Sense of Wonder

Do you have a sense of wonder?
Do you ever feel you do the same thing every day?
Do you see the world as colorful?
Are you ever excited about absolutely nothing?
What percent of your time is spent thinking about fairness, duties, and the cold hard facts of life?
Can you step back and see a bigger picture?

The truth is that there is great evil in this world. There is also great beauty. Sometimes...often...the evil hurts so much that the beauty does not seem important. There are problems that must be solved, guilt that must be dealt with. But what of Joy? Do you see the miracles?

If you can trust your guilt to God, believe he means it when he says that Jesus paid all, then you can go on to live vibrantly. If you can, with thanksgiving, let God know what it is you would like then he will give you the peace that is more than you can understand. (Philippians 4:6-7) That is what trust is you know - don't worry, just let God know and be thankful. This will set you free from the evil to enjoy the beauty.

I once heard a story of what would happen if the stars only appeared once every 1000 years. It went something like this;

If the stars only came out once every thousand years no one would sleep that night. The government would outlaw lights unless special permission was granted. Everyone would travel to a place that was guaranteed to not have clouds. As the first stars appeared there would be ooos and aaahhs. Everyone would marvel and be in raptures as the sky was filled. We would be so thankful that this amazing beauty, rarely seen, was ours to observe for an entire night. As the last star faded in the morning, we would wish again that it would happen every night.

When you look at the stars at night, how long do you stare? In the approximately twenty five thousand five hundred and fifty nights that you will see stars in your life time will you ever once appreciate it as much as you would if you only saw them once?

Can you see clean water today the way you would if you had just spent four months in the bush in Africa? Can you see your friends the way you would if they had just been cured from a fatal disease? What else could be taken from you that you have just never noticed? Notice it. Enjoy it with all your heart. Thank God for it. We are so blessed. Some people know this and some people don't. Do you know it? You can. At first it will seem that the little joys of life are too small and too few to live for but as you practice loving them to the full you will begin to see more of them, the miracle of each one, and the God behind the miracle. It's worth it.

I Hope You Dance

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder,
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger,
May you never take one single breath for granted,
GOD forbid love ever leave you empty handed,

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

I hope you dance....I hope you dance.

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance,
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Living might mean taking chances but they're worth taking,
Loving might be a mistake but it's worth making,

Don't let some hell bent heart leave you bitter,
When you come close to selling out reconsider,
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

I hope you dance....I hope you dance.

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,  
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.  

Dance....I hope you dance.

Home

I am a homebody. I enjoy going out and having a little adventure sometimes but mostly I like to be home. It's not that I'm scared or feel more secure at home, it's just that home is a pleasant place where I feel more energized and am able to function my best.

When I was younger, I spent the majority of my time, in fact most of it, at home. When I got my first job I was suddenly gone a much larger percentage of the time. I came to realize just how close I was to my family and just how much I loved every room in the house and every rock and tree on my mountain. I got a couple more jobs and started doing more things at church and eventually I was only home a few days a month and long enough to sleep every night. Then I moved to the Philippines and then I was in the mountains for a month with no contact whatsoever with my family.

My journey keeps taking me farther and farther away. And my heart hurts at each step and I grow more tired each time. Surprisingly, the move to the other side of the world was not the biggest step. The biggest was when I gradually began to realize that I had changed, and that even if I returned, I would not fit in. Not really.

Here in the Philippines there is no direct translation of 'home' so sometimes in English it gets translated literally as 'your place.' Every time someone asks 'do you have that in your place?' or 'when are you going to your place?' I'm not sure if they mean the dorm or the US. Where is my place?

But maybe I have gone even farther than that. The past few months I have taken to heart some things I already knew about life. There are things happening here that make me hate this world.

People say that when they visit a third world country their eyes are opened to just how much better we have it in the U.S.  Mmm... no, I think these horrible things were happening there too. It's just that as the illusion of home fell away, I was able to see them more clearly. And they make me hate it. I never want to call any place home if it is on the same planet with all this pain and confusion. Everywhere I go I will feel far away in an unfriendly place.

In my heart 'home' has shifted from Aurora, WV to my final destination beyond the skies. It is a little hard because I am very tired and I know it will take longer to get there, but I am thankful because I know not everyone has that place and I know my home there is sure. My father will be waiting for me along with innumerable brothers and sisters. I will never again have to leave or say goodbye.

This World is not my Home I'm just a-passing through,

My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.

The angels beckon me from heaven's open door

And I can't feel at home in this world any more.

Oh Lord, you know I have no friend like you

If heaven's not my home then, Lord, what will I do?

The angels beckon me from heaven's open door

And I can't feel at home in this world any more.

I have a loving savior up in glory land

I don't expect to stop until I with him stand

He's waiting now for me in heaven's open door

And I can't feel at home in this world any more.

Oh Lord, you know I have no friend like you

If heaven's not my home then, Lord, what will I do?

The angels beckon me from heaven's open door

And I can't feel at home in this world any more.

Just up in glory land we'll live eternally

The saints on every hand are shouting victory

Their songs of sweetest praise drift back from heaven's shore

And I can't feel at home in this world any more.

Oh Lord, you know I have no friend like you

If heaven's not my home then, Lord, what will I do?

The angels beckon me from heaven's open door

And I can't feel at home in this world any more.

That is my place. For where your treasure is there your heart will be also.

The Secret

A few weeks ago four of us white ladies and a Filippina translator sat in a tiny dark kitchen of a tiny concrete house. The beautiful young mother in front of us was apologizing for not having snacks for us. "Pobre kaayo ko." (I am very poor.) and indeed, there on the floor lay a pile of cassava-the food of the very poor. She did not even have rice but maiz or the corn imitation of rice and a few three inch long dried fish for herself and her 7 children for supper.

However, as we listened to her it became clear that the money situation was not uppermost on her mind. There were harder, more important trials. Her husband had left and gone to the city with another woman. When he comes back sometimes he brings food but he also brings fighting and an STD that our hostess does not have money to get medicine for. She is afraid her children might catch it as she is still nursing the youngest and does not know enough about STDs to know if they can spread other ways. But the hardest trial by far is tsismis. Gossip. The entire village knows and they will not come close for fear of catching it. When she comes home late from her hand washing laundry business in the city the gossip just gets worse. So our dear Ate lives in that dark little house, afraid to walk down the street for the looks she will get.

She and her eldest son, who looks older than he is for all that is on his shoulders, both want to learn more about God because they have noticed that is the only way they have found peace. Because of the tsismis, though, and because her husband destroys any Bibles he finds, they cannot go to church or even learn in their home. And she asks, "Ngano man?" Why is it? Her faith is wobbling. What do I tell her? What would you tell her? I do not know.

Later my dear new Filippina friend and I lay on the floor of our bamboo house-on-stilts waiting for lunch to be served. She told me her story of how she became a Christian and some of the rejection that pierced her heart afterwards. I can still see her face and hear her tone of voice, "I love my family. I asked God, 'Do I have to hate my family just to follow you?' Even now, when I think that I will be in heaven and my family will be in hell, oh! my heart is hurt. I am still praying for them."

My mind kept turning. How does this girl still have all that bubbly joy and sense of humor and passion for God and drive to get the message out when her father yelled that she was no longer his and her mother fights and asks, "Don't you love me?" I see that she sacrifices much for them, yet more for the gospel. I see that she always wears the thin necklace that was the last gift her father gave her before he died and she does not really know if he was a Christian. I see that she loves everyone she comes across with the love of a true friend. She loves to joke about everything funny and make up new words for existing songs and laugh at our poor attempts at Visayan. What is her secret?

The next day we visit the house of a girl who knows a surprising amount about Christianity for being in this unreached village. She loves her Bible and asks many questions. We share the gospel and ask if she has decided to follow Jesus and only Jesus. Then the fear comes out. She knows several people who became Christians and she watched the trials begin.  Her husband is not a Christian. She knows about the social persecution and she tells of one man who was struck by lightning and killed just after he got saved. She is too afraid to choose Jesus. What do we tell her?

We meet the young widow of the man who was killed by lightning. She sits quietly in a hammock and smiles sadly at us. She has three tiny children and is a Christian but her elderly parents who she is now living with are not. I also start to wonder why. What do I tell them? I know the frustration of not having questions answered. I know the pain and fear that can tear at your soul, though perhaps not on as deep a level as these ladies.

At the next house the gossip story surfaces again. This lady's husband is home and actually supportive which is rare. The couple wants to go to church but everyone there knows secrets about their lives and they are afraid of what people will say. I strain to understand any Visayan I can. My Filippina friend who had shared her story earlier is saying something. I catch the words "Mga mata.... Jesus.... mga mata.... mga tawo." And I suddenly understand. I could kick myself for not remembering. It is the story of Peter drowning in the waves.

Drowning in fear. Shame. Grief. Loneliness. Things that wrench your heart and tear your soul. Unreasonable. Unfair. Always there. Can anything get a person through weeks and years of this? Is it possible to flourish? But this is what Jesus went through for us. The cross was unfair, shameful, and lonely. When we look at God we can see his love, wisdom, holiness and power and we can trust Him. If we look at the waves like Peter did, all logical sense tells us that it is not possible to walk on them. But when we look at God we see He is so big, so much bigger than we can comprehend and when we know that we belong to Him something happens to us and suddenly we find ourselves dancing on the waves.

In the words of my friend, "We are only human and sometimes we forget but that is the way."

Wise men and philosophers, elders and professionals in suits and everyone on Facebook is looking. King Solomon, Dr. so and so, explorers and prophets down through the ages. They are all looking for the secret to life. Many articles have been written claiming they know it but many contradict each other. This past month I, a 19 year old girl from nowhere, discovered the truth in the mountains of the Philippines from people the world will never hear about.