no place I'd rather be

I am quite fond of this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NlJr6TE7b4&feature=related

Music helps to beautify my soul.

He knows us

I don't know who I am, but You know.

You know me.

This is enough comfort.

There isn't as much guilt as there is peace in my anxieties, worries, and fears when I think about how You know.

I am justified, I am free because He knows me.

One of my favorite verses is 1 Corinthians 13:12: "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known."

the hardest question I have ever been asked

"How come America is more blessed than Africa?" a young Rwandan school girl asked me as we sat together on a grassy hill sharing conversation last summer. I think this is probably the hardest question I have ever been asked.

I just watched this short video clip (http://www.altervideomagazine.com/2011/07/13/the-worst-place-on-earth/) of Lynne Hybels describing the disgusting tragedies happening in the Congo. She goes on to say: "in so many places where you see the church really being a Church, it is the poor caring for the desperately poor and it is the sick caring for the dying..."

Sometimes I can't help but think Africa is more "blessed" than America. Sometimes I can't help but wonder how much more generous I would be if I had less to live on or how much more compassion I would have for the dying if terminal cancer was destroying my own body.

Sometimes I get so frustrated because I simply don't know.... I don't know how much culture has influenced my theological view....or how to even begin to try to un-tie these two...and this scares me. How much do I really let culture decide what is "God's will" for my life? I don't understand why I was born into much materially wealth that has provided me with countless resources -both necessary resources to sustain life and completely unnecessary, selfishly excessive resources that I would probably be better off without. I don't know what to do with this constant, heavy frustration.....I often feel all I really have to offer God is this humble state of utter confusion.

I don't know how to just simply trust that where I am in life is exactly where God wants me without somehow feeling like I am forgetting a little bit about all the little African children I met last summer walking the streets with dirty, torn clothes and swollen bellies. My heart longs to be with these children or the people I met living in a garbage dump in Guatemala. Sure I am probably guilty of romanticizing poverty to some degree or another...but isn't it also so true that it often takes living among the sick and the dying to get us to remember that we are the sick and the dying? Sure the more academic degrees I earn might help me to make an even "greater impact." I love the work I am learning to do and am eager to continue to develop as a professional. I can always bring my line of work to Africa but this frustration, uneasiness, discontentment, distrust, or whatever you want to call it goes beyond Africa. Admittedly, I am probably still dealing with some reverse culture shock but when did we start classifying reverse culture shock as some sort of pathology? It is culture itself that is pathological.

I have become quite weary of Christian culture over the years...you watch this following clip and want to throw up because of this uneasiness we have created in ourselves in terms of how we integrate theology and culture: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2011/12/30/art-conscience-and-theological-mccarthyism/ -the media, theologians, authors, speakers, and bloggers (myself included) who think they know the exact interpretation and application of Micah 6:8, who think they know exactly what it means to be a follower of Christ in suburbia America or maybe they are a bit more humble and admit their limited understanding but you still desperately want to believe everything they say because they are John Piper or John Calvin or Bethany Webb :) Well, maybe you can feel safe believing everything they say if they are one of my favorite Taylor University people, Ken Taylor, whose personal translation of Galatians 6:4-5 is this: "Let everyone be sure that he is doing his very best, for then he will have the personal satisfaction of work well done, and won't need to compare himself with someone else. Each of us must bear some faults and burdens of his own. For none of us is perfect!"

How often I am told if I just do my best wherever I am, doing whatever I am doing then that is all the Lord asks of me....maybe this strong desire to go back to Africa is more than just an emotional pull at my heart strings, maybe it is one of the signs of what it means to "be called"...but what I can't understand is how any person of faith can go to Africa and not want to go back there for a more permanent stay...sure there is a lot one can do to make that seemingly "bigger difference" without actually living there but how can one not want to have consistent, personal contact to be able to frequently hug the sick and dying? Yes, Jesus refers to the sick and dying as meaning those who are poor in spirit as well (who are everywhere) but I just can't shake -and don't want to -this desperate longing to live among the real sick and dying in order to just maybe become a little more sick and dying myself.

"How come America is more blessed than Africa?" I don't know.

Jean Vanier on growth and the capacity of the heart to be broken.

http://www.altervideomagazine.com/2011/10/28/enlarge-life/

Joy is in the acquiescing

I used to wonder why C.S. Lewis found himself so “surprised” by joy. There is so much joy in life –and hardship too, of course –but ultimately joy knowing God has already purchased our joy-everlasting.

But finding joy in this life is not a choice but a command and it must be fought for daily. We are called to partake in perpetual communion –daily eucharisteo –thanking God for everything all the time….this is where the deep joy we all want to experience is found. As I read her book, One Thousand Gifts, I was encouraged by Ann Voskamp to verbalize and journal all the little gifts/graces I notice God bestowing on me everyday. Obviously, all of life is grace but how does one become exceedingly grateful for the exceeding blessings in life if they aren’t each carefully spoken of, reflected on, treasured? Can the heart fully register what the mind doesn’t first fully process?

Is there any true way to discover joy but as surprise? We all must fight for joy daily…fight to be continuously surprised by joy that is experienced again and again day after day by the same objects and people and tasks we must encounter no matter how mundane or tiresome or lackluster they become or seem to us overtime.

For a while, I thought if only I could run though the open fields and dance all crazy and run in circles until I fall down dizzy then I can experience some of this child-like joy to the fullest…but how to find the same kind of joy when folding laundry, grocery shopping, or writing a paper? This is why being surprised by joy is such a terribly hard and serious fight….we don’t always see joy in every moment, yet God is in every moment.

We are called to complete the Communion service in service. I love this quote by Tagore: “I slept and dreamt life was joy, I awoke and saw life was service, I acted and behold, service was joy.”

Henri Nouwen once said: “The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift to be celebrated with joy.”

Gratitude is certainly a discipline –it definitely takes grace to acknowledge grace. Going through the daily grind doesn’t look so daily or so grinding when we really acknowledge that every moment is sacred and every hour is Holy Communion.  But will we accept the gifts He has given us? 

a million drops of gratitude

What does it really mean to more fully understand God's love? I grew up being told that the purpose in life is "to live for the glory of God." But if someone were to ask me today what the purpose is, I would probably add "to learn to realize more and more everyday just how much God loves us." As a young child (both literally as I refer back to the day when I still carried around an American Girl doll and metaphorically speaking as I still am a young child of faith as we are all this side of heaven), I understood I was made in God's glory by Him and for Him but the implications of this didn't easily translate into other ways of knowing and understanding of and reflecting on what it really means besides the obvious -obedience.

Learning to love other people more and more selflessly is how we become more fully aware of just how much God loves us. Learning to love while forgetting yourself in the process is the essence of sanctification. Thankfulness lies at the heart of it. The Garden legacy, that Eden bite of fruit, the catalyst for all our sins was really the sin of ingratitude. Adam and Eve would not have sinned if they were completely satisfied with everything God had already given them in the Garden of Eden. We constantly fail to see the material world for what it is meant to be: as the means to communion with God.

For forty years the Israelites ate the mysterious substance of manna -a name which literally means "What is it?" They ate mystery. Their daily nourishment came from that which they did not understand. I held a four week old baby dying of AIDS this summer. Cancer and mental illness have unapologetically made themselves a part of my family. Two days after my visit to the central garbage dump in Guatemala City several hundred people die as it collapses into a major sinkhole -this was their home, their livelihood, and now their grave. We eat mysteries everyday. But how do we eat these mysteries in closer communion with God...giving up guilt and resentment and allowing bereavement and righteous anger to pave a way for greater gratitude and exceeding joy?

I have both seen and experienced great pain and I now I am beginning to realize more and more how I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks. "Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering" (One Thousand Gifts, Voskamp, p. 58).

I like this quote by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin a lot -"Nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see."

The next quote is a bit provocative but I believe its beauty and truth overpowers its provocativeness so I take the risk:  "The unit of wine is the cup. Of love, the unit is the kiss. That's here. In Hell, the units are the gallon and the fuck. In Paradise, the drop and the glance."

I can't wait to be filled completely with God's glory again but for now I must learn to more fully understand how all of life is grace. Every breath's a battle between grudgery and gratitude....and the more we embrace a heart of gratitude, the more we embrace God's love. 

a gracious gift

A dear friend from Uganda, whom I frequently keep in touch with, sent me a very disheartening, unfortunate message:

"today has been really sad for me, yesterday I spent a night at my friend's place and it really rained heavily at night, in the morning I went to check my room and I felt so sad that bags, clothes were really wet..."

I never had to worry about my tin roof, over my tiny, one-room house, leaking and getting my stuff all wet. Many of my worries, concerns, and problems look very different from the average Ugandan's worries. I have always struggled with romanticizing poverty. I must constantly remind myself that living in poverty doesn't equate to a more ready heart of thanksgiving. 

I have been thinking a lot lately about how to cultivate a more grateful heart...how to live in sync with soul and body and God....how to slow down and wake up and fully live. After all we are God's breath, God's life, God's glory. How paradoxical and offensive it is to think how ungrateful we can be at times when every single fiber of our being is made in His glory...we exude His glory.

I like being around people, there is so much in life, in my life, that I love, I have so many curiosities, interests, hobbies, hobbies I hope to pick up sometime, so many ambitions, dreams, hopes, plans, so many places I still want to travel to, several post-docs I dream about pursuing, countless lists of books I want to read........and all these things are great but they can be so distracting sometimes. We are relational beings who have many interests and we live in a world of many interesting things...some of which can help us draw closer to God but if we don't take the time to slow down then it is almost impossible to truly cultivate a heart of thanksgiving. Although God can be found in all these things, it can be terribly hard for us to find God in them when we are in a hurried rush. We are commanded to enter His courts with thanksgiving. When we are thankful we see God more clearly but thankfulness cannot be deeply planted in our hearts if we don't first slow down enough to reflect on what we are thankful for.

Help us, Lord, to learn to give thanks incessantly, to make every sigh and every breath one of thanksgiving, help us to give thanks for the breeze through the open window, help us to give thanks for the elderly man picking out flowers at the florist, help us to live in a posture of gratitude.

We have been offered grace upon grace upon grace upon grace upon more grace....the amount of grace we give depends on how grateful we are for the grace we have been given. 

Though we grieve, though we wonder, we must slow down and wake up and perceive each moment for what it is: holy, ordinary, amazing grace...a gift.