Ponderings. Part 2.

In regard to learning to live out the gospel and a Kingdom life... none of these sorts of things come about easily (or of ourselves…if it is He who first initiated our faith, then it is certainly He who initiates our training in faith). My most recent thoughts on those things in the last post came out of lots of questions I've been wrestling with. For some time I’ve had a heart-wrenching struggle with what boils down to the question of evil. I believe it’s true that God sees us, intellectually. When I looked around at the world (Kenya, Pakistan, Iraq, Darfur - just to name a few key things that have been on my mind), I couldn’t (and in many ways still can’t) understand how God sees these people and doesn’t intervene. Surely this breaks the heart of the One defined as Love in our treasured Book.

About this point in my questions and struggle, I borrowed a book of sermons from a friend with a chapter entitled “Sin, Evil and Suffering.” I thought – perfect, someone will finally address my questions, give me answers and all this will be put behind me for good (wink, wink). I was shocked and blindsided. All the sermons were about the cross. It was a series on the cross being foolishness and a stumbling block to some, but power to those who were being saved by it. The cross IS the answer to sin, evil and suffering. Something mysterious happened on the cross that I can’t understand. A few months ago I felt I needed to start making a list of metaphors that are used for cross as I chatted with people and listened to sermons…a blessing for a curse, a ransom, a sacrifice, an atonement, a substitution. A few of my friends and I have been chatting about these things and they’ve helped me articulate a lot of this. We realize we can’t carry any of those metaphors out to completion without them falling apart a little bit. They are the best pictures we have, but pictures nonetheless and incomplete. The cross is the power, but a mysterious one that we would do well to ponder and meditate on, but will never fully understand. I needed this revelation more than anything in a long time.

We are living in an in-between, tension-filled time. The Kingdom has come, but not in full. That’s difficult to grapple with, but we know that the victory for the truth and the right is possible, and one day the restoration will be complete (See the sermon The Captain of the Lord by Alexander Maclaren for an amazing picture of this from Joshua 5). In the meantime, it would seem there is a season for all things. As one of the more brilliant people I’ve been reading lately put it – we are living in a tension between Ecclesiastes and Revelation. Between ‘everything is meaningless’ and ‘He wipes away every tear.’

‘Jesus teaches us that human judgments are not the last judgments, that human justice is not the last justice, and that the power that humans exercise over one another is not the final power.’ – Father Lucic, Sarajevo (from The Bible and The New York Times, p. 59)

‘Only by attending to the horrors of this world can we continue to sing the words of that great eighteenth-century hymn-writer Isaac Watts:

He comes to make his blessings known
Far as the curse is found.
(Hymn, “Joy to the World”)

For only a faith forged out of suffering can say with conviction that the angels and monsters will not coexist forever…’ – Flemming Rutledge, The Bible and The New York Times, p. 60

So in seeing injustice and the things that are not yet full, I am reminded that the work of the cross, the work of redemption is in process. Some how it is complete but yet not completed.

Ponderings. Part 1.

I’ve been thinking about the future lately. One of my latest dreams and schemes is to go to grad school for non-profity stuff (very technical, I know…ask me more about this if you want the low down on what I’m thinking exactly). The longer I’ve lived away from my home culture, the more I don’t feel drawn to a particular language, geography or culture. I feel pulled toward the marginalized: immigrants, people caught up in human trafficking schemes, homeless, poor, refugees and on and on the list goes. For the first time in quite awhile my thoughts are so little about geography it’s a wonder, even to me, I persist in a place like this. I can finally see a totally Kingdom life I would be just ecstatic, blessed and excited to live out in the states. That must sound crazy to all you amazing people who are already doing that and being the voices of change and advocates in our own culture. I somehow lost sight here of how I could fit in with all that. I had this qualifier before I moved here even on who I would marry…only those interested in an overseas assignment need apply. Wow, how short-sighted I’ve been. Something so much more organic, alive is taking over. I want to live a life marked by struggling to figure out what it means to live the gospel wherever I find myself. Of course, I still want to be in cahoots with the globally-minded (how can we understand injustice otherwise?), and am staying open to the eventuality of learning other languages and crossing into other cultures. This phase of life has taught me nothing if not to live with my hands open. He gives and takes away.

This picture is some of what I'm (well, we're) figuring out 'being' the gospel looks like these days on my streets - taking time to chat with and touch someone who many avoid and brush off. It's become about looking someone in the eyes, using kind and gentle language and terms of endearment (our language is sprinkled with these here) with them and acknowledging they are human rather than just ignoring them (even on the occassions when I say no and don't give the little kids or some others the money they are asking me for). There's a sting in our hearts when we ignore people and treat them as less than human. I've learned a lot from some of these random encounters.

BDay Goodness and walking...

Here are some pics from bday. We had a great time at a restaurant up on the mountain. Here are my Roomies M, A & P, Buddies L&A, Occasional Roomie S, and me:

A few days before my birthday Buddies L&A and I went for a walk around the city in our less-than-black clothing. That was a fun and good time for us to process, hang out and act like tourists taking lots of pictures in our own city. It's not always the most relaxing to stroll around to constant shouts of random English phrases and honking horns, but we eventually scurried off into a dried out riverbed near my house, and that was nice: