old dictionaries

Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (1960) defines:

love 1. A feeling of strong personal attachment induced by sympathetic understanding, or by ties of kinship; ardent affection. 2. The benevolence attributed to God as being like a father's affection for his children; also, men's adoration of God. 3. Strong liking; fondness; good will. 4. Tender passionate affection for one of the opposite sex. 5. The object of affection; sweetheart. . .

distance 1. Discord; quarrel. 2. The space between two objects; measure of separation in place; hence, length or interval of time. 3. Quality or condition of being distant, or spatially remote. . .

hope 1. Desire with expectation of obtaining what is desired, or belief that it is obtainable. 2. Trust; reliance. 3. Ground or source of happy expectation; hence, good promise. . .

the will of man

two top stories on the news yesterday:

the oldest man on death row was executed monday night by lethal injection.
he was a terminally ill diabetic who had suffered a heart attack.
his last meal was sugar free.
(God forbid he might fall into a diabetic coma before the opportunity to put him to death)
many have criticized the execution sentence as cruel and unusal punishment...
to severely punish such a sick and suffering man.

ironically...

the state of oregon has upheld its assisted suicide law in court.
(Judges deemed the federal government's regulation of prescription lethal drugs an infringement upon the constitutional rights of state legislature).
many have defended the law as reasonable and compassionate...
to give terminally ill patients the freedom to end their own sickness and suffering.

i guess people just want to make their own choices
...whether or not to die
they don't want others to restrict them.
but their choices will restrict others.

death, whether cruel or compassionate, ends our relationships with others on earth.
and it seals our eternal destiny.


i don't know the answer.

stage three: grief

it hit me on the freeway today as i was driving in the rain.
i was no longer in the timeless, dreamlike slump of shock and morbid disbelief,
no longer paralyzed by raw, wrenching pain.
even the hard numbness of my rage and spite had begun to melt.
maybe it was my speed, driving along the highway at 75 miles per hour, navigating a city of 14 million souls oblivious to my circumstances, that slapped me awake to my grief.
and i sat in traffic, and my heart exploded silently and tearlessly.
is this the hardest part?... when the pain creeps inside, crawls under the skin, and hibernates deep in your stomach... until it bubbles up into a sudden stifled sob in the library, a quick stream of tears at a traffic light, a stab of nauseau at dinner time...
i don't know.
tomorrow i will probably go shopping, and every ounce of my body will want to prostrate myself on the floor and scream all day.

maybe it is time to cut my hair.

the wisdom of Dad

"from those who have been given much, much will be required"

An interesting coincidence: Last week I chose this verse, Luke 12:48, for one of the devotionals recommended to the tour participants who will be with me in India next week. I meant it for the wealthy and well-educated Americans to compare themselves to the illiterate and poor Indian believers, and then to compare what they are giving back to God also as contrasted with the passionate activity of believers in India. They will read it on Day Eight with their minds spinning from seeing poverty and miracles.

Does God give us "much brains" in order that He can require much from our brains? That’s too simplistic. It’s more likely that He gives us much because He likes to give us much. He favors His children. He enjoys giving. It’s the nature of His love and His grace to give extravagantly. He wants us first and foremost to honor the Giver for what He has given. Then to enjoy it. What else we do with the gift is secondary. It might be important, but it's still secondary.

The one thing He has given everyone is the freedom to decide what to do with everything that He gives us. That’s what distinguishes us from pigeons.

God is not afraid to "squander" huge gifts for what we might think are small outcomes. With God, there’s always more where that came from. He does not require that every gift be maximized to the hilt in return to Him. Otherwise it’s not a gift, but an advance payment.

Is He also sometimes extravagant in His gift of pain? I don't know about that, though I've heard of people who claim that pain is God's gift, and if that is the case, then it makes sense that pain is like everything else that God gives, given more to some than to others....

God gave me a gift for Physics. In High School I gave little effort to my science courses. My real effort and time was expended elsewhere. Yet I was awarded "Best Science Student" in our senior honors assembly, out of a graduating class of 599. Then I went to college and never took another science course. I still enjoy reading Scientific American, but only as a hobby. I think I’ll develop and use that gift for God in heaven (that is, on the new earth), but not here. I even think about travel to the stars, which I think we will do from the new earth and I can give you the scientific reasons for that prediction. But I don’t regret neglecting the science gift in my current life, even though someone might say that I extravagantly abandoned and therefore wasted that part of my brain. For sure, this life is not all that there is, and that fact is the ultimate liberation for anyone immobilized by indecision.

There have been a lot of really really smart people who could have been nuclear physicists but yet lived on a farm and raised corn and pigs their whole lives (...or lived in New Hampshire and had babies?) , and still pleased God. There have been a lot of really really smart people who used their brains to the max for the good of mankind, and lost God.

If I had it to do over again, I might not decide so quickly to go live in the Philippines between 1976 and 1986. I would give greater consideration to Taiwan. Or I should have left the Philippines sooner. I'm not sure that those decisions were the right ones. They carried a big price with a seemingly modest payoff. Yet, even from this distance looking back, I realize that I cannot see all of the good and bad outcomes of those decisions. For instance, there may have been one person in the Philippines who was so impacted that from God's viewpoint it was worth ten years of our lives and all of the other negative consequences. God is extravagant in His investments. And so I refuse to agonize over those decisions or to develop regrets. God fits it into His plans.

Mom decided to follow me to Taiwan, Philippines, Chicago and Hudsonville, and a lot of places in between where it was impossible for her to develop her own career. She might have some regrets, but I suspect not enough to change her decisions if she had the opportunity to do so. I think God would say, You did the right thing.

I agree partly with the statement: ""maybe there is no "God's timing." maybe we paste that label on a series of choices, consequences, more choices, and the complex interactions of ten billion people, hurting each other, with the best of intentions, trying to make the most from what they have."" The timing is not God’s timing in the sense that God does not initiate and pre-determine our choices. But it can be God’s timing in a certain sense because of what he is able to do with our choices and the timing that we choose. He’s so smart, he can let us choose from several good options, and still do his will with us.

One of His gifts is time, and He’s also not afraid to give that extravagantly, without much return on investment. Think about the 2,000 years it has taken to get the Gospel to most of the world?Sometimes He waits to use a person really effectively until that person has lived out most of their life and has only a year or two left....

Sometimes God babies us along, leading us so strongly in a certain direction that we get the sense of his will in our decisions. I have experienced that. But not usually.

Sometimes we need to overcome a lot of obstacles and discouragements in order to pursue a direction that is later strongly confirmed as God’s will. He’s not the only supernatural power out there trying to influence us.

The "much" referred to in Luke 12:48 is the knowledge of God’s will. The extent to which you know God’s will, is the extent to which God will require your obedience to it. If your knowledge of God’s will is little, then you have been given little, and little will be required.

What makes you think you know God's will?

More often than not, when facing two possible courses of action, God refuses to tell me his will, and therefore says to me, "You figure it out. And choose which ever one you want. It's not my will but your will that's at stake here. I’ll bless you either way." In that case, I can use my decision-making ability to choose either one of these courses of action, and still expect God’s favor, and without regrets, even on Judgment Day. Perhaps it will take me an eternity of learning in order to figure out how to figure out God's will? In the meantime, I can be sure of God's favor and God's blessing and God's love, because I know that he loves me even more than I love my own children.

Diary, June 28, 2005: an unanswered prayer

He said it was love at first sight. Wow. Granted, we had already been introduced. We had talked on the phone, online, written emails, exchanged pictures. And then he came from Boston to L.A. to see what I was really like. And I guess he wanted me right away. That was only 17 days ago. And now we've been on opposite sides of the continent for just two weeks. Two long, amazing weeks. And in two more, I'm going to meet his family. And two weeks after that, he's going to meet mine. He says he wants to move. He says we'll live near each other soon. And it seems almost too much to hope for. I keep catching myself at bracing myself. Please, God, not another man that doesn't know what he wants. That thinks he wants me and then gets bored after winning me. Please, God, no. Give Aaron wisdom. It seems impossible that there is a man like him for me. Protect me from illusion. Amen

from those who have been given much, much will be required

sometimes i wonder if God made a mistake by giving too many brains to some women, especially those in the childbearing years.

sometimes God's timing seems amazingly perfectly wise.
but not today.

maybe there is no "God's timing." maybe we paste that label on a series of choices, consequences, more choices, and the complex interactions of ten billion people, hurting each other, with the best of intentions, trying to make the most from what they have.

maybe.

i study psychology. i have witnessed a pigeon figure out how to distinguish between a triangle and a circle in less than one minute. a bird with the brain the size of a peanut, took 60 seconds learn that the triangle represented something it needed to survive and the circle did not.

if that pigeon were me, it would already be a lesbian.

re:solutions

today the overwhelm of life is crushing the breath from my ribs.

nothing like a new year holiday to remind me how much i wish i had it all together, how short i still fall of my own ideals for my life. i want so badly to make myself a new year's resolution list. i won't do it, though. not because i'm cynical. not because i think it's unrealistic. not because i'm not planning to make changes in my life this year: of course i want this year to be better. i want to be healthier. i want to be more balanced. i want to be intentional about the details in my life. i will never stop trying to improve myself. i will never stop aspiring or demanding more from myself.

but i need to remember, to remember that i will always fall short. i will always fail at something. i will always need grace: the grace of my friends, the grace of God, grace from myself. Last year was one more year that i received love that i didn't deserve. and that is the only thing that will get me through the next year. ... a succession of days that will inevitably be disorganized, frustrating, disappointing, hopeful, ambitious, satisfying, overwhelming, heartbreaking, thrilling, tiring, victorious, brilliant, monotonous, joyous... days when i will fail to live up to my own standards, days that will continue to grow and change and challenge me.

tomorrow I will wake up and try to be as physically, emotionally, intellectually, vocationally, relationally, and spiritually responsible as I can muster. tomorrow I will try to confront my weaknesses, cope with my failures, and capitalize on my resources and talents. tomorrow i will breathe every breath by the grace of God. and I will breath the next day, every day, every day, one day at a time, and remember his grace.