I'm terrified by the prospect of a lifetime of such isolation- of eternally sitting in silence, or playing the third wheel. Lord, I know living sacrifices must surely quiver on the altar at times? Teach me to continually lay it all down again, moment by moment. I think it was easier, feeling that I knew precisely what I wanted, and was giving it up with a grand gesture of renunciation than it is to realise with bewilderment that I haven't the faintest idea what I want- that, if all of the old dreams were to be untangled and brought to any sort of neat resolution, perhaps I would reject them, not out of sacrifice, but for my own sake. And it's hard not to look back to the simple, uncomplicated agony of resignation with passionate regret, because it was infinitely better than this limbo, and blind apprehension over the future. Yet, the Lamb who was slain is worthy, is He not? Surely I've no one but myself to blame if I go leaping from the Rock in pursuit of shining bubbles and pretty facades, and find it all as bitterly dissatisfying as emptiness always is? Miao Li's prayer, which I myself posted only days ago reproaches me:
"If my Savior be honored
More by my death than my life;
More in sickness than in health;...
More through loneliness than companionship;..."

"I must learn that the purpose of my life belongs to God, not me. God is using me from His great personal perspective, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him. I should never say, 'Lord, this causes me such heartache.' To talk that way makes me a stumbling block. When I stop telling God what I want, He can freely work His will in me without any hindrance. He can crush me, exalt me, or do anything else He chooses. He simply asks me to have absolute faith in Him and His goodness. Self pity is of the devil, and if I wallow in it I cannot be used by God for His purpose in the world. Doing this creates for me my own cozy "world within the world" and God will not be allowed to move me from it because of my fear of being 'frost-bitten'." -Oswald Chambers

The Problem of Pain

2009-11-10T17:24:00.003+08:00

Lord of the winding trail and trackless waste
Of pastures, and the forested expanse,
The dusk was riding- shadowy it paced,
A thousand questions gamboled at its heels,
A host of queries fluttered from its lance.

Maybe the dusk, the trees, the field, and I
Are pictures in Your mind- and nothing more
HAVE You a mind? Who are You Lord, and why
Knowing the desperate limits of my view
Should I dare question why? My God You are

Yourself- a Being dim, if known at all;
And 'I' -if here- a flicker, or a thought.
A thought that's fixed on You though- should it fall-
This shell I'm housing in, all which is You
Will keep all that is I- the rest is naught-

Plea

2009-11-10T17:14:00.002+08:00

Grant me the wideness of Your ways
Give me Your narrow law of Life
You are the object, and the praise
You are the carving, and the knife.
Further- You are yet more than those
You are the author whence all flows.

Grant me the broadness of Your heart
Give me the limits of Your grace.
Freedom and barrier impart-
Paradox placed within its place.
You who would set the captives free-
Beautiful jailer, capture me!

Firmly attached to ships must sails be
If they would guided by the gales be.

Randomly IMing about French (as opposed to simply doing my homework)

2009-11-10T09:40:00.005+08:00

5:42pmSharon
They keep telling me that due to the Norman invasion of England in 1066 (which, by the way, I am very passionate about) English and French have like 60% of everything in common (there's a fancy word for it that I can't remember) Apparently though, the French have a severe cultural (not congenital) speech impediment, which gradually evolved away once they crossed the channel- but their brothers left behind in Normandy were less fortunate, hence I have to suffer all of this frustration now.

5:43pmMelody
lol

5:43pmSharon
You seem to take this tragedy very lightly Melody

5:44pmMelody
yes. yes i do

5:44pmSharon
I might have expected as much.

5:45pmMelody
what is that supposed to imply?

5:46pmSharon
Think of the consternation when Sir Wilfred Lie-a-bed went home for the fifty year class reunion, and found that he couldn't understand a word his fellow squire of days gone by, Hairuid Stoneslinger was saying?

The tower of Babel pales in comparison

5:47pmMelody
LOL you are so funny

5:49pmSharon
And perhaps Hairuid was trying to explain that Lord Drizzlecask had died leaving him a fortune, but, in befuddlement, Wilfred thought he was offering him another tankard of ale... You have to FEEL these things, Melody, use your imagination- make history come alive! :-)

5:49pmMelody
my heart is breaking for them.

5:49pmSharon
I knew that given a little perspective you would begin to see things properly

Your tender heart does ye credit, lass.

5:51pmSharon
Twas a muckle sore thing, and the grief of it still rankles. What was the result of all this confusion? Wilfred and Hairuid's grandsons chopping each other to fragments at Waterloo, if not sooner! Little things add up.

5:52pmMelody
oh fun

5:52pmSharon
And all because the French can't spell, and consequently become desperately confused in their pronunciation. Honestly, where but in France would they assume that parles and parle should sound the same way? And where else would they try to write 'beautiful' and end up with beaux, and, looking it over say, 'ummm, I think it says 'bo'. Only, the e, the a, the u, and the x are silent. And the o is invisible. The French are entirely too enamoured of their own interpretation of dipthongs.

5:52pmMelody
lol

5:52pmSharon
Not to mention the dark day when some enterprising young grammarian came along and said: "No, simply to say 'beaux' would be misleading and cause complications! We must distinguish between the singular and the plural! I know- for singular nouns, we will drop the silent 'x' from the end of 'beaux' which we pronounce 'bo', and continue to pronounce it 'bo' in both cases. That way, no one will get confused!" Whoever he was, I hope he got a medal.

5:52pmSharon
I'm sorry. I become prone to impassioned monologues when I get tired. :-)

5:56pmMelody
lol

i enjoy them

5:56pmSharon
Which is one of many reasons we are friends! :-)

5:57pmMelody
yay!

6:01pmSharon
i know!

A Challenge from Miao Li:

2009-11-09T12:14:00.000+08:00

The unconditional prayer of the utterly serious:
“Lord God, my singular ambition in life is to magnify your Son.
I don’t care how You fit me into Your plan.
You may spend me as You please.
I place no conditions on Your arrangements.
You say the terms of my service.
My only prayer is that You ordain for my life
Whatever will glorify Christ most through me.
If my Savior be honored
More by my death than my life;
More in sickness than in health;
More in poverty than in wealth;
More through loneliness than companionship;
More by the appearance of failure
than by the trappings of success;
more by anonymity than by notoriety,
then Your design is my desire.
Only let me make a difference! ” ~ Miao Li, visiting student, China

Another College Prayer:

2009-11-09T10:15:00.004+08:00

O, guard me, Lord, from creeping doubt,
From questioning which sinks into
Recrimination- keep without
All thought which severs me from You.

Protect me, You, the Living Word
From the rebellious Dark which strove,
Crushing all sense of hope assured,
And cast its shadow over Love.

Father, the night is skulking nigh
To You I flee with faltering faith
You are the full and fair reply
Unto the snarling howls of death.

You are the fortress, and the Hill
Yours is the shield, the mighty arm
Perfect and flawless is Your will-
Shelter Your servant's soul from harm-

Shelter Your servant, grant relief;
Silence the shrieking chords of grief.

September 25 in 'My Utmost for His Highest'

2009-11-08T05:39:00.002+08:00

'Jesus Christ demands that His disciple does not allow even the slightest trace of resentment in his heart when faced with tyranny and injustice. No amount of enthusiasm will ever stand up to the strain that Jesus Christ will put upon His servant. Only one thing will bear the strain, and that is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ Himself- a relationship that has been examined, purified, and tested until only one purpose remains and I can truly say, "I am here for God to send me where He will." Everything else may become blurred, but this relationship with Jesus Christ must never be.... We are drawn to God by a work of His supernatural grace, and we can never trace back to find where the work began. Our Lord's making of a disciple is supernatural. He does not build on any natural capacity of ours at all. God does not ask us to do the things that are naturally easy for us- He only asks us to do the things that we are perfectly fit to do through His grace, and that is where the cross we must bear will always come.' -Oswald Chambers

A College Song:

2009-11-08T03:20:00.002+08:00

Out of my weakness, and my woe
Out of my sinfulness and shame
Out of my bitter overflow
He has engaged to lift His Name.

Out of my sullenness and pride
Out of my eagerness to blame
He who was born and crucified
Plans to bring beauty, all the same

How can He claim a foolish thing?
Take it, and overwhelm the wise?
Faced with my scanty offering,
I can but say, "Not I, but CHRIST!"

For from a harsh and lawless tongue
He has ordained that praise be sung!

A College Prayer:

2009-11-07T04:54:00.005+08:00

By faltering spirit bound, O Lord,
By a stony heart, and a wandering tongue
Yet let Thy grace surround, O Lord
The darkened souls I live among.
O let Thy grace transcend, my Lord
All the unloveliness I bring
And let in me be found, O Lord
The mercy of the risen King.

The mercy of the King Who chose,
And cherished the unappealing ill
Who robbed from death its sting, and rose,
And aims to bring to death my will-
All purposes of mine, O Lord
Which scheme to rear themselves above
The path which must fulfill, O Lord
The glory of Your Sovereign love.

For He who snatched the pain from pain
Can bring of one death joy again!

May 19 in 'My Utmost for His Highest

2009-11-06T04:09:00.003+08:00

'"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" (Romans 8: 35)
God does not not keep His child immune from trouble; He promises, 'I will be with him in trouble...' (Psalm 19:15) It doesn't matter how real or intense the adversities may be; nothing can ever separate him from his relationship to God. "In all these things we are more than conquerors..." (Romans 8:37) Paul was not referring here to imaginary things, but to things that are dangerously real. And he said we are 'super-victors' in the midst of them, not because of our own ingenuity, nor because of our courage, but because none of them affects our essential relationship with God in Jesus Christ. I feel sorry for the Christian who doesn't have something in the circumstances of his life that he wishes were not there.
'Shall tribulation...?' Tribulation is never a grand, highly welcomed event; but whatever it may be- whether exhausting, irritating, or simply causing some weakness- it is not able to 'separate us from the love of Christ.' Never allow tribulations or the 'cares of this world' to separate you from remembering that God loves you. (Matthew 13:22)
'Shall...distress...?' Can God's love continue to hold fast, even when everyone and everything around us seems to be saying that His love is a lie, and that there is no such thing as justice?
'Shall...famine...?' Can we not only believe in the love of God but also be 'more than conquerors', even while we are being starved?
Either Jesus Christ is a deceiver, having deceived even Paul, or else some extraordinary thing happens to someone who holds on to the love of God when the odds are totally against him. Logic is silenced in the face of each of these things which come against him. Only one thing can account for it- the love of God in Christ Jesus. 'Out of the wreck I rise' every time. ~Oswald Chambers

Dohnavur Song # 2

2009-11-05T14:14:00.004+08:00

The shadows of the underworld
Compassed about my guilty soul,
And thunderbolts were on me hurled,
And lightnings flashed; and on a scroll
Was written down, without, within,
The secret of my hidden sin.

Without, within, I saw it stand,
In clearest words accusing me;
Till, as it were a wounded hand
Annulled its record, set me free;
With that the stormy wind did cease;
A voice commanded; there was peace.

O Savior stricken for my sin,
O God who gavest Him to grief,
O Spirit who didst woo and win
My troubled soul to seek relief,
O Love revealed at Calvary
Thy glory lights eternity.' ~ Amy Carmichael

Late Night Theodicy in Free Verse

2009-11-05T08:35:00.007+08:00

The tide came shifting
Water and reeds, reeds and sands
And paths to shore all vanished or looked alike.
The tide came sucking
There rose the weary stench of wasted lands
And reeds which broke, which pierced the desperate leaner-
The hands which longed to rest from reaching out.
The tide came rising
And dim waters eddied- My foot vanished,
Gleamed white, was obscured.
Was torn by shells, but staggered forward.
The sand was tugging
Only the urgency of the dragging nightmare-
Nearly to my knees now.
And desolation of grey skies.
Gulls cry somewhere. A pelican makes a ponderous dive
Farther out. Bobbing on sulky swells
On treacherous depths.
I halt between the insistent sands, the lurking waters, the sullen day.
A breeze came ruffling. Danced shyly through the reeds.
Remembered, reaching me, that breezes here
Are nothing but the breaths
Of faltering souls-
Became a spray of salt.

It seemed, there was the day-
A lone expanse.
The sand, the day, and I, and no escape.
Nothing ahead for me but stormy depths,
And nothing behind which tides had not erased.
The mocking slap, breath, slap of lapping water;
Nothing to trust in all the waiting marsh.

One looks for solid ground.
One wants to say, 'A dry spot- here I stand!'
To scrub away the blackness of the swamps.
To step beyond the clawing shades of mangroves.
Shelter from sudden rains.
Footing against the dark uncertain waters.
And yet, for me, none came.
Only a lone bird sobbed.
I fought for ground- sank deeper-
The sands have langorous arms, but grips of steel...

Then somewhere, through the fog, a whisper came-
A voice cut through the wilderness- but WHAT?
Could He ask THAT of me? Please understand-
I couldn't hold what little ground I had-
To GIVE?
To give ground up? How foolish!
All the same,
The voice insisted- what had I to lose?
And what to gain?
So, cautiously I knelt.
The sibilant waters caught with eager hands-
My skirt- its floating hem, my waist- it seemed
They'd grapple at my throat- I staggered up
More prisoned than before, and drenched besides.
"Lord, something else! That way-
It MUST be wrong! It must!
You mean, there is no other? Only this?"

The tides come rising.
Gargoyle faces mock me from the reeds.
The currents hiss.

Can I concede?
Can I accept the clutching of these sands?
The taunting of this water?
The flogging of those waves?
Perhaps I have my rights, and could demand
Answers and proof and evidence- but no.
He won't give that.
There is Himself and me-
Before us both,
The choice:
Obedience, or not.

I knelt again.
The water seemed less cold, the marsh less foul.
The trick was to relax.

There comes a point when no one tells you why.
To know- to know He IS must be enough.

The sands still tugged
And still I sank.
Almost, the wind forgot to grieve, and stayed to mock.
"Where has He brought you now?
Why languish on the altar of His choice?
Child, who will ever know?
He's one who gives so little, asks so much-
And what have you to show
For all your pains?"
I could have tried to tell them all He gave- that altars have their joys-
But I replied:
One had to cast one's life upon the waters at His call
To be buoyed up.
It wasn't mine to choose
The contents of the cup
But, drink, or to refuse.

The breeze subsides.
I find at last, the bitter, bitter waves
Are His embrace-
Are salted by His tears-
The dragging day
Is tender with His touch
And my weak hands
Are warm within His hands-
His poor hands crushed- and crushed for me!

It has to be enough.
An answer for surrender, and descent.
For all the bones in all the mournful deep.
No other answer comes- I am content.

The tide came shifting
Water and reeds, reeds and sands
And paths to shore all vanished or looked alike.
The tide came sucking
There rose the weary stench of wasted lands
And reeds which broke, which pierced the desperate leaner-
The hands which longed to rest from reaching out.

Be still and know.

Beginnings

2009-11-04T06:04:00.007+08:00

Two miserable girls in a drab dorm room, each brooding on her harsh lot, each huddled on her own side of their insurmountable, and yet insufficient partition. And yet, one of them is stumbling through inscrutable darkness, lashing out at the Pathgiver, the Lightgiver, the One who is the way. One of them is sinking under the burden of her offenses, under the terror and grief of a broken home, a shattered family, and a heart hardened by abandonment. Under a vicious
cycle of exploitation and abuse. You could call her annoying, self-centered, inconsiderate, ponder for hours over the million nit-picky little things people are so good at doing to annoy those with whom they live from day to day. You could tell your side of the story- tell it with passion and conviction, and a deep sense of grievance. And maybe you'd be 'right'. But that's too simple.
It isn't a clear cut case of the 'good girl', and the 'bad girl'- the 'sinner' and the 'saint'. It isn't 'us' against 'them'. It's we. Because the saint is a sinner as well. I don't know everything she's thought, or said, or done. I'd probably be horrified if I did. But my life, looked at with that degree of perception, wouldn't be much prettier. People have DIFFERENT weaknesses- but they can never honestly claim to be WITHOUT weaknesses. Our pastor a few weeks ago said. "If you knew me, knew me as I really am- every thought that crosses my mind, every weakness in my character, you would despise me- and given the same knowledge, I would probably feel the same way about you. But Jesus Christ loves us both."
There is only one substantial difference between the sinner and the saint, between the two girls struggling in this chilly little room. One of them, as absolutely foul and rotten as she is, has been drawn into the stern, tender embrace of God in the flesh- of the Almighty Creator who came, and who died. The other is still resisting. But it doesn't have to stay that way. Can the daughter of the King lay aside her 'rights', knowing it might mean freedom for the the one whose life He has, at least temporarily linked to hers? Is she willing to consider the soul of one who could almost be considered an enemy from the human standpoint as more important than her own desire to sleep when she pleases, or study in peace, or leave the windows open on warm days? Can she take unjust criticism with humility- and even have the humility to recognize that the criticism may not be so unjust? That she may not be the ideal roomate she likes to think herself? Is she willing to give up her self righteousness, her tastes, her preferences, her time? Can she do it joyfully? Will she yield her self- pity, her frustration, her fears up to Him? Will she keep loving, even when there's no response? Will she keep loving when the response is hostile? Will she place a guard on her tongue? Will she pray when she'd rather explode? Will she do all of this without any smugness or false sense of virtue?
I'm not sure. The girl I've always known her to be could never manage it. The girl I am has not the faintest idea of what it might mean to TRULY empty herself that way. She's too weak, too lazy, too prideful, too self-centered, too eager to justify herself at the expense of others, to avoid unpleasant situations. She hardly knows where to begin. But maybe it's not up to that girl at all. I can't claim any 'moral superiority'- but my Lord can. I can't stand in judgment, or even discern my roomate's needs, but He is passionately aware of every hair on her head. I can't soothe her through her hurts and hearbreaks- I can't fix even one corner of her poor broken life. But He can change her heart. Am I willing to surrender us both to Him? It won't be easy. It won't be comfortable. It won't happen right away. And yet, there's something new which I've become in Him. Something beautiful which He may yet become in her. Something exciting ahead for us all. Do I dare? He has dared it all for me already, and conquered defeat. What's to lose?

Going On With Jesus

2009-11-03T11:21:00.005+08:00

It's hard to say what's been most challenging about my first semester of college. Probably dealing with people is hardest- that and keeping up with assignments. When your time is tight, it's harder to unwind, regroup, marshal your forces for the next assault. Instead of going 'from strength to strength' one is quickly tempted to go 'from collapse to collapse'

At first, everything was one glorious adventure- meeting new people, finding my way around, diving into my classes... but it didn't stay that way. After the first five or six weeks things crashed into a nightmare of constant tension and 'sameness'. P.G. Wodehouse said that 'Routine is death to heroism', and it seems that he was right. My focus flew out the window. My roomate showed up four weeks into the semester, and suddenly what little privacy I'd been able to maintain was gone. So, I fled to the field behind the dorm to read and study, and had a refuge... until the weather became wet, and bitterly cold. It quickly became clear that the multitudes of relationships I'd initiated were not going to become close friendships, and so, I began to feel desperately isolated and lonely as well. I stayed in contact with a precious handful of friends from high school... but physical distance inevitably creates a certain level of emotional distance. At first, I'd try to tell them everything... then everything turned into 'Oh, uh, nothing much. I'm fine.' Some of the more sensational stories would end up coming out. But the hard stuff, the day to day stuff, the quiet heartbreaks- those get glossed over. After a while, you feel guilty about complaining. And you wonder- do they really understand? Any of it? They aren't here- have never heard the bells pealing out across campus on the hour, seen the scarlet maple leaves glowing like fire in the rain against the drenched bricks of Juda Hall, or the wide sunlit field, tousled with wheat straw like white gold, the roughly turned earth, tumbled blue skies, a lacy border of deciduous trees and deep green groves of cedars, smelled the warm greasy haze which lingers around the Blum Union, or the repulsive fishy stench of the hundreds of earthworms which flee the sodden grass only to drown on the flooded sidewalks, and be deliberately trampled by frat boys. And they can't really enter into the moment by moment battle to love unloveable roomates, suitemates, and fellow students- not that they aren't having similar, maybe even more difficult troubles of their own- but yours are different. The communication breaks down from both sides. After a while you feel suffocated, stifled, by the constant profanity, lewdness, rebelliousness... it seems almost natural and normal, but still leaves you feeling violated and queasy. I still struggle not to protest that I 'shouldn't have to deal with all of that'- that I have a 'right' to be sheltered. But, of course, that's nonsense. Oswald Chambers wrote: "...watch when God changes your circumstances to see whether you are going on with Jesus, or siding with the world, the flesh, and the devil. We wear His name, but are we going on with Him?... The temptations of Jesus continued throughout His earthly life, and they will continue through the life of the Son of God in us. Are we going on with Jesus in the life we are living right now? We have the idea that we ought to shield ourselves from some of the things God brings around us. Jesus Christ's honor is at stake in our bodily lives. Are we remaining faithful to the Son of God in everything that attacks His life in us? Are you going on with Jesus? The way goes through Gethsemane, through the city gate and on 'outside the camp' (Hebrews 13:13) The way is lonely and goes on until there is no longer even a trace of a footprint to follow- but only the voice saying. 'Follow Me.' "

Love (III)

2009-11-03T08:59:00.001+08:00

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything.

'A guest', I answered, 'worthy to be here.'
Love said, 'You shall be he'.
'I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.'
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
'Who made the eyes but I?'

'Truth Lord, but I have marred them;
Let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.'
'And know you not,' says Love, 'Who bore the blame?'
'My dear, then I will serve'
'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'
So I did sit and eat.
~George Herbert