Perseverance

We went back to Azusa this weekend, a much needed sabbatical, for me at least. I feel like the last few weeks have been an emotional roller coaster ride, so up and down. When I got to APU, I had no clue what I was feeling or if it was ok to feel that way.
I confess that I am a victim of the popular myth that depression is always a negative thing. Pain has a stigma in our society that does enormous injustice to the real value and purpose of heartbreak, what I believe to be the purest form of pain. It sits above disappointment and bitterness in my mind because true heartbreak comes from the shock of an event or circumstance that is fundamentally opposite of how life was intended to be: broken relationships, addiction, injustice...
The problem was that I didn't know if that was what I was feeling, or if it was just some odd mixture of self-pity and bitterness. So the first night at APU, alone in my best friend's apartment, I used my first alone time with the Lord in weeks to weep and cry out before Him, looking to the Scriptures for some sort of guidance.
I found myself asking God, "If this is where You have called me, why is it so hard?" None of this fits with my perfect year. I know this year is my year, a phenomenal year, and thus far it has been filled with joy, community, growth, and above all, healing. I had a feeling at the beginning of the semester that the role LA term would play in my perfect year would be unlike the previous 8 months, but I didn't know to what purpose.
In my crying out, God spoke the question of joy to me-- "Do you still have joy?" And after some thought, I decided that I do. Thankfully, I am still able to rejoice when others rejoice and bring praise when I see the Lord's hand move, which is often. I thank God that He has given me His eyes these few weeks to see where He is.
But I am not happy. No, I thought, I am quite decidedly unhappy. "Why?" God asked. And I said, "Because I see no reason to be right now." And He said, "That's ok."
James chapter 1 is where He led me:

"Consider it pure joy, Sarah, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."

And so He answered my question- "Why is it so hard? Because it's supposed to be, at least for you. I've done incredible things in your life this year, but I'm not finished yet. You are not complete until you pass through this valley with your faith still intact."

Instead of filling me with dread, this promise of trials gave me comfort. Comfort that the Lord understands my sorrow, and He doesn't blame me for it. And comfort that He is not asking me to save the world right now, or even to do anything remotely "big." For now, He is simply asking me to put one foot in front of the other in His direction, to persevere. I'm being exposed to pain and oppression in forms I wasn't prepared to encounter face to face. My heart is indeed breaking for this city, and I've been putting entirely too much pressure on myself to do something about it. To fix it. To save it.

But it is clear to me that, at this point in my life, I can't. And that is hard for me. But God has given me permission, in fact He has told me, to rest right now. To slow, to lean into Him as the evil in the world seems to lean into me. This is a time of preparation and learning, not so much one of action- yet. And He will take care of the rest in His own timing, not mine.

I am so relieved to have a Savior that doesn't expect me to be a savior as well, but simply to go where He leads me. Praise be to the God who sees, the God who hears, and the God who speaks. Amen.

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I'm also incredibly thankful for the friends on main campus that lent an ear to my experiences on LA Term so far and who provided enormous comfort just by their presence. If you're reading, know that I love you. Thanks.

Here's some pictures of LA Term so far. I LOVE the people in this cohort. They help sustain me through this crazy transition with their contagious joy and love and curiousity. Love you guys :)


Everybody, with Steph, in front of Blossom Vietnamese downtown





City Hall



Kim and I laughing at Melanie 'cause she didn't want us to see her toes. :)

Bones

My passage of the semester (part of it):

The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. ² He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. ³ He asked me, "Son of man, can these bones live?" I said, "O Sovereign LORD, you alone know."

 ⁴ Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 'Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! ⁵ This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. ⁶ I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.' "

 ⁷ So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. ⁸ I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

 ⁹ Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.' " ¹⁰ So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.

Ezekiel 37:1-10



Can These Bones Live?



Romans 4:17 says that Abraham believed in "the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were." God sees us present-future, not present-past. He called Abraham the "Father of all nations" before his son Isaac was born. He called Sarah "princess" before she was part of this royal family that would be created through Isaac. Abraham knew that he was "as good as dead-- since he was about a hundred years old-- and Sarah's womb was also dead (v.19)." Sarah was just a bag of bones, if you will. And yet God insisted that she would have a child. Abraham was an old childless man, and yet God continued to call him a father.

Really, God's question to Ezekiel was a silly one. But it's the questions in the Bible that I think are the most intriguing parts of Scripture, because they are questions to all of us. They are challenges. We all have bones in our life, and God asks each of us the same question concerning these dry valleys.

"Sarah, can these bones live?" God asks me, stretching His hand out over the booming metropolis of LA.

I know enough now to realize that God wouldn't ask if He didn't already see flesh and tendons on every one. The problem is my own eyes. What do I do with God's vision of life for my valley of bones? Well, He didn't tell Ezekiel to pray for life. He didn't tell him to hope for life. He told him to prophesy; to proclaim life, to speak it forth, to insist it.

"Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed, and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, 'So shall your offspring be.'" (Romans 4:18).

Abraham conformed to God's vision of himself and lived as though he were the father of many nations, knowing that God could do what He had promised. My goal is to live this semester as if I truly am beloved of the Lord, to act is if this city is filled with living, breathing, vibrant souls instead of bones. I refuse to walk through this place in fear and disdain, condemning the bones to their grim fate. Instead, I pray for the strength to proclaim life over the lifeless parts of this city until it is true, even if I never get to see it.

"Can these bones live?"

Why yes, I believe they can.

Ministering Angels

After I wrote my last post, I continued to struggle with feelings of discouragement and isolation, despite the hope that God had already given me. I felt like I had already come face to face with so much heartbreak and desperation, and I was beginning to feel desperate myself. Every set of eyes with hopelessness in them and every person whose dignity had been taken away I took as a personal blow to my inner being; I took it to the core of who I am until I doubted even that. God has called me a mother to the motherless, and yet I felt helpless in this huge place, so full of people who need that kind of love. I want to save everyone, I want to fix everything, and when I can't, I get overwhelmed. I can still feel myself being pulled into a place where I am tempted to want so badly to help somehow that I lose hope and am not able to help a single soul, not even myself. My doubt in who I am as a lover makes me incapable of love.
But God is faithful, and the day after I posted my reflections on the "City of Angels," I opened up to read where I had left off in Walter Brueggemann's Prayers for a Privileged People, to a passage called "Sustained by Angels." Irony. This is what waited for me toward the end of the passage:

"So we pray in the Lenten season,

give us primitive freedom to

take full stock of Satan and the power of

evil still among us in our prosperity and

wealth and sophistication,

and give us primitive openness

to your ministering angels

who are present with care and gentleness."



I'm finding myself in a balancing act. Balancing reality with Truth, and trying not to let reality win out. My eyes were taking in the realities of the pain of individual people, the systemic injustices, the inequalities. But I had not yet practiced looking for the Truth, and my heart was totally unguarded. I realize now that along with my perceptiveness in seeing the wrong things-- the injustice, the pain-- there must also be an openness to God's ministering angels. I had to admit my weariness, already, and ask the Lord to minister to me by His angels.

I am starting now to find a balance. I'm searching for what it means to have the freedom to take full stock of Satan's work in this city. And it is evident, as on the metro the other day when a homeless man got on with a box in his hands and sat down on top of it. The train started moving, and the man looked around at the crowded train and asked "Where is this train going?" and not a single person in the crowd around him answered. "Where is this train going?" He looked like a puppy who had been beaten too many times, who had to muster all his confidence to say it loud enough, though no one would look him in the face. Finally a woman five rows back answered him, to my great relief. But the stunning silence as the man looked around at everyone around him shocked me and angered me.

I am also searching for what it means to have primitive openness to God's ministering angels, and God has given me plenty of opportunities to be open. There are glimpses of hope here that give me that balance between reality and Truth. The reality on Thurday night was that a friendly, talkative young man named Teddy spilled his guts to Kim and I on the metro, about his drug addiction and rehabilitation, his relationship with Jesus, and his recent breakup. The Truth is that what Teddy needed was a face full of compassion and someone to listen to him, and God thought we were special enough to fill that role. In reality, the homeless man we saw for the first time walking home the other day was an example of societal tragedy and injustice. But the Truth is, Kim had prayed earlier that day for God to send her someone hungry, because she couldn't finish her lunch that day. God did; his name is Raul and God put him there so he could have Kim's sandwich.

God has answered my prayers by giving me opportunities to look strangers full in the face and share in their humanity. These people minister to me by allowing me to love the way that God made me to love. I am still in a balancing act over here, and I've found it to be more of a battle with my emotions than I thought it would. I need prayer for focus, for my thought life, and for encouragement. But I'm finding the balance more every day, and it is beautiful.

City of Angels

I've been in LA one week now, and it has passed in a whirlwind. So many sights and sounds have bombarded me this week, I am almost tempted to shut them out already. But the danger in shutting out all of the car noises, the cat calls, and the buzzing conversations is that I might shut out the small yet bright glimmers of hope that I have found in this city.
Our first day in LA, Kim and I were attempting to find our own way to Elysian Park for a BBQ with the other LA termers and their host families, and we had no idea what we were doing. We just kind of walked to the metro and tried to figure it out from there. Epic fail. We stood looking at the map and pointing for a few minutes, clearly confused, until a man asked us if we needed help.
He was pretty young, but looked older than he probably was. It was clear that he was struggling with drug addiction. He was a little dirty. But he stood with us for five full minutes looking at our Google Maps printout and trying to decide which routes we should take. He was determined to help us get where we were going, even though we were perfect strangers. And when he left, he said, "You're welcome," and disappeared on a train. He didn't wait around for a tip or act like we'd wasted his time. He just wanted to know if we needed help, and we did. So he helped us.
I can't explain why it was so beautiful to me, or why I wished the train hadn't come yet so we could learn his name. Probably because he became our friend in that moment. He became our family. In the same way, the young man on the bus who held the door open to make sure it didn't close on the big group of girls getting off (us), was family to me. As he stood there holding the door, not looking at any of us or anyone in particular, I got the warmest feeling in the pit of my chest. I wanted to turn around and run back to him, take the headphones out of his ears and say "I love you. Thank you for being so kind." Somehow I knew, beneath his hoodie and his scowl and his stigma, he was just a very kind young man. He was someone's son, someone's big brother.
So was the twenty-something year old who asked us for change at the bus station to get home to San Diego, because he had just gotten out of jail, spent 21 days, and was so tired. He was just so tired, and he wanted to go home. I've felt that feeling, brother. I'm tired too... I hope you have someone you love to go home to.
I wanted to hug the Middle Eastern man who walked a full block with us today to show us where the Macys was. He was waiting for someone, but he showed us anyway. He was like an angel.
These people are showing me the beauty of a collective human family that exists somewhere in the realm of "should"s. I am starting to see a glimpse of the Los Angeles that lies beneath the stereotypes, the true City of Angels. Who knows? Maybe those men were angels, passing me by on my way home, or theirs. If so, Lord forgive me for not asking that man his name, or telling him I love him, or digging a little longer in my purse for change. It's going to take a little time to learn to spot angels. But that is my biggest prayer.
This semester in LA, I want to see the angels that dwell unnoticed or ignored in the city. The homeless man sitting across from me on the bus, or the single mom in the grocery store. And I don't want to let those moments pass me by without the chance to look into someone's eyes and see their humanity, and allow them to see mine. And in that moment we will become family, and this city of Angels will become my home. Lord, give me Your eyes this semester.