redemption

but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin."
John 8:1-11

Dang. Awesome message right there.
Can you imagine these teachers and Pharisees, all haughty-like, dragging a poor woman through the crowd and presenting her to Jesus, trying to both shame her and discredit Him at the same time? How sinless and proud those men must have felt? How mortified the woman must have been? And Jesus staring at them and then casually bending down to write on the ground, with all temptation to just roll His eyes and reply, "Are you kidding me..."

Then neither do I condemn you, He says. The only one without sin. The turning point.

melting pot

Can I apologize if I've been rude to you lately? Will you forgive me so I can see your smile again?

I looked through my livejournal blog from last year, which details raw emotions fluctuating stronger than a y=10sin(10x) graph. I went to beginning of November, 2009, and was so amazed by how much I resisted God's outreaching hand, relying solely on emotions and past experiences as if there were only one way of letting Him take me in.

November 9, 2009
What kind of experience or feeling is that, of being saved? I don't think I have been saved yet because there isn't one particular moment or day that strikes me as when You truly took me by the hand and mended my wounds when I was at my lowest, not that I really had terrible traumas since knowing You...yet (never I hope).

Yesterday I talked to Pastor Seth, and he pointed out to me the narrow path I was walking on and told me about perspectives. God wants to help solve my problems. We have the same solutions in mind but for me, there are only few ways to get there from the lessons of my broken past and out of what I know. For Him, there are a billion, infinite ways to get there... out of what He knows. I only know how to serve Him through my experiences, through what I learned from my freshman year. But now He's showing me other ways to love and other ways to serve, routes I never imagined would lead to giving Him glory but do, all the same. I was shocked, the limitlessness of God once something completely non-comprehensible but now being shown in a sliver through His work in our lives. Isn't this amazing?

1 Peter 4:10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's grace in its various forms.

I'm sorry for being frustrated with you, for not taking into consideration that you're trying your best to serve God too, just in a completely different way than I know. So let us all try to teach each other the best of what we know, through which we will know God's heart all the more :).

courage

PTL. Sin of fear slowly getting conquered, piece by piece, trial by trial. I've never in my life done or wanted to do what I got to do today, and I've also never felt that brave. The aftermath was overwhelming, butterflies-in-my-stomach, shuddering-like-it's-the-dead-of-winter kind of nervousness and relief. Courage only God can give.

Afterwards, He told me,

It is not about your reputation, your relationships with others, your life group, your church, your contributions, your work ethic, your intelligence, your creativity, your past, your future, your flaws, your emotions, your pain, your money, your education, or even why you are who you are. Most of these things are important in the process of things. Some of them you do need to work on. But how many times do I have to tell you? You are not reaching out in order to build relationships. You are not contributing for the sake of contributing. These things should be part of the process, not the goal. Instead, you should be doing all these things for my glory, and mine alone.. For if you struggle or collapse in one area, it does no good to yell at me as you have in the past, but it does all the wonders in the world to thank me for the trial, then courageously ask for my help.

this is so beautiful :)

Words I Couldn't Say - Leighton Meester (country cover)


In a book, in a box, in the closet
In a line, in a song I once heard
In a moment on a front porch late one June
In a breath inside a whisper beneath the moon

There it was at the tips of my fingers
There it was on the tip of my tongue
There you were and I had never been that far
There it was the whole world wrapped inside my arms
And I let it all slip away

What do I do now that you're gone?
No back up plan, no second chance
And no one else to blame
All I can hear in the silence that remains
Are the words I couldn't say

There's a rain that will never stop falling
There's a wall that I tried to take down
What I should have said just wouldn't pass my lips
So I held back and now we've come to this
And it's too late now.

I'm aware of what the real message is, but for me, the song resonates with the lack of confidence I have in praying out loud.. What are you so afraid of? The opportunity God is asking for to speak through you is given only once in that one instance, that one specific moment in time. There is no going back to relive it, and you can only try again in the future, in another setting. In a similar way,

1 Corinthians 14:16-17 If you are praising God with your spirit, how can one who finds himself among those who do not understand say "Amen" to your thanksgiving, since he does not know what you are saying? You may be giving thanks well enough, but the other man is not edified.

The unspoken words of the past will never exist except in your regret. There is no second chance.. Thus, in the words of Taylor Swift, speak now. :)

my november guest

Robert Frost, 1915.

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

The best part about this poem.. is not the nature or the personification of sorrow, but the speaker's transformation, upon finally receiving the ability to love that which he once always found so difficult to love.