January Sky

Vivid hues of sunset

Paint life across

Winter's muted tones.

Sing to me, January sky;

Soothe this wakened soul;

And pursuade a fearful heart

to trust

           and to let go.

Journal Excerpts from India

30 Dec 2010 [Thursday]
Chennai

Praise God for keeping us through these few days of travelling!  While long, the 17+ hours in the air, layover time, etc. have gone smoothly and we were blessed with an extra day in Chennai to rest and sightsee before taking the train toward Repalle tomorrow.

There are people everywhere.  We went briefly today to the beach, letting warm water from the Bay of Bengal splash over our feet; to a zoo of sorts ot see the snakes; to the Saint Thomas Basilica and the mount where said apostle first preached.  And inbetween was the adventure that consisted of our driver navigating the crazy traffic....

I hope our time at the school and in the villages will allow or at least help me understand rather than merely seeing to marvel, like a tourist I suppose.

31 Dec [Friday]

Train ride from Chennai

The restlessness in me for now is quelled and replaced by a joyful, active content.  I am a child with wide eyes and wonder, trying all at once to take in everything—sights, sounds, smells and tastes—of this land and people, and wanting so dearly to understand.  If ever I had any doubt about my calling, surely this living, stirring peace would give it away!

IREF school in Repalle, same day

How can I describe the land I saw from the train and van?

I saw a land of rich greens and rice fields where women crouched, harvesting.  I saw towns crowded with people and buildings of cement, thatched huts, and shanties of anything else.  I saw rivers where men and women dere doing laundry; ditches by the railroad tracks full of garbage; sections of land where the dirt is red with clay; desert areas where palm trees and cactus grow side-by-side.  I saw beggars with twisted or missing limbs; water-buffalo and goats roaming around; great bales of rice husks standing aloof in fields like Monet's haystack paintings but against a horizon speckled with palm trees.

They welcomed us at the school like celebrities or royalty.  We emerged from the van and walked up a street lined with men and boys.  They threw flower petals at us (the younger boys often aiming gleefully at our faces) and lit fireworks in our path.  When we turned the corner, the girls and women met us, putting large garlands of flowers round our necks—two each, heavy and fragrant—and they continued to throw petals so our hair, clothes and backpacks were adorned in yellow and orange.  John was given a microphone and asked to pray while photos were snapped in our faces.  And hundreds of children waved and smiled and called hello and "Happy New Year!" to us as we passed.  Some of the brave little boys put out their hands for us to shake and asked hopefully, "How are you?"  I doubt I was the only one so humbled, full of such wonder at this unbelievably loving reception.

1 Jan 2011 [Saturday]
Went to church late morning/early afternoon.
Then the girls on our team got some tubes of henna and brought it to the courtyard with all the nail polish and waited for the girls to come.

Again, it was all remarkably humbling.  It began with only a few girls around each of us, putting the henna tattoos on one hand.  Then more came, so three or four would stay, constant, and another 5-15 would come and go.  They ended up putting designs on both my hands and wrists, feet, painting my nails, braiding my hair, feeding me candy and snacks because I couldn't move or touch anything...

Bharati (prounounced "Barti") was the primary girl I became friends with; she did most of the henna, stayed the whole time, and gave me her bangle bracelets saying, "This way when you go home, you will see them and remember me," and they match my punjabi.  Then the girls complimented me to no end, excited to make me into an Indian, and started teaching me words in Telugu.  They call me "akka," older sister, and I call each one "chelli": little sister. Sireesha and Rani were two other girls who stuck around; they  are16 like Bharati and Rani's name means "queen."  So I joked with them and told them they made me feel "like Rani."  It was true.

2 Jan [Sunday]
This morning we went to church...for something like the fourth time in the last 3 days. Led a few songs...was struck by the faith and sincerity of the girls at the altar call and during communion.  Only those who have been baptized may take communion.  And those were surprisingly few. The decision to follow Christ is an enormous, life-altering, difficult commitment for the students here, whose families are mostly Hindu and do not understand; they may even cast them out of the family.  So Dee and Emmanuel want to make sure they know what it means to be a Christian.

After lunch we went to a church in a village pastored by Francis, Emmanuel's brother.  Materially the people are poor.  They live in brick or mud huts with roofs of dried palm branches with one room for eating, sleeping, living, no matter how many children they have.  Several of the children were wearing clothes that were torn, holes gaping wide open.
As we entered the courtyard of the church we were greeted once more with flower petals thrown over us and bright garlands of flowers placed around our necks.  The plentiful children, women, and a few men beamed at us in greeting and escorted us to the stage behind the altar.
While the villagers crouched on the floor we were beckoned into chairs.  The children watched hungrily as we were given bananas and crackers to eat and cups of Pepsi to drink.
There was a brief sharing time, as there has been in the church in Repalle.  One woman described how long the rains lasted this year and how bad they were—seven months, if I recall.  They were afraid their homes would wash away.  All their crops were ruined.  Yet with joy she ended by praising God for how He provided amidst these overwhelming troubles when they prayed for help.

When the service had finished, the children crowded up asking for pictures and attention and many of the villagers asked individuals on our team to pray for them by gesturing to their heads, where we would place our hands to pray.
As I was about to leave the courtyard, a pregnant woman in a green sari approached me, pointing to her head earnestly.  Francis's daughter Lydia was nearby, and she explained that this woman has not been able to bear children after trying for ten years.  After praying to God, she is now pregnant.
I saw that her faith was so much greater than my own—and yet she asked me to pray for her?  What could I possibly do for her or give her spiritually when she knows far more of God's love and power than I do?  Still, I thanked God for her and prayed for both she and her child.

Next they took us into a little hut where a man knelt on the dirt floor and we prayed for him.  Dee told us later he has been sick for a while so they took him from hospital to hospital.  He was finally diagnosed with tuberculosis.  His young wife and beautiful little daughters watched quietly with sad eyes as we prayed.
We walked to another hut and sat outside it under the eaves of the surrounding homes.  Dee pointed out water buffalo dung slapped on the walls of a few of these and explained how it is dried and used for fuel.

Again they gave us chairs while they sat on the ground.  Dee kept the woman of the home from giving us rice we couldn't eat and the little girls led the congregation in some songs.  The man of the home told us how last year he had wanted to have everyone over after church but couldn't because he didn't have room.  So he prayed and bought a water buffalo and started making a little money.  But, he said, when he had money in his hand he forgot about prayer.  He got sick, and his children and water buffalo started getting sick.  Then he remembered prayer, and indeed, he had us over to his house as he'd hoped.

Dee pointed to the corner of the "yard" where they go to the bathroom.  A hen and her tiny chicks trotted around.  The man's daughter went on the roof and cut squash off the vines to show us proudly, and flies swarmed around the ground at our feet.  And the people were beautiful.

Once more, what have we done to deserve this special treatment?  To accept hospitality and take gifts of food from people who have nothing?  Why are we honored when it is they, rich in faith amidst their poverty who will be first in the Kingdom of God?

Noise

Noise.

It amplifies to cover everything else.
The  "required"s           musts              ASAP!s
  due dates            schedules
            bustle and hurry
 get me lost in the loud maze of busyness
    where the bright flower petals
                     crumble into colorless dust
    where poetry             remains hidden       in prose
    with no one to   see it   and ravel it out

You say                    Be still     .

I need to breathe but I think the walls are closing in
      and I must find my way out.

Oh, Lord                       Keep me.

    Keep me yearning for you.

Prayer request

Merry Christmas, my friends!  I hope this season has been wonderfully refreshing for you as it has been for me, full of peace as well as laughter.

First, praise God for bringing me through a long and often difficult semester!
I was so very glad to come home and be able to sleep lots and spend time with my dear family and some of my close friends.  Looking back, it's been a hard semester with lots of growing and a fair amount of stress, but God gave me grace in places I would not have expected, none of it deserved of course, and thereby humbling me.

 

Now, looking ahead, I come to ask for your prayers. As many of you know, I leave Tuesday for India with a group from my school.  We will be gone from Dec 28-Jan 11, partnered with India Rural Evangelical Fellowship to serve and see how God is working on the other side of the globe.

Please pray for us as we embark on this adventure!

• Pray God would prepare my heart and the hearts of my team members, leaders, and the people we are serving in India, and that He would keep us close to Him and humbly seeking Him.
• Pray for unity, patience and strength for our team, both in travel, with over 20 hours of travel on both ends of the trip, and while we are at the school.
• Pray for my family as I will be gone for the majority of Christmas break and wasn't home for Thanksgiving, either.
• Pray for safety in health and travel; physically and spiritually. We are particularly concerned that I have had a headache on and off for 7 1/2 weeks now. Pray that God will heal me, and if not, that He will give me the strength I need for each day! And as I lead worship, pray for guidance as well as plenty of emotional and spiritual strength.
• Pray God would provide the necessary financial support, as I do not believe I am finished with my fundraising and the trip costs a considerable amount, and I know this is a struggle for other team members as well.
• And finally, pray God would work in our team, in our hearts, and in those we go to serve; that He would be present in active, powerful ways, and that we would allow Him to use us mightily as He sees fit!

I am incredibly excited and cannot wait for this new experience; to experience God in new ways as well as the beauty of another culture and people.  I do not expect to have any access to a computer, so expect an update some point after I have returned and begun processing.  And please, if you remember, keep us in your prayers.
Thank you so very much!

In His love,

allison

Prayer

We assemble quietly in the living room,
A place of warmth from winter's darkness,
From the cold and wear of the trudging week;

We come with our emptiness and aching places,
With slivers of joy and cautious sparks of hope,
And we are met with the richness of silence.

Desperately, fearfully, we show our weary burdens,
Lay bare the colors of our joy,
Reveal intricate beauty of yearning hearts.

Open ears hear;
Attentive eyes see,
And we draw near to show His love.

Plaintive whispers cry to the Father;
Broken whispers beseech the King.
Our limited stores seek His vast love.

And our silence and our whispers are powerful
                              Because God hears.

The Paradox of Christian Suffering

Consider this paradox:

God came to earth to bring about redemption; to reverse the effects of sin that had devastated the world He shaped and fashioned to be good and beautiful, ordered and peaceful.
But instead of coming in glory and splendor, living a life of perfect peace and relative ease, love and light and life (namely, the life which man was meant to live originally), He came as Isaiah's "suffering servant." He suffered darkness, distain, hatred, bearing the worst of human nature. Of course He did bring light and good, for He healed the sick and deformed and brought wholeness to human hearts. But instead of a ministry that sent out ripples of societal peace and order, His ministry effected waves of turbulence.
A ministry of hope was bound in affliction.

Do the trials of sin and destruction cease with Christ's entrance into the world? Does even His resurrection—the very conquering of death itself—abruptly terminate the woes of human mortality?

No. But its days are numbered; its doom awaits, and Christ brought His followers power greater than sin, letting them partake in the battle and re-creation by acts deliberately opposite their original nature, for He set them free from the predictability, punishment, and power of the fallen, broken world.

And by bowing to suffering as part of an ailing world, even in a way contrary to human nature and its sense of how things ought to be (for even many atheists see problems with violence, war and general entropy), He begins to heal suffering and combat its effects. How many times in the epistles are Christians told to rejoice in their sufferings?
It seems an ironic paradox that God would use Satan's very tool of destruction against him (Satan, not God).
Through the wrong in the world, God makes His people righteous. Through living purely against trouble and evil and darkness, God perfects human hearts to shine more brightly. Perhaps the contrast of light and peace against fallen darkness and disorder makes it more striking.

And perhaps it merely shows us the power of the Most High God that He would use the twisted schemes of the evil one to heal brokenness and make all things right; that through the cacophony He would weave a marvelous and captivating harmony.

I guess I'm back to the purpose of this blog and the theme which runs quietly in the background of my musings here. But is it not encouraging to pause for a moment and reflect—to praise and rejoice—that our God brings cosmos out of chaos?
Do not lose heart, my friends. One day the battle will be over, and though He has used suffering for good, we need endure it no more! Through the ugliness of torture and death He appeased His own justice. All things will be healed. In His pain we are made whole again. For His love endures forever.

The Girl in the Glass

Yesterday as I was walking from one place to another, I came across a wall of glass, and on the other side stood a girl like me. She stood close to the wall until I approached; then guards went over her wistful eyes and she took a step back.

The room in which she stood looked very small to me, and I asked through the wall if she wanted out. I saw her desperate longing then, just for a second, as she nodded jerkily and said she would.

“Well,” I said, “Perhaps there is a door.” The room behind her was messy and by the patchy redness on her face, she looked as though she had been crying.

She nodded dully and pointed to my left. I walked the length of the glass and indeed, a crack ran smoothly down, and there were hinges on the parallel edge. But the latch seemed to be on the inside, and I was strangely hesitant to put out my hand and find out.

So I ran back to the girl, but she had retreated to a corner where she sat curled up tightly with her knees to her chest, forehead bowed against them so her face was hidden, and I was impatient with her oddness.

“There’s a door!” I shouted, knocking on the glass to get her attention and gesturing toward it. “Come out and be free! The sun is shining out here; the day is warm and full of life. You can get out of there!”

She looked up at me and shook her lazy head in dejection.

“Why not? I thought you wanted out.”

Slowly she stood and faced me, head hanging. She shook it again and said simply, “I can’t.”

She couldn’t go out like that, she said—not the way she was. And I saw for the first time that her clothes were filthy, even torn in places, and disgusting to behold.

“Put on something else,” I said, trying not to show her how I inwardly recoiled at the sight.

And again she said, “I can’t.” She had no other clothes—if one could truly call such wretched tatters garments at all.

“Well…you cannot get new clothes without venturing out,” I ventured half-heartedly.

But there was too much fear. Backwards she stepped, away from the glass, and I thought I heard her repeat, “I can’t, not this way.”

I knew with a twinge of pity that if I were as she, I would not want others to know of my stench, either, and have them twist their faces and pinch their raised noses when they passed by.

The girl retreated into her dark corner and I turned and walked away. And so yesterday came and went.





Today I passed my reflection in a mirror, a car window, a glass storefront. And I thought for a second I saw a wretched, putrid girl, face blotchy and ugly from crying and shame.

And I walked faster.

 
 
 
 
(Lord, have mercy!)

spiritual short-term memory

Among other books, I am currently reading through the Gospel of Mark. And one passage in particular caught my attention the other day.

To give some context, Jesus recently fed and satisfied 5,000 hungry men with five loaves of bread and two fish, before the disciples' very eyes. Not only were they satisfied, but twelve basketfuls of leftovers were picked up afterward.  Among other healings and discussions with and about the hypocritical Pharisees, he gave hearing to a deaf man.  And the people were "astonished beyond measure, saying, 'He has done all things well.  He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.'" (7:37)
Next thing Mark tells us, a great crowd has gathered around Jesus, and these people have followed him for three days and have nothing to eat.  Being who he is, Jesus is filled with compassion, and from seven loaves of bread and "a few small fish", he feeds about 4,000 people.  And not one goes hungry—in fact, this time there are seven basketfuls of leftovers.

I know, I know, you've probably heard this before. But bear with me because these little beforehand-details are important.

So Jesus has fed another crowd of people.  And the Pharisees approach him and ask him for a sign from heaven.  "Sorry, mister; these miracles aren't good enough for us. Healing the sick, casting out demons, multiplying food?? Give us a real sign!"  Jesus is saddened by their lack of faith and hard hearts and gets back in the boat, and he and his disciples travel to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

Now they had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat.  And [Jesus] cautioned them, saying, "Watch out; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod."  And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread.  And Jesus, aware of this, said to them, "Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread?  Do you not yet perceive or understand?  Are your hearts hardened?  Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear?  And do you not remember?  When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? "  They said to him, "Twelve."  "And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?"  And they said to him, "Seven."  And he said to them, "Do you not yet understand?"  [Mark 8.14-21]

There are a couple of things going on in this passage, but what struck me is what seems to be the disciples' seemingly incredible short-term memory!  Within a fairly short period of time, with the disciples to help with distribution, Jesus has fed about 9,000 people.  He started with next to nothing, blessed, fed the people, and there was extra left over.  A couple more incidents, and next thing we know the disciples are complaining about being hungry again!  They come across on the thick-headed side, don't they?

I thought so.

Then I realized I do the same thing.  How many times has God called me to a certain place and proved his greatness, his power, his sovereignty and love by providing for all my needs?
Of course, sometimes I get needs confused with wants, but he has always been faithful! And he has always provided.

Yet I sit here and struggle with trusting him to provide for the future. Right now I'm trusting that if he wants me to continue at school, he'll provide a way, and so far I have been able to work just enough to stay on top of the bill, one semester at a time.  But when he put before me the opportunity to go on a short-term mission trip overseas this winter, one of my greatest concerns and hesitations is the knowledge that I have no way to get there on my own.

But he's always provided.  Every time.  Just counting mission trips, that makes six separate occasions.  And that doesn't even include the rest of my life, in which I've definitely seen God provide in large and small ways.

He has always provided.  And I still doubt.

Time to take some lessons from Hudson Taylor and start trusting God in more uncomfortable ways. For as Christians I think we often ask God to reveal his greatness to us, but it's hard for us to let go of our own self-relience--just like the Pharisees.  Jesus gave sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, but like the disciples, I have no excuse.  Having eyes, I still have difficulty seeing; having ears, I manage not to hear.

As the father of the demon-possessed boy cried, "I believe; help my unbelief!" [Mark 9:24]

God grant me grace and strength to have greater faith and to live by this faith day by day and month by month!

These Shining Fragments

The Body of Christ is like stained glass.

We are broken, fractured pieces, but He brings us together and makes something beautiful out of us.

He makes a picture, fitting each fragment just right into something far greater than ourselves; something we never would have been capable of comprehending if left by ourselves.

And through us He shines His glorious light, illuminating each radiant hue.

Scribblings on a Napkin During Work

October waxes with the moon,
We shed our summer skin.
From faces and arms slides the glow,
Slips away to adorn
The fluttering fingers of the trees
In whimsical raiment of gold.
We don't see the lifeblood start to slow
As days of sunshine grow silently slim—
Only festive confetti spiraling down
To frame our footsteps
Till winter falls;
Till she scatters her chill
Over our fingers and face
And spreads white across
Our streets and skin.

Some saplings I know
And a few strong, sturdy oaks
Quiver with fear as October wanes.
Gracefully they gloried in their gold,
In burnished, fiery bronze and red;
Now softly they moan,
They sigh and they tremble
As Wind strips their sole riches away
To litter the path which lies beneath
And be trampled to dust
Or left sodden to rot
And all former beauty forgotten.
They shake in the wind,
Howl their pain,
Fearing an imminent death.

Squirrels scamper through the wreck,
Frolic 'cross swaying boughs
Seeking the seeds unclaimed by the earth
Asking promises when Spring's rains sing.
Canst thou not see,
Thou elm, maple and oak,
Thou are not like the squirrel?
Canst thou not trust
Thou art unforgot
And thy Maker knows what He does?
That Springtime will swell
With riches anew?
Hold thou to hope for fullness to come
That now in thy waiting
Thou can scarce comprehend.