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| The same caution needs to be taken by someone witnessing as someone stepping into a romantic relationship. If one person shows too much attachment to the other person or shows hints of clinginess or desire to change the other person, it's a huge turnoff. But when both are focused on something higher, there is no judgmentalism but only enjoyment as both parties are seeking after something outside of themselves. Isn't that the meaning of fellowship: Different people with the same goal (that's not each other)? When people meet Christians they can tell right away if they are the yet again the victim of a "project" or "goal for conversion." If we can instead inspire our fellow man to see his worth and his role in the big picture through our love (actions) for him, he will see that he is not our goal, but that God is. Our goal should never be people. If it is people, then they bear the burden of judgmentalism by us. If the goal is God, then there is no burden and no judgmentalism, but only trust - trust in the truth that we are the light of the world. This is a truth that many of us try to prove by our own strength, when in fact, we are the light of the world whether we are conscious of it or not! We are inevitably a light when God is our goal and not others. | | |
| So I keep thinking there is an earthquake. Every once in a while I feel like there's an earthquake while I'm at work. My friends there either humor me and say "yeah, I think I felt that, too," or reassure me that building shakes in the wind or it's the semis across the street. (The street's not even big enough for semis). I know I've been feeling things. I even put up sensors - little magnets on my cubicle walls with beads hanging down at different angles so I could see them move just in case there really IS an earthquake. I was looking forward to the day when I would be sitting there when an actual earthquake hit and, while everyone else was panicking and rushing out the doors, I would just be calmly sitting there telling them that the building shakes or it's just the semis across the street. THAT DAY CAME!! AND I WASN'T AT THE OFFICE!!! I was 3 kilometers away from the epicenter of a 6.7 earthquake on the night of December 26th, 2006, at the complete opposite end of the island of Taiwan. I have a new appreciation for God's hand. | | |
| A little reflection on Deuteronomy 6 and the nation of the United States of America.
God told the children of Israel to bind the commandments of the Lord on various parts of their bodies, attach them to doors, mirrors, etc. so that basically anywhere they would be going they would run into another commandment. Not only were they to post His law everywhere, but they were to talk about it and think/reflect on it every waking moment, teaching their children to do the same. This seems overdone doesn't it? Very few of us are thrilled about God's law. But read carefully. This is not a passage of life-sucking monotony; this is a plea for our life! God is about to deliver them into the Promised Land, land with resources, livestock and buildings that none of them would work for. He would destroy every enemy before Him and leave the loot for them. He knows that they are going to get so caught up in the blessings in their lives, even to the point of growing proud because they will eventually think they did it themselves. So God Pleas with them beforehand to do as much as possible to remember His commandments and constantly have them on their hearts so that when they were out of the wilderness and into the good life they would not falter and forget God. And yet they did.
It's God's Law that Gives Life. We like to say now to come to God not only in distressing times, but also in the good. I would go beyond that. God desires obedience over sacrifice. It is His commandments that we are to obey whether in distressing or good times that give us life, not the time we sacrifice to spend time with Him.
Does this apply to a prosperous nation like America? Definitely. We underestimate the power in God's commands and in His word. We encourage each other to essentially rely on man's wisdom to bring in people to the church. The "Christian" nation of America is so prosperous we are consistently looking outside the Word of God for ways to become even more prosperous. This only confuses us and makes us think we are powerful enough without God and that everything we have we gave to ourselves. God's prophecy over Israel has become true of America as well. | | |
| How encouraging it is that there are children of numerous ethnicities running around and playing outside in my apartment complex. It reminds me of the good old days as an 8 year old in Taiwan playing Superman, which would be TV tag but Grace and I didn't want to take the time to teach the neighbor kids more characters' English names. We learned that resignation was good after a while. Without resignation comes frustration, a truth we discovered much later on teaching English as paid interns at a summer English camp. We played Superman on a road that seemed as wide as it was long, and I remember it being pretty long, though visiting a few years ago I covered the street in less than ten seconds walking. Typhoons were always a great opportunity for fun, as far as we were concerned. We would play Bamboo Slipper right around the corner, a game that required spontaneous gusts of wind, intermittent downpours, and the necessary bamboo branch that was violently blown out of the cluster of trees on the other side of the road. The "it" person would wisely stand in the middle of the street (just around the corner, remember, and out of sight of any cars that would pass that way in the blurring rain) and hold the branch by the broken end, spinning in circles, his/her goal being to hit someone with the branch. The fun of the other players consisted of flipping their flip-flops over the branch as it came around, and running by a moment later to slip it back onto their feet without using hands, all the while avoiding contact with the bamboo branch. God came into play each time He would send our flip-flops soaring somewhere unexpected in the mostly horizontal rain. I think if He created the storm, He sometimes wants His kids to have fun in it.
Of course, that was years ago and my ACL wasn't slightly torn from a handstand gone wrong. It's not raining or even wet now, but I would go to some field somewhere and somehow make a mud pit to wrestle someone in right now if my ACL were OK. | | |
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