Over-Partying God

My friend Gaby cut so many immense hydrangeas from her garden for me. I was telling her that hydrangeas suggest extravagant generosity -- like their grower Gaby!

She's also radiating one amazing aspect of God -- a Father who greatly rejoices over His children, presents us with a fuller than full life... and even over-parties!!

Really? Always original, PD recently described God as over-partying over lost sheep.

Luke 15: 3-6: Then Jesus told them a story. He said, "Suppose one of you has 100 sheep and loses one of them. Won't he leave the 99 in the open country? Won't he go and look for the one lost sheep until he finds it?When he finds it, he will joyfully put it on his shoulders and go home. Then he will call his friends and neighbors together. He will say, 'Be joyful with me. I have found my lost sheep.'

Now, doesn't that sound excessive, even a little embarassing? But it's true, all Heaven rejoices! Maybe our minds just haven't adjusted to a huge liberating truth like that.

Reminds me of what Joyce Meyer said. When we go to Heaven, we'll find piles and piles of beautiful unopened gifts. They were God's gifts to us on earth, she said, but we never even opened them!

Answered Prayer!

Lori and I were in my car on 355 when a motorist behind us tooted his horn. "Ignore him," Lori said.

I stepped on the gas a little but the driver accelerated to be level with us, gesturing for us to wind down the window. Then he yelled: "Your left rear tyre looks flat!"

Wow! We thanked him, impressed with his persistence and kindness on 355 in morning-peak traffic.

I wasn't expecting it but Lori called Dustin later. He fixed the flat and inflated all four tyres. The offending tyre had only FOUR pounds of pressure out of the prescribed 44!

The next day, I liked how my car felt so comfortable, stable and safe. I try to take good care of my car but, living alone, I've to be much more independent and responsible for everything.

There's more! The best thing is that Lori told me later that every morning before she goes to work, Dustin prays about her drive and the car's mileage, gas, tyres, everything!

We KNOW it was because Dustin prayed that the driver noticed and felt the urgency to let me know. It's wonderful that Dustin, our pastor, is totally serious about prayer. Every morning, he wakes up at 6 am to pray for all of us.

This slice of life displays all over again God's tenderest love and goodness.

It's been fun to spend time with Lori. I should keep this next part more covert, but I guess it's part of the story. Lori's pregnancy (she's due July 4) has caused carpel tunnel syndrome in her wrists and it's excruciating for her to drive though she's the original trooper and never whines. I volunteered to drive her to and from work, and one week of not driving has improved matters for her.

God is tremendously faithful and there's no way to outgive the giver of all good things and the lover of our souls.

Careful Infidelity

Jesus sums up common-sense carefulness in a disciple as infidelity.
-- My Utmost For His Highest (May 23)

Oswald Chambers links this strong comment on careful infidelity to Matthew 6:25 where Jesus says: "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body what ye shall put on."

In exhilarating contrast, Oswald Chambers speaks often about being abandoned to God, like Paul. He believes that "abandon to God is of more value than personal holiness."

Abandonment to God makes me think of a yieldedness and surrender that's also paradoxically extravagant, like King David's worship. Or the woman who sacrificed her alabaster jar of perfume and poured it lavishly over Jesus.

There've been stepping-over-the-cliff moments that abundantly show that life with God is the greatest adventure of all, better than anything we plan or desire. These are the times of abandonment, of new intimacy, and of a deeper hunger and worship than we imagine. Patrick actually dreamed about going over the cliff... and landing quite safely!

PD says he asks God: "How can I worship you today?" I didn't think of that before and I really like it.

Fathers

I met Trangdai Tranguyen once. All serenity and friendliness, she was stirring a pot of perfectly clear and flavour-rich chicken broth she'd prepared for pho at Sandra's place.

Soon after, I was entranced as I read three slim volumes of her poetry in mostly one night.

This is an excerpt from Daddy's Weekend, a poem in Songs For A Boat Father:

sunup
weekend
you're keyed up running to each room
asking, inviting,
- Get up! Let's go have breakfast!
the five children turn over
all five

The father is also pictured toiling over dinner, pulling a movie from his archive for his children, constantly on the go during the weekend -- highly enthused, sacrificial, pouring love into the lives of his children whom he'd missed for years when he migrated alone from Vietnam to the US.

Such poems that so tenderly portray the translocation trials of refugee families are transformed into the universal with Trangdai's skilled pen.

Certainly it reminds me of my own sacrificial Dad. The way he enrolled us in the best schools where he had to make patient, persistent connections. The opportunities he gave us out of his limited resources, and the times he played with us. He brought me to the library when I was six and I began my lifelong love for books. I think he was the only person who tried to imagine the extraordinarily intense first days of my life in the US, and that humbles and amazes me much.

Our fathers are wonderful and flawed. They are an imperfect but still-shining glimpse of the Father's heart and the God-designed love He placed in the hearts of men for their children.

Sushi on Sunday

In Japanese, Hinata has a lovely meaning: sunny place.

That's the name of a Bethesda mom-and-pop sushi restaurant and mini-grocery. I like to share this bright space with friends but most of my lunches here are solitary, and very late.

The sushi is beautifully formed, good and inexpensive. I often ask the proprietor's friendly wife about new items I discover on the shelves, and she's supplied enticing tips on the spicy cod roe, exotic snacks and all.

It was such contentment and enjoyment today to relish sushi on the summery eve of Memorial Day while reflecting on PD's increasingly anointed sermons. That's double sustenance -- sushi and the word of God!

Our perspective changes the more we draw close to the Creator, he said. The bills don't matter as much anymore when our focus turns to Kingdom needs. Our job is to be faithful, and God's role is to take care of the rest. Often we want to do or think more to change our circumstances, but there's no true help or self-help apart from Jesus.

Such truths from God are greatly sustaining and liberating. Uncertainties begin to look like adventures instead. Tough days become doors for grace and revelation. Our shallowness is replaced by growth, intimacy, integrity, character -- an excellent journey.

Jamaica II: Sunglasses

My lost sunglasses travelled back to me.

I'd left them in the tour van on our last afternoon in Jamaica. A few hours later, we were walking through a crowded, boisterous part of Montego Bay city when a tall smiling man stepped up.

"I'm your driver!" he announced. It was our tour van driver Errol, just then moonlighting as a cabbie.

"Errol! Hi! Did you see my sunglasses?" I asked.

"They're yours?'' he asked, surprised.

And that's how we landed in his cab -- a safe haven after the manic hustling cabbies we kept encountering -- and picked up my sunglasses from his boss' house, before returning to our hotel.

Sue was intrigued, and definitely me too. I'd sensed God's timing at work two days earlier, when our new Jamaican friend Pauline literally opened the door to our tour possibilities on a Sunday afternoon when the tour agencies were closed.

Surprising Pauline at her workplace two days later, we invited her for dinner. She found us a local place and later told us that she didn't have money for lunch that day. She knew it was God's provision when we asked her out.

The sunglasses, the tours that Pauline made possible, and her unexpected dinner -- God displayed His beautiful timing three times, not simply once. It was a generous assurance that His timing is perfect and He is all sovereign. It amazes and comforts me, particularly at this moment just before my big move to Singapore.

Wonder! Galaxies & GK Chesterton

Image: Dead Star Creates Celestial Havoc
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A friend gave me a book on his intellectual hero, GK Chesterton. I know his poems, but he's like the author and thinker I was waiting to discover! The first chapter I flipped to was titled "Wonder," my favourite concept!

Chesterton, a larger-than-life London journalist who wrote memorably in the early 20th century, said of wonder:

"The function of imagination is... not so much to make wonders facts as to make facts wonders."

"A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of five is excited by bein told that Tommy opened a door."

My high-spirited unstoppable nephew Caleb is five. The world is new and wondrous to him, even the littlest things. This early waker popped into my room one morning. I told him my new alarm clock would chime soon. A ho-hum everyday moment? Caleb's eyes widened and his mouth formed a surprised O in the half-light when the tinkling tune began.

One of my best Bible Studies highlighted Jacob and his dream of the stairway to Heaven, with angels ascending and descending on it. (Genesis 28:10-15). It didn't matter that his pillow was a rock and he was a fugitive. Wonder can still be our experience in woeful circumstances. We're alive to possibilities!

In my life, God embedded a special wonder when I was five or six. I was lying on the grass on Fort Canning Hill and suddenly I became aware of stars and infinity in the early evening sky. The Creator of the galaxies is also an intimate God who pursues us in love. We and the cosmos fall down in worship before God.

Cloud Prints

There's a "cloudiness" in recent days when I think about the months ahead. A kind of unknowing that clouds the all-Singaporean inner planner in me. But then I read Oswald Chambers, who says: "The clouds are but the dust of the Father's feet. The clouds are a sign that He is there." How uplifting! It's all about His presence!

Matthew 24:30: They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory.

Snow!

Delicacy, purity.
Praying, remembering.
Wondrous to walk in falling snow.

Today, I walked for 1.5 hours in the snow. Someone commented that the pearly-gray sky added to the feeling of weightlessness. I stopped often. Taking pictures. Journal-ing in my mind and on an increasingly damp scrap of paper. Looking at 13 puffy-headed birds with pale yellow chests, resting on the upper twigs of a tree. Staring discreetly as an indulgent Dad took his three little colorfully wrapped children out to skitter down a baby slope on tiny snow-saucers. Kind of like the days when my own Dad, hour after hour in Singapore's burning equatorial sun, pushed the swings with me and my sisters on them. I don't think he's seen snow, much as he loves traveling to new places.

I remember another Sunday, in 2003, when a snow-storm caused our little church to worship at a home. Later we walked down the empty street, so transformed, all white beauty and exceptional hush. Our friend Peter walked ahead with exuberant little Michael on his shoulders. Two other wonderful friends later gave the middle name Snow to their lil daughter, who just turned two. How beautiful that those days of church-planting and God's favor are so embedded in my heart that the snow today easily stirs memories of my friends, now a scattered family.

Today, it was mostly the glorious solitude that made it natural to be abandoned to Jesus -- and to know it's possible and desirable to be faithful whether I'm here or there. These couple of years, I've had to embrace the transition and the absence of certainty. It's been a time of growing while waiting. Of making the utmost of my days in the US and discovering so many gems, like the dreamy Berkshires, all nations in my workplace, new creativity, an irrepressible little church, the dazzling edges of revival.

God remembers His promise to me, Jeanne said during our intercessory circle. And He makes all things new, according to Revelation 21:5. That's a verse I always quote and pray! How perfect is that?

Thanksgiving 2005

Fallen leaves swirling skyward,

A wild dance, mimicking life.

Light draining, early and indifferent,

From this city I never embraced.

The absence of all of you,

Trails --

A pearly vapour

Suffusing Thanksgiving.

Our stories disconnect,

Yet persist, suggest

Marvellous light,

Not our own, divine.

I decided to spend Thanksgiving Day in solitude and prayer, away from the celebratory hubbub that always delighted me. I longed to step into a new season of walking in God's marvellous light, and glimpse (or see with eyes of faith) the outlines of a path out from my long transition. I missed my absent best friends with whom I'd celebrated Thanksgiving and served God in our church-plant these amazing years till last December.

I believe my prayer is being answered in the heavenlies. Meanwhile, one overnight fruit (yes, 24 hrs!) of my quiet day was this poem. I'd not written for such a long time, and I thank Jinsook who sweetly, insistently, unabashedly reminded me to write, week after week. She must be one of those people who know how to knock on Heaven's door. : )

I really want to write again. Not indulgently like in my college years, but maybe to flip open a few more windows in this vast online space to God's glory.