LIVE: kb

Just finished watching Taken with the roommates & company, thanks to Christel’s brain child.

This movie… well, it was completely mind boggling. I found a helpful OP-ED in the NY Times:

“Prostitution in America isn’t as brutal as it is in, say, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Cambodia and Malaysia (where young girls are routinely kidnapped, imprisoned and tortured by brothel owners, occasionally even killed). But the scene on American streets is still appalling — and it continues largely because neither the authorities nor society as a whole show much interest in 14-year-old girls pimped on the streets.

Americans tend to think of forced prostitution as the plight of Mexican or Asian women trafficked into the United States and locked up in brothels. Such trafficking is indeed a problem, but the far greater scandal and the worst violence involves American teenage girls.

–NICHOLAS D.KRISTOF

(Rest of article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/opinion/07kristof.html)

God is good to us and will continue to be. What are role as Christians in such flagrant injustice?

Colossians Prayer

 Lord God, help __________ to pray always for other believers as they give thanks to You (Col 1:3) • Continue to build in __________ strong faith in Christ Jesus and a love for all Your people because of the hope laid up for them in heaven (1:4-5a) • Thank you that the word of truth, the gospel, has come to __________ and is constantly bearing fruit and increasing since the day they heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth (1:5-6) • Help __________ to develop into a reliable and faithful servant of Christ on whom others can depend; help love to grow in __________’s life through the work of Your Spirit (1:7) • I pray for __________ to be filled with the knowledge of Your will in all spiritual wisdom and have a thorough understanding in all areas of life (1:9) • May __________ live a life worthy of You, one that pleases You in every way. May__________ bear fruit in every kind of good work and increase in knowledge of You and Your ways (1:10) • Please strengthen __________ with all Your power, according to Your glorious might, so that they will have great endurance and patience. I pray that __________ will joyfully give thanks to You, Who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of Your people in kingdom of light (1:11-12)

I sometimes consider the concept of setting boundaries, and this concept seems to in several occasions to create pride.  I wonder if boundaries can be manipulated in order for us to seem more righteous, and disciplined, or can they be used as a way to see truth and the gospel more clearly… hmm… enough musings for one day.

I received a chocolate bar for Easter, and inside this is what I found… My mother is a hopeless romantic…

from Sonnets From the Portuguese: Sonnet 12

Indeed this very love which is my boast, 

And which, when rising up from [chest] to brow, 

Doth crown me with a ruby large enow

To draw men’s eyes and prove the inner cost,–

This love even, all my worth, to the uttermost, 

I should not love withal, unless that thou

Hadst set me an example, shown me how,

When first thine earnest eyes with mine were crossed,

And love called love.  And thus, I cannot speak

Of love even, as a good thing of my own:

thy soul hath snatched up mine all faint and ewak,

And placed it by thee on a golden throne,–

And that I love (O Soul, we must be meek!)

Is by thee only, whom I love alone.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I am going to fight to remember that, although I am currently living in a fog of academia, work, internship… and millions of other things, that the Lord is being good to me in this moment.  I am going to fight to believe that I am being taught invaluable lessons, even though I reach the point daily where I can type a word without dozing off.  And, I am going to pray for understanding of how to balance the temporal, and how I might follow Jesus holistically.

I used to think we would change the world

You & I

I would imagine your polite smile

Sweet enough even to caress her out of a corroded misery

Your discipline to lay tarry shingles

One by one, and maneuver a family 

from the wrath of “God’s Mighty Hand”

Your laughter as you paddled out 

to catch the biggest one the Gulf could muster

Your tenderness big enough to dream up conversations with the greats;

Hawthorne, Dickens, T.S. Elliot 

And my heart, so swollen with expectation, that its entire contents were nonsensical.

To think that my self-indulgent notions had already stitched together every solitary detail

and, I could barely hold my breath

But then, I spewed coffee, that wasn’t even hot, all over my new white blouse, after reading your  casual remarks

And so, I lingered there, in that moment,

until the dizzying spiral of the room subsided

And, with the impact of a 2 ton mass,

I understood that my heart must relent.

I wish that in the moments we find ourselves in the most profound of pain were not the moments that contained the deepest of inspiration.

Oh Lord unless you build this house, its builders will have toiled in vain.  Unless you watch over this city in vain the watchman stands on guard.  Look with mercy upon this company of your children that our labors may be crowned by your grace. Help us to be diligent in the disciplines of our calling,and to engage in them in the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom.  Bind us together through our common responsibilities and prevent, by your grace, the friction of sinful purpose from destroying the unity of the body of Christ.  Give us the spirit of forbearance for one another, teaching us to forgive one another, even as you also, in Christ, have forgiven us.  Help us to do the duty which each hour and day demands of us, but grant us grace also to have a vision of the constancy of your will, about the chances and changes of our mortal life.  Let us not be tempted by our tendency to evade the tasks you have given us to do, nor be tempted by our strengths, to estimate ourselves too highly.  Grant that our strength may be made perfect in our weakness and your mercy purify us. 

R Niebuhr

Today, I was reminded again of the BEAUTY of the gospel.  A Hatian man named Yvfdo visited my French class, and eagerly shared his story.  He called his entire life a testimony, one that is full of the promise that Christ will never leave us or forsake us. He shared pieces of his heart that were only fashioned because of the Lord’s sovereign pull on his life.  My heart was warmed anew to the gracious provision of the Lord.

I need, each moment of the day, to remind myself that my life is NOT mine own. I belong to a Father who is fully aware of the my most basic needs, and the small curvatures of my heart that even I myself am unaware.  Yvfdo’s story reminded me of this truth so brilliantly.

I am continually in thought (and prayer, though not quite as disciplined in this arena) about the country and people of France.  Yvfdo reminded us that a revolution is only manifest to begin with, in one single heart.  It is only by the Lord’s grace that I have been exposed to disparity that is so deeply entrenched in the French spiritual landscape. I do not claim to be able to change a country, nor that I am being called to this.  I do not perceive my cultural leanings and understandings to be far superior to those of possessed by French individuals.  I do know, however, that the Lord has pulled my heart.  He has given me such a love that at times I feel paralyzed.  I don’t know quite what this means, but someday, I am sure I will understand…

I can’t make you stop

I just want you to stop

Just

                     STOP.

I want you to crouch down in the trenches of my memories

…and linger there

Until I am softly rendered anew with the ebbing dawn

But I can’t

Because you won’t stop

And there is nothing I can do

And this is just the point.