Random.

I wonder how you bend over to pick something up? In most of Asia women drop their butts to ground with their knees bent and bowed out. Here, they don’t bend an iota at the knees, but simply bend in half at the waist. Their hamstrings must be a mile long.

We have a small screen TV at the house that we’ll often crowd around to enjoy old Friends episodes, company over dinner, or dreading someone’s hair. This week we’ve been glued to the first season of 24. I’m in love with Jack Bauer.

Muslims put Christians to shame in the “discipline department” any day of the week. Birds wake me here with a matchless song every morning, but are usually second in the line of alarm clocks, with the first being 5am chants reverberating from the Temple about a mile away. Part of me is stunned at this practice of reverence, but most of me is saddened by the amount of fear, guilt and shame this practice trains. Every world religion has similarities, but something incomparably different about following Christ is its impossibility. It’s the one faith based on something other than the person of faith. It forces a laid down attempt to earn God’s favor, attention, or salvation by way of doing, serving, or being good/right/righteous. It requires an admittance of inadequacy and inability to face, or deserve, God in and of one’s own existence. Or persistence. And in “doing” (/not doing) all this, it attempts belief in a man named Jesus, who chose to bear the inadequacy and face the undeservedness himself—as the only one who actually ‘was’ deserving. I am so thankful for this difference this morning. I like to sleep in.

***

Crying-out.

“I would do just about anything to make her better. To make them better. It better. I would write a check, read a book, or get on a plane. I would smile bigger, study harder, teach them, send them water, wash their feet, become a doctor, provide them a lawyer, offer them a job, tell a coach of their skill, tell my God of their plight…but I know these aren’t enough. But I also know they’re a part. The road out of extreme poverty is complex, but also drivable, and I think that’s what’s most frustrating to me today. The fact that so much of it is preventable. The fact that these people are dying unnecessary deaths. Please tell me what to do, God. I cannot bear to see this suffering and know that so much of is due to our lives—to our unwillingness, selfishness and fear. To our lack of awareness, simplicity and desire. It’s not our fault, Lord, but it’s clearly fed by our addictions to the feast. If we could only break from our lives for one minute…allow You to break our hearts for one cause…and be willing to taste, delve and devour that end, as if we actually believed its Light was possible. I don’t want to hide from it anymore. I don’t want to minimize it to “overseas,” or over there, or over my head. It is the simple seeds that change a garden, Lord…keep planting and growing that knowledge in my heart. I want to be a part of this fight. I want to partner with You against these discrepancies. They are not right. They are not fair. They are not of You, Father. I want them to know You above what they see. I want me to know You above what I see. Make me stronger in the war against injustice. Make me more uncomfortable with a life to its own ends. Grant me a bigger perspective. Guard me from a life of complacency. Oh Holy Spirit, help me know what to do. Help me see the next step. Help me, God. Help me.”