Reflections

The year is slowly ticking down to its final moments. At this time tomorrow, millions will gather in the heart of Manhattan to watch a crystal drop ball and ring in a new year. It is crazy to think that 364 days have passed. A lot has transpired over those days. There have been good times; there have been tough losses. It has been fun and exciting while also filled with uncertainty and dread. I've experienced love and grace, rejection and rebukes, apathy and cynicism, hope and fulfillment. As one year passes and a new one approaches, it has been good to reflect on the lessons God has taught me.

Throughout this year, one of the fundamental things I learned was how sovereign God was. He knows what He is doing, even when I don't necessarily know. At this point a year ago, I was rushing to send out all my graduate school applications in hopes that one school would accept me. A few months later, I received the first rejection letter from the school of my dreams. But as soon as I began to despair, God rebuked me by sending me the first acceptance letter from another one of my top choices. Though my grades and experiences were lacking, God, in His marvelous plan, brought me to where I needed to be doing what I needed to be doing. And upon starting school, God continued to teach me about His sovereignty. Despite feelings of inadequacies in my studies, He provided the strength for me to finish assignments and finish the semester well. The grades I received were purely by the grace of God.

Related to this lesson, I'm desperately trying to learn to live a life that requires faith. I'm the type of person who needs to know every single piece of information available before making a decision. Over time and having gone through many circumstances, I've become so risk-averse that I cannot will myself to make a decision until I know with almost absolute certainty. And that fear has become such a stronghold in my life. At times it is paralyzing, especially when God wants to move in a certain direction and every logical part of me says no to Him. Something that Pastor Matt Driscoll said in one of his sermons has stuck with me ever since I first heard it. "But sometimes when you've done all you can, you have to take a calculated risk trusting that God is sovereign and good and He will figure things out...there are occasions it is risk, not foolishness, not a life of random blind foolishness, but a life of faith not folly where risk must be taken. Those of you who are overly cautious, those of you who must have an answer to everything, those of you who must think through the contingency plan for every contingency plan before you act, you may lack a proper understanding of God as sovereign and good. I'm not saying planning is bad, I'm not saying preparing is bad, I'm not saying contingency plans are bad but I'm saying at some point you must trust and in faith you must proceed forward and sometimes faith involves risk."

God even speaks to me on this very issue through Malcolm Gladwell, in his book "Blink." He writes, "We live in a world saturated with information. We have virtually unlimited amounts of data at our fingertips at all times, and we're well versed in the arguments about the dangers of not knowing enough and not doing our homework. But what I have sensed is an enormous frustration with the unexpected costs of knowing too much, of breing inundated with information. We have come to confuse information with understanding." That is me in a nutshell. I've confused information with understanding. When it comes to making decisions, I have this mentality that I need to know as much information as possible. Gladwell points out in the book that too much information severely impairs judgment and he cites case studies to prove this. I can't even count with my fingers how many times I've made poor decisions primarily because I've come to believe that I need to know every little piece of information before deciding on something.

This coming year, I want to live an adventure. This past Sunday, at RWC, the guest speaker spoke a timely message. I don't want to settle for mediocrity or anything that is subpar to what God had intended for me. Tehrah, the father of Abram, on his way to Canaan, stopped at Haran and settled there. He missed out on what God had for him in Canaan. He was comfortable. He found security. He settled. It was only through his son that God made a covenant, that Abram would become Abraham, the father of many nations. Abraham trusted God and obeyed. He did not know what lay ahead of him. He had security in Haran. Yet, he had faith and left everything. I want to be able to do that. He heard the voice of God and left. I hear the voice of God and then I need to cover my bases with contingency plans just in case things don't work out. And that is what I am praying that I will be able to do next year. Every step of the way, I want to have simple trust in God. If He has gotten me here this far, why would He fail me now?

On that note, Happy New Years!

Christmas

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel--which means God with us." - Matthew 1:20-22

Jesus is the reason for the season lest we ever forget.

Causes

These days, it's becoming a fad to have a cause. Bono, of U-2 fame, has his DATA organization to alleviate poverty in Africa and the (RED) campaign to raise money for the fight against AIDS in Africa. Angelina Jolie is the UNHCR's Goodwill Ambassador, the spokesperson for refugees and internally displaced peoples. Lucy Liu is the US Fund for UNICEF Ambassador, committed to the organization's HIV/AIDS awareness and education programs. Bill and Melinda Gates started the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the fight against preventable diseases among other initiatives. The list can go on and on.

It's awesome to see "outliers", to borrow Malcolm Gladwell's term, use their exceptional fortune to do some good in this world. In an age where the Lindsey Lohans and Brittany Spears and Paris Hiltons of the world headline the tabloids with their latest celebrity exploits, I find it abhorable that not as much media attention has been placed on Ben Affleck's "Gimme Shelter" short film for UNHCR's effort to raise $23 million for the refugee crisis brought on by the Democratic Republic of the Congo's civil war.

But as helpful and productive the attention that celebrities bring to some of these causes are, it is simply not enough. The challenges that the world faces today is overwhelming. Much of sub-Saharan Africa is trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty and war. Child soldiering has been and continues to be employed in many wars across the world. Indentured servitude and sex trafficking is the largest slave movement in modern times. Religious intolerance and persecution is not on the decline, and there were more Christian martyrs in the 20th century than all the prior centuries combined. Corruption is rampant in the U.S. and other economic powerhouses of the world. Dictators ruthlessly enslave their own citizens and execute others without cause. Tens of millions are without clean drinkable water while millions more are without basic nutritional food. People in abject poverty live in the base of garbage dumps, where they scavenge for leftover food and/or junk they could sell to vendors. We need not look too far to see that right in our own backyards are people who are disabled, homeless, incarcerated, victims of substance abuse, etc. Can there be a celebrity spokesperson for all of the thousands and millions of needs in this world?

It is no wonder that many choose to ignore the troubling circumstances of our times. They pretend as though poverty, AIDS, refugees, etc. do not exist. Or they simply don't care. The cynic inside of me fights to come out at times. There's simply nothing I can do. It's just too much. But I believe that God has called each and everyone of his people, including myself, to run this race for the least of these. Sure, there is no way in hell I'm going to be able to devote my time and resources to fight every battle. But I think that is the beauty of the Church, the partnership of the saints. I may be passionate about children's rights and human suffrage movements; others might be passionate about access to healthcare and preventable diseases; some others might be concerned with homelessness and substance abuse patients. And together, we can make tangible inroads in helping alleviate some of the tantamount issues of our age.

I am no idealist. I believe it is fundamentally impossible that we can eradicate all the problems of this world. That is what heaven is. But I believe that the words of Isaiah and Micah are not just in the Bible for the sake of being in there. I'm not sure how God will specifically use me to run this race for the least of these. But I am open to doing whatever and going wherever. Would you join me?

Here are a few organizations that are dedicated in doing some good in this world. This is not an exhaustive list, but a list of organizations I am familiar with and support to some degree:
- World Vision
- International Justice Mission
- LiNK
- ONE
- USAID
- Charity Water

Quarter Complete

One semester is officially in the books. The past two weeks (three if you count the crazy week of Thanksgiving) were a blur. There's one thing that I did a lot of that I hadn't done in quite some time: pull all-nighters while feeling the intense pressure to perform. It's seriously one of the depressing things when the sun is rising, your roommates are waking up to go to work, and you're in the same position as you were when the sun was setting and your roommates were going to sleep. It's even more depressing when this repeats more than once in a week.

But it's done now. I turned in my last paper today at 5:45pm. And I get to taste freedom for the first time in three weeks. No more locking myself in my room or in the dungeons in a library reading about Kim Jong-Il, nuclear deterrence, desperation theory, national identity concept in international relations; about Seoul Olympics, tourist industry, mega-event strategy for development; about aggregate demand curve, inflation rates, monetary and fiscal policy; about human rights, North Korean Human Rights Act, refugee status. Don't get me wrong. I learned a lot. I appreciate it. But I'm done with it...at least for now. I think it's time that I give my brain a rest. My body has taken a beating these past two weeks. I think I've developed acid-reflux disease or heartburn or something for having stayed up so many nights and eating anything and everything into the wee hours of the morning (or sometimes not eating at all). I've had minor facial breakouts that I hadn't experienced since like junior high school. And my room looks as if a tornado hit. So I'm ready to move on and enjoy the next several weeks of pure freedom and enjoyment.

But through it all, God is continuing to teach me more of His ways. All the sermons I've listened to has really touched me in fresh ways (even Pastor Bruce's out at Remnant West during the Thanksgiving weekend). This has surely been a time of renewal and refreshment for my soul, and I intend to enjoy it and soak it in as much as I can. I know that there will be stretches in my walk where I will struggle. But I believe, right now, I am learning to be content in how God is working in my life and without fear about where God will take me in the future. I need to learn to live for the moment (although still praying about the future) because God has lessons in the present for the future.

It's been a learning semester (academically, personally, spiritually). It's been a trying semester. But all in all, it has been a blessed semester, of which I have no one else but God to thank.