Windows

p.s. long post alert
Apart from the obvious reason for air ventilation in buildings, there is an aesthetic reason to having windows in buildings - the idea of opportunity. Too often in life, its so easy to spend our time completely tunnel-visioned on an angle or aspect that we fail to zoom away and look out the window for just a second. That was what hit me the other day as i sat in a subway train that sped underground. Summer is closing its clock on us in about a month... and i can say with a straightforward face that I've had a peculiar summer. Maybe not so different from others in the past  - i mean there was a LOT of change in the air, which is what always happens to me anyhow... but these changes were more felt.

    I walked out of a couple of phases into a new phase. I can’t say that i did that with open palms. I’m probably against my own good still struggling with just allowing my mind to reach acceptance, although it does get better with each cyclic dawn and dusk.
    Despite the immense good taking place however, i kept finding myself clutching and holding on and sinking into disillusionment repeatedly. And i started a new cycle of worry on things that have nothing to do with me. And every single time i let these new anxieties and worries clutch over my heart, like the swift prince charming He is, God always pulled through for me. More than I can say for myself.
    More good things that happened was the friendship between two of my friends and I - we kind of started this cheezy bonding get together of prayer and bible study over gmail. It went a really really long way in helping me get off my sinking feet. It felt good to get that reminder that I’m not the only one who gets constantly slapped by life’s frivolous tentacles. It felt good not to feel alone in this battle.
    And of the bad things that I let turn into huge monsters that tormented me at night, the biggest was letting sharp stakes of regret and guilt plummet my mind. I let this go on for the most part, on and on torturing myself to that abyss of emptiness. Until that train ride aforementioned.
    Zooming out. 
    Looking out the window. 
    Life is this way. No matter how hard I try to put it, I live in a fallen world. I am fallen, and no amount of my own good can clean up my inclination to sin and my own sins. Looking out the window forced me to see that i love spending my time calculating what bad I don’t do and how that makes me right with Him. I forget that it is His grace alone that justifies me - nothing of my own accord. I hardly walk around with the perspective that He has forgiven me regardless, and that He looks at me with a pleasing glimmer in His eyes. It is hard to visualize Him that way, and yet, that is what He tells us Himself.  

Another step forward, looking out the window, was about others. I am not the only one living in this fallen world. Others are fallen as well... broken shards walking with duct tape over their bodies as well. The war and ravishing famine in Somalia is one - Why does God let his happen? A man shot his wife to pieces this summer. Is God not looking? Jaycee Duggard told her story on ABC the other week - she was kidnapped from age 11 and kept as a sex slave untill she escaped at age 29 with her two kids. What can I say now? The God I worship allows this to happen... All these and more personal questions i had. Why all this bad?

Andrew Byers had some of my answers in his book “Faith without Illusions”. He spoke about ‘Hopeful realism’ - not so much cynicism, but not exactly idealism... it's that realistic inbetween where we reconcile the fact that we are in a broken world - we still are, and yet Christ came, died and resurrected. It's in the power of His resurrection.    

So all my brokenness, all of the world’s... all of our fallen melancholies... the injustices in the world... it’s so easy to get frustrated and defeated that He isn’t doing anything. But it’s just as He said in one of His responses to Job (Ch 39 vs. 1-4):

1 “Do you know when the mountain goats give birth?

  Do you watch when the doe bears her fawn?

2 Do you count the months till they bear?

  Do you know the time they give birth?

3 They crouch down and bring forth their young;

  their labor pains are ended.

4 Their young thrive and grow strong in the wilds;

  they leave and do not return.” 

He knows all that happens and He is still in control. 

    So yes, the world is messed up. That still doesn’t nullify that He is God... and that He is still God with all of the injustice and pain occurring. He is still in control, and He has the power to stop it all in a whim. And yet He chooses not to. For it is in our endurance and in suffering that obedience is borne. It is in that that character, patience and hope is borne for “hope seen is not hope at all” (Romans 8 vs. 24).

In the light of His resurrection, in the light of the fact that He has conquered death and all the ravishing sin in us, in light of the hope that He is restoring our minds, our bodies and our wills to His righteousness, in light of the fact that He is restoring all of creation to Him -

18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that[h] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.  (Romans 8).

In light of all of this, we need to remember that we are in the midst of a revolution - we have been since the last days, since His ascension into heaven. He left us in the midst of this overturn of His light eroding the encroaching darkness. We are in the middle of a fighting ground - a war. Fighting ourselves, fighting sin, fighting all the evil and injustices in this world in the light of His grace... in light of the knowledge that He will win in the end. And it has started. That’s is why there is so much off balance - with good still present admist the bad, with beauty still present in the prevalent ugliness. So despite my disillusionment, your questions and our doubts, the Invisible Hand of God is still at work whether we see it or not.
    And I want to live in light of all of this - neither gearing way to much to the left in the brink of my disillusionment and cynicism and anger and bitterness and guilt and shame... nor way to the right thinking the world is all right in the grind of optimistic idealism. I want to acknowledge my brokenness and your brokenness and all of the strife in this world, and i want to acknowledge that is He is fixing it step by step through me, and you and the whole body of Christ spread out all through out the world. I want to love my fellow man even as I love myself... even as I learn to love Him. Not spite or envy or broken ratification... just love, and grace I ask of Him to know just how to do that.

p.s. Yours truly has moved into her new crib and is at graduate school. O Boy, it has been a journey since the start of the year... i'm just here, hiding till classes actually starts... i'm like in a veggie brain state - on forced break till I have to start classes and my next lab rotation. Thanks for your prayers and warmest wishes. Don't forget to keep me in your prayers :)