Here is a blurb from the blog post "My New Year's Resolution" by Motte Brown:
As you reflect on the goals achieved in 2007 and consider the ones you'll set for 2008, remember God's providence in your life. God has allowed you to see his hand move so that you'll be encouraged in times of trials and humbled in times of plenty.
Here are excerpts from the article Silent Night, Lonely Night by Carolyn McCulley:
Christmas often staggers under the weight of human emotion and expectation — just as it has from the very start.
From a human perspective, the first "Christmas," so to speak, was simultaneously crowded and lonely. Dispirited Jews shuffled around the region, required to be part of a new, universal Roman census for possibly the first time. (Previously Palestine had been excluded from the Roman census because Jews were exempt from serving in the Roman army.) Among those sojourners was a young couple with a whiff of scandal about them.
Despite her advanced pregnancy, Mary and Joseph traversed 70 miles of difficult, mountainous terrain to be counted and most likely taxed. Her questionable pregnancy may have deprived Mary of the friendship of other women back in Nazareth, but there in Bethlehem, it's very likely she gave birth without the usual crowd of womenfolk there to support her and rejoice with her at the birth of a son. And then, because there was no room at the inn, Mary placed her son in a manger.
Lowly shepherds — excluded from society because their work was dirty and it prevented them from participating in the religious activities of the community — and stargazing pagans from the East were the only people who seemed to note the birth of Jesus. Scripture does not record that any other human beings noticed or celebrated.[...]
At that moment, Mary was experiencing a fulfillment of her cousin's blessing: "Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!" (Luke 1:45). Elizabeth, who bore the reproach of barrenness for so many years, was the one to utter this blessing to her younger cousin with the mysterious pregnancy. As she spoke those words, an elderly widow named Anna who was waiting in the temple in Jerusalem and praying for the redemption of Israel. Three women at different seasons of life but each trusting God for His timetable in the midst of their grief, loneliness, and trials — the weight of human emotion.
The day Jesus was born, many Jews were eagerly expecting a messiah to come one day. Their expectation was for political deliverance, not deliverance from sin. They thought their biggest problem was Rome and thus their solution was an earthly king.
Just like today, expectation and emotion ruled the day. And just like the day Jesus was born, there is a true perspective from heaven that transcends our own parochial outlook. [...]
What I love about this song is that I'm reminded of the one event that can bear up under the weight of human emotion and expectation. [...]
No matter how lonely Christmas feels to any of us this year, we know someone who has endured far more loneliness than we ever will — and He did it to rescue us. [...] in physical misery and torturous pain, Jesus cried out from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" His loneliness we will never know, but His joy we do know in part now and will know even more in the new heavens and new earth.
Wow. "Mystery", on Selah's Christmas album, is amazing (mostly)! I'm currently listening to it on repeat. :) I'd love to listen to a live adaptation sung by a choir singing out from their hearts and with instruments played with power...I'd love to just lay there and listen to a live rendition...anyway, give it a listen!
Here are the lyrics (I know He wasn't necessarily born on Christmas Day, but, His birth is celebrated this season...) :
A child was born on Christmas Day
Born to save the world
But long before the world began
He knew His death was sure
The pain and strife secured
Mystery, how He came
To be a man
But greater still
How His death was in His plan
God predestined that His Son would die
And He still created man
Oh, what love is this
That His death was in His hands
The Christmas trees
They glow so bright
With presents all around
But Christmas brought
A tree of life
With blood that sacrificed
The greatest gift in life
Chorus
I am just a man and
Can't begin to comprehend
When You look into this traitor's eyes
What do You see that justifies the Lamb
God predestined that His
Son would die
And He still created man
Oh, what love is this
That His death was in His plan
Mystery, mystery
Well, currently my cat is a little on edge and obsessed with the ceiling. A little whimpering on her part. And you know what? There's nothing she needs to fear or be consumed with. She sometimes gets obsessed with it, though.
Life application. We don't need to always need to be bothered about things we don't need to be bothered by :)
Hush, Selah, just relax...
From Piper's "Let the nations be glad!: the supremacy of God in missions":
But worship is also the fuel of missions. Passion for God in worship precedes the offer of God in preaching. You can't commend what you don't cherish. Missionaries will never call out, 'Let the nations be glad!", who cannot say from the heart, "I rejoice in the Lord....I will be glad and exult in thee, I will sing praise to thy name, O Most High" (Psalm 104:34; 9:2). Missions begins and ends in worship.***
Even outsiders feel the disparity between the boldness of our claim upon the nations and the blandness of our engagement with God.
It is possible to be distracted from God in trying to serve God. Martha-like, we neglect the one thing needful [...]
Simply...wow. A sobering reminder of the atrocities many of us know little about. This book details the account of the thoughts and experiences of a child solider, as well as life before and after his experience as a soldier, in Sierra Leone...
Thoughts:
Ishmael's thoughts seemed to be a haunting fear he tried to escape or avoid. Drugs, brainwashing, revengeful anger, and survival seemed to be a motivation for becoming a child soldier. After the war, the process of rehabilitation for the child soliders included violent outbreaks. They would be told that their bad post-war behavior wasn't their fault. They were treated kindly in the rehabilitation process. I am reminded of my dad, even though his situation was of course different. I thought I heard he had a hard time after coming back from Vietnam. Probably there are a lot of people who after coming back from war are traumatized in ways that their loved ones and associates know little to nothing about. When Ishmael went for an interview somewhere, he was unfamiliar with the operation of an elevator. What aspects of daily life might be hard for refugees to adjust to? What sorts of images, memories, and thoughts might haunt their minds?
In the moment of obedience, the fruitful end cannot always be seen. Abram left Haran to follow God out of faith in Him. As God promised Abram blessing, so He promises us blessings. But faithful obedience can be tough. Yet the beauty in trials is that through them faith "may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed" (1 Peter 1:7b). If our faith leads to qualities of obedience, we will not be entirely ineffective.
From 2 Peter 1:
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ
Here are some excerpts from Helicopter Seeds, by George Halitzka:
I listened a lot and tried bring God into the discussions.**********************
Even now, those moments of conversation sparkle like a firework in my mind. I went home feeling I'd "made a difference." But they were so brief: a bright flash for 20 minutes on a single day; fizzling like a spent sparkler and even now probably gone from the teens' memories.
[...] I have nothing to show for those moments except bittersweet memories of young wounded souls from Cleveland. Did I accomplish anything on the Saturdays I sacrificed?
Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless, proclaims the Philosopher. A chasing after the wind.
But what did that mean: that I entertained him or God worked in his life?**********************
[...] Perhaps it's ultimately not about the lone teenager in the room who might change or the shards of meaning I'm trying to find in life. Perhaps what I do is an offering to the God who made every moment and places me inside the ones He chooses. Perhaps it's wrong to seek "results." But doesn't the Bible say to look for "fruit" from ministry?
Perhaps it's all a chasing after the wind.
[...]in this moment the Helicopter Seeds are so, so beautiful.*************
Perhaps it doesn't matter that so many will never grow. Perhaps it is enough to see them fulfill a divine purpose. Perhaps the beauty is enough to make this breathless moment is its own reward. I even dare to imagine that maybe the seeds fall so I, and the God who made them, can be lost in childlike wonder again.
Or perhaps ... they fall for nothing. But as I reluctantly turn from the edge of beauty and walk towards my car, I try not to believe that.
I gave you a land on which you had not labored and cities that you had not built, and you dwell in them. You eat the fruit of vineyards and olive orchards that you did not plant.'
"Now therefore fear the LORD and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD."
Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
In regard to the idea of the "us vs. them" mentality in service, I found the following written here:
I believe the best remedy for "us vs. them" is in Jesus' words from John 15 in The Book: "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my father I have made known to you".
"Us vs. Them" employs hierarchal boundaries of master/servant, daddy/son, king/subject, etc. These are all necessary relationships in one aspect of society or another. But being friends eliminates hierarchies. If two people are truly friends, than one is not higher than the other. [...]
I have found that friendship (ie: relational model) with the poor is the best means of ministry. It not only brings a greater trust between us and them, but those expected to "minister" can also be "ministered to". We're all sinners and ain't none of us got it all figured out in life.
I have learned far more lessons from my "poor" friends and have received from them far more than anything I have given them.
Traveling is much more than sightseeing; it encompasses interactions, experiences, and life lessons learned. It's life...wherever you happen to be. In January of 2004, when I was about a year and a half into my first two years in Japan, I wrote:
One thing that I am grateful for is receiving the small kindnesses from those around me. For example, working in the small bakery near my apartment is an elderly lady who through the glass acknowledges my passing by with a friendly nod or wave. At the elementary school, the nurse whose desk is next to mine gives me gifts such as おにぎり (onigiri -- rice balls) and small trinkets. A few of the other teachers at the schools where I work have also been kind to me. I have gone out to lunch with some of the teachers before. I am pretty conscious of receiving the gestures of kindness from those around me in Japan. Not everyone around me is the friendliest sort of person, but, I do notice the friendly ones. Throughout my life, I should try to become increasingly aware and appreciative of others' kindness.
Here are some tidbits from the article "Unhappy? Self-Critical? Maybe You’re Just a Perfectionist":
but also suggest that perfectionism is a valuable lens through which to understand a variety of seemingly unrelated mental difficulties, from depression to compulsive behavior to addiction.
Unlike people given psychiatric labels, however, perfectionists neither battle stigma nor consider themselves to be somehow dysfunctional.
Ms. Provost said those in her program at U.C. Davis often displayed symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder — another risk for perfectionists. They couldn’t bear a messy desk. They found it nearly impossible to leave a job half-done, to do the next day. Some put in ludicrously long hours redoing tasks, chasing an ideal only they could see.
The British have a saying that encourages people to show their skills while mocking the universal fear of failure: Do your worst.
If you can’t tolerate your worst, at least once in a while, how true to yourself can you be?
Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease
Note. It can be noticeable when people take an interest in someone's life. Tonight I gave a ride home to a co-worker, and she asked me about Malaysia (perhaps specifically). Interesting. I told her about how I felt Cameron Highlands was one of the most beautiful places, and about an interaction we had interacting with a random family on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I told her about this picture you can see in this blogpost. A picture of diversity. I told her about how a picture was taken of a Muslim woman and I, and that I was supposed to send a copy to her (or was I supposed to write to her?) but never did. I could have told her about how my travelmates and I had followed an Asli man to his home in a jungle.
Most people don't ask me about my past travels. Perhaps they don't all know. It's possible I may be asked about Japan from time to time. It seems to be common for people to not actively take an interest in asking about people's travel stories or in seeing pictures. My co-worker went on to tell me about how she hosted a couple of parties so that she could share about Japan. The attendance was low at one. But she mentioned that someone asked about how her parties went, or something, and then told her that she (my co-worker) had asked to see her pictures when coming back from somewhere. I think something about this experience made her understand the power of words.
Might be a good thing that I'm not often asked to share stories, though, because I don't have a story-teller's heart, as you might be able to tell by my insecure parenthetical insertions and style of writing. I'd do better if I felt free to adlib.
Into Thy Word "The cheat sheet"
-> This article contains tips for studying the Bible inductively
