What if there was a canvas  
that was finished.  
And what if the artist of that canvas
showed it to a viewer.
“Wow,” the viewer might say.  “That’s stunning.”
“Thank you…that really means a lot,” the artist might humbly respond.

Turning to the piece, however, he shares a chuckling, questioning, coveting of sorts. “How can he call you stunning, having viewed you only so briefly?  And with such brief understanding, relative to what we’ve shared?”  

“What if though,” the canvas replied, “he could actually see something stunning, despite limited perspective of our whole?”  
What if stunning could be found in a color, curve, or even corner of us—versus seeing the whole of our final masterpiece?”

What if part was enough to stun today?
What if stunning was enough to fully realize part?

What if there was a canvas
that was finished.
And the artist could see the stunning whole, but the viewer could only see part.
And yet what if that part could be called stunning
and in many ways
whole.

“What if,” said the artist to the viewer.   

The following is an email that has spurred my days since receiving it early last fall.  Being a Christian in America has its challenges, but being a Christian from/in the Middle East has a world of its own.  Tarun (Kumar Chawla, for the full coolness of the name) is a student from Penn State whose become a dear friend and brother since meeting at a conference almost a year ago.  His life is a continual encouragement and challenge to mine and leads me to pray for us, entering this new year, that we’d pursue lives worthy of their cost and willing in their capacities.  Cheers to you in 2008!  as

***

Dear Abbie!
Hope everything is going great with you.
So my summer was pretty crazy.
I was baptized on 12th May and my flight back home was on the 14th. I called me mom up a week before I was flying back and this is how the conversation went:
mama: you sound different these days..for the past 2 months i think
me: ya
mama: are you dating someone?
me: mmm..nope
mama: who or what is it then?
me: he's a man
mama: what?
me: not a man but a man, God
mama: uh
me: Jesus
(long pause)
mama: so you are telling me that you are Christian
me: yup!
mama: we will talk when you get here.
me: sounds good.
So ya. I took me everything (almost) to say that to my mommy. I can say that my mother is my real best friend and I cannot hide anything from her. Usually I say things to her directly but this was a little awkward.
When I was baptized, that feeling of being WHOLE took over me. I was complete and I still am, forever. The Holy Spirit in me did things I could never imagine doable.
After a stop in London we flew from London to Dubai and during the flight I was waiting to use to the Bathroom. This man in front of me looks at my Penn State Jeresy this is how the conversation goes.
man: I am class of '74
me: speechless
man: all my daughters and sons went and go to PSU
me: small world uh?
man (looks at my cross): which church you go to?
me: i haven't found one yet.
me: I was baptized 2 days ago and became a Christian 3 months ago.
man: great!
Then he gives writes me a couple of people whom I could contact and talk to about Church and Christian groups on campus. Then he said he'd pray for me that everything goes good with my family about me being Christian.
So I reach home and my family was there at the Airport. I hug them and my mama looks at the cross I am wearing and she didn't say anything (really awkward moment). A couple days later my parents take me to the local Hindu temple (I still wore the cross) and there's this long line of people worshiping something. I don't know what. The stone idols? I was like I worship in unimaginable true God. I give the money to the Pandit (Hindu Priest) without bowing kneeling to the statues. My mama notices me not doing anything on what was traditionally done in "worship". We get back my mom comes over to the bedroom and she asks me about what I told her over the phone. I was like yea, ask me. So the conversation went on and my mom started balling. Dad comes over to the room and they both say that "I have rejected them". I was speechless. I asked why and what they meant by that? They went on by saying how changing religions means that I have totally made no sense of what my parents did for me and how I have disgraced my families name by rejecting Hinduism. My dad went on saying how I wanted to prove something when I was wearing the cross at the temple. I had no idea what was going on.
I asked them, so its about the family? and where is God in all this? Then they started making up things like how I wanted to adjust between friends in the U.S and wanted to be like them and no different. Also, that I was brain-washed. When I heard this coming from my parents, I was blown away. I have no idea how this could even come from them. Such not-my-family thoughts. I had no idea how I should have responded. The whole room was running with wild emotions. My sisters emotions and answers to my parents questions didn't help me at all. She was dragged into the conversation by asking "would you ever change your religion, Renuka?". She obviously said "no". I was being attacked by my parents for the first time and I have no clue what and how should I be responding to the situation like.
Then I told my parents how I didn't believe in any religions and it's a not what God wants from us. My dad asks me "what religion are you?". I said "nothing". My dad made my momma and sister believe that I was brain-washed and how I was not the same anymore and not their son anymore. I just let it go for a couple of days.
My called my mom over and my sister was near by too. I explained to her how I was saved and how God had this plan for me on how I would come to Him some day. She had NO idea what I was talking about. Then that made me think about how my momma is all into this religion stuff and has no clue who God really is. I started all over again and it came to Jubilee and I your name came up and I said how your story has been an inspiration for me. She got bits and pieces of it but I told her how you had to experience it understand it and feel it. I said I worship the God who has bought me to life again. That was it for her. She has NO idea where I was going with it. My sister seemed anxious and my momma left for bed and I took the bible out and asked my sister to read the book of Matthew. She being a anxious reader and a book-worm, read the book of Matthew as if it was a new Harry Potter release. I was like so what you think? She said what do you mean? I said whatever she read was real and it happened. It didn't really mean anything to her. I think her brain's full of wands, wizards and witches.
God had plans for me this summer. I wanted to be a Christian on fire. I started reading (for the first time). I read "Just like Jesus" by Max Lucado in about 2 weeks haha then I was like this makes real sense. God was calling me to be just like Jesus. Then I read his second book "A Love Worth Giving" and that took me about 4 weeks to complete :).  Sometime or the other the Christian thing came up and it annoyed me at times but I was like i’ll let my parents see it the way I live my life now. They actually did. I think that was the only way they could really see my change. I don't know how this works but mommy's can see their kids change and when its good, they accept me. My mom accepted me as a Christian. But my dad, thats a totally different story. He a great man but without God being in a great person's life, that greatness means nothing.
This may sound weird but I felt God was calling me to love like Jesus. I was like WHOA. How is that possible? I kept in touch with some friends back at school and I used to write to them on how my summer was coming along. You know, good Christian friends. Our friendships grew stronger and I was like these are the people I really Love. I flew back to PA (being constantly being  reminded by my parents how I should make Indian friends and go to the Hindu worship with them) and I couldn't wait to see my friends again. School began and we hung out and I was like these are my true friends who love me. I compared their love to Jesus' love for me/us. And this is one thing that God has taught me, unconditional love. He has called my name to do amazing things through me. And I can't get over that reality.
I still have soo much to say but I think I can keep some for later.  I so can't wait to sit and just talk to you about ALLLLL the crazy things our AWESOME AWESOME God is doing in my life and other people's lives.
Peace and in Christ forever and ever and ever,
Tarun

Jesus was born here. 
Meaning he deliberately stepped-out of heaven.
Decidedly chose to be a child. 
A baby. 
A life who needed to be cared for. 
A love who wanted to live.
What humility.
What humanity.
And for the one ultimately (and originally) called our Savior.
Our God. 
Our King. 
What a story we’ve been invited into.
What an invitation we’ve been sent.
What a miracle.
What a mystery.
What a man. 

I was walking with friend in Hermosa Beach this weekend.  We decided sipping coffee while watching surfers would be fun (it’s a tough life in southern California), so ascended a hill toward the best java-joint of choice, i.e. Peets, as a family on bikes was noticed as coming toward us.  At first glance they looked like the happy little clan, out for a morning ride.  But in closer observance, the youngest boy had a stench of fear in his eyes, as well as increasingly velocity in his wheels.  He’d lost control and was going downhill fast—literally.  His training wheels were tottering back and forth, swinging his fragile body to dangerous degrees.  “Daaaddddy, I can’t stop,” he screamed, as my friend and I went breathlessly numb.  Mom and Dad were on bikes, too, so were of no help but terrifying stares of horror.  He had about ten yards till he crashed through us, and then about another ten before he hit a big intersection.  In what seemed like an hour-long pass of seconds though, his out-of-control wheels spun him into safety.  Spun him into a cinderblock wall.  Into a cement savior who’d come to his rescue.

Though the entrance wasn’t pretty, and rather quite abrupt, painful and bruising, little-boy-biker was alive.  His life had been spared.  By a wall.  By a boundary.  By a brick bordering otherwise known as hard and heartless.  This morning, however, these arms were soft and incredibly heartfelt.

They saw.  They protected.  They saved.

Maybe roadblocks are good.  Maybe walls aren’t always the worst of our predicament.

Stoic bricks on the outside, but sensitive points of saving when I scream, “Daddy, I can’t stop.”

It’s easier when you know the whole story.  Makes more sense when all the pieces have fallen.  But that’s not where I am.  And per request, that’s not what I’m posting.  My latest thoughts have been unfinished. Unfinished starts, and unstarted ends.  It’s like they’re soaking the middle.  Steeped in the tension.  And I’m realizing that to dismiss this space—to discard this mess—is to lose the story.  To minimize the whole.  So here I am. Maybe these starts will further your finish, or maybe these midpoints resurface your start.  Or maybe we’ll just stay here and revel in the middle.

***
The Fall—how did it feel?  What did it sound like?  How was it to experience the birth of fear?  Like in the garden…like when Eve consciously chose the apple…  Do you think her appearance changed?  Do you think her stomach flooded with anxiety, or maybe “falling” was more subtle?  And Adam—how was the experience for him?  What were his thoughts?  What did he say at his lover’s choice?  Did creation scream?  Or maybe it went numb?
*
Who would I want to trust that has the power to take everything away?  
But who else would I want to trust?
*
Jesus died on the cross to restore perfect relationship with our Heavenly Father.  What does this mean?  What does it mean that at the base of Roman nails, a soul finds nourishment in the cleansing blood of Christ?  Or that at the cross, we are rescued from ourselves, rescued from the death of this world, and most profoundly, rescued into the loving arms of our purposed chase—a Lord who, “Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, has chosen you to be his treasured possession” (Deuteronomy 14:2)?
*
The call to marriage and God's sovereign plan for finding the “one” seems most about a sovereign plan for one's heart and heart's mutual readiness for find that one.
*
Do you ever feel like you give and give and give…and you’ve given so much that you’re done...out...at the end of your rope?  Hurt, tired and empty….saying to God, Lord, how do I do this?  How much am I suppose to give?  How much did you give?  How far does your grace go?  How far did your grace go?...”  I wonder how God would respond?  Wonder if He might say something like this, "I know child…I hear you.  My grace goes as far as it needs to.  My grace goes farther than it can fathom.  My grace goes back to the cross.  Always.  My grace always goes back to the cross.  Back to the point of death.  To the point of killing me.  Grace killed me.  Killed me for life.  For your life.  I died because my deepest longing was your birth.  
*
He knew who he was.
He knew whose he was.
He knew what he wanted.
He knew what he had.
*
I long for him tonight.  I long for the knight in shining armor.  I long for the smell, for the touch, for the silent gaze that speaks a novel.  What is that Lord?  What true longings found these thoughts?  What true desires sweep away my longings?  The blindfold on my heart is tired today.  But the raw strands of desire are exhausted too.  I can't run from it anymore, but my tears running toward it have cried their last.  The chase has found me beat.  The chasing has found me beaten.  How long must I wait, O Lord?  How long must I wait?  What is love, Father and who defines it?  What is not love, Lord, and who can so discern?  Is it the discrepancies that blind?  Or are blind?
*
Doing is so much easier than not doing
*
I saw a girl chasing a butterfly today.  It was glorious—the innocence, the artistry, the creation.  What is she really wanting though?  Is it the completion of the the caught fly?  Or the journey of actually chasing it?  Confusion seems to awaken when we chase an end without knowing its really for another.  Or when we chase another, unable to embrace its already found end.
*
Ever feel like your faith is frozen?  Wanting to move anywhere, but feeling stuck, to some degree, everywhere?  You know it has the potential to ebb and flow and mist and make, but right now it’s hard as a rock.  You’ve seen it soak and fill, and you’ve experienced its taste and filling, but its current state is dull, dark and fixed.  Frozen, cold and scared.
*
Mindful: "What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?  You made him a little lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honor and put everything under his feet." Hebrews 2:6-7
I love the word, "mindful."  I love how philosophical it sounds, how introspective it reads and even how intellecutally it speaks.  What I don't love about mindfulness, is how hard it is.  Based on sheer semantic breakdown, mindful connotes carrying a full mind of, toward, to, or from something.  So the obvious challenge falls in the fact that to be full of anything, we must be emptied of something else.  In other words, in order for my mind to be filled completely, I must attempt an emptying of what’s already there.  Consider mindful listening.  If I want to be mindful in hearing you speak, my mind must attempt to be “full” of you—and thus to some degree, intentionally “less full” of me.  
*
Prodigal Freedom: I was always the perfect one, so didn’t relate to the story, or circumstance, or strayings of “the prodigal son.”  I was clean, innocent and didn’t need forgiveness.  I was the brother.  But now I’m angry.  Now I have done all the deeds and delivered the good life, but am still empty.  Am still longing.  Still lusting after the life I don’t have and freedom I don’t experience.  To get there though, I’m thinking part of me might have to embrace my stance as the prodigal—unveil my masked states of rebellion.  Not because of the rebellion itself, but because of what lies beneath.  Because of its instant gratification and then let-down.  Because of its turning, and then returning, to the porch I was made for.  The Home I was Freed for.  The hell I was Freed from.  But doing so means I let go of control.  I let go of my guard.  And resultingly, I follow and let Someone else in.  And that scares the hell out me.
*
Home: Something in me longs for home today.  But what, I must ask, is home—be it a home, my home, or the home?  It’s not as simple as grieving my church home, or residential home.  And it’s not as complicated, or far-off, as my spiritual home.  It’s a space between—a tension unscripted.  
I long to be at home in my body today, but I also long to be at home in my surroundings.  I long to taste the familiarity of peace, but I long to bring comfort to the confines of injustice.  I long to rest, and I long to play.  I long to be with and I long to be without.  I long to be whole and I long to be empty.  I long to live and I long to die.  
For in without, I am with.
In being empty, I become whole.
In coming to die, I choose to live.
Something in me longs for home today.
*
I’ve heard myself pray for opened or closed doors, believing such doing insists that, "God's will is being done."  Recent musing, however, has found me realizing it’s not just a matter of an open, or closed door.  My willingness to walk, or not walk through, is equally crucial.  "Yes, there you are God, but yes, here I am, too."
*
Loving: I asked my mom if she loved God.  She responded, “Yes.”  Then I asked her if she was in love with God.  She said, “No.”
*
Her tattoo caught my eye.  First impression was from across the bar, so I couldn’t make-out more than a caliedescope of colorful, Chinese script.  Moving closer, though, the shape morphed into a cross, coupled with a subscript that read: “RUINED FOR LESS.”  I loved it.
*
I learned what I don’t want to be when I grow-up.  A truck-driver.  See, I always thought leadership meant leading forward.  I thought it meant you lead and I’ll follow.  And it does, in some ways.  But it also doesn’t, in maybe a lot more ways.  That's what the truck driver taught me.
*
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I think we tote deepest impression when we are least like the world.  Which seems to leave us in the most capable state to actually change the world?  And thus, maybe find ourselves most relevant to it?
*
Have you ever considered that a Savior was born to die?

Wanting to give a big hello to the students at Linfield College and say thanks again for letting me come worship with you last week.  McMinnville, Oregon is quite the spot and I'll look forward to being back there soon.  In the meantime, praying for you guys and hoping these final (and finals) weeks of school carry-out smoothly.  Keep in touch (*facebook*) and have a Merry Thanksmas, or Happy Christ-giving, or something representative of the stint between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  PEACE, abbie

It was broken.  And dirty.  And gross.  And I was able to be with them.  There were feces on the sidewalk and urine puddles rinsing our sandals.  It was drug-infested and prostitute-infected—and all in my own backyard.  

I spent yesterday in Skid Roe, touring the grounds and serving alongside a friend who works with Union Rescue Mission, as well as two ex-Tweakers (meth-addicts), ripe with memories grafting hellish days in this fifty block range.  The past couple weeks have found me itching to be back in the broken realities of Africa, often harder to recognize here.  A few collisions have scratched pretty clearly though, providing a brokennes, and reality, that would've been hard to miss.

Yesterday I was able to be with Andy, six months into his recovery program and convinced, “This is the time, because it’s finally me that wants it (recovery), versus God, or someone else, wanting it for me.”  Last weekend I was able to share dinner with a homeless woman named Nancy.  She comes from an educated and lucrative background and spoke of fond memories living on a farm and “breathing the airs of freshness” (I loved that she spoke of air in a plural sense…how did something so robust and uncontainable gain such a confined, singular phraseology?).  And I’m not sure if you remember the story of Barbara (see February posts), but she’s been a special player in bridging my gaps to brokenness, and has ironically resurfaced this week.  Barbara called at midnight on Saturday, ecstatic to apologize for her silence, but more ecstatic to brag that she’d been in a strict rehab program and as of that morning (at 12:01am), had been sober from meth, pot and alcohol for ninety days.  This Friday we will get to share a meal and afternoon of hiking.  If I were gonna die on Saturday, this is exactly how I’d schedule it—truly being with a person and doing so in the unshackled confines of airs.

As I ponder these stories, each seems to pose a bridge.  A bridge to the broken.  A bridge to my brokenness.  A bridge to complexities of the past, concerns for the future and realities of the present.  Each receives me as a bridge to poverty—my poverty and theirs, my wealth and theirs, my story and theirs.  Each presents a bridge to humanity—humanities heart and the heart of humanities longing.

Can it be quantified this simply though?  Life—as a web of bridges—connecting me to you and you to me—or me to me—or me back to them—and all back to Thee?  Could it be—not to fix, or force, or finalize, or face, but to bridge and to be bridged and to be with bridging gaps?

Is this all just a bridge?

I was broken.  And dirty.  And gross.  And you were able to be with me.

I thought it was gone.
I thought we were done with this.
Will you ever leave me fully?  
We you ever leave me in full?

Sometimes this is the conversation that goes with my sin.  Or sometimes it’s what goes with my circumstance.  Today it's my summer.  I can't get rid of it.  Fall is edging toward Winter, and I'm still stuck in a season well past.  

Some call what I'm experiencing "Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome."  I call it…I don’t know what I call it.  Hard.  Exhilerating.  Awful.  Real.  Right. …  It depends on the hour.

Tip-toe'ing on the gates of hell scared me to a point where death and danger are no longer what happens to old people, or hurts only on the movie screen.  Death is real and danger is present.  The question is, am I willing to feel that?  In a culture that’s convenient and “full of life,” am I willing to feel that no matter how it’s spun, it still carries death.  Sometimes at face value, and sometimes as an undercurrent, but at the end of the day, I’m still a dying person.  We’re still a dying people, and we still live on a dying planet.  

So in a world that facades reality and a body that runs from pain, do I have the courage to engage with death’s sentence?  And if so, do I have the courage to engage with the one that claims Life?