King’s Birthday Weekend

Last Saturday the King of Thailand turned 82 years old, and Thais went nuts. Fireworks, food, even more traffic than usual, and tons of partying. Like good Americans, we have practically no interest in the monarchy (though he seems quite nice) and are, in some ways, even a little skeptical of the institution as a whole. The reaction to King George’s taxes lives on, I guess.

Anyway, some friends of ours let us house sit for them for this long weekend. This may sound a little weird to you, but that’s only because your house has a legit shower, an oven, a toilet that can be flushed more than once an hour, internet, a couch, multiple rooms, etc. These people have a real home, and we were enthused about crashing it for a few days.

Cayla cooked up all kinds of magic, I read a couple books and we both enjoyed catching up with stuff online. We also managed to begin making more preparations for our time in the States and Iraq. It was Skype calls and info-gathering, for the most part, but it’s a start!

Love you guys. Keep in touch this holiday season.

5 Sites I Stick To

My work has become manageable to a fault, and I’m often bored with all the free time. The best remedy to this boredom is keeping a diverse RSS feed to read every day – especially since most of my friends and family members rarely update their blogs. (…not that I’m bitter or anything)

There are countless lovely faucets of information to keep me occupied, but sifting through all the internet slop can thwart curiosity pretty quickly. So here are just a few sites I’ve found to be worth following so far:

1. The Preemptive Love Coalition – A fantastic NGO providing heart surgeries for the thousands of kids in Iraq suffering from congenital heart disease. Cayla and I are a bit biased with this one since we’re planning on joining them around this time next year. So check ‘em out!

2. Soul Pancake – A quirky site devoted to asking ‘the hard questions’. Like all good post-moderns, they almost never take a stance on or ‘answer’ any of the questions (irritating to me), but the questions are fun to mull over, and the idiotic comments offer that cherished “laughing at, not with” kind of entertainment that’s fun for the whole family. Minus any children, or course.

3. This Is Why You’re Fat – If you browse these pictures and your mouth waters at all, you need counseling. And better eating habits. Just looking at this makes my arteries clog.

4. The Prosblogian – Nerd-alert! This is a philosophy of religion blog that melts my brain. The content’s kind of esoteric, but enough effort and Wikipediaing (present-progressive tense of the noun Wikipedia?) usually provides me with enough info to understand what they’re talking about. My daily theological bench-press.

5. Copyblogger – This one’s been recently added to my list. They provide “copywriting tips for online marketing success.” For me, that basically means they dish out advice on how to write online in a more compelling way. This is important because a) I like writing and therefore want to improve at it, b) I plan on writing a lot for PLC (see site #1) and c) They’re just plain excellent at their craft and I enjoy reading what they produce.

So these are some of my online haunts. If you have any of your own that you’d like to share, share away. Goodness knows I’ve got time for browsing. Peace.

A Percieved Incongruity w/ Prayer

Cayla and I took part in a discussion with our friends in Iraq that – even after a month – I haven’t managed to shake. Fortunately, hours of hearty heart-to-heart can be summed up succinctly:

We’re encouraged to pray, and God says that we’ll find and He’ll give, but we often don’t find or get. Why?

There were a bunch of scriptures that got ping-ponged around the room, but the focal passage, as I perceived it, was Luke 11: 9-10. Jesus says,

So I say to you: 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; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

Call me blasphemous…but really? Just like that? Where are the theological strings? The context? The important disclaimers? Come on Luke you’re supposed to be the detail guy – give us details!

It didn’t take long for the conversation to became a friendly but flustered tennis match between the ‘feelers’ and the ‘thinkers’ in the room. We discussed the possible contexts, different translations, the preceding parable and the analogy that came after, but perspectives basically stayed the same.

The ‘thinkers’ saw the incongruity: why would God promise to give and then not do it? Especially when we’re asking for something amazing (like for a baby to survive heart surgery). But Jesus doesn’t offer disclaimers or a preface, so how do we interpret this? How do we explain this to our friends who ask why God doesn’t answer their prayers like He said He would?

The ‘feelers’, in turn, pointed out that God welcomes our involvement, and that this passage is encouraging our involvement and that involvement doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll always get what we ask for.

My thinking is that God isn’t talking about giving us stuff, but that He’s actually talking about giving us wisdom and the faith to trust Him, though I can’t offer contextual evidence for that claim. What do you think? Do you see incongruity? Surely you’ve been frustrated or discouraged when it didn’t seem like God was responding to you.

A Morning At Play

Located in the heart of commercial Bangkok, Wat Pathum Wanaram School is pressed between two gigantic shopping centers in the backyard of a Buddhist temple. Also surrounding it is a parking garage, an unfinished hotel (complete w/ noisy construction sounds), and a couple slum neighborhoods. So ya, things are cramped. These kids don’t have the fields for running and playing that I enjoyed, so they make do with a small courtyard.

A post about the layout of my workplace may seem a bit menial, but the familiar sounds of children playing outside my office has become an endearing part of my day, so I decided to film the little buggers as I walked in this morning.

Have a watch:

Radical

If you light yourself on fire, the world will come to watch you burn. ~John Wesley

Repeat after me: “It’s OK to be radical…it’s OK to be radical…it’s OK to be radical.”

Really, it is. But recently the word ‘radical’ has been tragically hijacked by the hijackers. When most people think of ‘radical’, beauty is the last thing they’re thinking of (especially in the area of religion). Instead they think of bombs, jihadists, crusades, wars, and on and on. But let’s be real, these things are radical, aren’t they? They’re radical in the negative way.

I believe that negative connotation needs to be redeemed. Good connotations are possible.

Followers of Jesus don’t have to hide from words just because they’ve got a bad rap on the nightly news. Every action of every person is continuously contributing to the meaning of words. Words are static. And that’s good news because it means that negative words can be redeemed! Godly actions can inject new meaning into godless words.

All that brings me to this: How is a follower of Jesus meant to be radical? If godly living begets godly word-meanings, how should we live if we’re going to change the meaning of the word ‘radical’ into something godly?

I’ve been encouraged to be ‘radical like Jesus’ in the past, and, in turn, I’ve encouraged others in the same way. But what does that encouragement entail? What kind of radical are we talking about?

This is a trending topic among many believing college students, but the enthusiasm usually (at least in my experience) results in lots of talk about problems that need to be changed with those people/institutions/beliefs rather than how they themselves are going to make a radical change. It’s much easier to deconstruct others than to change yourself, but that’s another post.  : )

If there’s anything I’m certain of, though, it’s that there’s nothing passive about being radical. If you’re intentionality isn’t making a few people nervous then I doubt you’re on the right track.

Everything I believe about radical living can be summed up with the cross of God: our need, God’s love, and the redemption of everything in existence is about the most beautiful kind of radical I can think of. And God invites us to join Him in the redemption of all things to Himself. He invites us to be radical with him.

So, whether you comment or no, please consider: how does the word ‘radical’ manifest itself in your day-to-day? Are there set ways for every Christ-follower to be radical? Or is it different from person to person? Or both? Can you think of any examples of people who showed you a good kind of radical?

I’d love to hear from you.