Tag Archives: love

A Meaningful Summer

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Hi Everyone! This week’s post comes from my sister Rebecca, a 2007 V2 student, and recently graduated from university in England. Here are her thoughts…

At the beginning of this summer, I tried to have a perfect schedule lined up. It had to be productive and contain at least one exciting event of considerable length. And as happens every year, about half my plans fell through. So rather than tour Chile for a month or work for an English opera company, I’ve been spending my time back in Asia doing familiar things.

To an unbiased outside viewer, I’ve still been able to take some great trips and meet some amazing people. But because it wasn’t what I hoped, I found it hard to be completely invested in what I was doing. I was a transitory visitor, and I passed through each week without fully being present.

As I was internally whining over my empty ten day slot in August, God asked me, “Why don’t you care about the days I HAVE filled for you?” Even as I went on two mission trips to China and helped host multiple guests with my family, I carried out every task without giving of my emotions. Though physically there, I was always mentally in the future. 

Like the beginning of First Corinthians 13 says, if we perform all these great things, but have no love, it means nothing. It’s easy to be busy with tasks, but harder to care about those you are serving. So for me, showing love means living in my present, investing in wherever I am, whatever I’m doing. What does it mean for you to have love? 

 

Extraordinary LOVE

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Love is [patient]
Love is [kind]
Love is [not jealous]
Love is [not proud, and does not boast]
Love [does not demand it’s own way]
Love [is not irritable & keeps no record of being wronged]
Love [does not rejoice about injustice]
Love [rejoices whenever truth wins out]
Love [never gives up]
Love [never loses faith]
Love [is always hopeful]
Love [endures through every circumstance]

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NLT

I’ve really been thinking about these verses lately, and their current presence in my life. I want more & others need more, so I proposed a challenge to myself. The “1 Corinthians 13, Love Challenge.” Yes. After thinking about it some more – I’m sure someone else has already taken my idea and has probably written a book about it, but really, I didn’t steal the idea! 🙂 Regardless of it’s originality, it’s still a tough challenge for me. I’ve committed to specifically focus on an aspect of love every week and integrate it more into my thinking, the way I live life, and more importantly- the way I approach God. It’s more of a challenge than you’d originally think too. Wow. Sometimes it’s reaaaallly hard. To be patient with myself, others & God. Not just in my actions, or my words – but my attitude. A patient person is someone who isn’t as much concerned about their agenda & time frame, but towards others. Someone who is patient won’t become irritated when stuck behind some really slow person on the freeway.

I need patience in approaching God. Not coming to Him with my “10 minutes before I have to leave for work” mentality, squeezing Him into my schedule and expecting Him to refresh, teach, and give guidance; but, it is necessary to give Him time to speak, and move in my life. Time for me to be still, and not be thinking about where I need to be, or when I need to be there. God’s timing is often way different from ours. I know because I’ve seen this & experienced it firsthand. But you know what? His timing is ALWAYS better than the timeline I’ve set for Him or myself.

While attending a car race last week at the nearby Route 66 Raceway, I learned a little bit about patience that day just by watching it all! Those race cars are ready. They’re filled with fuel, and the driver is at the start line waiting for the light to turn from Red, to Yellow, and finally to Green. If they move too soon, they’re disqualified from the race. [Which did happen to a couple cars that night! 🙁 ] I’m so grateful that God hasn’t disqualified me because I’ve moved ahead of His perfect time. Each day is a new day – and another chance to be at the starting line – waiting for His hand to display the green light.

A patient love needs to be such a bigger part of me, along with the other 11 on the list. So here it goes to 12 weeks of learning more of Christ’s love & passing it on to others!

 

God Mended My Hoodie

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One winter day, during my second year in Taiwan, the weather was cool so I had taken my favorite blue hoodie along to school with me. On the drive to school, I noticed a tear in one of the sleeves.  I couldn’t wear it like that. I resigned myself to toughing it out in my t-shirt.      When I arrived at school, I plopped my bags, books, and purse down on and around my desk. My coworker, Xu Jun, and I greeted each other with smiles and “Good morning!” Then I showed her my hoodie.”The grandma can fix it,” she responded to my tale of tear.

The “grandma” is a bustling, kindly, older woman. What her official job is at the school, I’m not really sure. She bandages, combs disheveled hair, scolds, comforts, and generally ‘grandmas’ everyone in the school – except the principal, of course.

“Yes!” exclaimed another teacher, “We have a very good seamstress!”

“Here, here. Bring it here.” Grandma ordered in her gruff, yet good-tempered, way.

I gratefully handed my hoodie to her. I expected to teach at least one period in my shirtsleeves, so I settled contentedly down at my desk for a chat with Xu Jun before class. Not five minutes later, bless her heart, the grandma tossed my sweatshirt to me. She had mended it beautifully.

I thanked her profusely. I thanked the Lord, too. I knew He had directed me to take that particular hoodie to that school (as opposed to the others, which don’t have ‘grandmas’) just so it would be mended.

A couple of days later a friend of mine was trying to tease me about the hole. “Look!” she commanded several of our mutual friends. “Look! There’s a big hole in her sweatshirt… Where is it?” she asked in surprise.I laughed and explained how God had mended my hoodie.

Sometimes I’m tempted to think that God doesn’t really care about what is happening in my life. Then He reminds me of times like this when He has proven that He is concerned with even the smallest details. Why should I doubt His loving care? After all, “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)
This Easter, as we celebrate God’s greatest act of love, may we all continually marvel at and trust in the faithful loving-kindness of God!

Joy in Sorrow

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Tears crept down my face, sobs shook my shoulders. I tried to concentrate on conducting the song, but to no avail. Every note, every chord, brought to mind my grandfather, who was the inspiration for the song; my grandfather, who I would never see again on earth.

I was in the middle of directing our final dress rehearsal for this year’s VOICE musical. In a little over an hour, it would be time to wrap up and get ready for our Chinese New Year dinner, followed by the performance later that night. In every VOICE, the day of the Chinese New Year dinner has always been crazily busy with last minute preparations and practicing. This year, it was compounded by the fact that my grandfather, my roommate for the past ten years, passed away in Taiwan that morning.

Was God real, even in this situation?

Yes, He was.

I saw Him bless the peaceful rehearsal that day. Things went so smoothly, everyone worked together so well to get everything done in the short amount of time we had.

I saw Him as I burst into tears listening to fifty people pour their hearts into rehearsing a song, one that I began writing the day after my birthday, the last day I had seen my grandfather. I saw Him in the fact that for the first time in four years, I had enough time to relax and enjoy my Chinese New Year dinner with my coworkers before the performance. I saw Him work in the actual performance, as everyone’s hard work came to completion. Instead of bursting into tears as I thought I would, I found myself grinning with joy. I knew that God was real. And I knew that He loved me.

Note: The song I mentioned is the one my sister Karen has posted in the previous blog entry.

Irrational Love

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I remember our baby in a crib who’s fast asleep,
He doesn’t see my tears, can’t hear me weep
And I wondered, “Was it worth it that we chose his life not yours?”
And I felt you smiling with me and answer, “Of course.”

It was the first day of VOICE. I was sitting in TESOL auditions as my brother unveiled one of the most important songs in his newest musical The Inheritance, based on the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15. In Tim’s adaptation, the father finds himself wrestling with the rebellion and desertion of his younger son as well as possible professional ruin, so he questions whether he and his wife had made the right choice in giving life to their second son at the cost of her own at childbirth.

At the time, I was nearly 11 weeks pregnant, so the song touched a very sensitive spot in my heart. All my life, I’ve been learning to love others– family, friends, classmates, teachers, colleagues– but most of it was based on the other person giving or responding similarly at least in some small way. Even with Luke, I fell in love because he first loved me.

At this particular point in Tim’s story, however, we’re faced with the quandary of reconciling the sacrifice of a loving mother for her ungrateful and selfish son, who was recklessly destroying his father’s life work. Part of me cringed from the injustice of it. The other part of me, however, experienced for the first time what it means to be a mother– to love someone I have never met, not because of any merit of their own or because they love me, but simply because that is how God first loved us.

That is what Christ has done for us. He doesn’t love us because of anything we have or can do for Him. He didn’t choose me because I was a good girl. No, God demonstrated His irrational and wasteful love in that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

The Joys of Servanthood

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If anybody told me that one day I would be my grandfather’s “nurse”, I would first laugh at such an unlikely scenario, and then shudder at how horrible that would be.

My grandfather used to be a confident and capable man. He was an engineer who helped build the impossible during World War II in China and in the early days of Taiwan’s developing economy, a man who once he set his mind on something, woe to you if you tried to change it.

At first I hated it when my father forced me to be my grandfather’s roommate: he slept on the bottom of a bunk bed, I on the top. It was always too hot, and my grandfather would wake me up early in the morning to exercise with him.

As the years have taken a toll on his health, and my role has grown ever more demanding, to my surprise, my joy has been slowly growing. True, I have to wake up multiple times during the night to take my grandfather to the bathroom, I help change his diaper, I help feed him, but God has never made the task more than I can bear.

Jesus told us, “…He that is greatest among you shall be your servant” (Matthew 23:11). I am by no means an example of a perfect servant, but I thank God that because of my grandfather, I have become a much better one.

I will treasure this time with him for the rest of my life.

An Intrusion of Grace

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Last summer, one of the VOICE students returned to Oklahoma City with us. Since Chris is an American citizen, his father wanted him to finish high school in the US. I recommended Christian Heritage Academy, a good private school in town with an exchange program (headed by my friend Audra). It slipped my mind, however, that Chris would need a place to stay or a way to get to school…

…until his parents came to Oklahoma City to help him get settled. That was when Luke and I realized that Chris needed a host family.

Neither of us were ready for parenting– much less teen parenting. We had guarded our first year of marriage carefully, but with our anniversary around the corner, we wondered if this was God’s next step for us.

After talking seriously about it, we told his parents that we’d pray about it. I’ll never forget the look of relief in their eyes as they shared how they had gotten up at 4:30 that morning to pray that we might take Chris into our home.

That was nine months ago. Serving God this year has meant taking Chris to school, cooking for three, cutting his hair, tutoring him in Shakespeare and grammar, picking him up after football practice, helping him get his motorcycle license, and talking through important life issues.

An intrusion to our lives? Yes, but it’s been an intrusion of grace as we’ve been learning to let God use us as a channel of His irrational, extravagant love.

“In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” (I John 4:10-11)