yada ידה

Moving On

2010-01-15T01:26:00.002-08:00

Future Pastors?

2009-12-17T23:40:00.003-08:00

I sat and hung out with Daniel and Nathan for most of the day at Regent studying and preparing for our final exams and debating our various Christian perspectives and most of our conversation revolved around these big name preachers that we admired to be like.

One thing bothered me. As we talked about that one day which is steam rolling on its way, we wanted to be learn and mostly "become" this great preachers that we talked about. In our admiration we wanted to be just like them. But at the same time we reflect towards our education and how we are doing at school....

Now, not that we undervalue our graduate seminary education...but I can honestly say there things I have no tried my best at. There are courses that I have gotten away without much consideration or concentration.

Is this to be us? Do we deserve to be good pastors, nevertheless just pastors alone? Is this our future?

The fear of knowing nothing...

2009-10-19T00:24:00.003-07:00

As i struggle down the road in preparing for my first ever sermon, the more and more I come to realize I really know nothing.

How do I preach when I don't even know what I want to say?

Reading and listening to other theologians/pastors just makes me realize even more how much I do not know.

I have no theology.

I'm not a Calvinist, Armenian, Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Emergent, etc...

What do I know?

I'm like a cleaned slate....easily swayed this way or that

But I want to only preach the truth...

and the only truth I know is Jesus Christ and him crucified.

I hope that is enough.

Mature Immaturity?

2009-09-20T22:27:00.002-07:00

Is there such a thing as mature immaturity?

Creation of Tree and Theology

2009-09-13T22:08:00.002-07:00

I think I found a brand new understand of God's creation of heaven and the earth.

If you've driven through the country side, highway in BC, you come to realize that everywhere you look are tree, and more trees, and even more trees. Now we often overlook the repeated and quickly classify it as the mundane.

But think about it this way. Look for a random tree a distant away.

God created that tree

It might look like the one next to it

but of course in some strange way it is different from the one next to it.

No human hand may ever touch it

No human eye may ever pay notice to it

But for some reason God created this specific tree within the forest of millions.

Every ring within the stump

Every line, hole, bark, leaf, branch...everything to the finest detail.

"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."
-G.K. Chesterton

Ready or Not Here it Comes?

2009-09-11T11:14:00.004-07:00

I intend on being disciplined and thoughtful with laid out plans. But what happens when unexpected things come out? Is this really slowly taking me to a new place where I would never have imagined to be in?

I need fresh perspectives

I need new insights

I need clear guidance

Cause I just don't know where I'm going

Drama Queen or Keeping it Real?

2009-08-08T20:05:00.005-07:00

Learning the way of becoming a pastor is indeed filled with many sacrifices and pain. Over the past days I have become quite tired not just from class, but also lack any creativity and passion to do any form of ministry despite the constant need to do so. There is of course criticism and side comments that friends make with no true concern on how the recipient (feels). I used to be able to endure and absorb these things quite well, but I believe I have hit a saturation point.

It has all been a process of tearing down.

But no one builds up.

How quickly does that turn into bitterness?

Quite quickly.

At times, it seems even pointless to tell others about it, as you get the answers like " stop being a drama queen" or "you'll need to endure it".

Those words do nothing. Absolutely nothing. It is meaningless.

For one, it still resonates nothing to the core of my soul. That deep in my spirit I am feeling pain and suffering. And if being honest and upfront with what I am facing is being a "drama queen", then what's the point of saying anything to anyone?

Isn't this our biggest concern in the world? We are less and less connected to each other?

That the idea of hiding behind facades, masks, and illusions creating more and more dependence on material things to make "me" from the real me?

As a friend once told me, "You don't work out to gain strength, you work out so that you only get the looks..."

What? Is that what our world needs? Hiding behind things?

Didn't our first parents Adam and Eve do that already after they ate from the tree?

I believe Jesus redeemed all of that, he is the new Adam that reconcile all things including removing the need for hiding.

Would the Real Eugene Please Stand Up...

Drops Likes Stars

2009-03-17T12:49:00.001-07:00

We plot, we plan, we assume things are going to go

A certain way and then they don't and we find ourselves

In a new place, a place we haven't been before, a place

We never would have imagined on our own,

And so it was difficult and unexpected and maybe even

Tragic and yet it opened us up and freed us to see

Things in a whole new way

Suffering does that-

it hurts,

But it also creates

How many of the most significant moments in your

Life came not because it all went right, but because

It all feel apart?

It's strange how there can be art in the agony...

-Drops Like Stars

Lament Songs

2008-12-11T01:31:00.002-08:00

Who do we turn to when all hope fades away.

Who do we seek, when pain is on her way.

I seek to understand...

but I do not...

Hear my prayers O God of Jacob

Hear my prayers

Hear my prayers of silence

For no sounds leave my lips

Not for me to understand

too great is this vastness

too great is this plan

who to say I am a prophet

I am merely a child...

Hearing Their/Our Cries

2008-12-04T21:51:00.004-08:00

I reflect upon the words I shared just a few months ago regarding my trip down to hurricane devastated New Orleans. It was in my response I wrestled with one of the toughest questions I have come to encounter as a Christian.

In the book of Exodus, God hears the cries of his people in slavery and oppression. In Psalms, God hears his people weep beside the river in Babylon. God hears the cry...but do we as the flesh and blood, the body of Christ, do we hear the cries, more precisely, do I hear their cries?

It's been almost 5 months since that trip, and given the excitement of school, I have slowly placed this struggle to the side. Only to have it slowly revealed once again through "Jesus Wants to Save Christians" as part of the book study for sunday school. The refreshed approach by Rob Bell and Don Golden, along side with the notes written by my best friend on the T'shuva blog revamped the question circulating in my head, What happens when we don't hear the cry?

Bell and Golden approach it this way: when we don't hear the cry, the sin will become a system of oppression of the people, which we could slowly claim to be entitlement for us to continue this system, literally, the cycle becomes a closed system which continues to feed itself. We become the oppressors some more, and become a even greater oppressor.

But what about the people that cry out that we ignore or don't hear? I finally got an answer today. In Jean Vanier's book "Becoming Human" he writes something he saw at a psychiatric hospital filled with hundreds of children with severe disabilities that were just left in their cots. It was completely silent.

Hundreds of children.

Completely silent.

Silent.

No one was crying.

Vanier explains this strange scenario, "When they realize that nobody cares, that nobody will answer them, children no longer cry. It takes too much energy. We cry out only when there is hope that someone may hear us."

No one cares...

Hence it is silent...

Can God hear their cries?

Perhaps silence is the ultimate truth.

Silence.

Frederick Buechner in "Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale" writes this: "The preaching of the Gospel is a telling of the truth or the putting of a sort of frame of words around the silence that is truth because truth in the sense of fullness, of the way things are...."

Silence as a way to express reality. The gospel is this. A silent of some sort before the news of redemption is poured out. A silence, that tells us something is very wrong in the world. The gospel as a tragedy begins with silence.

Perhaps this is why it says, "Be silent and know that I am God."

Or that when Elijah went up to the mountain, God was not found in the midst of fire or earthquake or the rushing wind. But in the gentle whisper.

In the silence we hear the tragedy of the world.

In the silence we hear the cries.

In the silence, our souls cry out.

Then we come to understand why the gospel is the the "good news".

Because it is the silence, that God hears our cry.

Failure, Anger, & Glimmers of Hope (A poem)

2008-11-05T21:18:00.003-08:00

I don't normally write poems, but reflecting that I need to live artistically (mystically and poetically) and contemplatively, so here in rare appearance, I write a poem:

Failure, Anger, & Glimmers of Hope

Letters come and letters go

But none like this one for it foretold

It holds a destiny that one may see

a path in which would bring certainty

To You I pray this fateful day

that Your will be done on this letter may

Perhaps more my will then Yours be done

the enclosure shreds and conclusions: none

More uncertainty as the words proclaim

Why Oh Lord? Why this way?

Can you not change it for me today?

Have I not changed from wandering amongst the decay?

Anger arrises faster then I could speak

From the depths of my soul cry

Injustice, oh Lord, Injustice

Have I not given everything to follow You?

Why did You bring your servant high above

and then drop him into the depths once again

Why did You allow a chance of pride

only to humble thou like none ever before

Yet You leave room for hope

You did not surround me with companies of Job

but rather of those who grief and embrace

to say the words:

your journey does not end right here

there is plenty of trek for you to go

you can choose to see it as a stumble or a fall

or choose to see this as a learned stern reminder

Your will be done

In me as in heaven

Your will be done

Wrestling with Liturgical Prayer

2008-10-13T02:04:00.006-07:00

I wrote this in response to reading John Cassian's Conferences, a desert father's view on prayer:

"Cassian suggest the idea that we take Psalms 69:2 (Should be Psalm 70:1) as a formula prayer for piety. He suggests this because it fits into all situations. He follows on with this giving multiple examples of how one could use this in any scenario. Cassian says this verse of “Come to my help, O God; Lord, hurry to my rescue” will protect one from all devilish attacks but rather purify one of all sin and a continuous prayer to God. Through this continuous prayer, we would come to recognize we are in constant need of God’s help and is satisfied with simplicity.

This passage draws a few problems for me as I reflect upon this:

1. Are our prayers supposed to be a mantra? If we are to pray what Cassian suggests, it seems to lack authenticity of talking to a very personal and intimate creator. I find that this prayer neglects human responsibility and of really submitting our thoughts and desires to God and letting God have control, rather I would reflect upon the prayer of Jesus of “Not my will, but yours be done” to be a better example of what we should pray.

2. The prayer although very genuine, could easily turn into a cliché and loses it significance. If we are to teach our children this, as Cassian suggests, we must also be able to teach our children on how to reflect on our lives as this prayer seems to continuously call us to do. I’m not sure if young children are able to come to this idea of self reflection, but perhaps this is what we need, as Jesus said we are to be like children to enter the kingdom of God."

Love to hear some thoughts.

So they teach this now...Part 2 (speak truth in love)

2008-09-12T01:36:00.001-07:00

Philosophy is like a punch in the face.

Or more like a sucker punch from behind.

Socrates. Plato. Aristotle. I think my brain just imploded. (I personally don't like philosophy)

I understand that philosophy has a dramatic impact of how Christian theology was formed, discussed and interpreted and I do love reading, studying, and understanding theology. Yet somehow, to me philosophies role in theology was to try to close off the mystical aspects of God and try to have a rational answer for it.

Rationality is another result of philosophy spawning from Aristotle which spawned into our theology. I see a reason behind have rationality in theology, where we must somehow grasp or define God and what he does in our lives.

But how do you define an unlimited God?

Theology it seems, breaks God's into parts, and tries to study the part.

But I fear that might make us miss the whole picture of who God is (if that is even possible to see the whole of God)

So then we come back to "speak truth in love".

Truth must incorporate our story.

So speak truth in love.

(I don't know if I am making sense anymore at this point)

So they teach this now...

2008-09-09T23:04:00.003-07:00

Postmodernism. Yes

Meta-Narratives. Yes

lower case truths vs Upper Case Truths. Yes

One class summarized and answered what I had been wrestling with 3-4 years ago.

Life could have been extremely different if, and only if this was spoken to me when I first began my journey. So now I have to ask, why am I finding this at Regent, and not at the place more seekers come to, at our local churches?

I understand the fact that, this is part of my wrestling, my struggles, my story, which defines my character and who I am and God has definitely used it to get me closer to him. But I also have friends who have walked away from Jesus because of the same things.

Perhaps this is why Paul writes in Ephesian about how some are like "infants being tossed back and forth by every wind of teaching and craftiness of men."

So what are we to do engage in such philosophical talk? Paul tells us to "speak truth in love".

Speak "truth" in "love".

"Speak" truth "in" love.

"Speak truth in love".

This is going to keep me up all night.

Thank You

2008-09-04T21:30:00.006-07:00

Profound. Brilliant. Intelligent.

This is the best description of all the people I have been meeting the last few days at Regent Orientation. My fellow classmates, many I still have not met, or had a chance to say hello has indeed intimidated my journey to what God has called me to.

Because I am neither profound, or brilliant, or intelligent. (I'm not being humble, I am just not)

So given this slight intimidation, I pushed God if this was really his plan for me to come to this place only to watch me fall.

Yet somehow, today during our communion service I had this overwhelming sense that this is where I should be. That in the seer 'out of placeness' and the lack of insight that I prophase in any context, God reminded nothing more to worry about but to look toward his love on the cross. I found myself choking back tears as I took the bread and the cup. I began to pray and found myself only to pray these words that became this beautiful mantra:

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

"If the only prayer you say in your whole life is 'Thank You', that would suffice."

- 14th century Christian Mystic Johannes 'Meister' Eckhart

10 Billion Things

2008-08-27T21:57:00.006-07:00

It has been awhile since I have last written on this blog, but tonight, something draws me back here to restart all things again.

What has happened to me:

These past months have torn me down, built me back up and torn me back down again. It seems I have lost everything, and at the same time gain everything. (You must think I'm on some kind of anti-depressant...not quite yet...maybe in a few years)

I'll shall begin with what happened today. As today is my second to last day of work, my colleagues treated me to a farewell lunch along with cake back at the office. All is good with that until I was talking to one who mentioned about how I'm giving up so much to go to Regent College. Giving up a good job, and a good income to pursue this unforeseeable future. It is one of these nameless moments that I find myself sort of lost in identity, lost in security, lost in independence.

I'm looking at this quote I wrote on my board just this past weekend. It says, "If Jesus is not the one, we should not follow him. But if he is the one, we should follow him at all cost."

I find such an eerie irony at this, given when I wrote this, Wing made a comment about how "captain obvious" it was for this truth. But right now I'm reading it, over and over again flipping it over and over in my mind. Do I believe Jesus is the one? Do I believe it?

But I've experienced him...I don't think I have a choice