Physics, Femininity, and Strength - Newton's Third Law

Some further thoughts from the last post - as I was reading more on the term "ezer kenegdo," I came across and illustration that one Jewish commentator makes: a man and a woman holding up an arch between the two of them. I realized that Newton's Third Law would fit well in this discussion both on the literal level about physics and as a metaphor for men and women in marriage.

Of course, being the engineer that I am, my first thought turned to free body diagrams to look at the forces acting on an arch and which direction they point.

If you were to segment the arch, there would be downward forces at the joints of the blocks

As you can see from this diagram, the forces point down and out from the legs, away from the center. You know this instinctively -- if I put a piece of card stock on the table and I told you to make an arch with it, how would you get it to stay upright? You'd have to push the "legs" toward each other; otherwise it would just slide outward until it was flat on the table again.

In physics speak, if we assume that the arch is symmetrical, then the forces required to hold up the card stock arch above must obey Newton's Third Law; they must be:

1) equal in magnitude and

2) opposite in direction.

1) Equal in magnitude - "ezer" / strength

In one of their seminars on marriage, Tim and Kathy Keller from Redeemer talked about the term "ezer" in regards to the role of the man and woman in marriage. Kathy noted that by definition, a helper can only help out of a position of strength.

Many times in English, the term "helper" ends up meaning "assistant." However, you couldn't possibly use "helper" to mean "assistant" when you're referring to God as Israel's help; it would be utterly ridiculous (not to mention wrong) to think of God as merely Israel's assistant when he's fighting for her!

I love that as women we are called to be strong! In physics terms, the arch would collapse if the pink arrow were significantly smaller than the blue one. This call to strength means that I don't have to be a princess bored out of my mind while I waiting for my prince to come rescue me from my tower and then end up as a pretty decoration on his horse. I am not just a cheerleader watching from the sidelines; I am a necessary contributing member of the team!

2) Opposite in direction - "kenegdo" / corresponding

This card stock arch will not stand because the forces acting on the right leg are in the same direction as the forces within the arch.

If you and one other person were surrounded by the enemy, would you rather be fighting with both of you facing the same direction or back-to-back? Clearly, the most advantageous arrangement would be back-to-back, seeing what your partner cannot, minimizing blind spots and maximizing offensive potential.

Women, therefore, are vital members of this arch-bearing team because they can bring strengths that complement men's weaknesses and vice versa. Expecting women to perform like men or lead like men and hiding their feminine (relational, nurturing, group-oriented, etc) qualities would be like asking the back-to-back warrior pair to face the same direction. Shooting yourself in the foot, don't you think?

I am made to be an ezer kenegdo, a critical member of a team, a strength, not a liability in a unique way that men cannot be. In the words of Barnard and Elisabeth Eliot, let me be strong. Let me be beautiful. Let me be a woman.

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Sources:

Ezer Kenegdo: http://godswordtowomen.org/ezerkenegdo.htm

Physics of arches: http://www.cpo.com/weblabs/chap3/archf.htm

Phase Shifts, Femininity, and Strength

Over the course several summers of women's times on Summer Projects, I've started to realize that I care a lot about women, femininity, and empowering women to step into the fullness of all that God intended femininity to be. But what does this mean?

For most of my life, I've associated femininity with weakness, but the more I learn about the creation account of Eve in Genesis 2, the more I'm starting to see that being feminine doesn't exclude being strong. In fact, over the summer, Mushroom shared an insight from the Talmudic commentator Rashi on Genesis 2:18 argues just the opposite - femininity is strength.

¹⁸ The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make [a helper suitable] for him.”

The term translated, "a helper suitable" is ezer kenegdo in Hebrew, a term that is notoriously difficult to translate according to Hebrew scholar Robert Alter (quoted in Captivating). Ezer comes from the same root as "strength" and is used elsewhere in the Old Testament to describe God as Israel's help in times of trouble, as in Deuteronomy 29:33:

²⁹ Blessed are you, Israel!
Who is like you,
a people saved by the LORD?
He is your shield and helper
and your glorious sword.
Your enemies will cower before you,
and you will tread on their heights.”

Kengedgo means something like corresponding to, or opposite. Taking the two words together, Commentator Rashi wrote,

"If he is worthy then [she is] a helpmate, if he is not worthy then [she is] opposite him, to fight him."

In other words, as an ezer, a woman is a source of strength, but that strength can be used for a man or against a man. As I thought what that looked like, I, in my engineering nerdiness, found an "ahah!" moment through waves and phase shifts.

Partial Constructive Interference

If you look at the figure below, the red and the blue waves have the same period and amplitude; they have the same shape, except one is shifted further along the x axis than the other (if you want to be technical, the blue wave is y=sin(x) and the red one is y=sin(x+pi/2). The green wave is the sum of the two; if you were to take the y-values of the red and the blue wave at each x value and add them together and plot, the result would be the green wave).

In this particular case, there is some constructive interference - in other words, the resultant wave (green) has a larger amplitude (height) than either of the addend waves. Depending on how far you shift the red one, you can end up with a few different shapes and heights of resultant (green) waves.

Maximal Destructive Interference - a strength against

The two waves are of equal amplitude (height) and frequency, and they are completely out of phase: where the blue wave (y=sin(x)) reaches a maximum at 1, the red one (y=sin(x+pi)) reaches a minimum at -1. As a result, the sum of the two waves (green) is y=0 all the way through; they totally cancel each other out.

Maximal Constructive Interference - a strength for

Although you can't see it, there are actually two waves here - a red one (y=sin(x) ) and a blue one (y=sin(x)). The red one just happens to be completely on top of the blue one because the two waves are completely in phase, both reaching a maximum of 1 and minimum at -1 at the same time.

As a result, when you add the two waves together (shown in green), you have a new maximum of 2 and new minimum of -2; the amplitude of the new wave is double that of the originals. In the same way, when two partners are totally aligned, their combined strength as a team will be much greater than their individual strength.

Although Genesis 2 is often discussed in reference to marriage, I think that we can broaden this idea of teamwork and building up vs tearing down to other types of relationships between men and women in work, family, romance, etc. With strength comes responsibility, and I pray that I will be a strength for the men in my life and not a strength against them.

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Sources:

Ezer Kenegdo: http://godswordtowomen.org/ezerkenegdo.htm

Eldridge, John and Stasi. Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007.

Rashi commentary: http://www.tachash.org/metsudah/b01r.html

Vectors, Angry Birds, Workaholism, and Grace

I seem to be on a physics kick lately, which is funny considering how much I disliked it in college and how much I struggled to comprehend it. My brain just isn't wired that way, but for some reason, God has been using physics to teach me more about himself, particularly grace.

If you've ever taken Physics 101, the first thing you learn are vectors and kinematics - describing how things behave when they move. One subset of kinematics is projectile motion, which looks at what happens when you're tossing a ball, dropping quarters from the Empire State Building, slinging Angry Birds at pigs...you get the idea.

When you describe projectile motion, you break down the vector in question (eg, the bird is launched at 10 m/s at a 40-degree angle) into an x and a y component because the forces acting in the horizontal and vertical components are independent - gravity will never make you fly sideways.

As I thought about the independence of vector components, I realized that my workaholic tendencies stem from having false expectations of what my effort will actually accomplish. If x represents what I am responsible for and y represents what God's responsible for, I think I'm pouring all my energy and efforts into my work and achievements, expecting them to give me significance.

It's like pulling the slingshot in a completely horizontal position (maximizing Vx) in order to get them to fly higher (somehow to have an effect in Vy), and when that doesn't work, I try it again with a stronger elastic or replace the slingshot with a canon instead of aiming higher. It's absurd, and it won't work.

On a more practical level, the independence of vector components helped me to realize that as I'm developing a team of ministry partners (raising support), I am responsible for making phone calls, sending emails, meeting with people to share about my ministry, etc. However, God is the one who puts it on peoples' hearts to partner with me, and no amount of emailing on my end will change that.

Instead of working myself to exhaustion, I need to trust in God's faithfulness and in his provision that will come in his time -- which is not to say that I can just kick back, relax, and wait for God to drop people in my lap because then I wouldn't be faithful to my responsibilities. How then, am I to live somewhere in the middle?

Have you ever been a workaholic? If so, what has helped you in your journey of developing a more healthy relationship with work?

A visual reminder of grace

I'm an engineer, and sometimes God speaks to me through math and physics. Somehow, seeing it visually in a context familiar to me as an engineer is far more powerful than hearing the words alone. I came across Romans 11:5-6 the other day:

^"5 So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. ⁶ And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace."

The very essence of grace is that it is not dependent on works. If y is God's love, and x is my works (what I can do or achieve for God), then y is a constant independent of x.

But far too often, I operate with this assumption: The harder I work, the more God will love me.

Praise be to God that this is not true!

A Conversation with a Homeless Princess

During our second week of summer project, we had a major push for evangelism where we asked students to consider what barriers they had to sharing their faith or people they were afraid to share with. We challenged them to face their fears during that week. Of course, it wouldn't have been fair for us staff to just sit back and watch, so we made our own list of fears in evangelism that we wanted to conquer. One of mine was to share my faith with a homeless person.

After living in NYC for the last six years, I am still at a loss for how to respond to homeless people around me. I confess that more often than not, I just hurry past them, avoiding their questioning gazes and the jingling cup of change in their hands, or I ignore them all together, keeping my eyes buried in the book I'm reading as they stumble down the subway car. What do you do? Six years later, it's a question I'm still asking.

So if I'm this uneasy just acknowledging the existence of homeless people, talking to them about my faith was about as far out of my comfort zone as the earth is from the moon.

Yet, one day as I was walking toward the Ferry Building from the Muni station, I passed by a petite, wiry, tanned woman with a silver gray ponytail sitting on the sidewalk outside of a Subway shop. I walked past her at first, but then felt a familiar whisper from the Holy Spirit to turn around and talk to her, so I did. I asked if she'd had lunch yet, and when she replied no, I asked if I could buy her a sandwich. I took her order, then came back out to sit with her and asked, "What's your story?"

Her name, she said, was Princess, but she also went by Frances since that's what most people think she says when she introduces herself as Princess. She said that she was trying to find her way home (London...but she had a Midwestern accent). She was stuck - she'd come out to the States for business, but then got left behind because "they" had conspired to keep her here after taking away her home. She told me that she belonged to the British royal family and pulled out a series of notarized documents proving (or "proving"?) her identity. To be honest, I had no idea whether to smile and nod or to challenge her claims.

Despite my doubts about her mental state, we had some lucid moments when our conversation turned toward faith. I don't remember how we got on the subject, but at one point I asked her if she had a religious background, and she asked me about mine. As I told her about experiencing forgiveness, Princess exclaimed, "That's incredible news! Thank you for telling me!" In that moment, I was taken aback - I've never had anyone respond so joyously to the gospel before! And then she went on to tell me how she met Jesus Christ in Arizona ("he's a Superstar, you know") and I was back to smiling and nodding again, unsure of whether anything I said made sense to her.

As I reflected on my 1.5 hour conversation with Princess/Frances, I realized:

• The Holy Spirit has never led me astray before, even when I don't want to do what he asks me to do
• I genuinely enjoyed talking to her
• I don't have to be afraid of homeless people
• I am ridiculously full of myself. God didn't put me in this conversation so that I could check off an item from my "evangelism fears to conquer" list for the week. This wasn't about me. It was about God and pointing Princess/Frances one step closer to Him, even if there will be 1,847 more steps in her spiritual journey before she decides to commit her life to Jesus (if at all). All I am asked to do is to be faithful with the step I've been given.

I hope that this conversation with Princess and the ones I had later this summer with Wilma and Billy & friends (all homeless) are not just isolated Summer Project experiences. Instead, I pray that they will translate to a different perspective and heart for the homeless here in NYC, even though it's so much easier to slip back into my practiced habit of ignoring them.

New Yorkers (or other city dwellers), what do you do when you encounter homeless people? What has influenced your thought process about homelessness and aid?

To the woman in seat 8B en route to NYC,

I don't remember what your name is, but I wanted to write and thank you for the conversation we had. Thank you for breaking the ice and for your friendly inquiries when I first sat down. You see, I fly a lot for work, and I happen to work for an organization where it seems like everyone has amazing spiritual conversations with their seatmates on the plane. Our founder Bill Bright led dozens of people to Christ during the course of his travels. But I must confess - when I get on planes (and this one was no exception), I usually tell God, "God, I'm fried. Can I just sleep on this flight?"

However, as I was putting my carry-on away in the overhead compartment, I saw you and felt the Holy Spirit nudging me to talk to you. I groaned inwardly, but then you greeted me and started a conversation with me! I had no excuse not to chat anymore.

Later on, when there was a lull in the conversation, I even tried taking a nap to get out of any further obligation to talk to you, but that didn't work either. You asked to borrow the People magazine that I had been reading -- which I never read, by the way. I just borrowed it from a coworker on the same flight because I had neglected to pack my own reading material. And it just happened to have a story on The Bachelorette, your favorite TV show. I'm amazed at what God used to bring us together into a conversation because from The Bachelorette, we talked for the rest of the cross-country flight on just about everything.

Thanks for opening up about your life, your family, and your culture. I really enjoyed learning about Jewish weddings and bar/bat mitzvahs and expectations Jewish parents have on their kids -- they're not so different from Asian parents! Thank you also for your openness and honesty in sharing about your exploration in spirituality and how unsatisfying, "God does everything for a purpose" sounds when you're in the middle of hard times and you can't understand why things are happening to you.

As I was reflecting on our conversation, I realized that that line is only meaningful when you know him and trust his character. I pray that you will not only learn about God in your searching, but as the Pslamist writes, that you will "taste and see that the Lord is good" (Psalm 34:8). I pray that you will get to know him, trust him, delight in him, and fall head over heels in love with him because he loves you far more fervently, relentlessly, and ardently than you know. May you find the satisfaction of your soul in his arms.

Your friend,

Jessica in 8C

Airplane stories...en route to Denver

I fly pretty often for work, and it seems that something goes wrong on at least one leg of my trips. If you've seen me on twitter, I've hash-tagged these as #airportstories, but it's hard to do these stories justice in 140 characters.

After summer project ended, I spent a few days hanging out with a college roommate and seeing some friends in the area before flying out to Colorado for CCC's national staff conference. The trip out there ranks among my worst flight experience ever.

The short version:
My original flight got cancelled, so I got rerouted for a flight out of a nearby airport, but I missed it and had to wait 5 hours for the next one, landing at midnight.

The long version:
I arrived at the SF airport on Saturday morning, panicked because I had left the house late that morning, genuinely concerned that I wouldn't make it in time for my flight. The good news: I got to the airport on time. Unfortunately, when I arrived, they told me that my flight had been cancelled due a hailstorm in Denver the night before that had damaged some of their aircraft. The only options were to wait until the next morning's 6am flight or to take a flight out of San Jose airport with a layover in Los Angeles, arriving at 7pm. It wasn't the most direct route, but at least I'd get there for the night meeting.

That worked out well enough. San Jose is only 45 minutes away and they gave me a voucher for a shuttle, and if I left right away, then I would be well on my way to Denver (via LA). The problem was...it was 10:30 when they gave me the voucher for a 12:15pm flight. When I got on a shuttle immediately, the driver asked me to get off and wait for the next shuttle, which didn't come for another 30 minutes (11am...already tight for my flight). I neglected to ask the second shuttle driver to drop me off first, so he started dropping off the other passengers before I spoke up, so I didn't get to the airport until 12:10. For my 12:15 flight >.<

I've never missed a flight before, but now I guess I can cross that off my bucket list. I got rebooked for a 5pm flight with a 3-hour layover in LA, arriving in Denver at midnight. As I waited, I tried calling the other airlines to see if there were any available seats for an earlier flight. Just when I thought I had a glimmer of hope on the phone with one airline that had a direct flight arriving at 6pm, it was quickly dashed to bits when I went to the corresponding counter and learned that the flight in question was, in fact, completely sold out. Argh....

I was so frustrated at the whole process, and I started playing the "If only..." game and blaming myself for being in the situation I was in.

• If only I had asked the ticket agent if I had enough time to get to the SJ airport...
• If only I had insisted that the first shuttle driver let me stay on...
• If only I had asked to be dropped off first...
• If only I had asked the ticket agent to check if there were any other flights before landing at midnight before I accepted the one he gave me...

If only, if only, if only....Somehow, I find ways to assume responsibility for things that I'm not actually responsible for. Yes, there were things I could have done differently, but there is no guarantee that any of them would have actually worked. Hopefully one of these days I'll learn to stop taking the blame for everything that could have possibly gone wrong. In the end, I got to Denver safely, I had a great time at staff conference, and I had a short reprieve before I had to face the airport again. Until next time...

SFSP - The first week

I've now been in San Francisco for a full week now, and it has been one CRAZY hectic week. First, the director team prepared for staff to arrive, then we worked with the staff to set up shop for the students. The students arrived on Wednesday, and within 48 hours, they had their first orientation, went through a historical walking tour of Chinatown (courtesy of our resident SF expert, Steve Hong), learned how to share the gospel, initiated spiritual conversations in downtown San Francisco, and went searching for jobs/ministry locations for the summer. Whew!

Transitioning to life in SF was a little harder than I expected. Maybe it's because I'm a perfectionist and a fast learner, but somehow I guess I expected to magically be able to learn the city and know everything about SF instantaneously. I don't think I really understand that it's ok to be in process along the learning curve; instead, I just wonder why I'm not arrived already.

Because I live in NYC, I just assumed that going from one big city to another wouldn't be that difficult. However, the newness of everything and how much I didn't know became overwhelming -- I didn't know where to eat, buy groceries, pick up forgotten travel items, work out or have fun, and I didn't know where the public transit went or the streets were laid out (we're on a grid, but the streets are all named and not in alphabetical order in this part of town. Furthermore, our particular neighborhood's grid intersects with the next neighborhood's grid at a 30 degree angle, so there can be up to 3-4 street names at the diagonal intersections).

Although the initial realization that I didn't know anything about the city was a bit disorienting and upsetting, over this last week, I've found a few surprising sources of comfort. The first was the practice room in the hostel where we're staying, so I had a chance to vent some of my stress on the piano. Other sources of comfort were riding the muni (subway), studying the transit map, walking through the surrounding neighborhoods and trying to memorize street names, discovering bookstores and coffee shops, and believe it or not -- hearing sirens go by my window at night, like a city lullaby. I'm glad that some things can stay constant from city to city!

Here are some pictures of our week so far:

View of a sequoia at the SF Botanical Garden during our staff day

Staff dinner at our new favorite restaurant (Zaoh Sushi)

Trying to transport 40+ people through the muni system (and not get lost!)

Steve telling us about the Golden Dragon Massacre (part of Chinatown's gang history)

Brent and Mushroom (Kevin) cutting hair for the guys before sending them out to look for jobs

San Francisco - first impressions

Today is my third day in SF (and also the day our staff arrive!) as the director team worked to , wrap up loose ends, purchase supplies, finalize our staff briefing schedule, and get a lay of the land. We're living in downtown San Francisco, and even as someone who's lived in NYC for the last 6 years, there are still a few things I'm not used to.

The first surprised was the number of homeless people here. It's not that I've never seen any in NYC; it just seems like there's a higher concentration of them here. Furthermore, most of the homeless people I encounter in NYC are either sitting on the sidewalk or walking through the subway cars, but the ones I see here are generally walking down the street. There's also a number of them camped out on the lawn at city hall, although I'm not sure if that's because they usually do that or if they were protesting. To be honest, even after all these years in NYC, I still feel uneasy when I'm around homeless people. Maybe this is God's way of pushing me out of my comfort zone and really forcing me to confront issues in my own heart.

On a personal note, I've had a really hard time adjusting to Pacific Time for some reason. I've been to California on a number of occasions, but this time I can't seem to shake the jetlag. I was falling asleep after dinner, and even though I purposely tried to go to bed later last night (at 11), I still woke up at 4:30 this morning. I eventually fell asleep again, but for the last few days, I've just been tired all the time. Please pray that I can get some rest before our students arrive on Wednesday!

What if...?

It's been a week and a half since Harold Camping's predicted Rapture Day. Obviously, it didn't occur, but as I was reading this article from the New York Times ("Make My Bed? But You Say the World's Ending") I was really struck by the extent to which his followers believed him and acted upon that their beliefs. In one family highlighted here, the mother quit her job as a nurse and spent the last two years on missions trips to proclaim that the end was nearing. Another devoted follower spent nearly his whole life savings, about $140,000 on billboards and advertising to spread the word. $140,000!

Belief isn't just mental or theoretical; it dictates action. What do you be willing to give your life savings to? What are you so convinced of that it is worth every fiber of your being? What news is so urgent and good that you can't contain it?

What if we who call ourselves Christians were just as convinced of the truth of the gospel? What if we truly believed that we will have to stand before God one day to account for all that we ever thought, said, or did? What if we truly believed that Jesus came to reconcile the world to himself, that he called us to join him in that work, and that he will come back and finish what he started? What if we were completely sold out for him? What would the world look like?

Nerd moments - sin and gravity

As many of you know, I'm an engineer by training, and sometimes I have revelatory "aha!" moments where I'm struggling to explain or understand a concept about God, but then an illustration from science (usually physics, for some reason) pops into my head and the concept clicks. I like to call these my nerd moments, and I'll post them as they come.

One nerd moment I had recently occurred as I was trying to explain to a student that God views all sin the same way, whether the sin in question is a white lie or a murder. Intuitively, this doesn't really make sense because a white lie seems so harmless and even justifiable - I didn't want to hurt her feelings, or he didn't really need to know. But murder -- everyone knows that's just wrong. Why then, should God's punishment for all sins be the same when their severities vary so much?

As I thought about it, I realized that the claim that all sins are equal in God's eyes is just about as counter-intuitive as Galileo's claim that all objects accelerate at the same rate, which was radically different from Arisotle's claim that heavy objects accelerate faster than light objects. This claim doesn't make sense because we've seen feathers fall and bowling balls fall and we know that if we were to drop them at the same time, the bowling ball would hit the ground first, and if we had a choice to be hit with one of them, we'd definitely choose the feather.

However, upon further study in physics, we learn that the reason why the ball hits the ground first is not because of a difference in gravitational acceleration, but because of air resistance and drag effects. Once you enter an airless environment (in a vacuum or on the moon), then you remove the drag effects and gravity is the only force left to act on the feather, so it should reach the ground at the same time as a heavier object. Apollo 15 astronaut Dave Scott actually proved this in the video below, where he drops a hammer and a feather on the moon.

This is just speculation, but perhaps the reason why the perceived effects of sins vary so much, even when the Bible makes it very clear that the wages of [all] sin is death (Romans 6:23), is because there is some equivalent of a drag force that mitigates the effects that we experience in this life? I have no idea what the parallel would be, but whatever it is, it will not be there when we stand before God's throne and he calls us to account for all that we have ever said, thought, or done. To be in the presence of a perfect and perfectly good God will lead us to realize how pitifully short our own "goodness" stands in contrast and by extension, how terribly wicked our shortcomings really are. When we understand how infinitely more good God is, then maybe we can start to understand how any sin is the same in his eyes.

Japan, my heart goes out to you

My heart is heavy for Japan. A month ago today, he led me to the Japan Society during a prayer time (which I wrote about earlier) and told me that Japan was precious to him. Yet just a week ago, Japan got slammed with the largest earthquake in its history, an ensuing tsunami, now a looming nuclear disaster. What's next? Hasn't Japan suffered enough?

I look through video footage of the incredible power of the waves, tumbling over seawalls as if they were merely speed bumps and rushing inland like an army carrying away anything not tied down; pictures of the aftermath, of planes and cars and parts of houses strewn about like toys carelessly dumped from a toy box; articles the now half a million Japanese in emergency shelters...and my heart breaks for people I don't know and have zero connection to. I can't help but wonder - how much more must God's heart hurt for a nation that is so precious to him?

When I went last time to the Japan Society, I felt crushed by feelings of spiritual darkness, hunger, oppression, and hopelessness in Japan. However, some of these are now physically felt, with rolling blackouts to conserve power, food rations at some shelters amounting to about 1.5 rice balls per day, and fear of radiation poisoning leading even those who live outside the official evacuation advisory area to leave their homes.

If our God is the Creator and Master of the Universe, if he came to "provide for those who grieve in Zion -- to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair" (Isaiah 61:3), then what beauty will rise from these ashes? If what Paul wrote here is true...

¹⁸ I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. ¹⁹ The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons 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 the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. ²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Romans 8:18-22)

...then there has got to be an incredible glory that is coming if it's not worth comparing to what we're experiencing now. All I know how to do at this point is pray, so Lord, let that day of glory come quickly.

On a side note - closer to home, we're currently in the middle of JapanNYC, which is a month-long celebration of Japanese culture in a variety of forms, both traditional and contemporary: art, music, literature, film, architecture, anime, etc. This was planned months ago, but now is becoming a tribute to the Japanese people, (including concerts where proceeds are now going to disaster relief) so go check it out if you can!

An experience of God's love and (physical!) healing - March 3, 2011

Last Thursday night (March 3), the four major Christian ministries on campus came together for a night of interfellowship worship and prayer. I received healing during this time, and it came on the context of what Steve Choi from Remnant Christian Fellowship spoke about regarding prayer. His primary text was Jesus’ teaching on prayer in Matthew 7:7-11, where he compares prayer to a child asking his father for food:

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

Steve went on to explain why we don’t receive things in prayer, either because we don’t ask or because we ask with wrong motives (James 4:2-3). He illustrated these reasons in light of the example of a child asking for bread as:

1) The child who is starving but won’t ask his father for bread, even though he’s holding a huge loaf of bread

2) The child who is asking for a serpent (or some other harmful thing)

After he spoke, there was an extended time of worship and prayer, and at the very end, the worship leader invited people to come up to the front and receive prayer for healing for physical pain. It just so happened that a few days before, I mildly sprained my right ankle as I was walking, but when I heard the invitation, I assumed that he was talking to people with more serious ailments.

However, as I sat in the back and continued to pray, the worship leader repeated the invitation to come and receive healing, adding, “I know there’s someone in the back who has pain in their right ankle.” By this time, he had my full attention, but I refused to go up front, making up excuse after excuse not to:

· “That can’t be me – there has to be someone else in this room with a hurting right ankle.”

· “I’m staff. I should be on the prayer team praying FOR people, not receiving prayer.” (Oh, how very humble of me…I can't believe I actually thought that)

· “It’s such a minor injury! It’s not like I have a major disease or anything.”

· “I only hurt it 4 days ago. It already feels better, and I’m sure by tomorrow it’ll be fine!”

Yet as I continued to resist, I felt God nudging me even more strongly to go up front and ask for prayer, but I refused to budge until finally he whispered, “You are the child who doesn’t ask!” And he was right – I didn’t want to bother him or inconvenience him with what I thought were minor details in my life, and to be honest, I didn’t think I was worth his time. With this final prod, I finally went up to the front and asked one of the leaders if he had made the announcement about the ankle. He had not, but offered to pray for me anyway, so he placed his hand on my ankle and prayed, and I immediately felt physical relief!

He pointed out the leader who did make the announcement about the ankle and encouraged me to ask him to pray for me too, and so I did. As the worship leader prayed for me, he told me God wanted him to tell me, “God loves YOU! Not just the world in general, but you as an individual. It doesn’t matter what you experienced in your relationship with [a person who caused me great insecurity and doubt of God’s love] – God LOVES you!” At that, I just broke down in tears, overwhelmed by God’s goodness and reveling the fact that I -- little, insignificant me – am beloved by the Master and Creator of the Universe.

I share this story with you because the point is not “Jess got healed!” but rather “God LOOOOOOVES you, and he loves YOU!” I simply got to experience that love through the avenue of healing, and I pray that you too will be able to experience the incredible joy of that love from a Father who always gives his children bread, not stones.

Dreams, the mind, Inception, and Hindusim - Feb 25, 2011

Most Friday afternoons, I go with one or two students from CSFC to talk to people on campus about their thoughts on spirituality. This particular Friday, Wei, Diogo, and I saw a guy in saffron robes and decided ask him about his spiritual background. It turns out that he’s the Hindu chaplain on campus, and he leads a weekly Hindu discussion group on Friday evenings. This week’s discussion topic was the mind and dreams, with some clips from the movie Inception and some verses from the Bhagavad Gita (holy text). He invited us to join, so I accepted, although Wei and Diogo had prior obligations.

Through my four years and school (and 1.5 in campus ministry), I’ve never attended a discussion group outside of CSFC. However, as I observed this Hindu discussion group, I realized that it wasn’t so different from CSFC large group. Both CSFC and this discussion group gather to learn about spiritual truth. Sometimes these gatherings include food, sometimes there’s an illustration of a particular point with a movie clip, and there’s always the question of what the texts say about a particular topic and how it applies to our lives.

The discussion itself was pretty interesting, and I actually participated quite a bit, which is really uncharacteristic of me (just ask anyone who was in my Lit Hum class in college). Some food for thought:

· You can never trace the beginning of a dream, so you never know if what you’re experiencing is real or a dream until you wake up….but what if you never wake up?

· It seems that one of the ways to achieve a higher spiritual state is to learn to control your mind. However, you can’t control your subconscious, so then what?

· If our dreams are our subconscious replaying things we’ve experienced, and there’s evidence that babies (and even fetuses) may dream (ok, technically, all that was proved was that they go through REM sleep), what do babies dream about? The conclusion was that since they haven’t experienced the world yet, the most likely solution is that they dream about previous lives.

From the last point, we got into a long discussion on past lives and reincarnation, but personally by this point I was just getting frustrated because I felt that a lot of what was being said was internally inconsistent.

However, as I continued listening, I started wondering – what would it look like for a few Christians to attend this group together regularly, build relationships in this group, and have ongoing dialogue comparing perspectives? In other words (to use jargon from the Epic Movement Launching class) what would it look like for CSFC to be a missional community to other groups on campus?

I don’t know, but this experience has gotten me excited about checking out other spiritual/religious discussion groups on campus. I’m dreaming of a time when CSFC will finally stop living in its own little bubble and wait for people to come to us, but instead proactively step out into different pockets of campus.

Meeting God at the Japan Society - Feb 18, 2011

During this week’s staff meeting, Regina led us on a prayer exercise adapted from Robert Linthicum’s article, “Learning to love your city, part 2.” In this exercise, you look at a map (in our case, a Google map of the neighborhood around the office), ask God to reveal a site that is particularly precious to him, walk to the site, observe, read from the Bible, and pray.

As I looked over the map of midtown east, I felt inexplicably drawn to the Japan Society (on 47^th between 1^st and 2^nd), which I didn’t even know existed. I’ve never really been particularly interested in Japan or Japanese culture, and to be honest, I don’t even really like Japanese food that much (sometimes I can be pretty ethnocentric about my Chinese heritage). I went anyway, curious to see why the Lord had shown that to me.

When I arrived, I noticed a poster advertising their 6-month film series, with one film each month illustrating each of 6 planes of Buddhist existence, sometimes referred to as the “Six Paths” (Rokudō 六道). Half of the titles were in Japanese, but when I saw the last three (“Fires on the Plane,” “Hell,” and “Sword of Doom”), I just started crying because I felt so weighed by feelings of darkness, hopelessness, and spiritual oppression for the people of Japan. Japan summer projects, I’m praying for you guys!

It turns out that the day I went was the very last night of the film series, so I went back later that night to see the film, but they were sold out of tickets. I ended up chatting with the receptionist for a bit and picking up some brochures for upcoming events and a Japanese culture map of the city. Turns out there’s a cluster of Japanese restaurants and businesses right by our office!

I’m convinced that it wasn’t a coincidence that God led me there on that day, and clearly the point wasn’t the film itself, but perhaps a greater compassion and heart of prayer for the Japanese in NYC and abroad. Who knows? I’m looking forward to where God will take me next on this journey.