The important thing is to receive this moment's experience with both hands. Don't waste it. "Where you are, be all there," Jim once wrote. "Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God."

Elisabeth Elliot writes this about dealing with loneliness (edit: more specifically how she and Jim dealt with geographic separation before they got married. Passion and Purity: amazing story). I wish I had read this during summer in Korea.

Happy two thousand twelve, reader. Wherever we are this year, let's be all there.

sloppy pop

don't you love rediscovering your favorite parts from the shows you watched as a kid, and introducing them to the next generation of phonics-learners. between the lions was such a good show!

knowing and being known

It is a false form of honesty that suggests that nothing should remain hidden and that everything should be said, expressed and communicated. This honesty can be very harmful, and if it does not harm, it at least makes the relationship flat, superficial, empty and often boring. When we try to shake off our loneliness by creating a milieu without limiting boundaries, we may become entangled in a stagnating closeness. It is our vocation to prevent the harmful exposure of our inner sanctuary, not only for our own protection but also as a service to our fellow human beings without whom we want to enter in a creative communion. Just as words lose their power when they are not born out of silence, so openness loses its meaning when there is no ability to be closed...

Certainly in a period of history in which we have become so acutely aware of our alienation in its different manifestations, it has become difficult to unmask the illusion that the final solution for our experience of loneliness is to be found in human togetherness.

A lot of times I really don't get Henry Nouwen (THE introvert of Christian literature introverts?), but I am really thankful for this shred of wisdom.

Sometimes, like it has been this week, I want so much to know and be fully known in my relationships that it makes me sad and quite distracted.
Henry Nouwen reminds me that in any relationship in life (marriage included) I will never be fully known by any person other than God. And I realize that's okay. In fact, it is a good good thing.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.

Let's know and be known by one another in a way that is healthy for all of us and brings Him the greatest honor. Let's depend on Him for wisdom to know how and how much and when...
And where that human togetherness falls short, may we be satisfied in knowing that He knows us fully, perfectly, exhaustively, completely. He comprehends every single thought, emotion, meditation, struggle, wordless prayer. And His love - full, perfect, exhaustive, complete - meets every need so long as we trust and obey.

Bridge to Terabithia and God

"Do you believe people go to hell, really go to hell, I mean?"
"You ain't worrying about Leslie Burke?"
It did seem peculiar, but still - "Well, May Belle said...."
"May Belle? May Belle ain't God."
"Yeah, but how do you know what God does?"
"Lord, boy, don't be a fool. God ain't gonna send any little girls to hell."

I recently reread Bridge to Terabithia and watched the film adaptation, since I'm using the book to tutor a fifth grade boy in English. I don't recall this part at all.
This book disturbs me - the entire plot, but especially this part. It also kinda disturbs me that it never occurred to me to pray about which books I assign to the kids I tutor. I wonder whether I am doing a good job of presenting these kinds of topics to kids that pray everyday for sick relatives and see their grandpa do his quiet time in the study every morning.

Anyways, I found a little essay for tomorrow's lesson about the book's history of censorship. Hopefully discussing it will be fruitful for us in more ways than just increasing his Lexile / TAKS scores.

today's Utmost

"When you find yourself face to face with a person who is spiritually lost, remind yourself of Jesus Christ on the cross. If that person can get to God in any other way, then the Cross of Christ is unnecessary. If you think you are helping lost people with your sympathy and understanding, you are a traitor to Jesus Christ."

"For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified."
1 Corinthians 2:2


Let's not confuse mercy with sympathy. The gift of mercy too points to the cross as the only truth and the only hope.

new cloud on the block

Stumbled upon this while looking up a designer from Bruce Mau (SO COOOOL WAHHHH). Expect to see this in one of my renderings next semester.
"Cumulus, nimbus, stratus, cirrus…asperatus? First “discovered” in 2009, scientists have finally named this dramatic and rare cloud occurence as Undulatus Asperatus."

Oporto on my mind

maybe, someday, if He so wills

Going home is another battle of its own.

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.

Help me to know what the second half, as well as the first, means in the context of these remaining three weeks in Dallas.

26

How many slaves work for you?
Too many.

knowing Christ is BETTER THAN _______.

But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

frustration is really tiring.

I was about to go to bed a very, very angry person. But then I remembered this verse:
"Tremble and do not sin;
when you are on your beds,
search your hearts and be silent."

Okay. Fine.

Sometimes I just get so tired of being good (I hate this sentence because some part of me ridicules the fact that I think I'm being good)
I don't know why, but I always end up feeling trampled and ridiculed.
I often end up feeling guilty about things that I have no reason to feel guilty about,
and not at all focused on the things I have to repent and be graciously forgiven for.

It's during these moments that I marvel at how wretched I am. And what a humongous claim Jesus sure did make when he said that whoever drinks of him will never be thirsty again.

Please, no critical comments. Please nothing about legalism and condemnation. I don't think I can take it. Unless it's pure Scripture. I would give anything to just be able to speak my mind without being stopped constantly to be corrected of my incorrect thoughts and feelings (oh, grammar too).

This thunder scares me.

God, You are the God of Job 40. You are so beyond me. I am so fragile in this madly spinning universe on the tip of your index finger. God, please know me fully.

THANK YOU STEPH.

Job, like, the most righteous guy evarr even before all the crap happened:

"You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.
“You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.’
My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you."


The book of Job baffles me.

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The battle to proclaim Him Lord over my emotions (frustration especially) really does not end at pencils down, does it.