When Dr. Oh came to talk to us last Friday, I have to admit I wasn’t mentally there.  I was put off by the beginning of his lesson, and couldn’t shake that first impression for a while.  Just a logic malfunction classifying a mission field as your enemies… for me.

Anyway, he talked about the difficulties of raising his family in Japan.  Public schools run rampant with bullying and/or molestation, and nearby schools weren’t really up to his standards for education – not many in the world would be… he owns something like four graduate ivy league degrees – and he couldn’t bear sending his children away to be schooled.

And this got me thinking about reality.  And dreams.

I seem to have two futures that have never come in conflict with each other… or have avoided conflict with each other.

The Dream is a whole bunch of kids, playing in a cozy backyard with a well-kept garden.  I would build structures for flowering vines to grow, and would create a little enclosure where yard felt private and open at the same time, and I would just play with my kids and throw them into the air and do everything a loving father would do.

But the Vision.  The Vision is quite different.  The Vision is to go to Africa and be a missionary.  Marriage and kids isn’t against the rules (actually, I have come to find that a missionary family is more successful), but at the same time, I will have to sacrifice some of that American Dream.  And by that, I mean that I will have to sacrifice some of the opportunities my children would have.  Even if I marry the best teacher in the world, I don’t know if the quality of education or the resources available to us would provide them the best opportunity.  There would probably be no yard, and I would be very careful about where my children play at all times.  We would have to travel, they would not really know their grandparents or cousins… there are a lot of compromises.

How have these two scenarios never come into conflict in my head?

God better take care of this…

I had this… well… you can read the title.

In it, I was standing in some sort of group of people (I don’t quite remember the particulars or the setting), and a girl taps me on my shoulder.  I turn around and I see the girl, with eyes that are like blue crystal and blond hair.  But what’s weird is that her hair was cut in that Korean way with the bangs flat across the front and the rest long and straight.  I think she was slightly freckled, and she had a small mouth.  She wasn’t wearing makeup.

She said, “To me, Jesus used to wear no other clothes than yours – you used to be my picture of Him.  There used to be a spark, but now you’ve changed, and it’s gone.”

And I was speechless for a time.  Maybe like Dr. Michael Oh’s 45 seconds.  But eventually I replied, “I’ll take all my sarcasm, my lack of compassion, my jealousy and my demandingness and lay it at your feet.  Will you take me back?”

She answered, “It’s not enough.”

…

Very, very odd.

Something that I really care about is my family’s yard. When I was ten years old, my Dad put me in charge of watering the new grass in the backyard during the summer, and ever since then, I have owned all of the plants. I even named a couple of them.

Anyway, since I have been at college, I find it really hard to maintain the garden from afar. I do try to contribute in any way I can, and one way I do this is to grow flowers from seeds in my dormitory and transplant them into the ground when I come home in the springtime.

Seedlings are very fragile. You have to take care of them constantly, and one day of not watering them could result in their death. Not just that, you have to choose the correct time to transplant them from the pots into the ground, because anything from frost to wild critters can destroy them.

This year, I took care of so many flowers for two months, and I transplanted them into the ground Mid-April.

The weather forecast changed. It snowed the next day. Most died, and I was so disappointed.

But a funny thing happened – some of the flowers that I grew the previous year (which are only supposed to survive one year) reseeded themselves. Like no other. They grew like weeds – in flower pots and hanging baskets and in flower beds and in the cracks in the sidewalk!

So now the flower bed is beautiful, and it was probably one of the best surprises I’ve had in a while. Can’t help but relate this to life. And stuff. Sometimes, the seeds we sow, they just… die. Sometimes, we think we have all our bases covered and have the perfect situation set up, but some freak weather comes in and demolishes everything.

And sometimes, the seeds we sow come back around a hundred times more than we planted, and it’s better than we could have planned.

… And the uniqueness of Woman.

I learned something about five years ago. My old youth director bought me a book by Donald Miller as part of a going-to-college parting gift. Not Blue Like Jazz, the other one!

Anyway, I think this lesson is mostly derived from that, and I was just reminded last night when my small group was discussing the value of ‘work.’ We talked about Adam’s work before the fall, and how he had the responsibility of keeping the garden and naming all the animals.  When we read through his work in Genesis 2, we find this order: God saw that Adam was alone, Adam names all the animals, and then God creates Eve.

Let’s talk about that naming process. How many species of animals are there? Conservative estimates are around 10 million. If Adam named one thousand animals a day for 27 years, he would name those 10 million different types of animals. Every day, Adam gets up, and God brings him a thousand animals, and Adam comes up with a thousand names (this was one creative guy). And God notices every time, This creature is not suitable to be Adam’s helper.

And don’t get caught up in the word ‘helper,’ because most of the time in translation, it is used to refer to God, as in ‘God was Israel’s helper.’ I don’t think the word makes woman any less than man there.

So then, God put a lot of thought into Adam’s companion, and after 27 years and exhausting the world’s supply of species, God waits until Adam is asleep and takes from him a rib and forms Eve. Why not some other bone or body part? I can only conclude that God wanted something that was (a) strong and supportive and (b) close to Adam’s heart.

This little lesson is really what I lean on in my perspective of women. It helps me remember just how special women are.

Adam and Eve more perfectly reflected God’s greatness than Adam alone.

It makes a lot more sense.  Love me time… love language of service.

So.  There are a bunch of implications.  Can talk about Anna… sparingly.  ‘Cause, in this heart, that’s spending time with her.  And if I do that, I’m never going to get over her.  And what good can come from… being in love with a dead woman.

On the plus side, I can fall in love with anyone.  On the minus side, I can fall in love with anyone.  If I spend enough time with anyone, no matter how un-Christian, no matter how emotionally abusive or inverse of my calling, I will grow attached to her.

So is it time?  Is it time again… to search for that woman who sees me and all of that baggage and all of those secrets… and stays?

And that’s kind of excitedness and a bit of apprehensive sadness – like I’m already missing the week and am kind of sad that there are only five left.

Some fun highlights:

Before it even started, I got the day wrong for orientation.  I went to Wesley on Thursday instead of Wednesday, and there was no one there except for a group of people running a super food pantry.  They asked me if I was there to volunteer.  Apparently, they needed someone who could speak some Spanish.

It was a hundred and twenty degrees in the kitchen for at least three of the days.

I tried balancing five things to carry to the great hall from a car.  The butter was on top.  I dropped the tub of butter, but not before my soccer instincts told me to kick it.  The tub of butter was dented when it landed, and some butter came out the top.  I then proceeded to put it all back together and carry everything again.  Only my hands were now greased.

One young child considers it his purpose to teach me Korean.  The only word I can understand from him is ‘tree.’

At FCC (the indoor playground), I met a young lady and her niece from Libya.  I was so surprised because the niece did not speak a word of English, but she was playing with our kids very well.  It also looked like she was having the time of her life on the spinning apparatus.

One of the little girls was really concerned when I had a sore on my hand (I got burned from the boiling water).

Hold your bubbles!

Some fun questions by the little kids:

Do you have a son here?

[little boy turns his head to the left, to the right, and then after two minutes of inspecting my appearance asks] Are you Korean?

Can we go to the lazy river?  We can be lazy there.

Am I your little sister?  [I reply with 'little sister' in Korean, and her eyes light up and she starts speaking to me in Korean and I have to explain that I don't really know much of the language]

[Little girl holds her cup straight up over her head] Can… can I have more lemonade?  [Upon a closer look, I find the cup three-quarters filled] You already have some.  ‘Kay [continues drinking lemonade].

Are you 28?

Can I have some ketchup [on his deli-meat and cheese sandwich]?  … Me, too!  Me, too!

Some fun names from the little kids:

Mr. Blue Clues, Dad, Mr. T, Mr. Cheese, Apple Man, Mr. Deeds

…

I am completely exhausted, and I think I lost weight this week.  The kids are unbelievable.  They seem to get energy from nowhere.  There was one kid leaning against me and sleeping on the bus, but then he was jumping up and down when we got to the classroom.  I think I like the youngest kids the most because they are just awesome enough to make me think that people aren’t inherently damaged.

It is increasingly inconvenient to blog, as I no longer have internet at my place.  So I am a bum, sitting outside of Espresso Royale, not ordering anything yet still taking their internet.  There should be a rule against that.

John 4 was the reading for our first Friday night large group.  It is the familiar passage of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well.

Two things came to mind when I heard this message.  The first probably sinful – I thought of the girl who hates me – and the second is probably also sinful in pride – I thought of my home church.

I hate it when sermons encourage me to try to make contact with her and build a bridge.  Pastor explicitly said, “Why do we not reach out?  Because we are afraid of being hurt.  Again.  We are afraid of the constant rejection and how that person can make us feel so bad and so low.”  He was mainly talking about evangelism, but he did mention, in plain words, that this is also the case with repairing relationships.

And it sucks because it makes me feel right, and it’s just going to cause me heartache somewhere down the road.  I must be the most emo optimist out there.

The second thought about my home church came during my Pastor’s “History of the Samaritans.”  He talked about how Israel was divided, and the northern kingdom was run over by the Assyrians.  He talked about how the Assyrians tried to commit a cultural genocide by relocating half of the Jews elsewhere in their empire and replacing them with other peoples from other conquered kingdoms.  Israel was flooded by different thoughts, philosophies, and gods, and they had a choice:  They could fight and try as hard as they could to remain pure, in marriage and in faith, or they could take the easy root and compromise.

They chose the compromise.  They intermarried, and, as was inevitable, started to blend cultures.  Soon, they rejected much of the Old testament, holding on to only the Pentateuch.

My home church and denomination is going through an identity crisis that might lead to schism.  And the underlying question seems to be – do we believe the Bible is God’s word?  The ELCA promotes itself as an all-encompassing church, trying as hard as it can to reflect the universal church.  Unfortunately, in this attitude of acceptance, much of the Bible is lost.  Or ignored.  I know some in the denomination who would label Jesus as more of a ‘good teacher’ than God, and some who would doubt or deny the divinity of the Son completely.

Politically correct has turned our church into today’s Samaria.

The good news – Jesus ministers to Samaritans.  You Samaritans worship what you don’t know.  Your worship is not lacking in spirit, but it is lacking in truth.  Some others are short of spirit but hold the letter of the truth dearly.

Now is the time to worship in spirit and truth.  Where is that balance?  No… not balance; not sacrificing one for the other.  How can we fully embrace both and become lovers of God?

Someone recently asked me what I learned this year, and I couldn’t come up with an answer on the spot.  Considering I went on missions for a month, preached, almost got married, and lost some of my dearest friends, you’d kind of hope that I had something to show from it; some sort of mystic lesson about the sovereignty of God or the root of suffering.  Well, nope.  Not really.  I mean, I learned more details concerning those things, and this year has put those things into reality’s perspective, but I believe pretty much the same things I did last year.

I think one of my biggest, most pronounced lessons sounds a little dark:  People are two-faced.  Everyone.

And there are two meanings to the two-facedness.  The first is like how the world sees it – people speak one way and mean the other.  They lie.  They put on masks to meet different situations (in this manner, people are many-faceted).

But more along the lines of dual nature, there seem to be two different people for every person, the sinful and the spiritual, and the neglect of either can come back to bite you.  And not in the kind way.  It is impossible to cater to a person’s spiritual needs and purposefully starve their heart – you’ll just come out as calloused, and any sort of spiritual lesson gets lost in the bitterness.  On the ‘brighter’ side, it is equally impossible to focus solely on that selfish, sinful nature of a person (even if you’re really good at it) without it becoming eventually evident to both parties that the relationship is rather empty.

Here’s how messed up we are:  The latter lasts longer than the former.  We are willing to stay in that sinful state longer than persevere the spiritual state.

One thing I learned this year is that you have to go for both and you have to love the both.  If not, you’re just befriending a mask.

Don’t you hate it when you hear something thought provoking during the middle of a lecture and end up lost in thought?  Happens to me sometimes, and by the time I wake up from my pondering, the professor has moved completely past the subject and I’m about fifteen minutes behind the rest of the class.

It happens to me even more often during sermons.  It kind of sucks.

Four years ago, it happened when a side comment was made including Proverbs 14:4 – Where there are no oxen, the manger is empty, but from the strength of an ox comes an abundant harvest. … the debate bouncing in my head was so bad, I completely forgot the rest of the message.  I’m sure it was good.

And here is what the speaker explained… somewhat… paraphrased gratuitously:  Imagine you’ve got this farmer who is sick and tired of cleaning his stables (indeed, some translations substitute clean for empty).  He figures out that he wouldn’t have to clean the stables if he simply got rid of his oxen – after all, they are big and messy beasts of burden.  Finally, his manger is completely empty and squeaky clean, save for the lingering smell stuck in the straw roof.  The farmer pats himself on the back, but now he has no animal labor.  His farm’s productivity goes the way of Wall Street, and he is rewarded for his clean manger with a meager harvest.

The application?  If all you’re worried about is how clean your manger – your life; your heart, etc – looks (or is!), then you’re not going to be producing much fruit.  But if you’re focused on getting that super harvest, then you might have to put up with the less than pristine consequences.  Sometimes we have to get down and dirty.

Hopefully, this is why CFC missions teams always smell so bad.

Some people will say this to me from time to time.

Why should I, with everything happening in the New York State Senate?  Seriously – is anyone else as entertained by this as I am?

There’s so much to this story:  A billionaire getting his revenge; the element of surprise; A GOP/turncoat coalition ending the Democrat’s first majority in 40 years after six months; the stunning character of those two turncoats, one facing a bunch of fees for election misconduct and another indicted for cutting his girlfriend’s face with a broken bottle; the turncoats not changing party affiliation (and the Democrats not kicking them out); the Democrats hiding the keys to the Senate chamber and locking away all the bills; the responses by the Governor, who has a rock-solid 19% approval rating (not meaning rock-solid for the state, but if those 19% still approve of him, they’re the most loyal people on the planet); and, as always, race.

I mean, entertained until you realize that they are messing with peoples lives and taxpayer’s money (they’ll probably have to extend this session to submit a budget and complete the docket).

Apparently, they passed several measures 32-0 changing a few rules of proceeding.  Personally, I think they could have gone a bit further.  I would have retitled ‘President’ of the Senate to ‘King’ of the Senate, cut the pay of all dissidents, commissioned construction of a moat (and would have classified it a New-Deal project), annexed Connecticut, and outlawed the use of the words ‘Crunk’ and ‘Gebronie.’

But that’s just me.