creator calls forth belonging

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Come, let us bow down in worship,

    let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;

for he is our God

    and we are the people of his pasture,

    the flock under his care.

Psalm 95:6-7

This is what the Lord says—

    he who made you, who formed you in the womb,

    and who will help you:

Do not be afraid, Jacob, my servant,

    Jeshurun,whom I have chosen.

Some will say, ‘I belong to the Lord’;

    others will call themselves by the name of Jacob;

still others will write on their hand, ‘The Lord’s,’

    and will take the name Israel.

Isaiah 44:2, 5

"there is a peculiar presence of grace and glory into which men should never come without the profoundest reverence. We may make bold to come before the immediate presence of the Lord—for the voice of the Holy Ghost in this psalm invites us, and when we do draw near to him we should remember his great goodness to us and cheerfully confess it. Our worship should have reference to the past as well as to the future...

He is ours, and our God; ours, therefore will we love him; our God, therefore will we worship him. Happy is that man who can sincerely believe that this sentence is true in reference to himself. And we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. As he belongs to us, so do we belong to him. 'My Beloved is mine, and I am his.' And we are his as the people whom he daily feeds and protects. Our pastures are not ours, but his; we draw all our supplies from his stores. We are his, even as sheep belong to the shepherd, and his hand is our rule, our guidance, our government, our succour, our source of supply." -Charles Spurgeon

as creator he is worthy of my reverence and worship. his fundamental identity as the creator entails that he is my place of most profound belonging. i am to be wholly his and in his presence all fear must wash away.

let it be

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"The path of the righteous is level; you make level the way of the righteous. In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you; your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul. My soul yeanrs for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. for when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness." Isaiah 26:7-9

The way of the just is evenness, a steady course of obedience and holy conversation. And it is their happiness that God makes their way plain and easy. It is our duty, and will be our comfort, to wait for God, to keep up holy desires toward him in the darkest and most discouraging times. Our troubles must never turn us from God; and in the darkest, longest night of affliction, with our souls must we desire him; and this we must wait and pray to him for...The intention of afflictions is to teach righteousness: blessed is the man whom the Lord thus teaches. -Matthew Henry

recently i visited a friend who has a two year old toddler; as we talked i asked my friend if her child was showing any personality traits and she shared about how her child would make noises of discovery and point out new things to her parents. these discoveries ranged anywhere from a spider on the wall to the sound of the ac being turned on to an unfamiliar water bottle.

i remember not so long ago that i felt a different kind of energy about life; my inner thoughts were intense, curious, always churning and so hungry for more and i was eager to unabashedly share about these things. i leaned forward in seats when i was in conversation, greedy for opportunities to pick at others' brains and to bear my soul to others. my desire for intimacy in relationships was un-bound: i was raw and vulnerable and i think i thrived in it. but now the thought of returning to that intensity like sandpaper, or like the thought of a messy room that i have no desire to clean. i find that i have somehow begun to erect parameters in my heart for these conversations. i no longer look for them with nearly the same amount of intensity and in fact, somehow along the way i have begun to value privacy so much so that conversation has become increasingly taxing. i wonder if it's because i feel both burned and weary from relationships that i err on the side of caution, it seems like as i have implicitly experienced what feels safe and unsafe, my heart began to unconsciously build boundaries. it now feels relieving to detach myself from expectant desires and take a back seat to let things be, to let people be.

friendships

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“In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, 'Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,' can truly say to every group of Christian friends, 'Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.' The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.” 

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

i recently bought a new bike (i am in love with her!) and i also bought headlights because i have evening classes; unfortunately i do not have a screwdriver so i wasn't able to install it, so when i came home a few nights ago, an old man came up to me and chided me: "if i may offer a suggestion: you really ought to have headlights and backlights, you are much too young to throw your life away with a mistake like that..." i admit that i am not often ecstatic and receptive when random people give me unsolicited advice, and that i am very capable of misdirecting the conversation and/or verbally assuring the person that i appreciate their input even if inside i am seething in self-righteousness. i use this caveat to introduce the topic at hand: correction and friendships.

while that old man was a stranger and i will likely never see him again, i wonder if i would have reacted differently if a close friend told that to me. lately i have been blessed (a word i use intentionally albeit with a weary sigh) with many opportunities for conflict resolution, some of which are still in medias res. sitting in the tension of conflict makes me fear for the friendship as it feels like the foundations are being tested; it particularly grieves me when the depth and growth of friendships is stunted because of the unwillingness of one party to be seen and corrected. in my search for guidance and direction, i searched "spiritual friendships" or "christian friendships" online only to find relatively few things in relation to "christian relationships." i wonder whether we have so glamorized romantic relationships that we have placed it on a pedestal, and i wonder if the potential of spiritual platonic relationships have inadvertently been overshadowed and dismissed.

do we understand the implications of desiring a "Christian friend?" when we ask God for a Christian friend, do we understand that we are not just asking for a buddy to bear our emotional pains with and to rejoice in victories together. we are also asking for someone who is likewise under the authority of scripture that commands us to "love one another," to "bear one another's burdens," to speak truth to one another to the purpose of sanctification.

i once heard "intimacy" described as this moniker: "into me i let you see." as a friendship grows in intimacy, you begin to see the messiness and ugliness in his/her life just as he/she begins to see into your life. at every point both parties have the choice to opt out and to hide areas of their lives from each other, but i'm beginning to think that there is great potential for friendships to be used of god and the holy spirit as a means of gracious sanctification, and that it would be foolish of me to idiomatically "toss the baby out with the bathwater" by throwing up guards and denying my sisters and brothers the space to see into my life and exhort me towards holiness.

with these guiding principles in mind however, what follows is the very messy and scary execution. i notice that while we may theoretically welcome correction, it doesn't necessarily mean that the friends around us know that we do unless we verbally create a space for them to do so. i also notice that i have a tendency to err towards the side of acceptance and encouragement and justify it as an act of grace and mercy. what i fail to remember in doing so is that to correct someone is equally if not even more so an act of grace (unmerited favor) - who do i love enough to dare to venture into a potentially contentious and destructive space with the purpose of pointing out sin, and who loves me enough to do the same for me? doesn't the gospel say we are simultaneously more sinful than we know and more loved than we can imagine? is the full message of the gospel manifested in our friendships if we omit the reality that all have fallen short and are in need the grace of God manifested in our friends' willingness to correct us?

some questions to ask myself:
-who do i allow to speak correctional truth into my life?
-who do i allow to rebuke me?
-why those people and not others?
-in what ways do i resist correction/rebuke?
-how do i move forward as i grieve the implications of friendships that may be damaged through correction/rebuke?
-how can i encourage certain friends to be bold in correcting/rebuking me?
-how can i correct/rebuke certain friends in a way that is translated as an act of love?

Verses on Correcting
The "one another" commands
Relevant Magazine's "How We Misunderstand 'Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin'"

sidenotes;
someone sat next to me at whole foods when there are plenty of seats elsewhere, so uncomfortable lol. he has broken social norms uhhhhhhhhhh
my brain and heart definitely have a lot more to chew on and engage with during the school year... when i'm idle i feel like a dead thing

mundane

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"Throughout these forty days Jesus fasted from food so that he could all the more fully enter the divine feast. Then...God allowed the evil One to come to him with three great temptations...they were temptations for Jesus to access for his own use the three most prominent social institutions of the day -- economic, religious, political [turn stones into bread, leap from the temple and be caught by angels, and lord over all the kingdoms].

...but Jesus knew that domination and force were not God's ways. He rejected coercive structures because he intended to demonstrate a new kind of power, a new way of ruling. Serving, suffering, dying -- these were Jesus' messianic forms of power.

In those forty days in the wilderness Jesus rejected the popular Jewish hope for a Messiah who would feed the poor, bask in miraculous heavenly approval, and shuck off oppressive nations. And he undercut the leverage of the three great social institutions of his day (and of ours) - exploitative economics, manipulative religion, and coercive politics." Streams of Living Water, Richard J. Foster p.6-7

"wisdom as a charism of the Holy Spirit is far more than knowledge or information, more even than truth; it is truth applied to the heart and the mind in such a living way that the person is transformed" p.9

"we must recognize that the majority of Jesus' life - and of ours - is found in our families and homes, in our work and play, among our neighbors and in our everyday surroundings. This tangible world is the place we most fully experience the outflow of love, joy, peace, and all the fruit of the Spirit. Here and nowhere else. It was true for Jesus; it is true for us." p.21

i include the first two excerpts just for record keeping sake but want to address the last quotation. this summer i have been feeling, as i usually do during the summers, dry, purposeless, empty, dead. when i write, i write impulsively upon emotional waves and find that the act of writing feeds my soul as well. life circumstances will trigger my thought processes and my heart quickly follows as it connects long thematic arches and attributes it to God's work. but when life slows down, my heart, ill-adjusted to this speed, atrophies as its vision of life's grand meanings becomes frustratingly veiled.

so in light of the tone of my past two posts, i find that this summer is not a bad summer at all. god has placed me squarely in the midst of the social justice community in sd; i have found a new friend in jesús m.; i get to see my favorite people every weekend; i get paid; jackie is with me so that i'm not alone in the evenings.

things that give me life this summer: caring for people, thinking about the asian american church, meeting with trish and being rejuvenated by the kindred dreams i have in her, reading from nouwen and foster and lewis, sleeping, eating well, my new makana candle

object of my hope ii

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Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life—gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, not knowing what tomorrow may bring. This is generally expressed with a sigh of sadness, but it should be an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God...We are not uncertain of God, just uncertain of what He is going to do next...But when we have the right relationship with God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy. Jesus said, “. . . believe also in Me” (John 14:1), not, “Believe certain things about Me.” -Oswald Chambers, 4.29 utmost

There are many who have rejoiced in the presence of God for a season; they have basked in the sunshine in the earlier stages of their Christian career; they have walked along the "green pastures" by the side of the "still waters," but suddenly they find the glorious sky is clouded; instead of the Land of Goshen they have to tread the sandy desert; in the place of sweet waters, they find troubled streams, bitter to their taste, and they say, "Surely, if I were a child of God, this would not happen." Oh! say not so, thou who art walking in darkness. The best of God's saints must drink the wormwood; the dearest of His children must bear the cross. No Christian has enjoyed perpetual prosperity; no believer can always keep his harp from the willows. Perhaps the Lord allotted you at first a smooth and unclouded path, because you were weak and timid. He tempered the wind to the shorn lamb, but now that you are stronger in the spiritual life, you must enter upon the riper and rougher experience of God's full-grown children. We need winds and tempests to exercise our faith, to tear off the rotten bough of self-dependence, and to root us more firmly in Christ. The day of evil reveals to us the value of our glorious hope. -Spurgeon morning meditation, 4.29

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Psalm 43:5

interrogate my soul, strengthen myself in God

anchor: God's active outworking

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Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain. Psalm 127:1

god to david through nathan:

“Go and tell my servant David, ‘This is what the Lord says: Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in? I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling. Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?”’ 2 Samuel 7:5-7

david's prayer in response:

“Lord Almighty, God of Israel, you have revealed this to your servant, saying, ‘I will build a house for you.’ So your servant has found courage to pray this prayer to you. Sovereign Lord, you are God! Your covenant is trustworthy, and you have promised these good things to your servant.” 2 Samuel 7:27-28

"Waiting is a movement. People who wait have received a promise that allows them to wait. They have received something that is at work in them, like a seed that has started to grow. This is very important. We can only really wait if what we are waiting for has already begun for us. So waiting is never a movement from nothing to something. It is always a moving from something to something more.

Waiting is also active. Most of us think of waiting as something very passive, a hopeless state determined by events totally out of our hands. But none of this passivity marks the waiting in scripture. It is active, because in our waiting we know that something is growing from the ground on which we are standing. Active waiting means to be fully present to the moment in a conviction that something is happening where you are and you want to be present to it." -Henri Nouwen, “A Spirituality of Waiting”

God, as he has divinely revealed himself in the word, is a God who is actively and personally involved in this world. He claims all the glory not by stealing the credit of human labor -- but because he is the one who is laboring, and he presents us with the privilege to work alongside him in obedient participation. he prepares people for ministry (moses, joshua, david, joseph, samuel, etc); he makes the situation impossible so that it is clear that it was he who granted the israelites victory or rescue; he graciously emboldens and encourages those who are discouraged or fearful (joshua, elijah, gideon, jonah etc). this is the God i serve and he requires me to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with him. he requires me to love him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength - he does not command me to know everything that is going on, to control everything, to ensure that things go according to plan. he knows that it is beyond my limits to oversee results so to work for his glory is to let him shoulder the responsibility of the "results." he is the sole active pronoun in the bible and i worship him by the inner posture of rest and dependence that i adopt as i embrace the daily allotment of work he grants me. to forget that he was the one who brought me to this point or to forget that he has promised to be with me in the future is to fail to give him all the glory by my lack of utter dependence upon him.

sidenotes;

i think i am always thinking about what season i am in. maybe today i can just sit in the season and be still and know that he is God
also i think God grows me most in my utter dependence on him and so it is through pain, suffering, loss, failure, discouragement, etc. that he strips away my sense of wellbeing and security in other things so that it may rightfully rooted in him.
if i were to sum up how i've been feeling since coming back from sf, i'd hands down say "needy"

john stott & new quarter

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“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as 'God on the cross.' In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross that symbolizes divine suffering. 'The cross of Christ ... is God’s only self-justification in such a world” as ours....' 'The other gods were strong; but thou wast weak; they rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne; But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak, And not a god has wounds, but thou alone.” 

― John R.W. Stott, Cross

“[Christian rebellion] arises from the doctrine of mankind made in the image of God, and therefore protests against all forms of dehumanization. It sets itself against the social injustices which insult God the Creator, seeks to protect human beings from oppression and longs to liberate them… it protests against every authoritarian regime, whether of the left or of the right, which discriminates against minorities, denies people their civil rights, forbids the free expression of opinions or imprisons people for their views alone.” 

― John R.W. Stott

“Jesus never concealed the fact that his religion included a demand as well as an offer. Indeed, the demand was as total as the offer was free. If he offered men his salvation, he also demanded their submission. He gave no encouragement whatever to thoughtless applicants for discipleship. He brought no pressure to bear on any inquirer. He sent irresponsible enthusiasts away empty. Luke tells of three men who either volunteered, or were invited, to follow Jesus; but no one passed the Lord’s test. The rich young ruler, too, moral, earnest and attractive, who wanted eternal life on his own terms, went away sorrowful, with his riches intact but with neither life nor Christ as his possession…The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of derelict, half built towers—the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish. For thousands of people still ignore Christ’s warning and undertake to follow him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so. The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so called 'nominal Christianity.' In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent, but thin, veneer of Christianity. They have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved, enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable. Their religion is a great, soft cushion. It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life, while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience. No wonder the cynics speak of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism…The message of Jesus was very different. He never lowered his standards or modified his conditions to make his call more readily acceptable. He asked his first disciples, and he has asked every disciple since, to give him their thoughtful and total commitment. Nothing less than this will do.” 

― John R.W. Stott, Basic Christianity

tomorrow is the beginning of spring quarter. out of my solitude with God today, i will peptalk the future me for the next three months of my life:

prioritize your emotional, spiritual, mental, social, and physical health. know that it's okay and normal to be in your twenties and not have your life figured out. you fret and are easily overwhelmed and are of little faith; cling to the disciplines of the faith with the entirety of your being engaged because it is out of solitude with your Maker that you will 1) thrive and not just feebly survive and 2) be seen and fully known by your Heavenly Father who desires to carry your chaotic mess. interrogate your downcast soul and remind it to rejoice because God is worthy of this response, and because all things are purpose-full in the outworking of your salvation.

sidenotes;
this season of life as i currently see it is marked by blessed delight, adoration, fear, weariness, choked panting, deep breaths

1 samuel 29

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1 samuel 17-31 details david & saul's journey; the author intentionally juxtaposes the two men to highlight how they both egregiously fail and get themselves tangled in impossible situations, but they respond differently in where they put their trust. this is what sets them apart from each other -- not because one is intrinsically better than the other, but because one bows to the King in his helplessness. on 1 samuel 29:

"Saul goes off to consult a witch; David strengthens himself in the Lord his God. There is the difference. Saul never seems to repent, never seems to have a heart for God. David does have a heart for God and does repent. David, like most of us, finds that many of his turning points are during times of suffering and sorrow, in the dark times of his life. But in this dark day of David’s life, when he has no one else to turn to, he turns to God.

How does he do it? How does he strengthen himself in the Lord his God? We should note that the author gives us little detail here. He does not give us a formula, a series of fail-proof steps. We live in a day when people want a quick fix with a sure cure, and often by the performance of a set of neatly laid out steps – a formula. In the final analysis, I do not think the Christian life is lived by formulas, but by truths and principles. There are do’s and don’ts, but these are not formulas. Let us note here that David finds his spiritual strength in the Lord his God.

...If David strengthened himself in the Lord, we can probably infer that just as Jonathan did earlier, David must have reminded himself anew of the character of God and the promises of God. If God is who He is, in terms of His character (His attributes), we can be assured that what He promises, He will do. Paul put it this way:

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:6).

For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day (2 Timothy 1:12; see also Jude 1:24-25).

...David not only strengthens himself in the Lord, David inquires of the Lord. He seeks after God. He seeks to know the will of God in this situation, and then he does it. How different David is from Saul in this regard. David’s strength then seems to come from contemplating who God is, what He has promised, and what He wants us to do. David may have gotten himself and others into a lot of trouble, due to a foolish decision, but he also turns back to the God to whom he has entrusted himself." source

“Jesus of Nazareth always comes asking disciples to follow him--not merely 'accept him,' not merely 'believe in him,' not merely 'worship him,' but to follow him: one either follows Christ, or one does not. There is no compartmentalization of the faith, no realm, no sphere, no business, no politic in which the lordship of Christ will be excluded. We either make him Lord of all lords, or we deny him as Lord of any.” -Lee Camp

with all that i am, all my messiness and inabilities and stupid ways, i want this. bruised knees, callused feet, eager hands, heart splayed open and life surrendered to the King who reveals himself to me in the word as a God who delights not in my suffering but in my dependence on him, my trust in him, my obedience to his commandments. he delights in rescuing me. [list of god's saving acts]

sidenotes;
i am currently sobered by the enormity of what it means to follow christ and by the narrowness of this path. i feel grief as i think upon people in my life who choose not to surrender and follow. have mercy god.

20

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i'm 20 and i'm a mess.

i am a mess of fears and desires, some experience and no experience, and plenty of imaginaries. but i also remember being 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. i remember always feeling like a mess of fears and desires.  it's strange how the visual closeness of those numbers in text form seem to violently and flippantly gloss over all that has happened between each of those numbers; but even as they cannot embody my memories, my memory does a similar thing. my memories are abridged and i'm left with a vaguely helpless sense of loss.

but i'm none of those ages, i am 20 and i'm a mess but i'm still here. i can also be melodramatic sometimes

"My hour in Carmelite chapel is more important than I can fully know myself. It is not an hour of deep prayer, nor a time in which I experience a special closeness to God; it is not a period of serious attentiveness to the divine mysteries. I wish it were! On the contrary, it is full of distractions, inner restlessness, sleepiness, confusion, and boredom. It seldom, if ever, pleases my senses. But the simple fact of being for one hour in the presence of the Lord and of showing him all that I think, feel, sense, and experience, without trying to hide anything, must please him. Somehow, somewhere, I know that he loves me, even though I do not feel that love as I can feel a human embrace, even though I do not hear a voice as I hear human words of consolation, even though I do not see a smile as I can see a human face. Still the Lord speaks to me, looks at me, and embraces me there, where I am still unable to notice it. The only way I become aware of his presence is in that remarkable desire to return to that quiet chapel and be there without any real satisfaction. Yes, I notice, maybe only retrospectively, that my days and weeks are different days and weeks when they are held together by these regular "useless" times. God is greater than my senses, greater than my thoughts, greater than my heart.  I do believe that he touches me in places that are unknown even to myself. I seldom can point directly to these places; but when I feel this inner pull to return again to that hidden hour of prayer, I realize that something is happening that is so deep that it becomes like the riverbed through which the waters can safely flow and find their way to the open sea." -Henri J. Nouwen

this just happened

yea

sidenotes;

five more days
1!!!

object of my hope

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"ruth 1:13

ii. If Naomi was bitter or angry against God, she probably would have gone another way - further from the God of Israel, rather than back to Him. Instead, she showed that she trusted the sovereignty of God, and knew that despite her personal calamities, He is a good God who blesses.

iii. What Naomi could not see is that the hand of the LORD would go out for her shortly! There is never reason for us to despair if we believe the hand of the LORD has gone out against me. If we will return to Him, His hand will go out for us again! Naomi had no idea - not the slightest - of how greatly God was going to bless her in a short time.

ruth 1:21

d. The Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me . . . the LORD has brought me home again empty . . . the LORD has testified against me: Naomi was not afraid to see the hand of God in all her calamity.

i. Naomi knew that the tragedy that came into her life was not because of fate, chance, or blind fortune. She felt the tragedies were an example of God’s affliction because she could not see the end of His plan. But she knew there was a sovereign God of heaven, and didn’t think she had just run into a string of “bad luck.”

ii. Yet, in the midst of all these bitter circumstances, Naomi was not bitter against the LORD. We can imagine one of the villagers asking, “Naomi, if God has dealt very bitterly with you, if the LORD has brought you home empty, if the LORD has testified against you, then why have you come back?” And she would have said, “Because I want to get right with Him again. Things have been terrible, and the answer isn’t in going further from God, but in drawing closer to Him.”

iii. Not everyone reacts to trials the way Naomi did. “Many are humbled, but not humble; low, but not lowly. These have lost the fruit of their afflictions . . . and are therefore most miserable.” (Trapp)

ruth 2:1

ii. Sometimes we justify wrong choices because of difficult circumstances. But God will strengthen us, and bless us, to make the right choice, even in difficult circumstances.

ruth 2:2-3

ii. Many times when we are really walking in the Spirit, we can only see the invisible hand of God by looking back. If we spend too much time trying to look for His hand ahead of us, we can make problems for our self." Guzik commentary

"I've always found it curious that this proclamation of the Lord's never-ceasing and ever-new mercies and faithfulness is nested in the context of lament over God's sending Israel into exile for her unfaithfulness. This last year, as we studied Judges and saw how even God's punishment of Israel for her idolatry was a reflection of his faithfulness to the covenant he made with his people, and a consequence of his lovingly acting for their good and his glory, I was reminded of the daily faithfulness of God and newness of his mercies. And it strikes me that the context of this passage is a perfect reflection of God's faithfulness in every season.

Thank God that he is a living and active God, whose love and mercy never come to an end, even in meting out just punishment, as he is ever faithful to his character, to his Word. Therefore I will hope in him." -pnick

if i could only see. if i could squeeze hope out of my bones, wash off the fear that clings to my skin, throw it at the obstinate blankness which lingers in my path. where is your redemption in families? vision? obedience? surrender? sacrifice? if i cry out for a fortune telling will you instead increase my faith? i guess there is no hope in my bones, and that's why i must desperately stake all of me in a hope outside of me. i ask because i lack. i'm asking, i'm seeking, i'm knocking.

sidenotes;
ahm nitty gritty
on another note, i am presently feeling particularly affectionate of my dearest friends ahhhh

ever richer fruit

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We are women, and my plea is Let me be a woman, holy through and through, asking for nothing but what God wants to give me, receiving with both hands and with all my heart whatever that is. Elisabeth Elliot

Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one's thoughts. Elisabeth Elliot

Faith's most severe tests come not when we see nothing, but when we see a stunning array of evidence that seems to prove our faith vain. Elisabeth Elliot

"to be a woman is to have suffered. 

I can’t really explain why I think this is true. But I think I never felt so much the fragility of being a woman with the weight of the decisions of men in my life as I have recently. If womanhood was a skin, it took a cold, pouring ice rainstorm to step into it." -v.perng

when i ask for vision my trembling heart is asking for a forecast, a fortune telling, an easy way out. for blessed release from this -- how nearsighted of me though, to ask for "happy escape" from the suffering that God himself has carefully ordained for me. the suffering of obeying him when it's difficult to die to myself. as i survey my life i see clearly the hand of the great physician grasping the tool of suffering as it hems me in and as it readies me to bear fruit. when i ask for vision, give me precisely this gift: vision of your greater will in this. ever deeper roots, ever sweeter communion, ever richer fruit. this i ask for soberly.

my fragile fingers have a slippery and timid hold on a foundational understanding of present suffering. my hindsight understanding of suffering is solid, but sometimes in the present, the pain is all up in my face in an obnoxious and unrelenting manner. who has ever grown great faith except through great trials? through blood, sweat, tears.


sidenotes;
tonight i feel winded

depth under scrutiny

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"The heart must be the first, chief, constant object of solicitude to the Christian. It is this which God sees, and because God principally looks at it, the heart must be ever uppermost in our concern.

...To keep the heart must mean exerting ourselves with great earnestness, in dependence upon Divine grace, to preserve it in a good state; laboring to preserve its vitality, vigor, and purity.

...The heart is the citadel of the soul. If this is neglected, the enemy at the gates will soon be in and take possession. Set a watch, therefore, upon the heart. Let the sentinel be never off duty, nor sleeping at his post." -Proverbs 4:23 Commentary

i am navigating through life consisting of very human people with wildly different richness/color/depth/multidimensional/multifaceted quality of inner life. in doing so i am increasingly filled with an itching curiosity about the following things:

-our unique journeys to understanding vulnerability: do we demean it? do we value it? do we fear it? do we avoid it? do we idolize it? do we live in it? is it characterized by Christ-like humility? or is it characterized by an ill-begotten plea for self-victimizing, self-serving attention?
-our unique ways of individually experiencing and processing things i.e. emotions, thoughts, struggles, praises - aka the nitty gritty of life: how long does it take to process individually? which voices weigh most influentially during the processing? what blinds us in the process? what is our inner endurance level? all or nothing, chunk by chunk, not at all? what are the instruments of articulation and organization: writing, talking, silence?
-our unique ways of turning an insular gaze to an outreaching, sharing posture: what is our understanding of the meaning we attach to sharing? where did this understanding come from? is it biblical?
-our unique ways of seeking guidance/help: who are our peers? our mentors? our paul's, our barnabas's, our timothy's? who are our safe people? are they really safe?
-our unique ways of not doing any of the above
-self-perception of pride enlaced into our being: how are we deceiving ourselves through justification and/or victimization? how are we failing to make the connection between certain suffering/brokenness and our own responsibility/sinfulness/pride? because when has pride ever not been a factor, ever. how can we be real with others if we can't be real with ourselves.
-is it possible for some people to be vacant. i guess so. please help me understand because i'm so confused. do i have to understand to love? i guess not. but it helps. and i'm still confused at the end of the day help meee

sidenotes;
"nasar" (guard): to guard, protect, keep, obey; observe, behold, watch, inspect
can we please delve into the deep and dark and scary together? we can pioneer it togetherrrr. help slay each other's monsters & help hold the lantern for each other. take the night time watch while one of us naps before the morning onslaught. chip away at mildew, at pests, at cancerous growths. because we're all gross inside, who ever said your gross is worse than mine. nobody that's who.

feeling inhibited and pushy and helpless

also being at home makes me gain weight ughhh

developing my chops

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“A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.” Nelson Mandela

"I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it.Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good, either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be." Roald Dahl

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." MLKjr

"The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger is met." Frederick Buechner

"I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you  have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game." Toni Morrison

yesterday at the conferencia, prof said that he sees my trajectory, and he hears my chops developing. he said i should own it, and that i can't say that know what i am doing -- because the thing is, i do know what i'm doing. thanks prof, for believing in me. and because i am gangly and awkward as i grow into activism, here are questions that i am working on being able to eloquently verbalize; inciting people to action is like an acting job.

why are we, the most information savvy generation, also the most politically inarticulate and ignorant generation? why do we consume information being thrown at us in such a greedy, desperate, and uncritical manner? where is our filter? why do we assume things to be truth? why are our hearts so numb and difficult to incite to action? what creates the strange, foggy disconnect between knowledge and action? between individual action and collective action?

the prison system is eerily and disgustingly reminiscent of the horrific system that was "prohibited" in 1865; we can feel the echoes of entrenched historical infrastructures and ideologies looming over our shoulders, disguised and advertised differently - simultaneously more banaly, more insidiously.

let us aggressively and intentionally challenge the ways we think as we dream change, demand change, and make change. [let us be critically examining what change we envision to be the ideal - does the projected ideal coincide with God's heart for justice (restorative and punitive) on an individual and societal level?] i shudder to think of how shameful it would be if future generations look back to see us not only in our ignorance and inaction but in our uncritical albeit eager floundering. let us be people of dogged perseverance, creative fire, and unquenchable hope, and critically sober thoughts.

sidenotes;
intrepid, tireless, resolute

praise: thank you God, for having mom & n.hsieh call me after 5ish hours of sleep so that i can study. thank you for being my personal alarm clock, because everyone knows i can't wake up to my alarms.

pursuing justice

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"We sometimes see the gospel and justice as separate, like two sides of a teeter-totter. We think talking about the requirements of justice or the material aspects of life, raising that side of the teeter-totter, will diminish the gospel and our focus on the spiritual aspects of life. The assumption is that if one is highlighted, the other is diminished. This kind of either/or thinking, or dualism, is actually a heresy historically referred to as Gnosticism.

This is not how the Hebrews understood God, however. To them, the spiritual and material sides of life were united and integrated. When we think about the gospel this way, our picture changes. Rather than being in competition, as with the teeter-totter analogy, the spiritual and material aspects of life can be pictured as the two sides of a train track--meant to be inextricably connected in one purpose." (39)

"God absolutely uses short-term mission trips, and many of the career missionaries and international relief and development professionals I know were first given a 'taste' of their calling on a short-term missions trip when they were in high school or college. This illustrates exactly why I believe we need to continue to fund and send folks on short-term trips, while at the same time redefining our expectations for what they will accomplish and what they mean.

I believe we need to call these trips by what they really are: Learning trips. Exposure trips. Relationship trips. Engagement trips...Redefining short-term missions trips is about ridding ourselves of the illusion that we can change the world, and instead admitting that the world might need to change us." (151-152)

"Today, however, there is a growing desire among Christians of all sorts to discern and differentiate the social awareness of the historical social gospel movement from the specific theology that under-girded much of the movement. there is a desire to mend the artificial divide--the false dichotomy--between material and spiritual and return to a robust gospel message that includes the proclamation of Jesus and the embodying, person-transforming, society-changing love of Jesus." (209)

"'That which dominates our imagination and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshiping we are becoming.' [Ralph Waldo Emerson]" (224)

"We forget the sustaining power of grace that was given to energize and motivate us to change the world. Covering grace without sustaining grace can make us consumers of grace. As if grace were a product, we keep it for ourselves." (255)

"To discern the path God would have you walk, begin with repentance. Lament the problem of pain and the ache of injustice in the world. Ask God to lead you, and listen long and intently for His answer. Be willing to obey unreservedly, no matter how big or small, no matter how heroic or mundane the task God sets before you or the path God calls you to walk." (289)

-Pursuing Justice, Ken Wytsma

sidenotes;

be [present] where you are [and love where you are by actively seeking peace of the city]. be where you are.

suspended limbo

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the weeks preceding the new school year always feels like suspended limbo to me. like a huge pause button that makes my mind foggy and lazy, a time during which i look back to a surrealistically distant past and look forward to see just as surrealistic a future. it's a rhythm of life that i am ill-adapted to; i find myself consciously associating God's work with a faster rhythm of life: when i'm in school, with things to do and places to go and people to meet. why is it that home is my driest and heavy spirited battlefield? although i suppose i know the answer to that question and it comes in the form of generation gap, culture clash, dysfunction, unpredictability, and a shrill voice. i am dragged back to my high school mentality when i come home, but that just means it never left the dark rooms in my chest. the monsters like to come out when i come home. how shameless they are

nevertheless, i also often entertain melodramatic writing (perhaps because my inner world is a melodrama? a tranche de vie melodrama for the purposes of amusement? haha) and my words tend to throw things into stark, vivid relief. things are not nearly as awful as the picture my words paint.

today the shock is mellowing out into shy-faced disbelief because i am amazed by how intimately God knows my heart. today there is anticipation in my palms and anticipation in my stomach because i taste sweetness on the horizon

"Wear your sorrow like the lines on your palm. Like a shawl to keep you warm at night. Don’t mourn the love that is lost to you now. It is a book of poems whose meters worked their way into your pulse. Even if it has slipped from your hands, it will stay in your body. 

You loved a man who treated you like absinthe, half poison and half god. He tried to sweeten you, to water you down. So you left. And now you have your heart all to yourself again. A heart like a stone cottage. Heart like a lover’s diary. Hope like an ocean.” -Anais Nin

sidenotes;
currently:
elodie rama, strange island
emily king, georgia

on another note, i've always been number 11 on your list from the start, but that's okay because Jesus says i'm his number one and Jesus says he redeems you and me and i believe him

cultureshock

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I proclaim righteousness in the great assembly; I do not seal my lips, as you know, O Lord.

I do not hide your righteousness in my heart; I speak of your faithfulness and salvation. I do not conceal your love and your truth from the great assembly.

Do not withhold your mercy from me, O Lord; may your love and your truth always protect me.

Psalm 40:7

being back home is strangely anticlimactic in a stifling and surreal way. the lack of urgency here feels like a heavy blanket over my head. i am confronted with the short attention span of my humanness, because being physically far-removed from tenderloin/berkeley gives my brain a false sense of security and peace -- false, because this security and peace finds its source in the comfort of luxury. poverty is no longer manifest in the physical world here. i can't see poverty prowling the dirty streets. i can't smell poverty making its angry, foul demands at me for attention, nor can i hear poverty shrieking profanities down drug infested streets. just because i am in irvine doesn't negate everything my heart has inhaled this summer. and as i sit here in coffeebean, i feel dismay begin to claw tightly around my heart as i begin to feel more and more alone in the heart mentality that has so violently dug deep into who i am.

"the culture shock will likely be in the mentality, the rhythm of life, the degrees to which people understand or engage with what has been so close to your heart this summer." -nhsieh 

"My prayer for you as you return is for protection and that God would be your strength in spirit, soul, and mind. I myself am going through the difficulty and the spiritual attacks that come with returning to life after a mission trip, or conference, or any intense spiritual journey the Lord takes us on. But lets not let it be just a returning, but a sending out into a new mission field. You have been equipped with authority and with power and with truth. I pray that your identity in Christ will be secure. Praying right now against physical ailment, against temptation, against worry and anxiety and depression, and praying against discouragement and impatience with the self-sufficient, comfortable and ignorant condition of the heart of so many people in socal. I pray that even now God would use your experiences to reach those who you share it with to bring glory to His name and that to those who won't understand, God will give understanding in His own time." -pferido

 

“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” -Miriam Adeney

sidenotes;
this is a place of aloneness that i am fearful of staying in; i don't have strength to maintain a posture of satisfaction when i face the daunting silence that echoes back to my question, "do you know? do you know what i have seen this summer?"

inner chaos

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“As soon as we are alone,...inner chaos opens up in us. This chaos can be so disturbing and so confusing that we can hardly wait to get busy again. Entering a private room and shutting the door, therefore, does not mean that we immediately shut out all our inner doubts, anxieties, fears, bad memories, unresolved conflicts, angry feelings and impulsive desires. On the contrary, when we have removed our outer distraction, we often find that our inner distraction manifest themselves to us in full force. We often use the outer distractions to shield ourselves from the interior noises. This makes the discipline of solitude all the more important.” -Henri Nouwen

if i have a daughter, what would i tell her when she experiences her first real heartbreak? i don't know

i finished my last final as a sophomore. i'm now a junior. i am looking forward to a summer in sf. but tonight i would like to watch a good movie, eat comfort food, and cry in bed until there is nothing inside to cry out. even though i'm not sure what there is to cry about. i just know i need a good cry

renewal

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Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2

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. 2 Corinthians 10:5

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Philippians 4:8

People no longer ask “Is it true?” but “Does it work?” and “How will it make me feel?” Those latter two questions serve as a working definition of truth in our society that rejects the concept of absolute divine truth. Truth is whatever works and produces positive emotions. Sadly, such pragmatism and emotionalism has crept even into theology. The church is often more concerned about whether something will be divisive or offensive than whether it is biblically true...Too many people go to church not to think or reason about the truths of Scripture, but to get their weekly spiritual high; to feel that God is still with them. Such people are spiritually unstable because they base their lives on feeling rather than on thinking...Salvation involves the transformation of the mind. -Macarthur 

Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God...It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God. -J.I. Packer 

Satan wants to turn your mind into a cesspool and have your mind occupied with that which ultimately must corrupt, defile, and spoil the whole body, distort the life, and produce sin. The battle is not first in the field of action; it is in the field of thought. Transport yourself to the pasture, consider the cow chewing her cud, and learn that lesson from nature that the psalmist learned. Your delight must be in the Word of God, and in His Word you must chew your cud day and night. If the battle is lost, it is lost because you do not meditate on “ these things.” J.D. Pentecost

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in my journey of introspection and prayer, i have always been stubbornly inclined towards the framing question, "why?" i ponder about something for hours which become days (and eventually i surprise myself with the realization that months have passed and i have not given this issue rest). i wonder at why i react the way i do to certain situations, to people; i wonder whether my reactions have any credibility, what they say about me, what they say about God's work in my life. it is a knee jerk reaction and i find that it is a wonderful process of sifting through all that is in my mind to discover truth which i can embrace. sometimes though, i am distracted by the goal of finding an emotionally satisfying answer to these "why" questions that i become frustrated and dwell obsessively upon the lack of a conclusive discovery that can shed light upon the whole process.

i am learning that my inner life is never as linear or logical as i would like it to be; it is not an input-output system. it gets messy & that's okay. i can bring these messy things to my Father and have Him shed light and untangle in due time. in the meantime, i can content my soul with the captivating work of dwelling in Him.

sidenotes;
mmmm, yes. :)

contradictions

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“Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. The greatest pain comes from leaving. When the child leaves home, when the husband or wife leaves for a long period of time or for good, when the beloved friend departs to another country or dies … the pain of the leaving can tear us apart.Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving. And love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.” -Henri J.M. Nouwen

i am, frankly, a mess. i am a bundle of contradictions made up of unspoken heart desires and rational trains of thought that rage forth and then timidly meander about without direction, conviction, heart. i come once again before the throne of my gentle king and desperately pry my hands open, fall to my face, bask in nothing but His love for me.

ponder; what does it mean to worry? to dwell obsessively and be preoccupied with something to the point that it hinders your sense of emotional stability in everyday life. i suppose this is why philippians 4:8-9 comes right after philippians 4:6; it is unreasonable to expect us to just "stop thinking (worrying)" -- rather, we must replace the thoughts with things that are "true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy." i guess it just goes to show that god created us as singularly focused beings; we were made to worship, to fixate our gaze/orient our beings towards something. if that something is not God it will inevitably be something else. there is no way for us to not worship, to not meditate on something.

sidenotes;

sigh. walk on
i'm weary
five classes, never again

beloved

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"The greatest gift you can give to another human being is a secure you in Christ because that's the only way you'll ever liberate them to be all that God's called them to be." Christine Caine 

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” -A.W. Tozer 

“When we claim and constantly reclaim the truth of being the chosen ones, we soon discover within ourselves a deep desire to reveal to others their own chosenness. Instead of making us feel that we are better, more precious or valuable than others, our awareness of being chosen opens our eyes to the chosenness of others. That is the great joy of being chosen: the discovery that others are chosen as well. In the house of God there are many mansions. There is a place for everyone - a unique, special place. Once we deeply trust that we ourselves are precious in God's eyes, we are able to recognize the preciousness of others and their unique places in God's heart.” -Henri J. Nouwen

i am increasingly finding that as i delve deeper into the radical and living knowledge of God's heart towards me, and as i allow this meditation to contagiously permeate everything from emotions to thoughts to actions, i am simultaneously becoming aware of a desire that everyone in my life would also come to a knowledge of this love. it is my dream and desire and desperate prayer for young girls embrace and claim their identity as His beloved; for earthly fathers to know this for themselves so as to communicate it to their wives and children -- daughters and sons who, given an earthly modeling of Christ's tenderhearted gentleness and the protective but emboldening nature of His love, can stand before the lies of this world and step out in fearlessness to heal brokenness.

ponder; is this not a core question we all come to wrestle with at one time or another: does anybody care? to delve into deep and scary places with me? i am so blessed to have people in my life who care.

sidenotes;
stinky people who sit in front of me makes me so incredibly nauseated ):
i miss my siblings and my sisters and brothers in irvine. my heart is in irvine. i miss the company of those who really know me