Morning Needs

O God, the Author of all Good,
I come to thee for the grace another day will require for its duties and events.
I step out into a wicked world,
I carry about with me an evil heart,
I know that without thee I can do nothing,
that everything with which I shall be concerned, however harmless in itself, may prove an occasion of sin or folly, unless I am kept by thy power.
Hold thou me up and I shall be safe.
Preserve my understanding from subtlety of error,
     my affections from love of idols,
     my character from stain of vice,
     my profession from every form of evil.
May I engage in nothing in which I cannot implore thy blessing,
     and in which I cannot invite thy inspection.
Prosper me in all lawful undertakings, or prepare me for disappointments.
Give me neither poverty nor riches;
Feed me with food convenient for me,
     lest I be full and deny thee and say, Who is the Lord?
     or be poor, and steal, and take thy name in vain.
May every creature be made good to me by prayer and thy will.
Teach me how to use the world, and not abuse it,
     to improve my talents,
     to redeem my time,
     to walk in wisdom toward those without, 
          and in kindness to those within,
     to do good to all men, and especially to my fellow Christians.
And to thee be the glory.

"Morning Needs," a Puritan prayer from The Valley of Vision

Uplifting Letters of Hope (BBC News)

This week, the BBC ran this story about Somali refugee children in Kenya encouraging Syrian refugee children in Jordan.  Kudos to whoever organized and funded this! There are more letters and photos in the article.

Applause

Should all the poor know my name, 

And all my gentle mercies every heart proclaim

Should by my own two hands all this world be changed, 

This truth will yet remain:

My only victory is Jesus! His life and death and resurrection!

- Justin McRoberts, “My Only Victory”

I first read Jeremy Taylor’s nineteen points on humility* in my high school small group. I remember it so distinctly: sitting there, growing increasingly chagrined as I realized every example of pride he provided was visible somehow in my life. In fact, I pulled out my copy today to see if my memory had exaggerated, but no—every single section has underlines and notes to myself inspired by my smitten conscience.

Every section, that is, except one.

Ah, point twelve. I remember how glad I was to find it—a brief reprieve for my soul as I squirmed through the other eighteen.

Twelfth: Do not entertain any of the devil’s whispers of pride, such as that of Nebuchadnezzar: “Is this not great Babylon, which I have built for the honor of my name, and the might of my majesty, and the power of my kingdom?” Some people spend their time dreaming of greatness, envisioning theaters full of people applauding them, imagining themselves giving great speeches . . . All of this is nothing but the fumes of pride . . .

“Here at last!” I thought. “Fame. One I don’t have to worry about. Thank God for introverted-ness—I’m off the hook.”

My sinful self, however, is crafty.

It knows that outright fame is not the lure for me. Were the devil to dangle forbidden fruit in front of me, promising celebrity or publicity or far-reaching influence as the prize if I’d only eat, I don’t think it would even count as a temptation. My introverted heart would naturally balk and I’d gladly turn him down. (Although I’d probably feel sort of smug about so easily “resisting,” so I guess he’d still get a point. Darn.)

Here’s how crafty that fallen man inside me is: Over the years I’ve increasingly seen in my heart a desire to be famous for (get ready) not desiring to be famous. 

I don’t crave the spotlight myself—that’s usually true enough. But I want people who are in the spotlight to admire and discuss and point out my lack of spotlight-seeking and how awesome my selflessness, humility, wisdom, [fill-in-virtue-of-your-choice-here] are. I don’t even really care if my name is mentioned. In a twisted way, my pride could be even more gratified in anonymity. As long as (in my fantasies) people are nodding admiringly, and as long as I know they’re really talking about me, it’s enough.

At it’s root (and, let’s be honest, only barely disguised), it’s exactly the same as Taylor’s twelfth point I so eagerly excused myself from in high school. I do dream of theaters full of people applauding me—I’m just not on the stage myself to blush and stammer in front of them. In my dream I'm unseen, but basking in the applause just as much.

I struggle with this—with wanting to live a life that other people admire while not looking like I want their admiration—every single day.

God has spent years loosening my grip on all sorts of things I grasp at to define who I am and why I matter. Almost always, I persist in using other humans as my reference point for that: Who I am in the midst of the billions of other people around and before and coming after me. Why I matter to them, or don’t, or should, or shouldn’t. Why I matter to God, or don’t, in comparison to them.  

He has shown me—as even this blog can attest—again and again and again that He is sufficient for me. He has reminded me that I don’t have to prove myself to Him, or to do something extraordinary to get Him to notice me or use me or want to keep me around. And He has reminded me that since I matter to Him, then it really doesn’t matter whether people are applauding.

I am free to be bold, to throw myself into the wave, to risk—in obedience to Him—what earthly eyes would see as failure or humiliation or unimportance or loss. Free to see that everything earthly I have earned or accomplished is in fact already loss, and in that truth to rest—to breathe without the pressure of having to do and accomplish more and more and more.

There is so much freedom available to me. Yet I perversely persist in re-shackling myself to the fear of man and desire for human validation. Humans, in all their frailty and imperfection. Humans, who are nothing but a breath—here, then gone. I remind myself again that that famous question is meant to be rhetorical: What can man do to me? The answer: Nothing. People—their applause or disapproval or misunderstanding or criticism—can ultimately do nothing to you when you belong to God.

Of course, as we walk (sometimes trudge) through this broken world, what people think seems to matter a lot. How we compare feels important. Words can grievously wound.  Hooray, then, for a God who knows that, and comforts us and is patient with us and heals us and—even if it feels oh so slow—transforms us so these things matter to us less and less.

Living here, trying to listen and figure out what God is leading me to do with my time and energy, when to wait and when to act, seeing increasingly that I’m not as visibly needed or important as I expected to be (even if I hadn’t quite admitted those expectations to myself), I hope that transformation happens ever more quickly.

Grant me never to lose sight of

the exceeding sinfulness of sin,

the exceeding righteousness of salvation,

the exceeding glory of Christ,

the exceeding beauty of holiness,

the exceeding wonder of grace.

(from "Continual Repentance," The Valley of Vision)

-------------------

* Excerpted from his "The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living" in Richard Foster's Devotional Classics.

Perspective

I recently found out that my health insurance is going up ten dollars a month.  Uuuuggggggh.  I groaned.  I griped.  I felt my stomach tighten slightly with stress, that I would have to re-shuffle my budget again.  All those ten dollar increases here and twenty dollar increases there add up.

That afternoon, I stopped by my neighbor’s house.  They recently had a death in their family, and I wanted to check in on them.  I had also heard they might be running low on food. 

They weren’t low on food.  They were out of food, other than some rice.  As a friend and I helped them fill out a food stamps application, it came out that between all five members of the household—counting loose change from pockets and crumpled dollar bills—they have just over $87 to their name.  Total.  No bank accounts, no assets.  Only one family member works, and he brings home less in a week than I sometimes make in a single day.  Their electricity is going to be cut off this week unless they find a way to pay their overdue bills. 

… Somehow, a ten dollar increase—and that on a service I’m blessed to have in the first place—doesn’t seem worth complaining about.

Make Welcome

You should check out this awesome craft cooperative started by these awesome people in Charlotte: www.makewelcome.org

Okay, they all happen to be friends of mine.  All bias aside, though, it really is a great group of people meeting a felt need in this community, and showing so much love in the process.  I get asked by students and neighbors all the time whether they can join the group, which now has a waiting list due to space and sewing-machine-access limitations.

Pray that it continues to grow into whatever God wants it to be...

Photos - Fall and San Diego

A couple weeks back, it was one of those amazing autumn Saturdays that begged to be photographed.  It wasn't hard, fortunately--all of these photos were taken on the walk between my house and my Saturday coffee shop haunt.

Then last week I was down in San Diego, visiting one of my dear friends. I got to put my feet in the Pacific (sorry, the Atlantic just isn't the same), hang out in an unexpectedly spectacular cactus garden, and soak in the contrasts of sea and stone and trees all along the coast. Probably a hundred times I found myself wishing I had my real camera with me, but I tried to get at least a few decent shots with the camera on my phone.

The rest of the shots from both sets are on my flickr site.

(And yes, I do plan to write blog posts again, I promise!)

Zomi

I have, I think, four Bibles in English in my home right now.  That doesn't count the three on my nook, or the beautiful antique one, or the picture ones, or the interlinear ones with other languages.  If for some reason I needed another, the bookstore here has an entire section devoted to them.  The library has shelves of them.

During our Friday Bible study, my friend N.—the amazing woman who lets us meet in her home—shares her one Zomi Bible with her husband.  They are a family of seven.  They have one Bible.  Their children have a few English Bibles, but they have only one in the language of their hearts.

We asked her if she knew where there were Bibles in Zomi.  We would be happy to help her buy some for her family and any other Zomi speakers she knew who had no Bibles.  She got it in Burma, she told us.  She didn't know.

Even with the internet and other Bible-finding resources at our disposal, we couldn't find any.  I have a friend who knows people high up in a translation organization, with connections to other organizations.  She called him, who called a guy, who called a guy.  No one could find Zomi Bibles.  Finally, my friend was put in touch with someone who consults on Bible translations in the Zomi-speaking area of Myanmar.  He thought he might be able to find a few, but he couldn't ship them to us—they wouldn't make it through the Burmese mail system.  He found someone to take them by hand across the border into Thailand, and then ship them from there.  The whole time we all hoped it was the right language, and the right dialect of the language (difficult to confirm long-distance).

The search started in May.  Just yesterday, N.'s family was able to hold one more Bible in Zomi. They don't have to huddle together over one copy now, trying to read at the same time. It was beautiful to see how excited they were.  It was beautiful to see their seventh-grade daughter—who diligently reads her English Bible, but struggles with the vocabulary and grammar of a language she's known only a couple years—visibly moved when she opened it.  It was beautiful—and humbling—to see what a huge deal it is for them to read the words of God in the language they use to think and to pray and to talk to one another.

As I've mentioned, B. and my other Jarai-speaking friends don't even have the whole Bible translated into their language.  They have to read it in English or in Vietnamese, the language of the people who persecuted many of them.

I can't imagine what that's like.  I admit, even as a linguist, I take it completely for granted that I have access to almost anything I want in English.

I wish I could find Bibles for all my brothers and sisters here.  I wish I could speak Zomi and Jarai and Nepali and Chin and Swahili and Karenni and Ringau, and could hear their insights, and could encourage and be encouraged by them in words we all understand.  I hope that they are still encouraged as much as I am when we meet together, even without a common language.

God—the God of all languages and peoples and culture—is here.  He is at work.  He is bringing his Word here, even in cases where you can't just hop over to the bookstore and buy a copy of it.  ...I feel so honored to get to see him working.

The image at the beginning of this post is a paper cutting I did recently, based on the unity of the global Church expressed in Ephesians 4.  The background of each landmass is a list of (only some of!) the living languages found in those places.  (Except Greenland—it has only two languages, so I stole some of Canada's for it.)

Wait—You want to come inside?

I see a slight movement out the corner of my eye.  I turn, and jump.  Four eyes are staring in through the one small crack in the mini blinds of my front window.  I look closer and recognize B. and Y., two of my Jarai-speaking friends, grinning in at me.

They're probably here about World Refugee Day, I think to myself.  We told all the students that a school bus would be coming to take them to the celebration downtown.  They know I'm going to ride the bus with them, to help with logistics, and have been asking me about it all week. 

I walk out onto my stoop to greet B. and Y., and, sure enough, they're at my house to double-check they know the right time and place.

"Yes," I tell them. "Across the street at 3:30."  They smile and nod and say "Okay"—and continue to stand on my stoop.

Right, I tell myself.  This "isn’t America."  There aren't any thirty-second conversations, or "I just had a quick question" comings and goings.  This is my cue to invite them inside to visit. 

I pause.

It's Saturday, and I've been doing projects around my house—painting curtain rods, rabbit-proofing my back patio, making greeting cards, reorganizing part of my kitchen—and my home is in chaos.  My curtains are on the floor, my furniture is disarranged, art supplies are strewn about, there's a pile of "stuff to take upstairs" on my stairway, I haven't done the dishes yet, paint fumes are coming from outside, and there's a hacksaw on my kitchen table.

It's always hard for me to let someone see my house when it's messy.  True story: I was sick a few months ago, and my drugged, half-asleep brain realized that if I died, people would come inside and see the I'm-sick-and-don't-care-if-stuff-is-everywhere state of my house, and think I lived that way.  I actually dragged myself out of bed and began neatening before eventually deciding it wouldn't matter to me anymore, since I would be dead.  (Yes, I completely blame my mother for this.)

Needless to say, I was appalled at the thought of these two friends—neither of whom had been inside my apartment before—seeing my mess.  I knew, though, that inviting them in was important.  It was important for them, culturally and relationally, as a sign of respect and friendship.  But it was important for me, too.  As I've said before, hospitality does notcome naturally to me.  This was a chance for me to choose whether it was more important to show love or to bow to my vanity—to think of my guests, or to think of myself.

With some mortification and a quick prayer against my own pride, I invited them inside (not to say I didn't kick a couple things under the couch and shove some of the furniture back where it went on my way to the door).

And you know what?  It was fine.  The visit itself was endearingly awkward and amusing, as most such visits are.  This is the same B. you may remember, who invited me into her house before.  The B. who speaks essentially no English.  Y. speaks even less.  But I have tons of family pictures (always a popular choice), they gave me a tour of Vietnam on a world map, and we enjoyed just being together, words or not. 

Here's the best part: While they were there, I even forgot (sometimes) that my house was "embarrassing."   

In a weird way, I can see the grace in God dropping me straight into my mind's worst-case scenario for a spontaneous guest: If a visit can still go well in that chaos, then it can work in any setting.  Yesterday was for me a confirmation—an actual successful experience, however small it may seem to you, for me to remember and build from and hold onto—that hospitality is not about how well I can impress people with my house, or my food, or my "hostess-ness."  It is not about me at all.  It's about sharing the love of Christ, and letting him love people and meet their needs through my obedience to him. 

So—while still slightly horrified that people were in my house yesterday—I'm glad that God is giving me opportunities to learn to be more hospitable.  I'm even more glad, again, that he's a patient teacher.

A quick follow-up on World Refugee Day:

While B. and Y. were at my house, other students began gathering outside my door, too.

Now, if any of you have traveled outside the U.S., you are probably familiar with varying views of time across cultures.  We were fully expecting our day to unfold in "refugee time"—we told them the bus was leaving at 3:30 when it was actually coming at 3:45.  Our optimistic departure time was 4.

It was 2:30 when they started gathering.  By 2:45, a whole group was standing in the apartment parking lot, waiting for me to walk to the bus site with them.  It was amazing.  They were so excited to celebrate.

At the event itself, people walking by downtown were drawn to the beautiful cultural costumes and dances, and stopped to ask questions about what was going on. Many had never heard of refugees, or had no idea that more than 3,000 of them lived right in Charlotte.  All in all, it seems to have been a great success, both as a cultural celebration and awareness-raising campaign.  My neighbors are already planning for next year—some are planning to get me and the other ESL teachers/volunteers to do a Bhutanese dance with them.  That will be interesting…