A few things that have made me laugh lately

Maybe their standards for handicap accessibility are a little bit different here in Taiwan.



This is actually a really delicious drink that I discovered: kumquat lemon juice with prunes. It's like a tangy lemonade but the prunes add a bit of natural sweetness to it. However, it's a bit embarrassing drinking this delicious beverage because it looks like floaties in toilet water.

It's the end of the world as we know it....

Ah. the book of Revelation!

Duh, duh, dunnnnnn!

Armageddon, a rider on a white horse, a great red dragon, the mark of the beast... it stirs up apocalyptic nonsense in our heads and really we wonder if God was so good and normal beforehand, why does he get so weird when it comes to the end times?

And when is the end of the world? 1984? nope. Y2k? evidently not? 2012? I guess we'll wait and see.

I approached Revelation not so much with fear but with frustration. I've heard this book taught from so many different points of view. I have heard the teaching of Israel being God's chosen race to the end of time and 144,000 of them are chosen to rule and reign. I have heard people get in arguments over this book. And I have been made to feel really stupid in the past because I just. didn't. get. it. I know Jesus wins and all, but why the craziness?

After studying this book, I see things in a whole new light. The way we approach the Bible in SBS is to lay aside all the things we've been taught or what's been interpreted to us before and just let the text speak for itself. It's been really refreshing because you don't have to be a genius or a theologian to study the Bible. In fact...most everyone who read the books of the bible for the first time were neither of those things either. In fact, the majority of them were illiterate. But this is a bit of a tangent....

Revelation is apocalyptic literature. This means that it is written in a certain style and form and follows certain rules of this kind of literature. I had never really thought about this before, but it should be one of the main things we grasp when interpreting this book. It is structured in cycles looking at one event but from many different angles...it's like creating a 3D movie: a lot of different cameras are set up from different angles so when all put together it creates a picture with greater dimensions. This is the book of Revelation. So, it is not a chronological book but is looking at the return of Christ from many angles. Also, in apocalyptic literature, numbers are symbolic according to the Jewish mindset to which this book was written. Too often we have chosen which ones we like to be symbolic and which we take literally. So, I won't express all my interpretations and views of this book because it might spark debate which is not the intent of this post.

The intent is to say, I was REFRESHED by this book. One thing that really stood out to me is that Jesus appears among the lampstands. The lampstands are symbolic for the church and the crazy thing is that he is among them. His presence is their promise to endure, to stay strong, to keep preaching his word. Then when the Bride appears, the New Jerusalem, what is the defining feature is that the dwelling place of God is now with man. We just started Genesis this week and the fulfillment of what happened at the fall, the separation of man from God because of their sin, God then promises that he will bring a redeemer. Eternity comes with the promise of God's presence; that is a GOOD promise. This is the promise that we can hold to. God wants to be with us for eternity. His goal is to be with his Bride.

Another thing that struck me was in chapter 22 it says, the Spirit and the Bride say come. God is calling people to himself, but the church's job is to do the exact same thing. This is our job until Jesus returns, to extend an invitation to the world for the marriage supper of the Lamb. The Spirit and the Bride have the same goal. To be together for eternity, and to invite others into that.

Amen! Come Lord Jesus!

Gospel of John

So, here's the crazy thing I've been experiencing about studying the Bible...there are some well known and well loved passages in there for me. But, with my face in the Bible and my heart open to the Word every day, there are things that I have brushed over or really thought insignificant that are making the greatest impact in my life. For example, the story of Philip sharing with the Ethiopian eunuch was so powerful to me when we studied Acts.

This week we dove in after our week break into the gospel of John. John wrote this book after Jerusalem was sieged and the temple was destroyed (70AD). If you remember, this book is full of Jesus' "I am" statements: I am the bread of life, I am the resurrection and the life, I am the good shepherd, I am the light of the world. John is writing his gospel that people would believe in Jesus for eternal life. Judaism in most of its forms is gone. Jesus is what they need. John was also coming against teaching of the day called Gnosticism. This teaching said the flesh was evil and the spirit is good so Jesus must have been a spirit that appeared to be a man or he was a man who was blessed with the "Divine Spirit" for awhile and then it was removed. So, John shows the absolute need for Jesus as well as him being fully God and fully man.

So, the whole Gospel was great, and for those of you who know and love this book, John is a very personal gospel. It's the only one that includes things like the prayer Jesus prays for his disciples and the washing of the disciples' feet, John leaning against Jesus at the last supper, the vine and the branches. You feel the friendship of John with Jesus and how it changed his life when you read this book. I personally was blessed by that.

But, what hit me unexpectedly was the raising of Lazarus and the weeping of Jesus. It happened at an opportune time as Wednesday would have been my Grandpa Gene's 73rd birthday. I came into class and we had worship that morning. In worship, I tend to just let my heart be at a real honest place before God and so often I end up very emotional. In the middle of worship I realized the date and was hit but how deeply I miss my grandpa. I remember calling home last year and talking to him. He always called me names like Pumpkin or Sweets. He was a man of few words on the phone but sometimes he would pray for me. He would always tell me how much he loved me. My grandpa is the man who most treated me like a princess.

And it hurts that he's gone. It hurts that James (my brother) is gone. I know I will see them again on the other side of life, but there are two huge empty spaces in my family that will never be filled. They will always be there. The tears come and go, but there's always an awareness that there should be another person around. Family photos are just a little bit emptier.

When Jesus hears of Lazarus' illness and then that he has died, he knows that he will raise him back to life. And for that reason, I've always wondered why Jesus weeps at the tomb. It's the only time it's recorded that he cries and it's when he knows he's coming to raise someone back to life for goodness sake! But Mary comes to Jesus, falls at his feet and says, "Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died." She weeps. Jesus sees her tears and those with her grieving. He weeps.

It hit me....Jesus is moved by what moves us.
Jesus is moved by my deep loss over my grandfather even though they are together in heaven at this very moment. Jesus may even grieve and weep with me now, though he knows that resurrection and life is to come.
Jesus cares about how I feel. I don't have to change it, fix it, overcome it, hide it. I can feel and Jesus will be there.

I so needed that this week. Because in that time of worship, I lost it. I wept. That ache of loss over my grandpa and also my brother was like a bowling ball in my chest and it sent the tears cascading down my face. And I admit, I was embarrassed. Why couldn't this happen when I could run to my room and be alone and let it all out? Why in front of 70+ people? And these people have no idea it was my grandpa's birthday. They just watched me lose it and some felt awkward and wondered from a distance if I was alright. Only a few gave me a hug.

But Jesus, he sat there and he wept with me. He didn't feel the need to give me words that made me feel better, or made him feel better. He didn't fix it. He just wept.



I wanted to post a photo that i have by my bed right now. My grandma sent it to me in a package because she found it while going through things at the house. In the photo on the left is my mother, in the middle is my great-grandma Potter (my grandpa's mother, who died when I was pretty young) and to the right is my grandpa, the man who has been there for me since I was born. The man who always treated me like a princes. The constant in my life when so many things changed.
And me...I'm the one week old baby in my great-grandma's arms. I love my family. Through all we've been through, we've stuck it out and still love each other and we're still there. And we miss and grieve so much because we have loved.