Life Lesson #1 -You know you're an adult when you get excited about having enough money to go to the grocery store.
Life Lesson #2 - Sometimes the deepest heartaches don't come from romantic relationships.
Life Lesson #3 - Heartache is a part of living.
Life Lesson #4 - Don't subscribe to the status updates of random Spanish speaking guys on your facebook mobile. (Kara.)
Life Lesson #5 -The less you focus on yourself, the more rewarding and adventurous life becomes, because you have all that time on your hands that you used to spend worrying about what other people thought of you. (Still working on this!)
Life Lesson #6 - "To forgive is to know. He who loves, sees." (C.S. Lewis)
Life Lesson #7 - Most seemingly huge problems don't end up seeming so huge on the other side of them.
Life Lesson #8 - If you get impatient and embarassed about someone's behavior in public, you always turn out looking worse than them.
Life Lesson #9 - Some people really just need to sort things out on their own. Most times, the best way to be a friend to someone is to just be with them and offer an open ear if they need it. (Still working on this too.)
I love this quote: "Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away." - George Eliot
Life Lesson #10 - You can go half way across the world and touch someone's life, and that's important. You can walk just down the street and touch someone's life, and that's important too.
Life Lesson #11 -
"We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary...
to understand other people." (George MacDonald)
Life Lesson #12 - "...do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" (Matthew 6:25-27)
Life Lesson #13 - Sometimes waiting is harder than working. Sometimes God asks us to wait. (Thanks Megan!)
Life Lesson #14 - Keep an open heart when it comes to people. The person you never thought you would be able to hold a 5 minute conversation with, might end up becoming one of your best friends. It just takes more for some people to open up. A lot of people have a hard time trusting, just like you.
Life Lesson #15 - You know you're really an adult when you can buy a Sesame Street coloring book (for yourself) and admit it.
Life Lesson #16 -I really don't know that much.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
a God like no other.
Yesterday I was the designated driver for my sister's trip to an eye doctor in Atlanta. She's doing fine, she just had an infection that did some damage in one of her eyes, but they think it will repair itself with some super intense saline drops for a few weeks.
While I was waiting for her in the waiting room, I was reading from the book Killing Fields, Living Fields. It's a history of the Cambodian church. It talks about how during the brutal civil war that broke out right before the even more brutal Khmer Rouge years, the church in Cambodia began to explode. The fields were so ripe for harvest, because the people began to see that their gods didn't bring any hope for the horrific times they were facing. Once they became Christians they began to say things like "our gods gave us laws and then died and left us alone, but JESUS IS ALIVE!!!" The Church began to go around reaching out to the hurting, poverty stricken, and abandoned with the love of Jesus Christ and all of the churches and home groups began overflowing. People were literally "spilling out of the windows."
I was sitting there in this eye doctor's office with "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?" playing on the TV, and a Pod coffee maker to my right on a table, styrofoam cups piled up and whispery gossip going on amongst the office workers. But I wasn't there. I was transported to Cambodia in the early 1970's. I felt such a connection to the Christians there. They became my closest friends for that moment.
One part of the book talks about how Buddhist monks began coming to the churches, seeking Jesus, because...get this: there had been a prophecy among the monks for a very long time that there would be a "terrible war when 'a great one, a god' would come to the 'place where four rivers meet' (Phnom Penh -the capital city of Cambodia) with scars in his hands, his feet and side'." Many of the monks accepted Christ and became pastors in the church!
My heart broke as it talked about how right before the Khmer Rouge completely took over, all of the missionaries had to leave. Their names were on government lists as Christian workers and if they stayed with the local Christians those Christians would be immediately incriminated. However, the missionaries also knew that they were going to safety in Thailand while their beloved brothers and sisters of the Cambodian church had to stay behind and would eventually experience unspeakable torture and most likely, death.
I felt so honored, that I am going to get the chance to live and worship alongside the next generation of the Cambodian church. I'll get a chance to be a part of their lives for a little while, and see the legacy that those who sought God's face during the darkest of times passed on. Maybe those in the church today aren't even directly from those peoples' families, but I know that God is making sure that what they sought is being carried on and fulfilled now.
I was reading in Isaiah the other day, and I came across these verses:
"On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine—
the best of meats and the finest of wines.
On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
He will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears
from all faces;
He will remove his people’s disgrace
from all the earth.
The LORD has spoken. "
As I was reading it, I began to see...that the gift of redemption that Jesus Christ died on the cross for goes so deep... it's so rich... that it is like a lavish banquet for those who make the decision to partake. It's like the best of meats and the finest of aged wines. The Cambodian Christians I was reading about knew this. The shroud of death and spiritual darkness that had once covered their hearts and eyes had been removed and even though the circumstances of their lives were worse than any of us could imagine, they realized that the banquet of Jesus Christ was what really mattered. That the joy and fellowship and nearness of God that comes along with it cannot be stolen by anything on this earth. Those things carry on into eternity.
I couldn't help but wonder, what would happen if I lived every day like them?
While I was waiting for her in the waiting room, I was reading from the book Killing Fields, Living Fields. It's a history of the Cambodian church. It talks about how during the brutal civil war that broke out right before the even more brutal Khmer Rouge years, the church in Cambodia began to explode. The fields were so ripe for harvest, because the people began to see that their gods didn't bring any hope for the horrific times they were facing. Once they became Christians they began to say things like "our gods gave us laws and then died and left us alone, but JESUS IS ALIVE!!!" The Church began to go around reaching out to the hurting, poverty stricken, and abandoned with the love of Jesus Christ and all of the churches and home groups began overflowing. People were literally "spilling out of the windows."
I was sitting there in this eye doctor's office with "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?" playing on the TV, and a Pod coffee maker to my right on a table, styrofoam cups piled up and whispery gossip going on amongst the office workers. But I wasn't there. I was transported to Cambodia in the early 1970's. I felt such a connection to the Christians there. They became my closest friends for that moment.
One part of the book talks about how Buddhist monks began coming to the churches, seeking Jesus, because...get this: there had been a prophecy among the monks for a very long time that there would be a "terrible war when 'a great one, a god' would come to the 'place where four rivers meet' (Phnom Penh -the capital city of Cambodia) with scars in his hands, his feet and side'." Many of the monks accepted Christ and became pastors in the church!
My heart broke as it talked about how right before the Khmer Rouge completely took over, all of the missionaries had to leave. Their names were on government lists as Christian workers and if they stayed with the local Christians those Christians would be immediately incriminated. However, the missionaries also knew that they were going to safety in Thailand while their beloved brothers and sisters of the Cambodian church had to stay behind and would eventually experience unspeakable torture and most likely, death.
I felt so honored, that I am going to get the chance to live and worship alongside the next generation of the Cambodian church. I'll get a chance to be a part of their lives for a little while, and see the legacy that those who sought God's face during the darkest of times passed on. Maybe those in the church today aren't even directly from those peoples' families, but I know that God is making sure that what they sought is being carried on and fulfilled now.
I was reading in Isaiah the other day, and I came across these verses:
"On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine—
the best of meats and the finest of wines.
On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
He will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears
from all faces;
He will remove his people’s disgrace
from all the earth.
The LORD has spoken. "
As I was reading it, I began to see...that the gift of redemption that Jesus Christ died on the cross for goes so deep... it's so rich... that it is like a lavish banquet for those who make the decision to partake. It's like the best of meats and the finest of aged wines. The Cambodian Christians I was reading about knew this. The shroud of death and spiritual darkness that had once covered their hearts and eyes had been removed and even though the circumstances of their lives were worse than any of us could imagine, they realized that the banquet of Jesus Christ was what really mattered. That the joy and fellowship and nearness of God that comes along with it cannot be stolen by anything on this earth. Those things carry on into eternity.
I couldn't help but wonder, what would happen if I lived every day like them?
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