To quench a desert. [part one]

10/20/11 was the first time I opened this note, and I purposed to write a short thesis that would encapsulate both the theme of this blog of mine and of the Farniks' mission work in the Czech Republic that, for the past two summers, God sent me to help. It turned into this.
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Pastor Mueller prepared several devotions for the team of 2011 to remember the purpose of ministry based on several chapters of II Corinthians. On one such morning, before we packed the van to drive up the mountain of the second week, he shared this verse with the team, to encourage our motivation: For the love of Christ constrains us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again. (II Corinthians 5:14-15)


This resonated with me more deeply than the other devotions, for I had named this blog from the previous year after the very concept that I am not the driving force of my insistence and enthusiasm and argument and sheer joy, but rather that the love of Christ compels me. Some of my dorm-mates from last year used to jokingly exorcise the demons of laziness from our midterm-riddled minds with the command "The power of Christ compels you!" I don't know where they stood in regard to Christ.

Pastor Mueller also elaborated to us that the word translated "constrain" in verse 14 paints the picture of a fierce river's current being held and twisted and guided by the rocks on the banks. The love of Christ thus directs the flow of our ministry and pushes us onward, to purge death and, by our saltiness, to rinse the salty seas of their saltiness! (Ezekiel 47:1-12 ) The Greek word is συνεχει, which my Greek Bible Reader says means "control." This is a comforting thought, as are the other verses demonstrating God's powerful hand, for we know that He's working through us, and we need not feel guilty that we are wasting our time in ministry. 

And yet the picture of a river is so vivid in my mind, for I am annually reminded about the brevity of my land's water supply. California is a desert, and I love the desert. Yet the desert is a place with no water, where rainfall is truly a blessing from God, and water does not come freely through filtered taps on porcelain sinks. This I would do good to remember. Water, living water especially, [that is, water that flows from natural springs / brooks; the only acceptable source of water for the ceremonial bathtubs of cleansing at the temple, the mikvehyim], was pretty uncommon for the past few thousands of years. Irrigation is one thing; building canals to get specific mountain-born, living and flowing, "virgin" sources of water from one place to another is a much more difficult task. Thus, water was a precious commodity not only for its unique hydrating usefulness, but more importantly for its cleansing properties: how dare you come before the LORD without obeying His command to be pure for him, to be ye holy? So the Israelites built canals across mountains to get the water of the Jordan to Jerusalem.

And yet I've skipped over the most obvious use of water-- we only survive a few days without it! The human dependence on water is as close to oxygen as we can find in the material world to quench our daily thirst. Be cut off from your water supply? Perish a thirsty death with a parched tongue. 

The Psalmist-King David knows this too fully, having spent much of his life in the Judean wilderness, shepherding his father's flocks before His father commissioned him into the hard labours of shepherding His unruly flocks that trembled at giants and chose giants and banished David, their "beloved" king, into the land of the giants. The psalmist writes: 

As the deer pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after You, O God. 

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?

-Psalm 42:1-2

He leads me beside quiet waters.

-Psalm 23:2b

O God, You are my God; early will I seek You: 

my soul thirsts for You, my flesh faints for You 

in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; 

to see Your power and Your glory, so as I have seen You in the sanctuary. 

Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise You. 

-Psalm 63:1-3

I could write for hours for each of these verses, which will hopefully, one day, be a good thing. I won't today. But I will draw from Psalm 63:3 the fact that David was motivated by the lovingkindness, the "hesed," of Christ. And so I also draw my motivation for praise and joy and vocation and song and poetry and justice and integrity and excellence from the fact that Jesus's love is better than life. The bride of the Song of Songs declares her husband's love to be "better than wine" (Song of Songs 1:2, 4), but the psalmist goes even further to say that being loved by God is better than life itself, much more than the many joys He gives us in life!

God is the ruler and rider of the rainclouds that precipitate and empower stony hearts to preach and hold fast to the Rock of the desert, the fountain "whose waters do not fail" (Isaiah 58:11). 

BOR_Chapter 7: Childhood Friend

I really feel that this chapter is aimed directly at me, as generic and widespread the heartache of lost friendships may be.

The friend I wish I never lost touch with was Jon Nelson. [FSAE: You sucked at sentences ending prepositions with. You still do.] As you may have noticed, going to a school as private as my elementary would leave short room for enemies. So I pretty much got along with everybody, and I've carried that attitude with me to Valley, although I need to work on my attitude with my family. But Jon was the only other guy in my grade, and we got along like brothers. We even joked that we could have been twins, minus the obvious differences in appearances, because he was born merely hours after I was, celebrating his birthday on the 19th after mine on the 18th. We helped each other for everything, encouraging each other in everything from pull-ups in P.E. to helping with homework or memorization. We could talk about anything with each other, to our nine-year old minds' content.

Jon Nelson was one of the only friends I [have ever] invited to my home, which may seem trivial [in light of the circumstances surrounding my neighborhood's deficit in multiple generations], but to me it symbolized a great deal of importance to invite people to see who I really am, where I'm myself the most, [for better and worse]. It may be commonplace elsewhere, but in my heart, inviting friends over is something of a no-secrets relationship, and I haven't had that with many of my friends since Jon Nelson and his brothers. He has two brothers that I also call my friends: Scott the younger and Mark the older. Scott is my little brother's age, so our parents thought we would work like clockwork together, and so we did. Mark was the first friend I made when I began attending Covenant Christian Academy, and he helped ease me into the whole ten-kids-in-one-classroom-but-they're-all-different-grade-levels-and-taught-by-the-same-intimidating-teacher-Mrs.-Jocilyn-Warren. I really had a pretty deep relationship with the Nelson boys, but in the fourth or fifth grade, their father's work transferred him to San Diego, and I failed time and again my promise to write and keep in touch.

I never really saw Jon for the longest time, besides certain get-togethers and events sponsored by our church's presbytery, in which we would have awkward conversations aout how we've been doing, about how we've been growing apart the years we have been separated.

I'm his friend on Facebook, but what does that mean? We've grown so far apart from our former friendship that I sometimes wonder if things would have gone differently if I had been a faithful and loyal friend, but I know that heartache is part of God's plan to strengthen me and cause me to become more mature, learning from my mistakes. This experiential knowledge has lead me to be more faithful to my friends, but I have not let some of my closest friends into the deepest recesses of my heart, for reasons I cannot explain even to myself.

[FSAE: Nope. I still don't have an answer.]

I think the love is so much easier than you realize: 
if you can give yourself to someone, then you should.
Dawes, "A Little Bit Of Everything" -- (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36bItoBXpxk)

Of course, discretion is advised. I.e.- NOT just "someone." 

BOR_Chapter 6: Childhood Games

One thing elementary school did for me was teach me to run, and run fast! At Covenant Christian Academy, all ten of so of the kids my age would organize games during recesses, and I must say in retrospect, that I love the kind of organic bonding that comes with those games. At the time, I just liked to run, because I could beat the other boys and girls. We played games like "Colors," "Capture the Flag," and all sorts of variations on the game "Tag."

Colors was a really awesome game, and I remember it more than the other games because we actually played Colors in the pool up in Mammoth Camp for Cross Country pre-season summer conditioning this year [summer of 2009]. The person that's "it" stands in the center of the field (or pool) and calls out a color and everyone else tries to run across to the other side based on whether they are wearing the color the "it" person chose. It's loads of fun, and it sure helps to be fast in order to evade being tagged and turned into a minion of the "it"-person. I've been told that this game is also called "Octopus," but I've never heard of "Octopus" being played outside of the water.

"Capture the Flag" was the most fun game I can remember from my elementary years. I totally remember how much fun it was to swiftly slide into the "Jail" and redeem one of my fallen comrades, and how much fun it was to sneakily creep behind enemy lines and snag the oh-so-precious flag that determined the game. I was actually really good at that game, and it brings a certain sense of pride when people want you on their team, regardless of the circumstances. Whether that pride is good or not, I've found it true that whenever I'm in high demand, I grow haughty and arrogant, and I don't like that person I can become.

"Tag" is the typical childhood game that everyone is familiar with. It's really the simplest and easiest game to teach children--all one has to do is poke a child, yell, "You're it!!", and run in the opposite direction. I admired the creativity of the variations my friends and I developed for it. We played "Freeze Tag" when you have three lives and must be unfrozen after each tagging, "TV Tag" when you must yell a TV show in order to live, and "Tunnel Tag" when you must be unfrozen by someone crawling through your legs! Those days were amazing, and I think there is something to be said about the way God wired children to chase each other, not in pursuit, but in friendly love.

God is [also] the God of games, entertainment, pleasure, and simple joys. 

Odd things and endings, two.

αρ ', ω φιλόσοφε σοφέ, τη αληθεία o κόσμος
άρχεται
μεγάλω νοί,
τη μοίρα,
ή μόνον τη τύχη;

This, roughly translated, asks:
"O wise philosopher, is the world in truth
ruled / made begin
by a great mind,
by destiny,
or only by chance?"

I can't decide whether άρχεται is in the passive (X is ruled by Y) or middle (X was made to begin by Y) voice. Either way, I know the answer: the world in truth is ruled by (and made to begin by) a great Mind, with a great Word, and a great Spirit of power and love and righteousness and holiness and self-sufficiency and initiatory leadership. Yet! this does not make me a wise philosopher, but rather a blind fool who God spared, who sees with new eyes.
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I have found that my spoken words are different than my written (or typed!) words. This is obvious at first glance, but let me prove my stupidity before you judge, reader.

1. My written words SEEM to be more grammatical, methodical, and otherwise intelligent. This is because written words of any media have the advantage of the backspace or eraser, and the advantage of pre-submission proofreading. For example, it's much easier to avoid ending sentences with prepositions if you can see what a sentence ends with. (<-- intentional.)
2. My written words are more assertive than defensive. This is because I realize that I have this problem with my speech, that I like to substitute absolute statements (X is wrong. Y is right.) with simpler and cheaper alternatives like "It seems to me that..." or "You shouldn't do this because..." Both convey the same message, but the first is a stronger obligation. I ought to be more careful with my spoken words.
3. Written prayers and speeches have no need for temporal immediacy. This is something that scares and excites me about music: you can't stop or stutter or think too slowly. Anyways, much like a musical piece, you can't just stop talking mid-sentence unless you'd like your friend to....
....lose interest in the stuff you've got to say.

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Also, a friend of mine has the initials CID, so she slants the curves to make a heart (or a circle!) with a straight line in the center. This is a cool monogram. But cooler yet is her name. Her parents gave her two feminine Greek nouns for her first and middle names: χάρις and ειρήνη defined "Grace" and "Peace" respectively. This is how Paul opens his letter to the Christians who are "in Christ" "in Colosse." This is an important prioritization on Paul's behalf, I believe, for Greek places extra emphasis on the first word in a sentence, because word order isn't necessary for understanding. I would do well to remember that I am in Christ, in California. 

Do work like a Calvinist.

As Charles Spurgeon, more eloquent than I, preached for several years, he greatly affirmed the truths of Calvinism as being the focus and root of his desire to evangelize. He said "If there are so many fish to be taken in the net, I will go and catch some of them. Because many are ordained to be caught, I spread my nets with eager expectation."

Calvin's most renowned (or most despised, depending on the presenter) doctrine revolves around the sovereignty of God & "free" will of mankind. But this, as Spurgeon said, should not serve as a hindrance to evangelism, but as a supreme motivation! If God has a people He promises to save, let the church rejoice and carry on the mission of Christ to seek and save the lost!

A prayer of gratitude after deliverance.

And in that day [of restoration from the wilderness of exile] you shall say,

"O LORD, I will praise You:
though You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away, and You comforted me.
Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid:
for the LORD GOD is my strength and song; He also is become my salvation."

Therefore with joy shall you draw water out of the wells of salvation.

And in that day shall you say,

"Praise the LORD,
call upon His name, declare His doings among the people, make mention that His name is exalted."

Sing unto the LORD; for He has done excellent things: let this be known in all the earth.

Cry out and shout, you inhabitant of Zion: for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of you.

Isaiah 12