The Reminder I Need Today

Preserve me, O God, for in You I put my trust.

O my soul, you have said to the Lord,
"You are my Lord,
My goodness is nothing apart from You."
As for the saints who are on the earth,
"They are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight."

Their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another god;
Their drink offerings of blood I will not offer,
Nor take up their names on my lips.

O Lord, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup;
You maintain my lot.
The lines have fallen to me pleasant places;
Yes, I have a good inheritance.

I will bless the Lord who has given me counsel;
My heart also instructs me in the night seasons.
I have set the Lord always before me;
Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved.

Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices;
My flesh also will rest in hope.
For You will not leave my soul in Sheol,
Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.
You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

~ Psalm 16

A Few Favorite Quotes About God's Love

"We have to keep finding new ways of saying the same thing: 'You are the beloved of God.' But it is important that we not become sentimental about this love. The Scripture makes it clear that God chastens and disciplines those who are loved... This is no ordinary lover we have; this one will be impossible to manipulate. It is God who molds us, and sometimes that hurts. Love isn't always easy on us, but it is always our salvation." - M. Craig Barnes in The Pastor as Minor Poet

"There's a wideness in God's mercy
I cannot find in my own
And He keeps His fire burning
To melt this heart of stone
Keeps me aching with a yearning
Keeps me glad to have been caught
In the reckless raging fury
That they call the love of God

Now I've seen no band of angels
But I've heard the soldiers' songs
Love hangs over them like a banner
Love within them leads them on
To the battle on the journey
And it's never gonna stop
Ever widening their mercies
And the fury of His love

Oh the love of God
And oh, the love of God
The love of God

Joy and sorrow are this ocean
And in their every ebb and flow
Now the Lord a door has opened
That all Hell could never close
Here I'm tested and made worthy
Tossed about but lifted up
In the reckless raging fury
That they call the love of God"
- Rich Mullins, The Love of God

"He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realize just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

We are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
So Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets"
- John Mark McMillan, How He Loves

At the Back of the North Wind, by George MacDonald

The moment he was through the hole in the roof, all the winds of heaven seemed to lay hold upon him and buffet him hither and thither. His hair blew one way, his nightgown another, his legs threatened to float from under him, and his head to grow dizzy with the swiftness of the invisible assailant. Cowering, he clung with the other hand to the huge hand which held his arm, and fear invaded his heart.

"Oh, North Wind!" he murmured, but the words vanished from his lips as he had seen the soap bubbles that burst too soon vanish from the mouth of his pipe. The wind caught them, and they were nowhere. The couldn't get out at all, but were torn away and strangled. And yet North Wind heard them, and in her answer it seemed to Diamond that just because she was so big and could not help it, and just because her ear and her mouth must seem to him so dreadfully far away, she spoke to him more tenderly and graciously than ever before. Her voice was like the bass of a deep organ without the groan in it; like the most delicate of violin tones without the wail in it; like the most glorious trumpet-ejaculations without the defiance in it; like the sound of falling water without the clatter and clash in it. It was like all of them and neither of them - all of them without their faults, each other them without its peculiarity. After all, it was more like his mother's voice than anything else in the world.

"Diamond, dear," she said, "be a man. What is fearful to you is not the least fearful to me."

"But it can't hurt you," murmured Diamond, "for you're it."

"Then if I'm it and have you in my arms, how can it hurt you?"

"Oh yes! I see," whispered Diamond. "But it looks so dreadful, and it pushes me about so."

"Yes, it does, my dear. That is what it was sent for."

At the same moment, a peal of thunder which shook Diamond's heart against the sides of his bosom hurtled out of the heavens: I cannot say out of the sky, for there was no sky. Diamond had not seen the lightening, for he had been intent on finding the face of North Wind. Every moment the folds of her garment would sweep across his eyes and blind him, but between, he could just persuade himself that he saw great glories of women's eyes looking down through rifts in the mountainous clouds over his head.

He trembled so at the thunder that his knees failed him, and he sank down at North Wind's feet and clasped her round the column of her ankle. She instantly stooped and lifted him from the roof - up - up into her bosom and held him there, saying, as if to an inconsolable child: "Diamond, dear, this will never do."

"Oh yes, it will," answered Diamond. "I am all right now - quite comfortable, I assure you, dear North Wind. If you will only let me stay here, I shall be all right, indeed."

"But you will feel the wind here, Diamond."

"I don't mind that a bit, so long as I feel your arms through it," answered Diamond, nestling closer to her grand bosom.

"Brave boy!" returned North Wind, pressing him closer.

"No," said Diamond. "I don't see that. It's not courage at all, so long as I feel you there."

"But hadn't you better get into my hair? Then you would not feel the wind; you will here."

"Ah, but dear North Wind, you don't know how nice it is to feel your arms about me. It is a thousand times better to have them and the wind together than to have only your hair and the back of your neck and no wind at all."

"But it is surely more comfortable there?"

"Well, perhaps; but I begin to think there are better things than being comfortable."

"Yes, indeed, there are. Well, I will keep you in front of me. You will feel the wind, but not too much. I shall only want one arm to take care of you; the other will be quite enough to sink the ship."

"Oh, dear North Wind! How can you talk so?"

"My dear boy, I never talk; I always mean what I say."

"Then you do mean to sink the ship with the other hand?"

"Yes."

"It's not like you."

"How do you know that?"

"Quite easily. Here you are taking care of a poor little boy with one arm, and there you are sinking a ship with the other. It can't be like you."

"Ah! But which is me? I can't be two me's, you know."

"No. Nobody can be two me's."

"Well, which me is me?"

"Now I must think. There looks to be two."

"Yes. That's the very point. You can't be knowing the think you don't know, can you?"

"No."

"Which me do you know?"

"The kindest, goodest, best me in the world," answered Diamond, clinging to North Wind.

"Why am I good to you?"

"I don't know."

"Have you ever done anything for me?"

"No."

"Then I must be good to you because I choose to be good to you."

"Yes."

"Why should I choose?"

"Because - because - because you like."

"Why should I like to be good to you?"

"I don't know, except it be because it's good to be good to me."

"That's just it; I am good to you because I like to be good."

"Then why shouldn't you be good to other people as well as to me?"

"That's just what I don't know. Why shouldn't I?"

"Because I am. There it is again," said Diamond. "I don't see that you are. It looks quite the other thing."

"Well, but listen to me, Diamond. You know the one me, and that is good."

"Yes."

"Do you know the other me as well?"

"No. I can't. I shouldn't like to."

"There it is. You don't know the other me. You are sure of one of them?"

"Yes."

"And you are sure there can't be two me's?"

"Yes."

"Then the me you don't know must be the same as the me you do know - else there would be two me's?"

"Yes."

"Then the other me you don't know must be as kind as the me you do know?"

"Yes."

"Besides, I tell you that it is so, only it doesn't look like it. That I confess freely. Have you anything more to object to?"

"No, no, dear North Wind; I am quite satisfied."

"Then I will tell you something you might object. You might say that the me you know if like the other me and that I am cruel all through."

"I know that can't be because you are so kind."

"But that kindness might be only a pretense for the sake being more cruel afterwards."

Diamond clung to her tighter than ever, crying: "No, no, dear North Wind; I can't believe that. I don't believe it. I won't believe it. That would kill me. I love you, and you must love me, else how did I come to love you? How could you know how to put on such a beautiful face if you did not love me and the rest? No. You may sink as many ships as you like, and I won't say another word. I can't say I shall like to see it, you know."

"That's quite another thing," said North Wind; and as she spoke, she gave one spring from the roof of the hayloft and rushed up into the clouds with Diamond on her left arm close to her heart. And as if the clouds knew she had come, they burst into a fresh jubilation of thunderous light. For a few moments, Diamond seemed to be borne up through the depths of an ocean of dazzling flame; the next, the winds were writhing around him like a storm of serpents. For they were in the midst of the clouds and mists, and they, of course took the shapes of the wind, eddying and wreathing and whirling and shooting and dashing about like grey and black water, so that it was as if the wind itself had taken shape, and he saw the grey and black wind tossing and raving most madly all about him. Now it blinded him by smiting him upon the eyes; now it deafened him by bellowing in his ears; for even when the thunder came, he knew now that it was the billows of the great ocean of the air dashing against each other in their haste to fill the hollow scooped out by the lightening; now it took his breath quite away by sucking it from his body with the speed of its rush. But he did not mind it. He only grasped first and then laughed, for the arm of North Wind was about him, and he was leaning against her bosom. It is quite impossible for me to describe what he saw. Did you ever watch a great wave shoot into a winding passage amongst rocks? If you ever did, you would see that the water rushed every way at once, some of it even turning back and opposing the rest; greater confusion you might see nowhere except in a crowd of frightened people. Well, the wind was like that, except that it went much faster, and therefore was much wilder, and twisted and shot and curled and dodged ad clashed and raved ten times more madly than anything else creation except human passions. Diamond saw the threads of the lady's hair streaking it all. In parts, indeed, he could not tell which was hair and which was black storm and vapor. It seemed sometimes that the great billows of mist-muddy wind were woven out of the crossing lines of North Wind's infinite hair, sweeping in endless intertwistings. And Diamond felt as the wind seized his hair, which his mother kept rather long, as if he, too, was a part of the storm, and some of its life went out from him. But so sheltered was he by North Wind's arm and bosom that only at times, in the fiercer onslaught of some curl-billowed eddy, did he recognize for a moment how wild was the storm in which he was carried, nestling in its very core and formative center.

It seemed to Diamond likewise that they were motionless in the center and that all the confusion and fighting went on around them. Flash after flash illuminated the fierce chaos, revealing in varied yellow and blue and grey and dusky red the vaporous contention; peal after peal of thunder tore the infinite waste; but it seemed to Diamond that North Wind and he were motionless, all but the hair. It was not so. They were sweeping with the speed of the wind itself toward the sea.

The Love of God And Doubting His Goodness

I don't believe in God's goodness towards me. It is something I want to believe in and an area of faith where I am progressively growing, but it remains true that at the core of my heart, I doubt God's goodness. It is easy for me to believe all of his other attributes and I consent rationally to his goodness, but the degree of stress, anxiety, worry, etc. that I keep around in my life shows that regardless of logical agreement and correct theology, there is a doubting disconnect between my mind and my heart.

Two weeks ago, God used some frustrating circumstances to give this disconnect a lesson. I was with friends in Siem Reap, enjoying the first delicious days of vacation and very ready to move on to the beach so I could completely unwind and let go of an exhausting semester's lingering stress. In a twist of events, though, my passport was stolen and I lost any chance to rest as I battled embassies, immigration control, crowded international buses, and sickness just to be able to return to start a new semester. The stress was almost unbearable, primarily because its roots lay in my anger that God wasn't giving me what I needed. I needed rest and he wasn't being good enough to give it to me.

As I sat on a bus from Cambodia to Bangkok, I read something in George MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind that has started to dissolve the head/heart disconnect. MacDonald tells the story of Diamond, a little boy who meets the North Wind and progresses through a series of adventures with her. North Wind is at times an allegory for God and in one particular chapter, MacDonald uses North Wind to give one of the best illustrationa of God's infinitely wild love and goodness towards us, even though it is often almost impossible for us to comprehend this kind of love.

Two keys aspects of the story stand out to me. First, being as close to North Wind as Diamond is brings pain with it. Diamond could choose to stay on the safe side of North Wind, benefiting from her and having relationship with her, but keeping a safe distance. Instead he desires to be close to the very heart of North Wind, regardless of the pain it includes. Being at the center of God's loving heart is simultaneously the best and most painful place to be. Diamond makes the statement, "I begin to think there are better things than being comfortable." Knowing God's love is a tremendously powerful thing, but there is nothing comfortable about it.

Second, it is only possible for us to doubt God's goodness when we think we have done anything for him; when we realize we have never done anything for God, that only he has done on our behalf, we can start to make sense of God's wild goodness. As North Wind holds Diamond in her arms, she sets out to sink a ship. Horrified by this, Diamond questions her goodness. He knows there can't be two North Winds, one good and one bad, so he is faced with deciding if North Wind is completely good or completely bad. Diamond admits he has never done anything for North Wind and therefore their relationship is based entirely on North Wind's goodness to him. Because of this acknowledgment everything about his relationship is based on North Winds desire to do good, Diamond has faith that sinking the ship is within North Wind's good character and they continue on their journey.

It's a difficult argument for me because at times I think I see God's goodness and at times I seem to see God's badness, for a lack of a better word. What is to keep me from deciding that God is entirely bad all the way through? When the ship is sinking in my life, why shouldn't I decide God is bad? And it can only be harder for others. It is one thing for me to flip flop back and forth on this issue because sometimes inconvenient things like stolen passports happen in my life. But what about the really bad stuff in this world? What about sex trafficking? What about people I love going to hell? What about starvation? What about earthquakes that kill thousands of people? Based on the collective experience of humanity, what is to prevent us from concluding that God is bad all the way through? Grace.

George MacDonald got it right when he highlighted grace as the evidence in our lives that God is good. If I think I have contributed anything in my relationship with God, or on the large scale, that people have contributed anything, then yes, there is enough in this world to think God is bad. But if I believe that I have not been able to give God anything, that even my best is worthless, that God is in my life simply because of his own desire to be in my life, then that is enough goodness for him to be thoroughly good. MacDonald's point is that if I accept God's grace in my life, then I also accept his goodness, even when I don't understand the sinking ships.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around all of this. No, I am trying to wrap my heart around it. I want it to transform the way I see my life and my God, so that stress and anxiety don't define me. If I lived like God was good to me, fear would have nothing to control. I want belief in God's goodness to sink down into me, deeply and completely. And it will. Just as the North Wind's billowy and blustery presence changes Diamond and leaves her mark in his life, so will God's powerful and loving presence leave its mark in my life.

One Woman's Story of Abortion And Merciless Redemption

-->

I just finished reading Chi An's A Mother's Ordeal and I couldn't recommend it more. During the first few chapters, I was bored with the typical tales of the Cultural Revolution. You can read a slew of other books, all full of horrible, dehumanizing descriptions of China's chaos. But by half way through, Chi An's tale grabbed me in the gut and I found myself waking up to an extremely personal admission of victimization and guilt unmatched by other such memoirs.

Chi An tells her story of growing up, finding a husband, and starting a family, all against the backdrop of China's population control policies. After suffering the cruel delivery of her first child and the forced abortion of her second, Chi An finds herself bitter and self-focused. Willing to do anything for the benefit of her own family and despite deeply suppressed ethical qualms, she takes charge of enforcing the One Child Policy within a local work unit. It is not until she accidentally becomes pregnant for a third time while living in the US with her husband that Chi An wrestles with her deepest longings and deepest guilt. The couple decide to fight to keep this new child alive and in the process are forced to separate all ties with their homeland.

Better than any educated argument or theological belief, Chi An's words from the heart reveal a universal longing for life and the guilt that ensues when it is prematurely ended. Growing up in a world where logical and practical arguments for abortion abound, Chi An continues to be plagued by the human desire to conceive and bare children and when in the end, she becomes complicit in the forced termination of a generation, she and her colleagues suffer from nightmares, recurring sights and sounds, and emotional torment all oriented around the "little hands" that will come after them for justice in the next life. There is no reason Chi An should suffer from guilt considering the positive environment towards abortion in which she came of age, and yet something inside her refuses to accept the actions both committed against her and by her as innocent.

What finally intrigued me most about her account lies within its closing chapters as Chi An retells her first experience with Catholicism. In a beautiful reflection on why people would worship a "dying God," Chi An simply and movingly describes the apologetics of the cross from an outside and Asian perspective. I am doubtful if Chi An took time to catch up on John Stott or Tim Keller's theology before writing down her thoughts on a couple pages (nonetheless predating Keller! ;-), and yet she sums up all of their grand arguments and thoughts through the layman's lens of a Chinese woman who has lived through hell and for the first time ponders what kind of God would be so real that no person could dream him up.

And yet, Chi An falls short of reveling in the grace that lies waiting for her. She senses that there is a vast significant meaning to Christ's death, but she cannot find what it is. Instead, she finds redemption and hope through confession and a new calling in life to set right her imbalanced scales of justice. She declares to have found redemption, but she dares not hope to have found mercy and grace.

The whole of A Mother's Ordeal is well worth reading, but if you never pick it up, at least read below. It will save you the gruesome operating table scenes, but fill you in on one woman's heart full of fear and hope. Fear of a Heavenly justice that she cannot understand and hope in the value of life that she has both betrayed and protected.

"Two hours later, after I had been moved from the recovery room to a regular hospital ward, my baby was brought to me. As Wei Xin looked on, I stretched our my arms to take her from the nurse, suddenly aware of the significance of the moment. It was for the sake of this tiny human being that I had endured so many months of long-distance blackmail and personal torment. I drew my infant daughter close to me, thankful that Wei Xin and I had chosen to defy the authorities, exulting in our triumph.

..."'You are safe now, my little 'illegal' daughter,' I whispered. 'Whatever happens now, no one can ever take you away from me.'

"By the time I returned from the hospital, the first article written by Steve about our case had appeared in Catholic Twin Circle magazine. It closed with an appeal for concerned readers to appeal the INS on our behalf. A surprising number did...

"I was moved to tears of gratitude by these letters, even as I struggled to understand what had motivated their authors to write. Why should these people, strangers all, care what happened to us and our baby? What did they hope to gain from such an act? I had grown up in a culture where only people who knew you well - kinfolk, coworkers, classmates, or close neighbors - exerted themselves on your behalf, and even they expected favors in return. And yet hundreds of Americans from across the country had taken time to petition their government on our behalf. I did not know what to make of such generosity of spirit. 'The American people have good hearts,' Wei Xin and I told Steve wonderingly.

"'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,' Steve replied. 'Americans would not like to have their government forcing them to abort their unborn children,' he added, 'so naturally they sympathize with you.'

"This 'Golden Rule,' as he told us it was called, had a familiar ring to it. The Analects of Confucius contained a similar precept: 'Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you.' But the more I reflect on the two formulations, the more I realized how different they in fact were. Confucius had merely forbidden people to wrong one another, not encouraged them to perform positive acts of charity. Living under such a rule, no wonder so many Americans had written letters on our behalf - and with no expectation of a return.

"The awareness of what others were now doing for me convicted me anew of what I had earlier done to others. Not just once but a thousand times I broken both this new rule and its Confucian variant. I had done to other women what I did not want, and had finally not allowed, to be done to myself. The horror I had hoped to leave behind me in China came back to torment me anew. What good is your regret? I sneered at my reawakened conscience. How does it help the troubled and despairing women, now forever barren, whom you tortured, aborted, and sterilized?

I abandoned myself to the care of my tiny daughter in the weeks following. Holding her in my arms, I could finally let go of the memory of the other little girl or boy who had been taken from me twelve years before. But the joy that my ‘make-up’ baby brought to me was not untempered by sorrow. She was both balm and wound, consolation and accusation, for her very presence seemed to speak to me of all those other children who were absent, who would never be. I had won my struggle to give birth, but how many hundreds of women had lost theirs? I was able to hold my daughter, but how many others would never hold theirs? What right do I have to this child, I thought bitterly, after what I have done?

“One day Wei Xin, looking rather abashed, told me that he wanted to go to church. ‘I know that we were taught by the Party that all religion is superstition, but a lot of my friends at work go, and I would like to find out what it’s all about. Besides,’ he said wryly, ‘if the Communist Party is against it, maybe we should be for it.’

“Wei Xin’s suggestion came out of the blue. There were no Christians in either of our families. My parents had been atheists, while Wei Xin’s had been Buddhists. I had been force-fed Communism, which was virtually the state religion of the People’s Republic, since I was old enough to talk. I was not about to submit myself to some new cult, however pleasant sounding its rules. I didn’t know whether the benevolent heaven of Chinese folklore existed or not, but trying to find out had never seemed to me worth the trouble. I thought Wei Xin foolish for even suggesting that we make the attempt.

“It was by appealing to my concern for Tacheng, who would be entering the sixth grade that fall, that Wei Xin convinced me to go. As far as I could tell, he was receiving no ethical instruction in the public schools at all. Teachers in China placed a heavy emphasis on learning right from wrong, even if it was confounded with Marxist ideology, but all that was missing here. Wei Xin told me that it was in America’s churches, not in her schools, that such things were taught.

“Walking through the doors of Saint Michael’s Church the following Sunday, I had a strong sense of trespassing on forbidden ground. Attending services in China was either discouraged or entirely banned. I had never before been inside any religious edifice, unless one counts the Buddhist temple I had helped a horde of fanatical Red Guards demolish during the Cultural Revolution. The only Christian church I knew of in Shenyang had been converted into a warehouse in the fifties by the government.

“I looked over the hundreds of people present with interest. Mixed in with the Anglos were Mexican Americans, Filipinos, Korean Americans, African Americans, Vietnamese, even a Chinese family or two. No one had ordered these people to come. Like Wei Xin and me, they were all here because they wanted to be. As we sat down I was struck by the realization that this was the first time I had ever taken part in a meeting not organized by the Communist Party for its own purposes. But for what purpose had these people voluntarily gathered here? To practice the Golden Rule? To improce themselves? To socialize? To adore the deity of love?

“I understood almost nothing of what followed. It hadn’t occurred to me that there would be so much chanting and singing, so much standing and kneeling, and so much invoking and summoning in a religious service. I followed as well as I was able, which was hardly at all. I caught only the odd phrase. ‘As it was in the beginning, is now…’ What was in the beginning and is now? ‘Holy, Holy, Holy.’

“I was fascinated by the painful figure on the cross that hung over the altar. Why would anyone worship a dead God, I thought to myself. Chinese god images were always robust and happy – fat, laughing Buddhas without a trace of suffering in their features, or sturdy figures of Guan Gong, a famous general whose body carried no scars from his numerous military victories. Of course they were also easy to dismiss as mere excrescences of human desires – happiness and success embodied in little wooden divinities. But the idea of a dead God was simply absurd. Surely the fact that this man had been killed proved that he wasn’t God at all. Who would want to kowtow before a defeated creature, I thought, unless he was not a mere creature at all but the Creator? But then why had he allowed himself to die? It was almost beyond belief, certainly beyond the human imagination. The wildest dreams of human beings, I was sure, could not have begun to conjure up a dead God. Perhaps there was something to all this after all.

“I remembered the hundreds of women I had forced to have abortions, how they had writhed and screamed and cried. And I remembered my own abortion, and how I had writhed and screamed and cried. If this tortured figure was God, then surely he understood the pain and suffering that I had felt and caused. Was there in his death some larger meaning?

“From the time I was a small girl, I had been eager to help others. It was for this reason that I had become a nurse. At time, I had allowed myself to be twisted by selfishness into acts that I regretted, but my one true desire was to serve, to love. How could I have gotten to be thirty-eight years old and not realized this? That I had hurt and injured others was a failure to love.

“Wei Xin and I enrolled in adult classes, Tacheng in catechism. Months later I made my first confession – and felt at peace with myself for a long time. The little hands that had been clawing at me could no longer reach me in the new place where I lived. My mind laid to rest the little-boy-who-wouldn’t-die to his rest. From now on the only baby’s cries that would wake in the night were those of my newborn daughter.

“I was forgiven, but justice demanded that I do more. I would spend the rest of my life doing good to others – a goal I happily adopted, for it corresponded to my own deepest wishes. I did not know which way the scales of justice would tip when I had completed the course; I would only try to weight them in favor of mercy. In caring for others, I would be atoning for my past crimes. But how could I help women still in China? I resolved to begin by telling my story to Steve, however painful that might be, so that he might write it.”

More Thoughts from Real Christianity

"Knowing that the journey of faith will not be easy, they do not become discouraged when difficulties come. Knowing an adversary will oppose their efforts, they are not surprised or unprepared when the enemy attacks. As they set out on their way, they expect the early going to be difficult, but they know that the end of the journey will be great.

It is not without merit that those who pursue authentic faith in this manner are called pilgrims and strangers. A pilgrim is one who is on a journey. When the journey transcends his normal borders, he becomes a stranger. He is like a businessman who is sent into a new territory with the task of executing his job with diligence and tenacity and then returns home as soon as possible. Whatever pleasures he enjoys along the way, he enjoys with moderation. He is thankful when the weather is pleasant but is not diverted from his task when storms come.

He is a traveler. He expects the unexpected. But as he travels, he knows he traveling to 'a better country' (Heb. 11:16). He can observe the practices of this strange land and associate with its inhabitants. He even attempts to speak their language and where appropriate adopt their fashions, but he makes sure that he is not sidetracked or delayed along the way from accomplishing what his master has sent him to accomplish. He has business to which he must attend. He knows there will be temptations and distractions. He knows the enemy wants to delay and derail his advancement. This means that he must maintain his focus and direction. To make sure he is on the right track, he needs periodically to stop and take stock. Is he traveling in the right direction? Has he become distracted? Often he has the sense that he is making good progress. At other times he feels as if he is getting nowhere. All the passions of life are experienced along the way.

...This is no dreary duty! This is challenge and excitement. This is the ultimate adventure. This is what life was meant to be."

Thoughts from Wilberforce's Real Christianity

"What is good in only a matter of opinion in secular society. Using society's own standards of goodness, careful observation of the bigger picture of the bigger picture may reveal that a particular good has been outweighed by general evil. When a society defines its own morality and then applies it to itself, that society can justify its own serious breaches of character. It is able to lower the standard to the detriment of all.

Even in the best of cases, the fundamental problem still exists that the motivation for life is still man-centered instead of God-centered. Goodness is no substitute for devotion. In its culturally defined forms, goodness can exist where love of God and passion for His glory do not."

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."

Thoughts On Mary During Advent

During my senior year of college, I was researching early 20th century feminist philosophy and struggling deeply with God's design of the sexes. I had not intended to find myself in such a quagmire; rather, I started the research project with the intention of better understanding feminism's roots in order to better refute it. And yet, by Christmas break I was fighting against bitterness and questioning what role womanhood played in God's eternal plan. It's a typical question among women who start to think through these things, but I couldn't escape wondering why God seemed so male-centered. He revealed Himself in terms of the male gender, He created Adam first, He gave headship to the male half our race, and when He came to be one of us, He entered the flesh of a man. None of these issues shook my faith in God for redemption, but I just could not help ask... why? Was there any way God acknowledged my sex as important to His plan, or were we just along for the ride, to sit and watch God's grace unfold from the sidelines?

About the time these questions were the most pressing, I happened to go see The Nativity Story. I had no big desire to see it originally, but went along with my family for some holiday entertainment. It is beautiful how God often uses the unexpected to answer some of our deepest questions. The movie was beautiful, but what struck me most was the harshness it displayed. In particular, watching the birth scene clicked with me. Watching Mary scream as her body is ripped by the Child leaving her to enter the world on a mission of redemption started to awaken in me the idea that the nativity is evidence of God's deep love and commitment to both genders in His eternal plan. I didn't continue exploring the thought at the time, but it gave me enough peace with the issue to finish out my senior thesis with peace and confidence in who I am as a woman.

Today, though, I was looking through an art book and being drawn to the Medieval section, I was reminded again of the nativity as a sign of God's value for both sexes. The Gothic Catholic paintings depict an importance in Mary that we Protestants have missed for centuries. Mary was not a deity, neither was she purer than any other human under the sun. But Mary was an integral and crucial part of God's plan for redemption and the ripping of her body foreshadows the ripping of Christ's body for the sake of humanity.

Not to be taken lightly (particularly in the ancient world), giving birth is a bloody, brutal, and beastly sacrifice of one body for another. If women feel undervalued in the redemptive plan, it is because we have not recognized in Mary the inclusion of womanhood by God. The male gender was acknowledged for redemption when Christ used a man's body for the work of atonement on the cross. The female gender was used for redemption when Christ submitted Himself to the blood and screams of birth.


Our visual culture misleads us concerning womanhood, particularly at Christmas. Birth is not quiet and peaceful. Mary was no gentle angel. The problem of the Medievals was not that they liked to paint Mary and the Christ child. Their problem lay in failing to recognize the true significance of her story. No wonder woman's role in God's plan has been lost - they took the nativity story and cleaned it up to be decorative art. A true understanding of the nativity would have produced terrible scenes of placenta and umbilical cords, blood and sweet, tears and pain. We would think of the nativity as gruesomely as we think of the crucifixion. And we would be inspired to worship the true and living God for the splendor of His will.

The story of the nativity in its true meaning points us to the cross. In these two events, Christ's earthly life began and concluded, and both were marked by bodily suffering. In Christ, God reconciled both sexes of a fallen race to Himself and declared grace and mercy for those who seek Him. There is peace between God and humanity, and as a result, between man and woman. And at the end of time, we will both be resurrected, our bodies complete and renewed. The story of redemption is a story of wholeness and one where God forgets none of his creation in the drama.

The Christian community fears feminism, and rightly so, but I believe some of feminism's roots stem from the same questions I dealt with during my senior year. A history of misrepresentation and misunderstanding of Mary's role in God's redemptive story has played a disastrous role in the church to the point where we see her either deified or forgotten. If only recognized God's use of her as similar to crucial male figures (such as Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, Paul, etc.), maybe modern women would have a better understanding of their status as God's daughters whom He chooses to use. I don't know if the makers of The Nativity Story share any of these thoughts, or if anyone else was as struck by it, but I am extremely grateful that the movie dignified Mary with a painful birthing scene and recognized (perhaps unwittingly) that woman's greatest moment was being included in the redemptive story so intimately that God would submit Himself to her bloody body.

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"

Fruit Stand Reality Check

I went to buy some apples from my regular fruit stand this afternoon and starting thinking about the physical difficulties I am facing here in Asia. My fruit seller has lazy eyes and decaying ears and I buy his fruit not because it is the best, but rather because the man stirs up compassion within me. I don't know what causes it or if it's really as bad as I think, but the edges of his ears are often black and wilting.

My heart often breaks as I think about the physical conditions of those living around me, but today I realized I am not too different from them. The harsh environment of this city created by both natural factors and the falleness of man is taking a toll on all of us whether it is my lungs, the fruit sellers ears, the grandma with no teeth bent over double, or the student with gray hairs. The lives of this city's citizens mirror the buildings surrounding them as they crumble under acid rain even as they are built.

My body often hurts here, but today's trip to the fruit stand was the beginning of peace and maybe even pride in the pain. I am starting to say, "It's ok" and bow my head because how can I expect to be different from the people I live with? They are in pain, too. Afterall, their ears decay. If the people I live with suffer, why shouldn't I? Of course I long for healing and am seeking medical assistance, but my soul is realizing that suffering alongside the residents of this crumbling city increases my love and pity for them.

Two months ago, I was convicted to pursue further indigenization and maybe this is it. I don't want to presume anything, but just maybe this is how my Father wants me to identify with this corner of the world.

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.

A Prayer

My heartstrings are trying to tie themselves to the things which are passing. I find peace only when they are tied to you. Cut them free from the entanglement into which I've let them fall and hold them tightly in your hand.

A Prayer

Please be the all to my soul.
Let me love not out of my need,
but rather from your plenty.