Leaving China

Everyone says that it's harder for the ones staying, but as I begin to commit to this process of leaving I find that I disagree. Though, maybe it's just me. I tend to be an outlier. 

I look at the China-world around me and think of how little I know about this people, their culture, and their language and my soul hurts. My eyes begin to fill with tears. How can I leave when there is so much yet to learn?!

I walk up the main staircase as school is about to start and I am embraced by third-graders who were in my first Tianjin kindergarten class. They want me to email them so we can plan times to get together and have a reunion. How can I leave?! How can I choose to miss out on their continued growth and development?!!

I sit on the blue, square carpet in the middle of my Douglas Fir Foundation classroom and am sat on, sneezed on, hugged, squeezed, poked, and prodded. I wipe tears, blow noses, and help children learn to communicate and share. I have taught them how to say, "I love you," in American Sign Language, and we often blow kisses to one another. How can I leave these people behind?!

I go to the cafeteria at school to meet with high school students. As I go, I pass by old fifth-grade students who are now middle schoolers. We're getting together in a couple Fridays. They want to know if I am coming to the middle school club this Friday to celebrate a birthday. I get to the cafeteria and meet with high schoolers wanting to go to Cambodia this year and maybe next year. Some high schoolers want to meet just to chat. And I am leaving these relationships behind?!

I sit in my living room, holding the hands of Chinese friends with whom I have prayed, studied the Bible, loved, and learned. They have invited me to their homes and they have come to mine. We can't always understand what we are saying to one another, but our souls are united. How can I leave this special group of people?

Text messages, emails, Skype messages, and WeiXin messages come to me from friends I have made through various English corners. They want to know where I have gone, when we'll have another party, and how we can get together again. These are the people who have shown me another side to China. Students, business people, parents, young adults. How can I leave behind these opportunities to learn and know more?

Either way you look at it, staying or going, it is tough to say goodbye.

Time to Speak

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3113/2656383155_29ffb77685_z.jpg

Today I went to Kettering to see a friend. We drove around Dayton looking for some Thai food. I observed the downtown Dayton businesses in a way I have not seen them before.

When we got out of the car to see if the restaurant was open, I noticed that the neighborhood was littered with girlie bars, strip clubs, and adult shops. I have seen those before and have felt disgusted, but today I felt more than disgust, I felt sorrow.

I felt sorrow because I saw them as possible businesses of sex traffickers. Women's faces came to my mind and I saw people who are scared, abused, and do not realize what love is. I saw men who are not controlled, who think they're just having fun. I saw other men who understand what they're doing and want more. More money, more power, more success. Today my heart was saddened in a way it has not been at the sight of downtown "night life". Praise the Lord, today He has grown my heart.

What to do, what to do?

Just take a step...and more will follow.

It is time to act - with words.

How can that be enough? How can that matter?

Will any of this make a difference?
Is that mine to decide?

Hmmm....
Nope. I guess it's not mine to decide.
It is my opportunity to cause an effect in whatever way the Lord would choose to use and direct it.

May He be glorified and may people know His love.

Cambodia -- My Hypocrisy?

Written while I was there. Published now.

I sit here, on a couch, in a foreigners’ hotel, next to the Mekong River in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I’m supposed to be writing the plan for my Bible lesson for the kids in a “suburban village” we are going to this evening after church. My stomach is feeling a bit uncomfortable. I stop to write this “reflective essay” because I find that I am faced with a choice. I could stand up, go to the fridge, and eat. I could relieve my small hunger pains, return to my computer screen, notebook, and Bible, and continue writing words of encouragement for the children in this factory village. But, isn’t that hypocritical?

When their stomachs feel uncomfortable, whether it is because of hunger pangs or those other, sickly reasons, are they able to immediately rise up, go across the room (which they don’t have) and pull out some leftover food that is just waiting to be consumed? If hunger is not the source of their pain, can they easily get up and go to the toilet? Go get medicine from the cabinet? Have their parents drive them to the doctor?

No.

Isn’t my ease of being full and overfilled a type of hypocrisy?

This stance may not be true for the world, but the conviction is true for me. For at least three years I have been thinking about Matthew 5 and the hungry who will be filled in heaven, the mournful who will find their joy in heaven, and those of us who have lived happy, full-stomached lives who will still – get as much reward for our life trials and choices as those who have experienced real starvation and life destruction?! 

Based on Matthew 5, I think I won’t. 

(WARNING! CAUTION!! Does this come from a mind that fights to go back to earning the approval of God? –Yes. And yet, I will continue to build a case for my point.)

It is true, I will know greater joy and fullness in the eternal presence of Jesus, but will I know it to the same depth of sweetness as those who have hungered and mourned to great depths of starvation and sorrow? I actually think not. How can I? I have chosen and been filled with the immediate pleasures of this world rather than denying myself and waiting for eternity. (Biblical? The other side: I am welcomed to enjoy the blessings of the Lord because He has chosen to bestow them upon me, thus far, while I live on this earth.) 

Perhaps this is the true point of God’s conviction upon my soul: have I been sharing His blessings appropriately?

I will say it clearly so there is no confusion: There is nothing inherently wrong with earthly wealth, but what does the accumulation of wealth reveal about my heart?

Where my treasure is there my heart will be also.

And so, I sit here with my conundrum. I am, I think, legitimately hungry. It would be no sin for me to go to the fridge to get something to eat. The food is there and already purchased. We will be eating it anyways. But, where does this pattern of the “necessity of comfort” end? If the Lord has convicted my soul, then I must choose to take steps to change. When do I start to take those steps? How do I keep those steps in a consistent manner?

Suddenly, I am aware of the time.

I need to go finish writing my Bible lesson about Matthew 8 – the leper and Jesus.

With such ease my conundrum of hypocrisy continues. I will put off eating my breakfast for a few more minutes, a short-term way to placate the wrestlings of my heart.

Cambodian Reflections - Part 1

Written three days ago with the intention of being posted sooner.

We made it to the beach. The crashing waves are exciting each of our souls, and we are thankful.

We came in around 4 on Saturday afternoon, checked in to our rooms, and headed to the hotel's beachfront restaurant. (We're not in Phnom Penh anymore.) After eating our food, self-restraint was no longer a virtue. We ran up and down the shore, frolicking in the delights of God's creation until, at last, we jumped in to experience the power of the crashing waves against our bodies. A delight and a half.

As we played, our thoughts continued to drift back to the reality of the power of God. God sat as King at the Flood and He sits enthroned forever. The disciples were shocked when they witnessed how even the wind and the waves obeyed His voice. To Him belong glory, honor, majesty, and power. The twenty-four elders and the four eye-covered creatures recognize this with continuous exaltation. His power is great and greatly to be praised.

The day before we left for the beach we went to an NGO-established House of Prayer. Hallelujah and amen! It's a cool place. On the first floor they have a restaurant that makes and sells scrumptious delights. When you have finished sampling their wares, you walk up the stairs to the section designed to be the House of Prayer. On the second floor they have set up different stations to help you pray and worship through creative outlets. There's a photograph station, writing station, painting station, music station, couches, pillows, books on prayer and spiritual warfare, and huge windows to look out and see the people on the street.  It is great.

Halfway through our time there a man came to guide the music and intercession for those involved in sex trafficking. Another group joined at this time. We sang and prayed together, united in the hope of what can be accomplished through the power of the Gospel. After all, what other authority can break through the chains imprisoning the hearts of the men, women, and children in Cambodia? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

In light of this, how much more diligently and purposefully should His children be interceding for those who have not yet risen from the dead? How much more should those who are apart of His Body pray for those already inside His Body as well as for those who are ceaselessly working for the souls and people in Cambodia?

We love to play in the crashing waves. I think it's so thrilling because I have the opportunity to wrestle with power. I want to see if I can stand up against the energy of the wave. Can I harness its power and ride it to the shore? Will it throw me to the ground? Will it lift me to the heights? There’s joy in the danger.

If the power we see in the waves is such a small glimpse of the actual power the God of the universe possesses, how much more should we then choose to go before His throne and intercede for others? All our efforts without His power are as nothing, but through and in His power they can accomplish everything.

As CS Lewis said in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, "He is not a tame lion.” Our God does not have power or majesty that can be tamed. There is risk in that reality. Will we choose to sit outside and question, or will we jump in by faith and trust that whatever He may choose it is for our good and His glory? We have the opportunity to sit outside His power and watch how He works, because He will work without us. But, if we step in to participate with Him in and through prayer we have the delight of experiencing the working power of our Creator for the benefit of ourselves, our local fellowships, the Cambodian church, as well as the Global Body.

May we choose to jump in and allow the power of the waves of His work rush over us -- and those for whom we pray.

Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish.

Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous.

The Lord watches over the sojourners; He upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked He brings to ruin.

The Lord will reign forever, your God, O Zion, to all generations.

Praise the Lord!

Psalm 146:3-10

Disgusted in the Deception

But groups that would normally defend late term abortions said that is not what they consider the Gosnell case to be about. These groups consider the trial to be about illegal abortions performed under dangerous circumstances.

"The fact that he wasn't providing care later and wasn't ensuring fetal demise and not operating under any established standards of care and outside of the law is the problem in this case, and not indicative of the high quality care available across the country," Saporta said.

"This is why we have to keep abortion practices available as medical procedures, so that they are safe and legal between a woman and her doctor," Hague said. 

Article Here

Yeah. After all, this is why Holland wanted to legalize prostitution. It's going to be done, so let's keep it "safe and legal" between the brothel and its men. We see the good that has done, right?

Sure.

We find that women are valued in the red-light district, true?
Lives are held in high regard and women are compensated fairly.
They feel strong and empowered, right?

Sure.

Just ask their government officials about the rise in crime.
Ask the ladies how they got to that brothel and how they feel about their current type of employment.

What a ridiculous twist of events.

What a sweeping away of the horrors committed by a "doctor." 

I also enjoy how we use the word "care" now.
You know I care because I will kill you.
Old, young, just as long as you are feeble.

Care for whom?

The lady will be left with shattered pieces of life and emotions.
The baby will be dead.
And the doctor will be waiting for the unrealized consequences.

What is life?
We don't know, but we know we have power to control it.

...As long as we twist and deceive the masses, of course...

(And shall I do this?! I shall. The link I was questioning, I link to: Pro-Life Home)

Love Poured Out

It seems as if I could be plagiarizing, but I am not sure what song. Oops.

Oh great God, matchless King;

Ruler over everything.

We give our hearts and our lives;

Let us dwell in Your sacrifice.

Living God, consume our souls,

Let us not our love withhold.

Focus our gaze; enlarge our hearts;

Faithful One, You will not depart.

You have come and set us free

And we’ll always dwell with thee.

You took our sin and our shame;

You are coming back again.

Hallelujah, hallelujah sin is gone and Christ’s alive!

Hallelujah, hallelujah to the One who reigns on high.

Gone Away

Grown Up and Gone

Away

I do not know how to

love.

The ones I loved have gone.

And now love is no more.

How rapidly time has

flown.

If only I had known this day would come.

It came far quicker than I could judge.

And now love is no more

The ones I loved have

          gone.