Alone with my father

This is my first post after my father's death.

About 4 weeks ago I woke up early because it was a beautiful day.  Winter had given way to spring and I wanted to embrace the new warm weather by spending some time getting healthier, so I went for a jog.  In the middle of my run I got a message from my brother that said "I need to talk to you".

Any time someone needs to talk to you it can be scary, but my brother has been going through some difficult things in his own right, so I thought I had a good idea of what he needed to talk about.  I didn't.

I finished my jog and then called my brother back once I got home. I'm glad I was at home with my wife when he answered the phone.  Thank God for blessings like that. Yukari started crying while I was still trying to understand the words my brother said.  It's amazing how slowly and quickly your mind can work at times. When my mind did start working again I could only think about one thing: I needed to get home.

The rest of the day was a whirlwind of buying plane tickets, getting my newborn daughter a passport, packing clothes, calling students and friends, cancelling appointments and trying to get home as quickly as I could.  I've been so thankful for my wife and her family and for their generosity to me and their gracious acceptance into their family under a difficult situation for a long time, but I've never been more thankful for the family I married into than in those hours before Yukari, Rina and I were able to board the airplane home.  While I can't often speak to my new family (because I'm not very good at speaking Japanese and they aren't very good at English) I learned in an indescribable way that love surpasses language.  Sitting next to my father-in-law as he drove us to the American Embassy, back to our apartment, to the airport (for a flight we all knew we wouldn't be able to make), back to our apartment and then to the airport again the next day, just sitting and not saying anything was one of the most overwhelming displays of love I've ever received.  I hope that one day I can express just how much those moments meant to me.  If not in words, then in some other way.

We made it to Tennessee safely.  I was more stressed than I knew and said some hurtful things to the people I love.  I didn't do well in the situation and for that I'm really, truly sorry.  My wife saw my father in person for the first time in the funeral home. She said some very kind words to him and left us alone.

The rest of the week was a beautiful time with family, friends, and a multitude of people from a variety of backgrounds who were impacted by my father during his life.  His memorial service was deemed a "Celebration of Life" and for many of the people who went, it was a celebration.  For me it felt different, from the moment my wife left me alone in that funeral home my thoughts have centered on how much I've failed.

When I saw those hundreds (literally hundreds) of people who came from all over Tennessee to that small church to remember my dad and how much he loved them I thought about how I failed in understanding my father's love.

I thought about my plans to move back to Tennessee after my parents retired.  I thought about my own foolishness in planning to use my daughter to make my dad proud of me.

I thought about all of the ways I was different than what I thought my father wanted from me.  I've been thinking a lot about the ways I've failed.  A lot of people have been asking me how I am and if I'm okay, and what I want to express is a deep sense of hope, the hope that comes from believing in a God that is the author of life and gives life eternal, and a hope that comes from knowing that I'm not alone in my failures, that I'm following in the precedence of almost every biblical figure apart from Christ.  I want to show that I know these things to be true, but I also don't want to hide that what I'm experiencing now is definitely more on the spectrum of sad than happy.  I have a deep, enduring hope and trust, but the surface, the moment to moment, is an enduring sadness, a feeling of loss and regret.  While I don't feel helpless, I don't exactly feel "alright" either.  I wanted to write a message about dealing with my failures by looking at biblical examples, (I was thinking about Jacob and the way he disappointed his father in comparison to his brother; David who dealt with a deep depression in his failures to live righteously and meet the expectations of his heavenly father, and the prodigal son who experienced the joy of acceptance even though he expected rejection by his father) but even as I prepare that message for my church family, it's not the message I want to put here.  It would end up being more pedantic than honest and what I want to show here isn't as clean as all that.  I know the stories, and I know the theology, but some (if not most) problems and some sadnesses aren't erased by a lecture or a bible study lesson.

It's fitting that I would see myself as Jacob in my relationship to my father, because now I feel like I could use a real good wrestling match.

Being a follower of Christ means believing in a message of eternal hope.  The promise of life and life eternal was a central theme in Christ's message.  Usually my image of "hope" is a happy one.  Maybe it's because most of my struggles have originated internally, and this is such a different kind of difficult situation, but I'm seeing that a hopeful person isn't always a happy person.  So this is me, hopefully trudging through my failures, with both my fathers.

So pray for me.

TL;DR I'm a daddy

For those of you who have tried to keep up with my life and have wanted to be invested in me, but haven't been able to because of my extended absence from being intimate in a social setting, I apologize.  I have been blessed with many amazing people in my life and know a lot of loving and caring people, and like Neil Young, I plan to thank you each individually one of these days.   I'm sorry it's been more than a year since I've published anything on here.  One day I'll write down the stories from the last year.

As for today, I'm going to do my best to focus on one idea that has been resonating strongly with me over the last 6-10 months and I'll do my best to give you guys an idea of how I've been living; struggles, and successes.  I've been thinking a lot about the relationship of self control and self discipline.

If you've been keeping up with my Facebook statuses, you might have noticed that on November 1, I married a wonderful, strong, beautifully effervescent yet refreshingly practical, woman (well, maybe you wouldn't have known those things just from looking on Facebook) but if you've been paying REALLY close attention, (I see you, you creepers), you would know that last week, on January 3rd, my wife and I had our first baby.  Her name is Rina Jasmin and she is the most beautiful thing I have ever laid eyes on.  She has completely stolen my heart and I am beginning to understand some of what it really means to love, to know what The Father's love really means.  Her birth has for me, as I'm sure the birth of one's firstborn usually affects a person, surfaced a lot of doubts, fears, worries and weaknesses.  I am terrified of what is coming next, and part of it is because of my struggle with self-control and self discipline.

You don't have to be very good at math or physiology to realize that from November to January is definitely NOT enough time to complete a full gestation period.  That's because, obviously, my wife and I conceived Rina about 7 months before we were married.  Until that time I had remained committed to abstaining from sex, so why the change?  Where did the change come from?  It's hard to fully explain why we made the decision we did, but part of it comes from this idea of the relationship between self control and self discipline.

One of my favorite verses in the bible is 2 Tim 1:7 (to which I've just supplied the links for the ESV and NIV versions) which says that we have a spirit of self discipline, or depending on the version, self control.  For a long time I've been reciting verses I've memorized to myself without dwelling on the meanings.  Using the memory of a time when I understood better what the words meant to help me guide myself so that I don't have to wait patiently, listening.  In the same letter Paul wrote to Timothy that scripture is "God-breathed".  If I believe that God is a living God, that his breath provides life, then it falls to logic that his words are not only living, but life-giving.  By reciting a verse that comforted me without engaging with the spirit that offers understanding, I wandered away from an understanding that surpasses language, and I was limited to the words I told myself over and over again.  Effectively, I was using the bible to escape from God.

Self control vs Self Discipline

In my struggle to obtain a lazy sort of righteousness (That is doing good things separated from searching the the spirit of God) I tend to understand this verse as saying that I have a spirit of self control.  I can control my life, my thoughts and fears; I can decide the direction of my life and I can determine where I go and whether I do or do not have sex.  Self control bound by the language through which I understood (understand) the word is a demonstration of my personal power.  This understanding, however, flies in the face of one of the basic tenements of Christianity (Reformed Christianity).

Self discipline, however, is a little different, in my understanding of the language.  To me, Self discipline suggests another party's involvement, and in the case of the Christian, I believe that self discipline is not discipline that is conducted on oneself (like the priests who would abuse themselves) but rather is the acceptance of God's discipline and direction in our lives.  Instead of trying to control my desires, trying to control the course of my life like I would if I were seeking self-control (self righteousness) I step aside and let God's discipline guide my decisions.

Last year I traded self discipline for self control, and in my attempts to determine the direction of my life God gave me a reminder of how little I can control.  I honestly and earnestly believe that my daughter was a gift from the almighty.  Before we found out that Yukari was pregnant I was praying that God would show me a glimpse of his power and glory so that I could find my resolve to be self-controlled.  God answered my prayer and showed me that my desires to be self-controlled were ill-conceived.  He also reminded me of his amazing grace, though and through this whole process over the last year has shown me that truly, all things work together for good.

I'm completely smitten by my wife and daughter and have been truly blessed by much greater things than I can ever hope to deserve.  Hopefully you all will be able to see the two beautiful women I'm blessed by soon.  Hopefully I'll be able to write more blog entries this year (it was my New Year's resolution)

Thanks so much for reading, for your love and for your prayers.  Y'all are the best.

Something about powerwalking and prayer or the power of walking in prayer, or something

I must ask you in advance to please forgive any spelling or grammatical errors I might have in this post because I'm writing it from a phone.

It's 9:00 in the morning in Japan and I have an empty period before my first lesson with fifth graders today, so I wanted to post a quick update and type some things that have been on my mind.

To begin with, today is wonderful. Just an absolutely amazing day. Yesterday I had a day off and I was able to spend time with my housemates (a very rare occurrence) and have a truly restful day. Today, some of my housemates woke up early so we all had Costco muffins and breakfast tacos together. It was a wonderful start to the day. On my walk to work this morning (10 minutes to my train station, 20 minutes from the station near my job) I got the chance to compare days like yesterday and moments like this morning to what my life looked like 2 months ago, when I had little to no contact with anyone outside of my jobs. And I thought about prayer.

Several weeks ago, just before I found myself very much alone in a foreign hospital, I started praying that god would help me find community. That he would send people I can learn from and also people to teach me. I want to be able to pour into others, but I also need help from people who can pour into me, too. I had one good friend in Japan who could help me find that sort of community but we could only meet once a week at best, and for such a short time that it was difficult to actually hang out. It's been discouraging not having anyone around the last few months. My forced introversion started making me become more introverted, to the point where I didn't want to talk to people or go out of the house or do anything because it was too strenuous or troublesome (though that may have been due to the mono). However, a long time before I started praying for god to send a friend to help me he was already preparing to send someone.

My friend who was living in Japan had come here with a missionary organization called ywam. I still don't know a whole lot about the program itself, but I do know that the people I've met from ywam are wonderful Christians with hearts for changing the world. Anyway, she invited me to a ton of events the organization put on, and on a few occasions I was actually able to go. In this way I became acquainted with some wonderful people who have hearts set on seeing Japan redeemed and the people of Japan instilled with a desire to know Jesus. While I was in the hospital I was asked if one of the members of ywam could stay in my room for a few weeks. As a favor to my friend (and because I was realizing the depths of my feeling of friendlessness) I agreed.

Having this new friend stay at my house for the last few weeks has been one of the biggest blessings (so far as my limited perception can tell) I've received in many months. It was a very real answer to a very earnest prayer.

This is what I've been thinking about: answered prayers.

Recently I've been bombarded by messages from books, acquaintances and church services with either the entire theme or at least some part of the message focused on the idea of using the right words. In Matthew chapter 7 we're told if we ask then we'll be given (what we'll be given is not specified, but I think that's a different idea then what I'm talking about now). But why is it that sometimes it feels as though god refuses to give us things when we ask for them? I've heard a lot of answers to this question and the one that I hear the most frequently is also the most disconcerting to me - "maybe you're not asking the right question". Of course this statement can have several meanings, but I've often heard this used to mean maybe you're not using the right words.

I can't believe in this. If I believe in a god that knows my heart and knows me even deeper than I know myself, a god responsible for creating the world by speaking it into being, then I can not believe in a god that is subject to the constrains of human language. But following down this trail I have to ask why does god have us pray in the first place? Why should we even bother expressing out desires and needs if he already knows what we need?

The answer hit me hard this morning while I was walking to work in the heat that I can't describe any other way but "sweltering". (lucky for that, because I wiped my face with my handkerchief it looked to everyone else like I was wiping away sweat.) On an unrelated note, summer in Japan is awful. I thought, growing up in Memphis and Nashville, I'd be ready for the humidity, but it is just terrible. If you're planning a trip to Japan, I have two pieces of advice: do not come in the summer time and make sure you come to Tokyo and say hi to me.

Anyway, this morning I heard so devastatingly clearly the answer I was trying to find because as I thought about the breakfast I had with my temporary roommate I could not possibly not remember the prayers I prayed for god to send friends and community.

So the answer I felt was this: god lets us pray cause he loves us.

Weak, right? Hold up, son, I ain't finished. If I hadn't prayed for friendship, if I hadn't expressed my desire to grow and be sharpened (the iron sharpens iron) then when I discovered that kind of friendship I would of course feel happy that I had a friend, but I wouldn't feel the joy from receiving a gift from god, and my friend wouldn't receive the blessing of being seen as a gift from God. The thing is, when we get to share in God's glory with him and I mean, when we can see his work in us and the world and we can as they say, taste and see that he is good, then the whole world changes right in front of us. Our lives stop being subject to our self-centeredness that so often leads to cynicism and our inability to love and be loved. (because if you don't believe in god, how can you believe in love?) We get to be part of something else, something good, and I mean 100%, no shadow side, no faltering, good. Once we've realized our desperation (for me it was my desperate loneliness which may be better described as aloneness, desperate not because of the way i was feeling during that time, but desperate because of the divide I was creating between myself and god), and trust me, we're all desperate in a lot of ways, and we come to god, and he answers those prayers, there's no where for the glory to go but to him. He lets us see his glory, which we have no business being able to see, have no right to get even a little glimpse of, and the only reason that I can think of to explain why he would do that is that he loves us. Oh, how he loves us.

That was a lot to type by phone. Especially in between classes and on the train ride to my other job, but that's all I wanted to share. God is very good to us. Please, let's see that together.

So pray for me! I'll try to update when prayers are answered. For now, my friend is leaving Japan in less than a week, please pray for a friend, for it is not good to be alone.

Sorry for the errors, both in my fumbling attempts to understand this life and this love, and in my thumbling (get it?) attempts to type this on my phone.

working in silence

Today I am full of hope. Maybe it’s the poignant lyrics of the music that I’m listening to, ormaybe it’s the peace I’ve received from reading excerpts from St John of theCross’s “Dark Night of the Soul”, but today I feel a certain level of deliveryfrom my anxieties as to what it is I’m doing in Japan.

I came to this country because in my prayers and in mythoughts I felt so led to be here.  I don’tknow why, though.  I’ve never been muchof an evangelist; my presentation of the Gospel isn’t usually what we wouldrefer to as “seeker friendly”.  I focuson the things that my own faith has been focused on:  the idea of complete depravity, the idea thatthere will be a constant struggle that will only lessen as you grow deeper inChrist between your lower instincts (your desires of the flesh) and your higherones (the things you want to do) but to grow in Christ you have to give up oneverything that is you and what you think is your own.  This isn’t really a big selling point to alot of people who are just kind of trying on Christianity most of the time.

I’ve been reading a book recommended to me by a friend whilehere in the hospital.  It was written bya great evangelist named Mahesh Chavda. In his book he writes about the power of Christ’s blood and the millionsof conversions that he’s seen by way of his messages over the years.  Anyway, reading the way he writes and hisgeneral presentation, I can say with more assurance that I am not anevangelist, at least not in the same strain as this man.

Because I don’t typically think of myself as an evangelist Ihave to wonder.  Why did God call me tothis country?  I came here nearly 9months ago expecting to find some form of ministry or to better understand mycalling once I got here, but so far God has remained silent.  What I’ve found instead is a regimen ofspirit-breaking work.  I’m writing thispost from the hospital, because after six months of 70-80 hour work weeks (13hours a day, 6 days a week) my body finally had enough and decided to stopworking properly.  I have been blessedwith these jobs, with the ability to pay for the loans I took out in order toattend University, and for the experience of working in several differentpositions, but I also know that I have been working too much.

Over the last two months, as fatigue started to set in, Istarted wondering why.  Why did God callme here if there is no ministry for me to be involved in?  While thankful for the jobs he provided, whydidn’t he show me one with a better salary, so I could afford to live withoutworking in this manner?  Why haven’t Ibeen able to hear his guiding spirit to find out what to do next?

I have a feeling that God has been preparing me through thistime.  He’s been teaching me, I see now,how to cut out the fat from my life. This is why I’m full of hope today. Today I see how God’s silence isn’t an abandonment it’s a call: a callto come to know him deeper, to walk in discipline towards his righteousness, toseek to be filled with his spirit, not in a way that I can feel, but in a waythat changes my entire manner of living. I’ve been so reliant on feeling and conviction, that I’ve neglected theeveryday presence of the Lord, and I feel as though the last few months havebeen preparing me for a time to come closer to him in ways that I’ve neverknown before.

God has also shown me his glory through prayer these monthsas several longstanding prayers have been answered.  This too, lends itself to hopefulness whichbrings joy in despair.  This is also atopic that would merit its own post, so I’ll try to work on that later thisweek.

God is again changing my heart to be closer to his own.  I know that my life will reflect his glory,so long as I have the courage to let it. Please pray for my courage, for that, now more than ever, is what Ichiefly need.

Sorry for the recent ramblings.   Thanks for your prayers and love.

I'm back! For a moment...

Dear friends and family.  I must first apologize for my longstanding absence from this forum.  It’s been almost six months, I think, since I posted on this blog, and that, I have realized is far too long a time not to share.  It’s sort of one sided most of the time, but the encouragement, prayer and acknowledgment I receive from readers of this blog is an invaluable form of community for me that I have, unfortunately, cut myself out of.

This is my ways of apologizing for the internet silence these last few months.  There are other things that I feel I could apologize for, but I’ve already mentioned the thing I wanted to post about today, so instead, I’ll just jump right in.

Recently, especially the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking quite a lot about community.  It’s a concept that has always interested me, especially when living in cultures with a different sense of community as the one I grew up in.  Anyway, community and thoughts about community have pervaded my thoughts recently because I’m really struggling to understand how community in Japan works and how that is a reflection of what community in the Kingdom of Heaven will be like.  I’ve been thinking about this topic especially as the lack of community in my life becomes ever more clear, and I’m left wondering, do I need to create community, be able to rest in the community of Christ, God and the Holy Spirit, open my heart to be able to join an already present, but as yet invisible to me, community, or some other thing?

It seems this blog is going in several directions, please bear with me, I’ll try to tie things together by the end.

I was recently talking to a friend about the high rates of depression and suicide in Japan and South Korea and whether or not the collectivist mindset of the culture in these countries has any impact on these alarmingly high statistics.  I wish I had more training as an anthropologist than the two or three classes I took while at Biola, because I’d like to do this question justice, but I’ve come to the hypothesis that the answer is a very indirect yes.  It’s not the collectivism that causes the high rates of suicide, it’s the pressure that kind of collectivism can bring on.

I’ve heard the difference in culture described like a machine.  In the west we focus on the cogs, the gears, the gemstones in the watch, but here the focus is more on the machine itself, on the actual functioning device.  I can’t say which is a closer image to what true community looks like, because they are both severely flawed and they both have their own advantages, as well.  Especially among members of my generation, there is a severe distrust of systems, at least in America, which is due, at least in part, to the focus we give to the individual.  True community, I believe, is founded under the direct leadership of the Spirit of God, but in the west, if we all want to be radical and unique and to be leaders, then who will be able to follow even the simplest of directions from the Holy Spirit?  Conversely, from what I’ve seen in Japan so far (and my views are especially limited here, as I still don’t speak well enough to enter into anything other than small talk conversations) if someone can’t find a way to fit into making the machine (society) progress and move forward then there is a lot of pressure to either remove yourself entirely from that machine or to change yourself so you can fit into it.  This sort of forced community may be where some of the anxiety that leads to suicide comes from.

I wish I knew more about culture and could see more, to have something more interesting to relay back, but what I see and my understanding of things is always so relative, so reflective, of my own life and experience that as it is, I may not have anything interesting or new to offer to anyone, but I don’t think things need to be new or interesting to be relevant, so: Today, I want to talk about the idea of viewing people in terms of their functionality.

Three years ago I felt God call me to give up on my grasp of earthly things, so I did.  I gave up all of my money, which included my rent and food budget for the next two months.  The following week I wondered if I had made the right decision, as I frantically searched for new jobs to take on so I could afford to live.  It wasn’t until recently, looking back at that decision that I can see a fraction of the way God blessed me through that bit of very difficult obedience.  One of the greatest blessings I received was the desperation for work that led me to taking a job I might not have otherwise taken.  In the fall of 2009 I started working with an adult day care center as a paid intern.  I was responsible for custodial maintenance as well as assisting full time staff while they worked.  Later, I became part of the full time* staff of the organization I was working for.  Amongst the workers I met an array of so many different people from so many different backgrounds, and among the clients I met so many people with so many different disabilities.  I had to begin overtly wrestling with the problems of viewing humans in terms of functionality here (even though I’d been wrestling with it for much longer).  If I saw my clients in terms of what they had to offer anyone other than themselves, if I saw them in terms of societal cogs, then I could not justify working where I was working.  If I tried to draw a picture of community, incorporating my clients into the picture, I had no idea what to do with them.  My clients, who quickly became my friends (and the greatest source of community I’ve ever known) have no place in a society driven by function.  Understanding this, and understanding that my view of their abilities or disabilities is irreparably contrasting to how God views them (as creations, fearfully and wonderfully made) was how I started to learn to view people not by what they can do, or even by what they do, but by how they were created.

After I left that company, in order to return to Tennessee to prepare for leaving the country, I must have forgot what I spent such a long time trying to learn.  Either that, or I stopped wearing my contact lenses, because myopia started setting in.  I began to view my own life in terms of my function.  What thing have I done?  What have I accomplished?  What has my life led to and where will it lead?  How can I make God happy?  What can I do to be a good person?  What can I do to make the people who know me proud to know me?  Admittedly, not all of these questions are terrible if you’re looking for motivation, but I wasn’t looking for motivation.  I was looking to reinforce the lie that I wasn’t good enough for God’s grace, or for anything that I was setting out to do.  This, I believe, was my greatest source of spiritual warfare before embarking on my trip to Japan.  The ideas that God would never use me because I wasn’t good enough for him, and that I have to be used in certain, specific ways for God to bestow love and grace on me permeated my thoughts and left me feeling very empty, very estranged.  I realize now that the majority of these thoughts on personal functionality are centered in pride.  I want to know how good I am so I can compare myself to others, or measure up on some “You must be this tall to ride” picture of Jesus, cut from acacia wood, of course, holding his hand somewhere by his waist or something.  I wanted to know what God thought of me, but the idea that he loves me is unacceptable at times.  If I truly accepted that he loved me, knowing what I know about myself and knowing what I know about God, then my response would have to be so drastic that at times I would just rather not accept God’s view of me and exchange it for a view of my functionality. 

I think this is where a lot of people get caught up.  I think this is where the collectivist society can add pressure, making an already difficult problem swell into an insurmountable one.  This is where my thoughts have been today.  I’m going to try to sum this up concisely (like I promised earlier):

Community, true community, is an assortment of different people (individuals) living together (in a system) under the head of one common goal (the Glory of God).  Community cannot exist when we measure ourselves against our goal because this destroys the image with which we were created, the image of God; in order to live in community with others we must accept a view of ourselves and of them that does not lie in their function (what they can do for us, what they can do to further our goal) but instead lies in the very fact that as humans created by God they bear his image and his stamp of approval.

Thanks for reading.  Please pray that God helps us to see others and ourselves for what he has created, rather than the shadow of what our function might be, and pray that Japan is receptive to the word of God.

Shake shake shake.

There was a 6.1 Earthquake this evening, well by the time this post publishes it will have been several evenings ago.

My thoughts on experiencing an Earthquake from the 4th floor of a building:

Woah! Another earthquake!
Ooooookay, it's been 10 seconds, why is the building still shaking?  Why is it getting stronger?
Alright, I think I might die today.
Okay.

I should mention, the other day I had a dream that there was an incredibly strong Earthquake while I was in a building and the building fell over.  The dream ended with me falling towards the street from 50 feet up in the air.  In my dream, though, I felt like even if I fell, it would be okay.  I ended the dream knowing I would wake up and be okay, even if I hit the ground, and then, right before I hit the ground in the dream I woke up.  And I was okay.

I don't have a death wish, please don't read this and think that.  It's not the truth.  But as clearly as I knew I would be okay in my dream, I knew today, during this earthquake, that I would be okay.  Even if I fell and hit the ground, I would wake up and everything would be okay.

That said, some notes on what an earthquake like that feels like:

When the walls start shaking I can always hear it before I feel it.  Then, when the building sways back and forth it feels like I've climbed to the top of a tall tree and the wind is blowing really hard.  After that feeling passes I get dizzy and I can't tell if the earthquake has ended or not, because I sort of get my quake legs (think sea legs).

Now, some notes on what an earthquake like that makes me think about:

The earth cries out.
The next big, or for many people, the last big earthquake could happen at any time.  How have they prepared?  How have they been prepared?
There will be earthquakes in various places.

I don't believe in predicting the return of Christ (he'll come back like a thief in the night, y'all) and I don't even like talking about the end times, because I don't believe that was the focus of the ministry of Christ, but it's hard not to think about it when you can feel the Earth shaking so violently, as though it was sick of being in the shape it's currently in.  As though even the very ground itself was sick and expressing it's need for the savior.

Again, I'm not trying to sound foolish or like I seek death or anything, but you gotta admit:

That's pretty cool. 

And if you don't think it sounds so cool (mom), then think about this - love transforms the way we think.  Earthquakes remind me of love and of God's love for us and his desire for us to know him, because even if we don't show him love, even if we don't glorify his name, for God's sake (literally) the Earth will!

I caught a cold

For the last few days I've been sick.  It started as a little bit of a headache and stretched to be a full blown achy-body, snot-factory, lung-hacking cold.  I feel pretty bad, but I am also, admittedly, a big baby about getting sick.  In fact, I am absolutely terrible when I'm sick.

My friends who have lived with me (God bless their patience) can probably attest to this.  When I am sick I act like a spoiled child, even more so than when I'm not sick.  I refuse to do anything for myself, I won't even get up from the couch or bed or ground or wherever I've decided to lay down to perform my normal complain, moan, complain routine until someone comes along to take care of me.  It's awful, and I don't know how anyone ever put up with it.


If you're churchgoing folk, you can probably already tell where this is headed, but be patient, I haven't finished the build up yet.


So, most of the time I'm a pretty healthy guy, but when I do get sick it takes me a long time to get better.  Mostly because when I get sick, even though my body starts to get better and heal, I start feeling worse and worse and worse.  There's no escape once I get sucked into the maelstrom of depression from sickness.  As much as people have helped me in the past when I got sick by bringing me soup or gatorade or doing my chores so I can rest or any number of other pleasant things, no one has ever been able to help me recover.  I mean, don't get me wrong, they help my body get better, but the damage my spirit takes when I'm sick sometimes feels irreversible when I'm still feeling sick.


Alright, here it comes:

This is why it's so difficult to follow Christ, but also why it isn't.
I'm not claiming to be a strict Calvinist, I don't know if I could ever make that claim and that could be the subject of a whole different sort of blog post, but I do believe in the total depravity of man.
To some degree, some more than others by way of our choices, we are all spiritually sick, and one of the hardest things to do when you're sick is to take care of yourself, or, in this case, to let someone else take care of you.

I don't think I've made much mention of this yet, but in the months I was planning and preparing to come to Japan I was feeling really sick.  I mean, I was fighting depression and wading through some stuff from the last few years that I'd been putting off confronting, and the whole struggle led me to feel disillusioned a little, and to be honest, pretty angry at God.  I kept asking myself the same question that everyone else was asking.  Why was I going to Japan?  Except for me, the full articulation of this question was more like, "Why am I doing this thing for a God that I don't even feel like I know or particularly want to know right now?"  Luckily I was raised in a family that believed that serving God transcends how you feel, so I was able to base my own answer to my question on optimism that one day I would want to be close again, and in that day I would be glad to have stuck through doing what I knew was the right thing to do, regardless of my feelings.  I guess, to a small extent, this feeling could be classified as faith.  But I'm not talking about faith in this post, because even though it's an important and (at times) difficult concept to discuss, I've got bigger fish to fry here.

Today I'm talking about grace.

I mentioned earlier that sickness, and for me the ultimate feeling of pessimism that comes with it is why it's so difficult to walk with Christ, but also, why it isn't.  It is because in these moments especially I'm like Paul in that what I would, I do not, but what I hate, that I do.  The problem with relating too much to Paul here is that sometimes this is where the comparison ends.  I don't think about the fact that there is another spirit, a holy spirit, willing to work inside me and fight this sinful flesh that I'm trapped inside of.  I don't think about the fact that Jesus still loves and was even willing to die for such a broken, dirty person.  All I see is that which I hate, I do, and in these moments, at these times, I start to see a broken (yet all too prevalent) philosophy creep into my thoughts, and even more damaging, into my feelings:

I start to think that I am the sum of my actions.


What I mean is that I start to think that the definition of who I am is just the sum of my actions.  Therefore, if I walk I am a walker, if I eat I am an eater, if I sin, I am therefore a sinner.  Now, these things are true to the extent that I have all of those aspects inside of me, and they make up part of the mosaic that is my person, but there's also more to me and in these moments of utter weakness I forget what those other things are.  I forget that this mosaic of my person is a window, not one of those stone mosaics, but a stained glass.  I forget about what I look like when the sun shines through, mostly because I've distanced myself from that source of light.  One of my favorite metaphors representing Christ came from (of course) C.S. Lewis.  He said that he believed in Christ like the risen sun, not because he could see it, but because by it he could see everything else.  This is how I often neglect to see myself, especially when I'm sick.  I don't want to see Christ and I don't want to see anything else by his light.  I don't want to know what that mosaic of stained glass looks like when his light shines through.


This is why grace and love (and how they go hand in hand in an unbelievably inseparable way) are still the central message of the gospel to me.


Now, how do I show that, in truth and power, to other people?  How do I affect the people around me so that they can feel this love, so they can experience the refreshing peace offered by grace?  How, in essence, do I show Christ?


Man, this post took an unexpected turn at the end, but it is a valid question, and as I close I should mention that I would LOVE any answers any readers might have to these questions.


Sorry for the length, and if you made it this far, thanks for reading.