Hanging Out with the Big G

What time is it? I’m sure most of you have a clock on your computer and glanced below to check. Fortunately, I am gifted with the same technology so I can know the time whenever I wish. In fact, most of us can check the time on our phones, watches, on the wall clock anytime we want.

Isn’t that odd? We are so bound by this thing called time. Every hour, every minute, we are doing something, filling it with fun and responsibility. Oh, I know how that goes. I have worked in American businesses and now I work in a place where work starts and ends on the dot. We are so dictated by the ticking hands that we form all of our desires, needs and rhythms around it. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s depressing.

But, that is not what I mean by the question I posed in the first sentence. What I mean is, “What are you going to do with the time you have now?” See, each minute that passes by during the day is a minute invested in something. We think that certain things, such as finishing homework, spending time with kids and going online for some Facebook is time well spent. And it is. But it’s not. Not without God.

Remember what I talked about at the last English Service? I said that we tend to put aside God and not make time for him, neglecting to read his word. We are so ready to invest time in Facebook, work, career, education, play, friends and relationships, yet we conveniently forget to spend time with God. We are not building our own temple. But there it goes even further. Even if you do spend time with God every day, if he is not part of your other activities, you really aren’t spending time with God!

As Christians, we have to live, breath and exhale Christ. Our reading of scripture is only the beginning of us reflecting Christ. We learn from God’s word and act it out. And I don’t mean just good works! Do you give a quick prayer before doing anything? Do you ask yourself what Jesus would do? (Yes, I know it is cliché, but it’s true!) Do you think of what kind of witness you would be? Do you consider if your actions will help other weaker Christians stand? Be honest and ask these questions.

Did you hear about the act a popular singer did in a recent awards performance? It is slightly disturbing for me to even reiterate, but it gives a good example. Take a wild guess what type of people she was hanging around with? I’m sure most people would venture an accurate guess. Her friends reflect who she is now and she is representing who she hangs out with!

What if you were hanging out with God every day? I think your actions would start reflecting it. I think your mind would start being filled with ideas of Christ. I think your heart would be full of Jesus’ peace. Don’t you think so?

Never Going to Neverland

Tick, one year older. It only takes a second before entering or finishing another year. This month is my birthday month. I will be 29 on the 21st, marking the beginning of my last year being in the twenties. It feels odd, yes. In fact, it resembles the time when I turned 10 or 20. It’s a huge mile stone. After this year, I won’t be in the twenties ever again. God willing, I won’t be submitting more paperwork for my professor. I hope I don’t have to go through the insecurity of what I will be doing or where I should be. I hope I don’t have to find my first job again, nerve wrecking as it was. These experiences are in the past, gone. Maybe I will do it again, but I won’t do it the same way I did when I was twenty. Do I miss those days? Well, yes and no.

I loved high school, college. No responsibility and lots of games. I loved the excitement of looking for my future wife and dating girls to see which one was the lucky one. I consumed myself in studies and learned a lot or drank a lot of mountain dew pulling all nighters for the times I didn’t study much. I loved being free, going anywhere in the world, literally. I loved staying up and sleeping in, feeling groggy in the morning. No one restricted me, but I had parents who would cover me financially. Yes, I was a happy man.

But getting older is not bad either. In fact, it’s a different kind of fun. No, I can’t go around playing like a high schooler or college boy anymore. No, I am half forced to be responsible and work a job I may not particularly enjoy. But only now can I deeply understand the love of a parent. With my age comes a different kind of joy, a joy impossible to explain. You see, now I don’t play too many games, but I play the game of life. I get to learn how to love my wife, to spend time with my baby. I get to sacrifice my time, ministering to others. I get to feel responsible and earn money, providing for my family, giving to the Church. Does that look fun? No, but it sure heck is.

My dad loves Hannah. Many people may say, “Duh” but it’s something important. See, he never really imagined loving a child so much. Each time he looks at her, his joy increases three fold. But you can only be a grandfather once you are a certain age. Duh again. Our joy of being a grandfather is only possible once he is an older person, a person who has experienced many things in life; including hardship and responsibility.

Do you remember enjoying coffee when you were little? No of course not. As a kid, the joy of coffee was incomprehensible. Why would anyone purposely put something bitter in their mouth? Same thing with love. Elementary school kids think girls are cursed! But suddenly, dating someone is a joy. How about work? Who wants to work? But when you do it, you find that you get a sense of fulfillment.

The point is this. Why are you living in the past? There is no such thing as the good old days. There is always something as good coming. Why are you trudging through hardship as though it is the end of the world? The hardship is something that propels you to something better. Why are you dredging responsibility? It only produces joy you never imagined. Yup, it’s in the Bible, look it up (Rm 5:3-4).

I firmly believe that everything can be looked at it positively. As something that will grow us, to give us a deeper joy in everything we do. Suffering, responsibility, growing up is all part of the process, a process for finally enjoying something different than what you are now. Look forward to getting older, or simply, old. It gives you something to look forward to.

The Strength of Vulnerability

Do you feel the need to be vulnerable? I sure do sometimes. It is rather difficult for a man to say this, but it is necessary for all of us to be vulnerable at some point. In fact, if we think about it, we are by nature vulnerable beings. How many of you, if you truly think about it, rely on others to simply live? I’m not talking about the obvious, such as your heart beating or your immune system working. I’m talking about eating, lodging, receiving education and so on. Things like, receiving love, protection from criminals and dangerous viruses, and national defense are some things we also take for granted. It is amazing to me how the modern man has become so self-centered and under the illusion of self-sustenance when in fact we are more dependent than ever we have ever been. If another country were to attack Japan, for example, and we lose our economic structure, how many of us will survive as basic farmers or hunter gatherers? I believe most of us will end up as beggars as our skills are so far removed from the basic functions of survival. We rely on others to figure those things out.

I was talking to a lady in my old church with the O’Brien’s one day. As I was translating the whole process of adoption, in which the lady knew much about, she said something that caught my attention. She was describing how each mother who adopts a child needs to quit everything and focus on the child and show as much affection to the child as possible. This is due to the child being so hurt, even as a baby, that excess love was needed to comfort him or her. Therefore, the lady said, it is discouraged for mothers to be working at least for the first several years of the baby’s life. She said the first few years were crucial in connecting with the baby and start the process of healing him or her!

Oh how much love we truly need! If a baby who has been hurt at age 3 months needs that much attention, how much do adults who have been hurt over many years need it? I’m fairly certain we need it as much as a baby since we are merely grown babies with a brain that can process hurtful things. Just as much as eating, love is a basic need for human survival.

This is where my message from chapel last Saturday connects with. The question is, who can provide all of these needs? We need a hero, who will not only come to our rescue, but who will provide for our most fundamental need; love. Isn’t it great that we are given this person? That he is real? Jesus who has promised to provide for our daily needs also loves us abundantly! All he asks for return is that we become vulnerable and rely upon him. How easy! Honestly, I can’t think of a better person to rely upon. As mentioned in church, we all rely on something. We choose God, or “not God,” everything other. We rely on the strength of something, whether it may be our own brain, science, society, government or family. However, nothing promises the fundamental provision of our essential needs as does Jesus. His sacrifice is the ultimate form of love in which nothing can compete. I think I’ll choose to rely upon Jesus. Hope you do too.

Loving the Least

Investing? Investing now? Has your last month been full of great investments in the kingdom? If you are discouraged, watch this video. If you are encouraged, watch this video. The message is precisely what we are talking about.

Investing in the Right Stock?

Walking towards home? No, the real home. The home we all are walking towards. Whether we are heading toward an eternity apart from or with God, we are heading to our eternal destination, our eternal home. As discussed in the last meeting, our destiny is impossible to avoid. As Abraham journeyed from Ur to the promise land, we are journeying towards our death. Each one of us. No one escapes. Are you afraid? You should be, as ultimately we journey alone. At the end of our life, seemingly, it's just us The journey towards death is lonesome. But are we really alone? That's where the gospel penetrates us like an arrow through the heart. Jesus promises to be with us. Not only is Jesus present during this life when we need him, but he says he will be with us til the end (Ps. 23).

My wife said something interesting the other day. As we were talking about the afterlife she said, "It's interesting that people work their entire lives for the comfort of this world, seeking riches and a higher standard of living. But when they are faced with death, the only thing they ask for is what is truly important. Yet in most cases, people fail in their life to invest at all in the thing they ask for at the end." It's simple, but brilliant. Our money, fame, mind or anything that we invested in this life matters at all when faced with death. Simply the relationships we built are the only thing that matters at the end.

Here I see a dilemma. If relationships are what ultimately matter, why are we investing so much time into so many things that are totally unrelated. If the ultimate relationship is with Christ, the true Love, why don't we pour our soul into Him? Here the treasure lies. As stated in the sermon, we must invest in heaven, and the shortcut to that is investing in strengthening our relationship with Jesus. During the sermon, I talked about three practical ways of building treasures in heaven. Now, I give you the ultimate, Love Jesus with all your mind, your muscles and your being. This way, you will change so much that you will only make perfect investments, eternal investments. Hmm, this sounds awfully like a verse I know in a book somewhere...

Carl's Dusty Corner: Too Small to Lift His Head

I know the Christmas season is over, but I went to America for the holidays and couldn’t write anything until now. And, besides, is it ever too late or too early to talk about the Christ-child?
I think it must have been an awful thing for Christ. Colossians tells us that it was through Christ that the world was created (Col. 1:16). He formed the stars like clay and flung them into the vast and expanding black. He spun planets and set them on their courses. He forged atoms and set their elections in motion. And, for hundreds of thousands of years, and to this day, He sustained it all. He kept everything spinning and wheeling and burning and crashing. That is, until one day, when He stopped and did something else.
I’m not sure how the universe went on spinning once Christ was born. The One through Whom all things were created and are sustained was for thirty three years like one of His creations. And on the day He was born, the God that created universe had barely enough strength to lift His head.
A while back I heard a legend about that silent night that, after Christ was born, He was immediately able to speak and gave profound and wise words to those in attendance. Perhaps this story was started in order to show the Christ-child has being something other than normal, perhaps, better. That of course misses the entire point of the Incarnation. Christ’s birth was not God descending as God, but God descending to Man. It is like a king, throwing off his robes, tossing aside his scepter, and going to live as his subjects live. God threw off being God for a while.
I also heard another story that claimed that Mary was morally perfect. This was told to explain how Christ could have been born without sin. If that is the case, ours is hopeless. If Mary were perfect, then God bestowing His blessing upon her makes sense. She deserved and we can all hope to be like her someday. Except, we can’t. No one in this whole wide world can say he or she is morally perfect. That’s why we justify and rationalize. It’s why we have moral relativity, because people have gotten tired fighting against themselves. Their fortitude has failed and they can either accept that they are imperfect, or find a way around it. However, Christianity makes a startling claim in the image of a young peasant girl. Without earning it, without deserving it, she was chosen. Mary wasn’t chosen because she was special. If anything, she was chosen because she wasn’t. Because of that fact, her being with sin, we can rest assured that God can still work through us. He will find ways to use us, even though we fall very far short of Christ’s model.

Really Jesus

The stillness eases my soul. The tree stands proud, its branches garnering the family memories. The snow catches the sunlight reflecting the warm glow, truly a white Christmas. The constant smiles of family members remind me of Jesus, the Christ that was born. The season is finally reaching its apex as people all around the world, Christians or non, celebrate. But is it really Jesus?

There seems to be a disconnect, a separation of the God we believe and the Christ that was born. How do you picture Jesus? Many will describe a scene of angels singing in the fields. Many will recall the manger and the serene display. Mary, Joseph and the three wise men are a staple. Yes, these are part of Christmas. Yes, these remind us of the God we worship, which is a good thing. But no, this is not really Jesus. Jesus was simply a baby, the one and only God, but a baby: A helpless infant with no power to talk or crawl. Nothing about him was anything of a man who came to save the earth. Nothing that makes a man great was apparent. Born in a manger, a son of a carpenter. Simply a baby. Do you realize this?

None the less, he was real. The historical account, the authoritative biblical nerrative and non-biblical, ancient sources say so. He was really born, a baby, God. He smiled, pooped, spoke baby language and cried. He grew older, crawled, stood and eventually ran. He learned motor skills, learned to read, to make crafts. He was man.

But God. The almighty God who spoke to create, who spans the universe. The God whose power moves stars and creates gargantuan explosions like Super Novas. The God who mixed carbon and breathed to create life. The God who set nature to build upon one another. He was God.

He experienced everything we do. All the "goo-goos" of a baby's voice to the curious questions of a youthful mind. He lived to die, a death of a martyr, a savior. Over two thousands years ago he lived thinking of you to give glory to God. His awesomeness contained in one little baby. God is real. Jesus is real. A real man who lived, a real God who lives. 

Is He real now?