Reboot
Love and miss y’all, Manna ‘14, as I looked back through some of my college journal entries and other miscellaneous writings tonight!
-Shawn Du (November 8, 2018 A.D.)

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@mannaclass2014
Reboot
Love and miss y’all, Manna ‘14, as I looked back through some of my college journal entries and other miscellaneous writings tonight!
-Shawn Du (November 8, 2018 A.D.)
You Make Me Brave
He is truly working powerfully in Baltimore, this broken city, where the brokenness stems not only from drug addiction, violence, murder, poverty, but also from riches, from achievement, from the lies the Enemy feeds us, from so many souls living life without a greater purpose, there is so much sorrow and hurt that can come into a life separate from God. Here are some stories from Baltimore, just little glimpses that I've seen the past week. I truly thank God that I could even hear these testimonies, which time and time reminded me again of God's unending love, His waves of mercy, and His grace that cannot be broken by the world. He is the light of the world:
"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." (John 1:5)
Story from Hampden, Baltimore
On Friday, I went to a potluck dinner at my pastor's house, open to everyone at our church (which isn't that big). On the way out, I gave Peter (not his real name) a ride back home, as he lived in the surrounding community. We talked, and he shared pretty casually about the drug problems in the area and how the drug dealers would often give out "free samples" every time they got a new product, which was like "every other day." One time, after serving awhile in prison, he got out, was clean for awhile, tried one of these samples, and it based messed him up for "3 or 4 years." Back then, he was a drug addict and also a pimp, and had a few strippers he pimped out.
One day, I think because of overdose on drugs, he nearly died, and his arms were all messed up, and it was bad because even those aforementioned strippers left him. He stated how he was on a stretcher (probably to/in the hospital), and felt like he was going die. Everything went black, and he felt like he was just going to collapse down, through the stretcher (though he never actually did). Peter said how at that point, he truly experienced what he felt “hell was like,” the total separation from God, and it brought so much fear, it was an unmentionably fearful feeling, experience. He didn’t even go to church before at the time, but at the time he knew no other words to put it than, the feeling of being “totally separated from God.” Even as he shared, he started tearing up a little bit, and said he would always cry/shed tears at the thought of that moment whenever he’d re-tell it again. At that point, he felt he knew who was in charge, that God had given him a second chance in his life, surviving that event, to turn his life around. At that point, he knew for sure there was a hell, with unspeakable pain in being separated from the Father, from His love. Yet he also knew that if there was a hell, then there’s got to be a heaven as well. At that point, he realized, and knew who was in charge – not himself, but God.
He also found out about the our church when they were giving out free lunches one Easter as an outreach event, and started coming since. He now goes to a rehab place in the neighborhood, where they give him regulated, progressively smaller doses of methodone to eventually get him off of the drug in a more natural way then quitting (which is a terrible, painful experience).
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Story from Johns Hopkins
This Monday, at Hopkins Grad Christian fellowship, a professor from the School of Public Health came to share some testimony, and to give witness to the power and the Joy of the Holy Spirit who has led her life and at Hopkins. This was COMPLETELY unexpected, as I didn't know how/when/if I could encounter prayer warriors like this person in my professional setting, much less a faculty!
After graduating from undergrad, she planned to be a missionary, being in public health/professor was the last thing on her mind. She grew up in a "normal" Christian church in India, but through two years of applying and waiting, God had closed so many doors in her life. In those years, she did much prayer and fasting, and was strengthened in knowledge and experience of the Holy Spirit, as she realized that listening to and following the Holy Spirit brought true peace, though the plans were completely unthought of and wild compared to her expectations of her own life! God led her to apply to Hopkins for grad school, a school she had then never heard of, in a city (Baltimore) she did not know.
After experiencing the Holy Spirit, she began to witness true revival, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit working in her midst; she studied with students of many different nationalities: Palestinians, Kenyans, etc. And by her testimony over 300 people got saved, that she knew of; she knew that there was no way man could start such a revival as this. It was the work of the Holy Spirit, who was working and stirring in the hearts of those students, stirring in them a desire to know and have fellowship with God.
One time, she was studying for a biostatistics exam the next day, when the Holy Spirit told her to go down to this one (Kenyan? Nigerian?) girl on the floor below. She was a little exasperated, since she had the (probably pretty hard) biostatistics final tomorrow! But she went down, and started talking to this girl God led her to, and realized her mom had recently just died, and she was in sorrow and mourning, wavering between the idea of going back to her country or not. So the day before the exam, she just sat with this girl and talked to her for an entire day, leading her to Christ, as God had done through her for several other international students, bringing them into her own church community as well.
Also shared how she knew some Kenyan friends who were saved, and afterwards went back their own countries to spread the Gospel. They went also to more remote villages, who did not speak their language and began speaking with a funny accent or something. After awhile, they realized that they were actually speaking the language of
the village(s) they went to, despite not knowing the language beforehand! They were speaking in tongues, and the Holy Spirit was giving them utterance, so that they could speak the language of the village(s), though they didn’t know it beforehand! (For anyone who went to Alabaster, this is further evidence and testimony corroborating to some of the similar events described in “Voice of the Night” by Pastor Surprise Sithole)
One thing she said that really struck me, and sent chills down my spine, in a view for revival at Hopkins: “Unlike Yale, Harvard, Oxford, or Princeton, which were founded as seminaries, Johns Hopkins University was founded as a secular institution, a research university. But though Hopkins didn’t start as a seminary, I hope it can end as a seminary, where people from all over the world come to get advanced academic training, and in the process come to KNOW Jesus Christ.”
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My Own thoughts (trying to be brief)
I share these testimonies, glimpses with you hopefully as a way to bring encouragement, and a reminder of the REALITY of our God's love - He loves us too much not to care, not to act! Though you might be living through depression, dry seasons, mourning, you must remember that He is faithful to the end, that ALL things work together for good for of His children, whom He loves.
As I spend more time in Baltimore, I thank God for how faithfully he's led me, but have also come to know more clearly how little my faith really is. I desire revival, salvations at Hopkins, but often only half-heartedly, like the seed planted in the rocky soil. I still struggle with the praise of man, with desires to be liked/acceptance, with various temptations. In this, I realize more and more how true faithfulness lies in not even being a tool for God, for tools know what they're gonna be used for; we are truly conduits for God, as Jonathan Rainous stated in May 2012 during his Princeton visit. I pray that our hearts would continue to soften and let the Holy Spirit lead our lives, that our lives would no longer be micromanaged by our every little desire, every expectation we have; I confess that I have struggled with this much at Hopkins too. But I believe in the testimony I have over and over again in different ways in this city: there is TRUE JOY and PEACE in being led by the Holy Spirit, and by the Good Shepherd, who laid down His life for us, who is faithful, who will lead us back to our true home, who called us out upon the waters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UglO7SGUWk ^ Last point. At around 3:00 it goes:
"You make me brave, you make me brave, you call me out beyond the shores into the waves; no fear can hinder now the love that made a way."
I can't help but imagine Peter (the disciple), who had so much fear and trembling as he walked upon the waves when Jesus called him in the Sea of Galilee. He had the human "boldness" to take out his sword and strike down the servant's ear to protect Jesus, yet in fear and trembling denied Jesus three times as He was led to be sentenced. Yet upon Peter Jesus chose to build His church. In seeing the empty tomb, in seeing Jesus Christ resurrected and victorious over death, and with the Holy Spirit poured out upon him, equipping him and strengthening him as an apostle on the Day of Pentecost, Peter's heart of fear and cowardice and trembling were turned into wonder, and boldness, and a passionate love for Jesus, for the sharing of the Gospel, for living a life utterly laid down for the one who loved Him - no lies of man, no lies of the Enemy, no fear, no shame, no trembling could hold him back from proclaiming and living out the Good News with boldness, humility, and love. We too live in the legacy of all the saints, the faithful who have lived before us; we live too in the legacy of Peter, the legacy which Jesus Christ started.
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses (and testimony, and the love of those who have patiently poured into our lives), let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith."
stream of consciousness, cuz that's how i roll...
what is belief? what does it mean to believe something? how do you check it? what if you think you believe something, you want to believe something, but in reality you believe something else? for example, i WANT to believe in the power of the cross and jesus' resurrection and the gospel &c, but do i actually? i THINK i believe it… but if i do, why is it not showing in my *visible* actions? does belief always manifest itself in actions? if not, how does it manifest itself? is the manifestation of belief really important or is it more what's going on inside? are there different ways to believe the same thing? and, can we actually control what we believe? i guess i'm saying this because my quiet times have been pretty sporadic for the past couple of weeks, and sometimes i feel so strange praying before meals because i feel like a hypocrite. i think a large part of this is stemming from a mistake i made / something i've been wrestling with for a while, and the guilt really is a barrier. at first the guilt was a barrier to EVERYTHING - all day i'd just feel ugh and hate myself. then i realized it wasn't from God it was condemnation, and it lightened up a bit but it's still interfering with my relationship with God, MAYBE. this is just my diagnosis so far but we all know that i'm pretty confused (going back to the beginning of the paragraph: then again i know it's possible to do the QTs and pray before meals and all that stuff and be a hollow shell inside, and i really DON'T want to be that way!) my life in laos is going pretty well EXCEPT for this (my spiritual life), but this is like the MOST IMPORTANT PART OF MY LIFE so i don't really know. i guess i'm feeling numb at this point because it's my defense mechanism. i wish God would just reveal himself to me again! but part of me is like, are you really waiting on him? i guess not… but part of me is like, God doesn't work like that: input -> output. but if i really believed, i would wait on him actively, right? but then again it goes back to the things that are like - are there different ways to believe the same thing? i think so… based on all the Christians i know who lived out their faiths in so many different, equally inspiring ways (some obvious, some not so obvious) not saying my passiveness is "right" or "good" (and i'm slowly beginning to hate those words… hate is a strong word though so maybe not :P) but that it might not be incongruous with actually believing one thing that i think helps me know that i do believe what i think i believe is that i have hope, and i'm not despairing. i think other religions (though i'm totally not educated about them at all so i really have no right to say this) might offer a "transcend suffering, it's all in your head" solution, christianity is the only one that offers REDEMPTION (again, i hesitate to say "only" bc i don't know all of them, but yeah). that one day the world will be as it should. hmm i could unpack this a bit more but i don't really feel like it so if you read my lao update (which i will probably send out within the next day or two) for those of you who are on the list you'll get a very different side of the coin from this post… and yet all of it is true! i'm so glad i came, i'm learning a lot and being stretched in ways i could never have imagined, it's such a blast and all, but i'm wrestling, boys and girls. please pray for me, and i would love your inputs!! ps. rereading my first paragraph… can you subconsciously but not consciously believe something? for example, if someone who gives generously and serves willingly and loves all is living as if they believe in God and know jesus but they don't consciously do… then what? pps. i apologize if this email is super abstract and hard to really understand… hahaha but this is how i'm feeling now! love and miss you all!!
The Purposes of Community
We are lucky as Christians to be able to integrate ourselves into the church. For me, the church is an embodiment of common community across uncommon territory. Despite being placed in unfamiliar places, we can often find community through the church.
These statements, however, have now ceased to encapsulate the significance of the church to me. I do not disagree with anything I have said previously, but I now realize that this is such a small part of the church. You see, community as I have described it above was not defined. My beginning statements have only attached the connotation of familiarity to the word community. While community does imply a sense of familiarity, this definition fails to appreciate the depth of meaning behind this one word.
Since becoming integrated into a church, I have begun attending small group. Sitting there in small group, I find that for all my intellectual reasoning on Christianity, they add little to the conversation. I can draw upon Bonhoeffer, Niebuhr, and Hauerwas all I want, but at the end of the day, I am describing Christianity as a science. My brothers around me instead tell of how the gospel has redeemed their lives and share genuinely about how they are struggling. These men are not being comforted by intellectual observations on the coherency of God's narrative for our own life. Instead, they are comforted by the testimonies of others regarding the goodness of God and the way he provides. While I can think about the faith, these men truly live the faith.
This distinction comes back to the word I started with–community. The intellectual exploration of Christianity for me a lonely one. It is a road taken largely by myself with the books around me and papers scribbled with musings. The community exploration of Christianity is one taken with others.
So how does this juxtaposition inform my current understanding of community?
Perhaps it's best summed up this way. The intellectual discovery involved with my time spent reading the likes of MacIntyre and Hauerwas are my attempts to digest the incomprehensibly complex reality of God into simple arguments. Yet the ability of these arguments to do this pale in comparison to the ability of narrative. Perhaps that is why God has us live out narratives instead of telling us exactly how everything works. Only narratives can come close to appreciating the complexity of our world and our God.
And how do we begin to understand our narratives?
By sharing them.
So this is community? Just a collection of narratives all intertwining with each other? Perhaps, but a collection of narratives is powerful. When we talk about narratives being put in conversation with each other, we begin to talk about terms such as vulnerability, reconciliation, and love. Community, then, instead of just being a place of familiarity suddenly becomes something more. It is instead a forum for the sharing and intermixing of narratives. Most of all, it is a place where our walk with God is strengthened by that of others.
He is doing a new thing
"Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings forth chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:
Remember not the former things, nor consider things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert... for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise" (Isaiah 43:16-19, emphasis mine).
This is God's word to his people Israel in their judgment and exile due to their past faithlessness, idolatry, and lack of concern for injustice in their midst. He says that in this sorrowful and seemingly hopeless time, he will make a way where there is no way and "do a new thing," so that his people praise him as they are created to do. Hundreds of years after the exilic period, Jews and Gentiles understood that this "new thing" ultimately unfolded in the person of Jesus Christ. Almost no one expected God to come down himself, care for the brokenhearted, and rescue his people by dying for them, only to resurrect, ascend, and pour down his Spirit. This was GOOD NEWS to all.
Reading this passage this morning, I wanted to give thanks to God for doing "new things" in our lives during this post-grad period. I am confident that God is with us as we meet new people, learn new things, and go on new adventures wherever we are. But I pray that for all of us, there would be nothing newer and more refreshing to our souls than Jesus himself. Sometimes, I feel the temptation to think of the Gospel as a parable or allegory that guides my life, but as followers of Christ, we must see that HE is life itself - we have no meaning or hope apart from HIM - and HE compels us to take up our crosses and die everyday.
I pray that especially for those of us who feel dry and/or are burdened by past hurts, mistakes, relationships, and sins, that we would turn to God and praise him TODAY for who he is and what he has done in our lives. Would your thirst be fulfilled through your worship and would you be strengthened to see the new things that God is doing in your life this year.
He loved to make us lovely
Hi everyone, it’s been the beginning of my 6th week of work in Wisconsin (I can’t believe it’s already been over a month). There’s not much to update on, but been settling in nicely into Midwest life.
I just wanted to share this quote from a Tim Keller book that I’ve been reading. In it, he’s talking about what loving one another means and he says this: “Well, when Jesus looked down from the cross, he didn’t think, ‘I am giving myself to you because you are so attractive to me.’ No, he was in agony, and he looked down at us - denying him, abandoning him, and betraying him - and in the greatest act of love in history, he stayed. He said, ‘Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.’ He loved us, not because we were lovely to him, but to make us lovely.” I wonder what it could have felt like for Jesus. To know that he could step off the cross if he wished to, but avoiding that selfish act in an act of service and love for humanity. The ultimate sacrifice for a fallen people. And that’s our example of perfect love. Not an emotion or some feeling that comes and goes, but service for others.
CS Lewis once said, “Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more.” It’s a very similar concept to what Smith talked about in Desiring the Kingdom. Our actions shape our hearts and desires, which in turn influence our actions. For me this was a challenge by God to simply love those around me. He commanded us to love so that our hearts may be continually shaped to love.
Worship and Prayer: Battle Songs
Hey guys, it's been quite a hectic first week here at Hopkins (with first week of classes over). I don't think I've ever taken this many class hours even in my busiest semester at Princeton, and there's a quarter system (4 quarters in a year, 8 weeks each), so it feels like everything is just flying by with psets, readings, assignments, and assessments. I feel like I'm maneuvering through an asteroid field (like one of those you see in movies, not real ones because those are actually much more sparse!) high-speed, just trying to dodge all these obstacles, occasionally getting hit, every day. Also, Hopkins has two campuses if you don't know, and I'm taking my classes this year at the Medical campus (even health econ/stats classes), which is about a 25 min. shuttle ride from the main undergrad campus (where David and I live).
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Do you guys remember the Large Group our senior year when David Kong gave his testimony? That day was a great blessing to me. Anyway, every day, when I finally take the shuttle back and enter into the apartment, I basically just want to fall face down on my bed/floor, as David Kong described, and just pray, in thanksgiving, in desperation, and sometimes for others and the campus. I remember that for most of the summer, and to be honest even during Princeton years, it's been relatively hard for me to just spontaneously pray by myself, with a serious, heart-pouring train of thought.
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Last week, at the church David, Long Duong and I went to, the pastor said towards the end of the service: "Worship isn't supposed to be a Christian karaoke. It's supposed to be an outpouring of your heart to God." In so many times during the day, at home, and on the shuttle, with "groanings too deep for words", I can't help but sing, usually quietly to myself or in my head and pray too, often without an agenda or guideline. These very pretty rare for me at Princeton. Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope; you are probably familiar with this idea and message of Paul. I hope that for all of you (myself included), that any challenging times you face may produce a new song - true worship, praise, and prayer from the bottom of your heart.
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I think it'd be great for us to know each other's prayer requests and praises, that we may continue to intercede and give thanks for each other in the name of God, especially in a new year, as we are all sent out from Princeton. If you share with me, I'd love to pray for you. Obviously you shouldn't feel pressured to share with me or the whole class (maybe a particular subset or particular gender is better), but I think that God really listens to our prayers and answers them, and this recognition and observance is crucial for us in building our knowledge and trust of Him (especially when He "answers" in a way we were not expecting, or with something orthogonal to our heart's original desires).
I pray that for all of us, even as we get more used to (or have become more used to) our new living/working situations, we may continue to grow in Him, in total reliance on Him (in dark and in joyful times), giving Him all thanks and praise. Truly, I pray that we can really understand and act upon the fact that HE is the one who gives us the power to live a life laid down for Him, that HE gives us the power to be holy, to be sober, to love, to worship, to endure when we believe otherwise.
"His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence." 2 Peter 1:3 (I remember this verse from James Martin)
Finally, thanks Isabelle, for your previous post; very crucial reminder. A song I've been playing/sometimes singing a lot to get me through the is Jesus, Lover of My Soul by Hillsong United; “worship you, My Lord, until the very end." You might dislike Hillsong‘s style or other things - whatever the case, find what helps you worship and praise!
Today marked the first day that I ever went grocery shopping (at Wegmans) completely BY MYSELF. It was one of those experiences that really set apart this phase of life from the last four years as a student, and before that as a dependent on my parents for things like food and groceries. Anyway, amidst this moment of cognitive dissonance, I was reminded of the video "This Is Water," which takes place largely in a supermarket. If you haven't seen it, I'd definitely watch it, and even if you have, I hope it can be a good reminder for us to be sensitive to our neighbors in our day to day lives (a la Sheng's post), and to really see everything as God sees. Miss all y'all!
Work jam
Whoa, my first post. Anywho, for those of you who don't know I started work back in the beginning of August in Hong Kong. It's been a smooth transition, since I'm working at a place where one of my best friends from study abroad also works. This is not to say there isn't any strugs - there's been some OT's and idealities have definitely been broken. But at the same time I am definitely grateful for the friendly work environment and great co-workers/bosses, some of whom have actually been great encouragements spiritually.
But the topic of this post is actually about something more specific than my workplace and it has nothing to do with architecture (if you want some of that, follow some of my posts in gospelworldview blog - shameless plug hohoho). I don't know why, but for the past few days I kept on listening to 'Joyful Joyful' from Sister Act 2. Some of you might laugh, and to be honest when I first played that song a few days ago I just wanted a catchy song to do mindless mouse-clicking to. But the more I listened to it on repeat, the happiness from listening to an upbeat song turned into joy from praise for who God is. I mean, if you're listening to words like "Melt the clouds of sin and sadness / Drive the dark of doubt away / Giver of immortal gladness / Fill us with the light of day" dozens of times, how can it not?
Just thought that it'd be a good food for thought (whoa using two of the same words in the same sentence...wait I did it again..INCEPTION) and maybe a good email chain starter? You know, titled something like: what's YOUR work jam? or jayuuuuuuuum...
But yeah, think about how your music sets the mood for your work, and find one that draws you to Him. (<-the tl;dr versin of the post)
Hope you all are doing well!
A Formula for World Peace
I was sitting on the El the other day. (The Chicago equivalent of a subway) I sat there staring out into blank space. Next to me, there was a man playing a racing game on his phone. Another man sitting across to me was reading.....again...on his phone. The people standing next to the door seemed disinterested and ready to just get home.
I had just caught glimpses of a the sun setting between the tall buildings of Chicago. As the elevated train zipped out of downtown, I sat there, silent, counting the stations until I arrived home. The silence in the train was interrupted only by the hums it made as it navigated turns high above the city streets. This silence, however, was soon interrupted by a man who announced:
"I have something to say."
I looked at him. He was dressed with long sleeves and jeans. He didn't look particularly wealthy or particularly poor. In fact, he looked extremely ordinary. Yet, the fact he said something suddenly broke his ordinariness.
He looked around and proceeded to exclaim:
"I have a dream. This dream is for world peace."
Immediately, I started rolling my eyes and silently begged him inside to stop interrupting the initial sacred silence on the train. I thought,
"not another overly idealistic man trying to beg for money by championing an abstract cause."
As if reading my mind he continued:
"I know what you're thinking, I'm crazy, but just hear me out."
I did think he was crazy. Nevertheless, I thought it best to remain open-minded. What he said next, though, astonished me.
He told me and people sitting around me in the train car to stop for a moment and just say hi. He related his frustration at the fact that no one in the car would for a moment put down their cell phones and actually talk to each other. He told us how he said "have a good day" to 10 different people and 3 of them flat out ignored him, thinking he was insane.
I thought about this.
As I looked around, it was so true. Here I was in the third largest city in the United States, surrounded by people in a train car. Yet, I never felt lonelier. I could see that the people around me felt immensely uncomfortable. I, too, felt this extreme sense of discomfort. Yet, I had to question myself...
...Why?
Why is it so rare to have a conversation with the person next to you in a train?
Why in the world would such a simple thing as saying hi to the person next to me and introducing myself feel so foreign?
As I thought about this, I realized that to open my mouth was to be vulnerable with someone I never knew. Immediately when I opened my mouth, my character would flow out. This could be a good or bad thing. Yet, if I said nothing at all, no one would remember me on the train. There would be no awkward silences or small talk. Tucked in my own small world, I was safe and yet purely alone.
At the same time, I realized the flip side of this paradigm. By opening myself up to someone else, the other person necessarily now has the decision of either ignoring my advance or entertaining it. If we were both to entertain each other's company, we would learn something from the other person and shift our relationship from the foreign to the familiar. Thus, not initiating conversation means I would be safe, but it also means there would be no opportunity for meaningful exchange.
As I was thinking, I realized what he meant by world peace. This gigantic term is such an abstraction and considered so idealistic. Yet the way he was describing it, peace can arise by taking the foreign and changing it into the familiar.
This was a profound thought for me. I had sat on the train for 30 minutes with these people. Yet I did not know a single thing about them. As I thought about it, I could not help but think about the Christian ideals of community. In church, it is relatively easy to build community because frankly, the entire idea of church is to build a community of believers.
Yet, what about the train car? Sitting here, are still people made in the image of God. Yet, we all pretend like no one exists, afraid to reach out to the other. There was something oddly right about the initial silence in the train car that now seems disturbing. At this moment, I decided to get up and introduce myself to this man. Despite his long, persuasive monologue, I was the only one.
As this man exited the train, he said:
"There's a reason why we were on this same train. Think about it."
Now that I had introduced myself to this man, I could no longer regard him as foreign. The silence was broken as was the divide between me and them, the people on the train. This man was no longer simply an object on the train. Instead, he was Anthony, a man passionate for life and exasperated by the seeming obsession of the people around him with their electronic devices.
In a perfect community, there would be world peace. Yet, we live in an inherently imperfect world. Despite this, Anthony saw something I did not:
We reserve the capacity to make the world just a little more perfect by not overgeneralizing those on our train car called life into a category called others. Instead, we can ask for their names and stories so that they are called John or Max or Peter....
...or Anthony.
Hey guys!
I just came back from China (on ISEC) and stumbled on our old graduation pictures and it reminded me of such good memories! So thanks guys and missing you all, wherever you are.
I would love to share about China and how God is moving in my life, and doing great things alreadys at Berks. I don't like writing stuff down tho, so email me or something if you wanna hear about it. Although right now it's been struggz trying to settle down and actually having responsibilities, especially in the craze of a public school of over 50,000 students...I should really be sending out emails to profs right now...
I was going to be anonymous, but you probably already guessed. Hope you all are doing well and hopefully we can have a get-together online sometime soon. May God bless you all! :)
Suffering
I was reading an article when I came across this quote. The author quoted Charles Spurgeon who struggled with depression all of his life and died of gout and Bright’s disease at age 57. Spurgeon said, “It would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity.”
It’s a very interesting take on suffering. If God has not ordained our suffering then He is not in full control and that idea is more frightening. If He has ordained our suffering, then we can rest in the full assurance that He will deliver us from it. I had never really thought of it that way, but it was very comforting for me.
Hope everyone is doing well :)
At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children...
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Matthew 11:25-26, 28
Dear brothers and sisters:
It feels as though ten thousand years have passed since graduation. That first night--similar to Jocelyn--back at home, I dreamed about our class. And a few days later, without knowing fully why, I kept crying, perhaps because I didn't know how else to express the sadness and tumult I felt inside.
O ye of little faith! I hear my name in that call, but also this: that He loves and loves and loves our fragmented, unlovely souls. That He uses us, all of us, the brokenness and the anguish, the parts that we would rather not claim but which He still claims for Himself. And He is refining us daily.
Friends! I pray that God keeps our hearts open in the coming year. I pray for radical encounters with Him. I pray that we surrender to Him, even when we would rather sit back into the ordinary patterns of our lives.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
Psalm 19:14
Praise God for watching over you so faithfully since graduation. I wish I could say more about what I have been learning and seeing, but I feel how hard my heart is, and I pray that God will continue to humble me in South Africa. Please keep this Zithulele community in your prayers, and for a spirit of renewal in everyone in this place!
It is my first Sabbath here today. Praise God! I love you all very much, and I am comforted by the magnificence of His love for each of you. Praying for more of Him in each of us, and less of our own desires, so that His strength and wisdom would ground us and encourage us each day--
I'M IN LAOS!
hey friends! hope you are all doing well. the main reason i'm posting on this blog is so other ppl will post cuz i wanna know how you are all doing!
i'm in Laos and it's been great so far except for food poisoning (vomited for the first time in 5+ years yay...) (it's ok though it wasn't that much) (but that's why i'm staying home right now instead of going out to an organic farm like i was supposed to, oh well!) i also wrote a super long update with all the details only my family (and even for them - questionably so) cares about, but i also sent it to some friends so if you wanna read about my not so exciting yet still awesome escapades thus far, lemme know and i'll forward it to you :)
miss you all very much!!!
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edit: i forgot the actual reason i wanted to post here. (you know that feeling when you walk into another room to do something and when you get there you forget what you were gonna do? that's like what i did, except i just stayed in that other room and did something random aka wrote the above post). ANYWAY shawn was in my dream last night lol. apparently the honor committee found similarities between some graphs i made for health econ last year and his thesis or something this year. i was like hrm my graphs were not very legit... and the comparison was really strange. ok that's all. it's a bit hard to describe. haha anyway yep that's all
Pride and Anger
Matthew 5:21-26
21 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. 23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. 26 Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.
Today I heard the new English pastor for ACCCN speak for the first time. Pastor Eric Chang. I was eager to listen to one of his sermons since I had heard many good things about him thus far. During the service we read the above scripture from the sermon on the Mount as Jesus preached and taught about the many vices that man struggles with. Specifically the passage about anger was read out loud. I didn’t think anything of it and just read it through without giving it a second thought. But when it came time for the sermon, I began to get the feeling that God was really trying to speak to me on the this topic of anger.
During the sermon, Pastor Eric spoke of how Jesus was admonishing the Pharisees for believing themselves to be ‘good’ and ‘righteous’ because they kept the commandments. Jesus addressed the commandment, thou shalt not murder, specifically and reminded the Pharisees that the inner expressions of the heart, namely hatred, are just as sinful as murder. Pastor Eric encouraged us to go to God first with our anger and reconcile ourselves with God that we may master our emotions, rather than let our emotions master us.
I have been told recently over the last several months that I seem grumpy all the time. That my temper has been out of control. That I have been mean and impatient. That I seem joyless at times and easily annoyed. At first I didn’t want to believe these statements about me. I found them to be an attack on my character and thought they did not accurately represent who I was. So the more I heard them, the more I continued to dismiss them, to my own detriment.
What I realize now is that I was simply blind to my own pride and self-righteousness. I didn’t believe that I could be so angry and bitter and impatient. Slowly I am beginning to realize that I am falling prey to my sinful tendencies. The more I think about it and the more I see that my pride is really the root of my anger and impatience. I believe I have all the answers and that I know what is best. I believe that my time is more valuable because my pride tells me that it is, rather than realizing that my time is all simply God’s. It’s funny because I thought that my 4 years in college had taught me and humbled me enough, but it seems not (again pride masking my lack of humility...quite insidious). Pride may be one of those sins that I battle over and over again. I must be on the lookout for my pride creeping at the doorstep, waiting for the right moment to strike. I really need your help on this one God.
Hello there. I am Jay, a total newbie in the adult world. Here are recordings of some of my epic...
Hi guys!
I have recently being trying to keep up my personal blog, where I will post both gospel related things and also some goofy things as well.
I realize some of you guys might not care, but a few may, so I am just putting it out there...
For those who are fans of the StupidJayMoments Chronicles, this is probably where you would find them.
I hope you guys had a lovely 4th of July, and I miss you all!
Mannalove,
Jay
"For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” -Galatians 5:13-14
Happy belated Fourth of July, everyone! As I was restless on the plane back to the US from Beijing, I decided to do a daily devo and was at the end of Galatians. Anyway, not much to say here, other than that for me, it's easy to forget what the word "freedom" can and might truly mean. Many times, I am cynical of the way "freedom" is packaged in media, portrayed, ridiculed, satirized, and the way I often take my freedom as very much for granted. But thank God, for what we've began to learn from Gospel Worldview! In GWV freedom, there is hope and joy, selflessness and love.