Calling

So, this week was a little weird for me, like I was existing in parallel worlds: the world in which I was at peace and contented and thrilled to be living every day here, and the world in which I was discouraged that I'm still working an admin job and have no idea what God wants me to do with my life.

Then God worked it out so all these people spoke into my life throughout the week--directly and indirectly--and left me both encouraged and challenged.

Encouraged that God is good and God is sovereign. Encouraged that God's strength is perfected in weakness. Encouraged to embrace this unique time I have to be still and listen and pray and be, without a lot of distractions. And encouraged that God is at work in ways we cannot see.

But I was also challenged (again) to deal with the pride that makes me bristle at having an "unimportant" job, which I don't find difficult, and with which I'm not materially successful (read: making money) or humanitarian-ly successful (read: saving the world).

And challenged to embrace that it's good that God is stripping away my "identity"--those things I use and have used to define myself--and humbling me, so that He will be my identity. Not my studies, or my job, or my world-saving, or my success, or my inflated sense of personal destiny. Him.

So often lately I've been asking God what He is calling me to do, what He wants from me, what the heck He is doing with me. I mean, sure, this random adventure over to Baltimore is great for now, but what am I actually being called to do?

Then someone pointed out that God is much less concerned with what He's calling us to do as He is with what He's calling us to be.

And I'm slowly realizing that the answer--my calling--is as true and present in this very moment, working an admin job in Baltimore, as it would be if God were to speak audibly from the clouds to send me to grad school or a "career path" or the refugee camps of Nepal. Because my call is to follow Christ.

That's the whole deal. Jesus.

Yes, I'm still antsy to go out and do something, anything, "spectacular" with my life. So I'm glad that God is such a patient teacher, and that I can cast myself on grace.

But it's good to know--however imperfectly I've learned it so far--that I do in fact have a calling. Even now.

Freakin' amazing grace

Hallelujah, God doesn't expect more than His own grace to carry us to shore. (Sojourn, "All Good Gifts)

I was reading through Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount the other day, and was struck anew by what a brilliant picture it presents of our need for grace.

There's this line in there: "I say to you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Never. It has so much finality. Unless you do this impossible task of living more perfectly than the most intensely obsessive rule-followers of the day, that's it. You're out.

Jesus then goes on to list a bunch of those important rules for righteousness which his listeners would know, and makes them even more impossible: You've heard that if you murder someone then you're liable to judgment? I say if you're even angry with him then you're liable to that judgment. You've heard that you shouldn't have sex outside your marriage? I say that if you even lust after someone in your heart then you're guilty. On and on, taking the Law beyond the external "rules" and making it about our hearts and our minds and our motivations. He demands that we be perfect, all the way through.

Impossible.

Which would be really depressing, if it weren't for the fact that He then offers us the incomprehensible gift of grace. If He didn't live that perfect life for us, then switch places with us so He could bear the crushing guilt and nastiness of our lives and we could get the credit for the God-glorifying perfection of His. If God didn't remember that we are dust, and show his love and everlasting patience by letting us into His presence on nothing more than the merit of His son. No matter how badly we've screwed everything up, and keep screwing it up.

It's crazy, really. Crazy and beautiful and infinitely humbling.

Olympics

So, I've resigned myself to the fact that I can watch only the Olympic highlights online, and not the full events, but do they have to name the winner in the title every single time?

Takes a bit of the drama out of it all.

I have a street again!

They finally plowed my street, so cars can get through.

...Granted, to do that, they re-buried the freshly dug-out cars, so all of my neighbors are still stuck. But it still feels like progress.

Having people

So, I was out for coffee with a friend, and ran into someone else I knew. Someone else, from an entirely different social context, who didn't know the person I was originally meeting.

It made me happy.

There's just something so...settled-feeling, about having enough known people around to be able to run into them randomly on the street.

Spello-tape

I just learned today that the British word for that yellowish, translucent sticky tape is "sellotape". So the "spello-tape" in Harry Potter is actually a pun, not just the rather silly (and not-too-creative) made-up word I thought it was. Still silly, yes, but now in a pun-ish sort of way. My esteem for Rowling has increased.

By the way, it's snowing really hard again...

Latest forecast

I don't know how well it shows in the pictures, but the main roads around here have been plowed (although still extremely slick and narrow) and most things are open as usual today. I'm glad, however, that I don't have to try to drive anywhere today. Fortunately, I know at least one person who is very comfortably driving in snow and has four-wheel drive, so I'm totally fine if I do end up needing to go somewhere.

The latest forecast I heard this morning: It's supposed to get just above freezing today, and things will begin to thaw, then tonight/tomorrow it will drop into the 20s and freeze everything that has thawed and on Tuesday we're expected to get 6-12 more inches of snow. So I'm really glad I won't be trying to drive anywhere then.

Since I don't have to drive anywhere, though, I have to say I'm enjoying the wintriness of this week.

Neighborhood bonding

My neighbor and I dug out a road today:

Two women, two shovels. We bonded. It looked like people were bonding all over the neighborhood, as everyone ventured out to unbury cars and clear their alleys together. (Bonding, or yelling at each other for throwing the snow in the wrong place, depending on the group.)

If you're interested, there are some more pictures from the morning in my album, including the neighborhood and the nearby park.

Enjoy!

I used a snow shovel...

...for the first time in my life today. Exciting times.

The snow continues...

I awoke to this this morning, with snow still falling heavily and fast:

Yes, that is a car under there. Even less of it is visible now.

And no, that's not an illusion. The entire porch is full of snow up that high on railings.

Pardon the spots...I had to shoot these through the door, as it won't open, on account of the snow piled against it. (The front door is fine, though, with the overhang and all, so it's not like I'm officially "snowed in".)

Some very nice neighbor guys of mine shoveled my walk and stairs for me, and so I got to stay warm and dry and eat banana-walnut pancakes and drink hot coffee while I watched the snow outside. (I didn't sit and eat while watching them shovel, though...I thought that might be a little mean.)

The snow is supposed to continue all through today and tonight, and there are rumors that another storm will hit on Tuesday.

Somehow, I don't think I'll be going to church tomorrow...

Tutoring

Tutoring today was quite entertaining. I have been assigned to a fifth grader (who's ten--almost eleven), who seems to be a good kid, and funny. He asked me whether I had a job, then volunteered that, when he grows up, he doesn't want to be a firefighter, or a police man, or a banker, or anything like that. I asked him what he did want to do then, and he didn't know. Just something where there was no chance of being killed, injured or robbed. He also told me, when we were asked to sing a song as a group, that he "wasn't much of a singing kind of guy" and would prefer not to participate. But then an hour later he was enthusiastically performing for me his self-created remix of "I Believe I Can Fly" (pretty good, actually), which sounded suspiciously like something a singing kind of guy would do...

We studied apostrophes and quotation marks using a program in the computer lab, and practiced reading, and then played floor hockey for a bit (part of the evening routine at the learning center: spend the last fifteen minutes running around like crazy people).

When we were leaving he shook my hand solemnly and told me that he was very glad to have met me, and that I am a very nice person. Aw.

Anyway, we'll see how this all unfolds in the coming weeks, but so far, so good... :)

Weather on the way

Apparently a Baltimore-blizzard (1-2 feet of snow) is on the way for tomorrow and Saturday. Good thing I have plenty of toilet paper. :)

Oh, PETA

I'm sorry to say that until this moment I was unaware of the vastly important contribution PETA is campaigning to make to our English usage:

No, no, that scaly thing people catch and turn into sticks and eat on Fridays and throw around in the Pike Street Market is not a fish. Psh, you are so behind the times. It's a sea kitten.

I mean, who could ever bludgeon and eat a cuddly little sea kitten?

...

Oh, PETA.

Obedience, when it makes no sense

I've been thinking a lot lately about the crazy story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, and the picture it presents.

I mean--even excluding the parent-child element (which adds a whole extra layer of craziness)--Abraham is being asked not only to sacrifice the one thing most precious to him in the entire world, but to destroy the miraculous means God provided to fulfill His promise of making Abraham into a great nation. There's Abraham, an old man with an old, post-menopausal wife, being told that God will give him a son. Not likely. But then through this incredible, miraculous birth of Isaac, everything is exciting and beautiful and on track for Abraham to father God's chosen people, to see this promised and hugely God-glorifying calling realized.

And then, God commands him to do the unthinkable thing: To sacrifice his son. To kill the joy of his life. To undo the only way to fulfill his calling, the way which God Himself had miraculously provided only years before.

And he obeys.

I don't pretend to be facing anything as dramatic and mind-blowingly painful and sacrificial as Abraham, but over the past couple years I have--more than once--experienced a taste of the confusion. I have seen God open doors and providentially orchestrate timing of events and so clearly lead me towards something that excites me and fills me with joy, the thing that must be my "calling"...only to have Him tell me "no" at the last minute. And I find myself asking why He lined up every so perfectly and let me get all excited if He wasn't actually calling me there. Or, if He is calling me in that direction, why that perfect step--in my mind, the obvious and and God-appointed path--towards it is being thwarted.

And I still don't know why. But I see that with Abraham, God was glorified through his obedience. His obedience not only in giving up his son whom he loved, but in--through Abraham's eyes--"thwarting" the fulfillment of what God had promised. And then God was glorified again, and He did fulfill His promise, and let Abraham keep his son and showered him with blessings on top of it.

But when Abraham chose to obey, he didn't know that would happen, and he chose it anyway. Even though it mustn't have made any sense at all.

So, if Abraham can obey God that crazily--with the life of his son and the birth of an entire nation at stake--I suppose I can trust Him with things like which country I live in, or what job I have. Even when it doesn't make sense to me.

(I have to say, though, it would be nice sometimes to get the whole audible-voice-from-God instructions which Abraham got. I mean, seriously.)

I hate money

So, today I got a stern letter warning me that my renter's insurance payment is overdue, and that I must pay it soon or bad things will happen. It's my Portland policy, which I thought had canceled. Long story. But I dealt with it, and it's fine now.

Not five minutes after straightening it out, I get this message on my cell: "This is the Fraud Prevention Center at US Bank. We need you to call us back to review some potentially fraudulent activity on your account number XXXX. This is important. It is not a sales call." Heart attack. Phishing? Identity theft? Something else I forgot or got wrong that would haunt my financial life forever?! I called US Bank directly, and got routed to the fraud department. It was a real call, but nothing is actually wrong. I started breathing again.

And then my tax documents came in the mail. Bah.

I hate money. Being a grown-up is stressful.

(I did get a phone call from my almost-three-year-old nephew this afternoon, though. And that made the day much cheerier.)

Snow

It's snowing again. Just thought I'd share.

That was entertaining

So, an internet-fixing guy had to come to my house again today (I now have internet, but am getting about a fifth of the speed I'm paying for), and I have to say, it was one of the more entertaining repair-person experiences I've ever had. In the half hour he was here, I learned his life story (hometown, time in the Navy, world travels, current home on two acres where he raises chickens and tends apple trees), his medical history, his favorite foods, how often he eats eggs (not counting when they're hidden, like in waffles), his opinions on several issues (wood stoves vs. furnaces, the merits of recycling, the state of the economy, whether people should be allowed to raise chickens in the city limits (touching on the historical ramifications of such rules in times like the Great Depression), his desire to see outsourced jobs brought back to the US, his disapproval of estate taxes, etc.), a brief history of the Baltimore rail system (which led to broader discussion of rail systems in general), his aspirations to live as much like a mountain man as he can, and an overview of the rawhide trade of California in the 1830s. And I'm sure I've left some of it out.

Whew.

Unfortunately, this man was not a good multi-tasker. So every time he spoke, he stopped what he was doing. You can see why this means he was at my house for half an hour instead of the thirty seconds it should have taken to test the line and say: "You're getting a great signal. It's .8mgs faster than you pay for, actually. Must be an issue with the wireless."

But he was so friendly and goodnatured with his chatter, that I couldn't help but be entertained by it. I wonder if the internet company knows that's why his jobs at each site take so long...

In other news: I have now officially volunteered to tutor junior high kids in reading once a week, in a nearby low-income neighborhood. My church helps run a youth center there. I'm looking forward to it as a way both to get out of the house and to get more involved with my church/city. I'll let you know how it goes. (And yes, all you mom-type people out there: I have a friendly ride with a fellow tutor to and from each week, so no scary walks or busses at night through sketchy neighborhoods. You may stop fretting.)