Thoughts from Piper's The Dangerous Duty of Delight

"Life is war. The casualties are millions, and the stakes are eternal. What we need today is not a call to simplicity, but a call to war. We need to think in terms of 'wartime lifestyle' rather than a 'simply lifestyle.' I have used the phrase 'necessities of life' because Paul said in 1 Timothy 6:8, 'If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content.' But this idea of simply necessity can be misleading. I mean it to refer to a style of life that is unencumbered with nonessentials - and the criterion for 'essential' should not be primitive simplicity, but wartime effectiveness... Life is war. All talk of a Christian's right to live luxuriously 'as a child of the King' is this atmosphere sounds hollow - especially since the King Himself stripped for battle."

"Jesus did not ask us to be indifferent to whether we are destroyed. On the contrary, He assumes that the longing for true life will move us to deny ourselves all the lesser pleasures and comforts of life. The measure of our longing for life is the amount of comfort we are willing to give up to get it."

Surrender

This world is just a shadow of a stronger, more real time to come;
In this lies my hope.

"I surrender all
to the promises you made
and I will give it all
to the maker of the day

No one knows your heart
and no one knows your fears
When no one solves the mysteries
or even wipes away the tears

Can you hear the sound of laughter
from the other side of life?
There are days when I feel like a stranger sometimes
Tell me, are there any other fools like me?

This reliance on another world
has a great effect on this world
This conscience of another world
has a great effect on
grace recollection

He doesn't love us 'cause of who we are
He only loves us 'cause of who he is

We all were children once
so will we return
So let those days return
let us all return"

The World United By Street Music - I Wouldn't Complain

This made my heart really happy. I've always loved this song and appreciated street musicians. "If this video doesn't bring a tear to your eyes and makes you smile for the rest of the day, you are a cold hearted bastard."

http://gizmodo.com/5231112/best-video-ive-seen-today-will-make-you-smile

Drowning Out the Sound of Our Demise

By no means am I a cultural expert, especially concerning the culture in which I currently live. But I do try to notice things and observe what exists around me. I struggle with this observation, though, because so often it turns to judgment and furthermore, I haven't decided for myself when it is or is not ok to judge a culture. Allowance for cultural variety and regard for higher morals or ideals do not easily compliment each other and I tend to fall off one side of the horse or the other. For now, my goal is simply to question. I can't come to conclusions and I can't pretend to understand the way people live around me, but I can pay attention and ask questions.

Since moving here, I have started to think about the ways in which people observe death and question whether we can gain insight into the spiritual health of a people through their customs for the passing away of life. It started last fall when I came across a funeral and wrote the following:

Death is a loud and noisy thing when it does not offer hope for eternity. When we do not acknowledge what is truly taking place – that a soul has left this world for the next, either to enjoy an eternity of satisfactory fulfillment and peace or to face eternal and excruciating separation from God – all of the ritual we produce is nothing more than empty, meaningless, destructive, sinister noise. All of the memories, all of grief, all of the talk are nothing more than smoke to cover the eyes of the living, satiating the screams inside them with clattering numbness.

Yesterday, I witnessed my first funeral in East Asia. The empty gaudiness of is made my soul sick. From what I’ve seen, funerals here are no time for meditation or reflection on life and its meaning. They are a time of loud and showy distraction from reality. In this society of disbelief in any higher deity, or for that matter, in any higher meaning, moral, or reality, death has been reduced to a crowded tent in the middle of the street, filled with neon lights, karaoke singers, and bored looking passers-by. Women put on make-up at a table and attempt to look grieved. Family shuffle through the music selection, picking songs that seem appropriate for the memory of the departed.

Christ said, “Blessed are those who mourn.” In this context, in this society, I take those words to mean, blessed are those capable of mourning. Humanity lives brokenness and thus to be fully human, we must know how to mourn it. If we don’t acknowledge our brokenness on any other given day of our lives, death, at least, is a time for our nature to slap us in the face. How wrong not to mourn when such a beating takes place! How can you declare with Paul, “Where, O Death, is your sting?” if you cannot feel death’s knife piercing your heart?

When a people are religious it at least enables them to realize what takes place in death; they are more fully human in their acknowledgment of the eternal and desire to touch the holy. The East Asians need something that is going to make them aware of their own human nature. A prick that will teach them to mourn this existence and to yearn for release from death’s sting. They need something that will force them to turn off the noise machines, to forgo the glittering lights, to leave behind the show, and to bleed with reality for once. To scream in the night for rescue as the noise of distraction is left behind and the heavy silence of eternity settles in their hearts. For no noise we frail humans create can drown out the roar of an eternity without God. But what is more, that awful roar of hell cannot overcome the glorious and surrounding chorus of Jesus Christ’s triumph. The crack of death’s back on Christ’s empty tomb is a deafening sound that echoes throughout time and space, even to the back alleys of my little neighborhood.

Let us pray that it is heard from our lips every time we open our mouths.

A Thousand Questions

I can't watch this short film without getting choked up, and maybe even crying. Since high school, I have wrestled with how to hold the beauty of this world and life in one hand and the destruction and despair we all witness in the other. I still don't have any great answers, but I am learning to keep an eye out for those who do. This movie strikes especially close to home because the longer I live in Asia, the more I become convinced that understanding the Creator's larger story of redemption is the only way to accept the majesty and horribleness of existence without succumbing to one or the other and furthermore, that once we understand the story, we are propelled into playing out the story, being given roles and purposes in the advancement of redemption.

Thoughts On Time And Upcoming Goodbyes

I have never been one for goodbyes. Tending to have a semi-tragic attitude when it comes to saying farewell, I melodramatically forget that more likely than not, I will actually see my friends and family again this side of heaven. And even if I don't, the plethora of communication options available via internet make it almost impossible to actually ever forget a person. My penchant for the dramatic has quieted in recent years, but some people dear to my heart will never stop laughing about the night I cried in a sleeping bag on the living room floor at the thought of saying goodbye to Pittsburgh. ;-)

Just this week, though, my perspective may have started to truly change. My dear, sweet, friend and neighbor, Estelle, took me to an Asian teahouse (www.chingchingcha.com) before parting ways since she heads home to France for the rest of the summer and I set my face towards the East before she returns. While sitting on the floor, slowly sipping my rosebud brew, we discussed the passing of time and our hope to be reunited one day. I started to explain my attitude towards goodbyes, but something she said stopped me. "I like time." What? You like time? What could that mean? Time has always been my enemy. It is what causes us and our surroundings to change in between the goodbyes and hellos. There is never enough of it between the hellos and goodbyes. Time forces us to comply with its speed, when I so often want it to stop and let me be. Stop poking me in the back, Time. I want to stay where I am just little bit longer, ok?

But Estelle likes time. It heals, it teaches, it promises, it hopes. I started to think about my upcoming goodbyes. I thought about the goodbye I would soon say with Estelle, and in a couple weeks, the goodbyes to DC, and after that, goodbyes for my family. And I thought about my biggest fear concerning all of those goodbyes - what would the passage of time do to us? My automatic assumption was that time would not be nice. But what if it was? What if time didn't have it out for me? Estelle liked the passage of time; could I like it, too? "I will have to think about this," I told her.

I look back on my life and see that time's passing has only ever been a good thing. Sure there are pain and difficulties, but what does that have to do with time? Those come at any point, when we expect them or when we don't, when we are young or when we are old. Maybe, just maybe, I can starting seeing time as a gentle friend. I can leave behind the fear of something prodding me onwards and get to know the uncertain, but steady embrace of this thing that never lets us go. I struggle against it and loose. Why not hold its hand and enjoy the story time tells? The goodbyes won't be so painful and the hellos will hold more promise.

Hello, Time, my name is Hannah. Will you be my friend today?