Today is Friday, it's 7:43pm and it is my weekend off. I'm at home quietly alone with my thoughts - planning to send my thoughts to dreamland very very shortly!!! However first I'm going to detail some of them here.
In my working day I teach two level 5/6 (top levels) combination classes as well as various other classes. What is unique about these two classes is that one of them in entirely men and the other is entirely women. So while I teach the exact same lesson to both classes the conversations we have are completely and utterly different.
Except for one thing. I have come to the conclusion that most people live lives of quiet desperation. Most of my students are not happy, they tell me the most amazing things sometimes. I think they tell me these things for two reasons;
1. They don't have the vocabulary to lie, and
2. Sometimes I think that my classroom has the same feeling as a cruise ship, or any group of strangers who come together for a holiday, it is a time/space out of real life where you meet people who are similar to yourself but who have no other contact with your real life so you feel free to be open about things you would never ever tell your friends and families.
So I hear these tales of sadness and then I look at the people on the street going by the window, on the subway opposite me, going about their daily lives and I wonder; "What dreams did the man pushing the cart piled high with cardboard for recycling have in his youth?" I'm almost certain he didn't dream of being a cardboard recycling man. And the Lady who spends all her days repairing shoes in a tiny tin room - maybe 1.5m x 3m in dimension - "How did she imagine her life in her young days?" I'm betting she didn't plan on her confinement - but my students tell me she's been operating her business out of that box for 20 years. And what about the man sitting on the pavement trying to sell dried seaweed? I see him there at 10am on a Sunday morning with a huge pile of weed, and again at 10pm at night trying to sell his last packet before he heads to whatever passes as his home. "Was this the height of his ambitions?"
I want to tell my students that there is more, so much more!!
Most of you reading my blog are personal friends, you know I came to Korea to be a missionary. To tell people that Jesus loves them, that He wants them to accept Him as their personal saviour and to go to Heaven to be with Him forever. And I get to do this on a daily basis. I lift up Jesus every chance I get, I tell my students stories of how God has worked in my own personal life, how He is still working even now, how even in situations when things are hard and I hurt I can still trust Him and learn from Him and that I know that one day God will make everything new and there will be no more tears and no more pain.
I look at the world around me, the natural disasters, the erosion of personal freedoms in the west, the world wide economic crisis and looming war rumours and it all speaks to me, telling me that the end is near, that Jesus is only a short way away, that we don't have much time!!!
Half of me wants to tell God, "Come now!! Let's get this over with, let's end the pain and evil and sorrow!" and half of me wants to say, "Don't come, so many people are not ready, so many people haven't had a chance to decide. So many people are so ignorant of Your love, Your will and Your truth."
It makes me think of Rahab, (in various parts of chapters 1-6 in Joshua in the Bible) she has the promise from the spies, "Everybody who is in your house will be saved when we destroy Jericho." So she goes out amongst her friends and family telling them, "The Israelites are coming, Jericho will be destroyed, but if you come and stay in my house you will live." I can see her standing on her roof top looking over towards the Israelite camp, for six days they've come, marched silently around the city walls and gone away again. I imagine Rahab in two minds, one mind says "Hurry up, finish this already." The other is trying to figure out how she could squeeze just one more person into her house and who would be open to hearing her message of hope without informing the king of her traitorous beliefs. And in reading the story I know what she doesn't know, the seventh day is the last day. One the seventh day the army doesn't march away silently. On the seventh day the city falls, Jericho is destroyed and everybody within its walls dies. Everybody except Rahab and the people in her house.
I believe we're in that same position, standing on the wall looking out into eternity, it's the end of the sixth day and the seventh is just about to begin, bringing with it the destruction of our planet and the Salvation of those people who have put there faith and trust in Jesus and His sacrificing love!!! His cleansing power, His blood.
Then I look at myself, I've be so blessed, I know so much of the truth, I've experienced so much of God's love and yet I still manage to make dumb, stupid mistakes, essentially denying Jesus, like Peter, on an almost daily basis. I want to tell God; "Don't come yet - I'm not ready, PLEASE make me ready!!! Make me like Esther."
Esther who went to the King to tell him that his most trusted official was a traitor. But Esther was clever, she didn't accuse Haman in front of the whole court, she did it in private so the King didn't look bad in front of his servants. I need God to make me as clever and as loyal and as brave as Esther. Only His Holy Spirit can make me into a good Missionary and only His Holy Spirit can make any of us ready for the time when Jesus comes again. We need to be praying continually for the Holy Spirit and that is one pray that God delights to answer with an immediate yes.
That's some of what I've been thinking ...
I get your main message, and that is fine, I have no issue with that.
ReplyDeleteBut I think that there is something else you haven't thought about - or two things really.
1. that western society sells us dreams - tells us that we can do anything if we only dare to dream it. Now there is a message in that that is real. But there is also the unreal twist which ends up in people with absolutely no skill or talent trying out for the "Idol" shows - and others trying to fulfil their dreams in quite narcissistic and sometimes morally ambiguous ways. Not all dreams can come true. The other flip of that is that western media sells us a consumerist version of that dream, where only the flashiest, most self-indulgent dreams, are really worthy... which leads me on to point number...
2. there is a value judgement going on here that the lady in the box or the man with the seaweed don't like their work/lives ... and perhaps implicit behind that is that such work is not valued/valuable/rewarding. I find that terribly disturbing. For all we know the lady in the box loves her daily routine,loves the interaction with people, and is content with the life she has made for himself. I have a friend who cleans toilets for a school part time to pay for school fees for her children. Sure, it isn't the life she dreamed of as a child - but as we grow up we put away childish things (I dreamed of being a princess and a space fighter captain, neither of which have come true). To her surprise she actually does enjoy her life - there is a satisfaction in a job well done, in finding a way to achieve the things that she values (independent school education for her kids),and beyond that in being able to survive and get a bit ahead.
Happiness, value and purpose in life, are found in the little things.