Signs...So Funny

Just for fun...

Please check out the following post on my roommate's blog. It is a hilarious collection of signs that we've seen around Thailand.

http://arambikur.blogspot.com/2011/10/signs.html

Feel free to check out her other posts as well. :)

Sprouting Seeds

I think one of my students is a missionary in the making. Technically, he's Buddhist but he has a soft heart for the Lord and remembers Bible stories better than just about anyone. He reads the Bible during English class and I feel terrible telling him that he needs to put it away and listen. My roommate says I'm persecuting him, and I guess she's right.

Yesterday, halfway done with the after school student drop offs my boy says, "I love God." I said "Oh, yeah?" My roommate who just been talking with him said to ask him why. He said, "Because God made us and called us and He loves us." We then proceeded to talk about the stories of Daniel, Joseph, and Noah. Joseph is his personal favorite. I remember being shocked several weeks ago when I asked my class who Moses was and they stared at me with bewildered looks on their faces. This boy however, raised his hand and was able to tell me in Thai from Moses' birth to the parting of the Red Sea. Now, you have to understand this child rarely listens to me, focuses on anything, or remembers what we've been studying, but he can remember entire Bible stories.

After we'd been talking for awhile he saw a plane passing overhead and made a comment so I asked him if he could go anywhere on a plane where would he go. He said he wouldn't because he wouldn't want to crash. But he decided he'd like to build a big boat. He said he would, "Have people come see, and have pictures, and tell them about Jesus." I asked if I could come see it and he said sure. There might be a second ark in the future. ;)

When we had arrived to the drop off spot he said truly disappointed, "Oh, I wish we weren't here yet, I want to keep talking about Bible stories." I told him to read a new one and we'd talk about it on the next ride home.

This is the same child who three days ago was on "red" which is the lowest rung on our school's discipline ladder. He was unmotivated, not listening, and not putting forth any effort. I was frustrated because we were trying to review a lot of information for the final and he was just not being helpful. We finished and he was still nowhere near done with his work so I sent him to the office with a note asking them to have him finish because we were moving on to Science and I had no patience to keep working with him. He spent all afternoon in the office working with my boss. After school I apologized for not being patient with him and he said, "It's not your fault, I'm sorry, I was on red, I wasn't doing very good." I said, "Well, we are both sorry we'll start again new tomorrow." To which he responded enthusiastically and gave me a high five. I was impressed with a third grader taking that much responsibility for his own actions. He has such a tender heart. Please pray for his development in the faith. Please pray Luke 8:15 for him: "But the seed in the good soil, these are the ones who have heard the word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast, and bear fruit with perseverance." Please pray that he would not be like the "...rocky soil are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no firm root; they believe for a while, and in time of temptation fall away." Please pray that his faith would not be squashed by his Buddhist family, may they come to believe in the Lord as well.

Call...Obedience

I'm hesitant to try to explain my thoughts of late. Afraid I can't actually make them make sense in verbalizing them. Thoughts of obedience in the hard stuff, of desiring God's will crazy as it may sometimes seem, of common sense and throwing it out the window. Pete Fleming, missionary to Ecuador wrote, "A call is nothing more nor less than obedience to the will of God, as God presses it home to the soul by whatever means He chooses." I think this means that when we know that a certain choice is obedience to God's will, because He has pressed it on our hearts in various ways over the years, that constitutes a call. Rarely do we have a flashing billboard, a 2x4 to the head, or the audible voice of the Lord. But daily as we meet with Him and seek His face He lets us know. At the end of many quiet conversations with Him I can't explain to any human how His voice has turned my heart and helped me choose. Sometimes, we wait for the obvious sign, when God has already given us the quiet word/nudge. Yes, the Lord does command us to wait for Him alone, but when He gives the green light, we better move. We just have to make the first choice to obey and then follow the path of obedience no matter how many twists and turns, how many stops, or detours there may turn out to be.

I think so often God's will sounds crazy to everyone else, sounds irresponsible, sounds illogical. Yet God is above all that, more powerful, and more in control. It sounds impossible and way more than we can handle. And it is. That's the point. He doesn't call superheros, He calls those who in themselves are unqualified and incapable and He takes delight in providing His strength, His wisdom, and His grace.

I think that too often we miss the deeper call of God on our lives because of fear. Fear of what others will think, fear of being unprotected and uncared for, fear of believing that God is good or fear that God might prove to be harsh or cruel. I think within each of us two strong desires battle. One from the flesh for comfort for security and one from the Spirit for more of God and His plans. At least I know this battle has been fought in me. "God is not overly concerned with our comfort" I read those words from a missionary right before I moved to Thailand. I think he was right. There are much much bigger things going on right before our eyes yet we get tangled up in unnecessary worries. I'm not saying this kind of "crazy" obedience is easy...it is not. But it is worth it. I'm absolutely sure that those who have lived this way don't regret it. My fear is that I will consider the cost too high, the way too rough, the risk too great. That I will choose easy and that at the end I will see a wasted life.

May we be the kind of people who live like we truly believe in our faithful God. May we be the kind that follow Him to the ends of the earth. May we come to see that following Him, knowing Him is all that is truly necessary. May we desire Him more than comfort. May we love Him more than ourselves. By His strength and for His glory.

How Could I Ask for More?

"How could I ask for more?"

Those words jumped out at me during our Tuesday night Bible Study and they've been replaying themselves in my head all week. They convict me because I have everything I need, I'm blessed to do the work I do, and the Lord has always taken care of me. In spite of that my selfish heart sometimes says, "If I had this..." "If I was there..."

It's in those moments where He is prompting me to be grateful for what is. To be thankful for every hot afternoon teaching kiddos who are hot and tired and cranky. To be thankful for the hours of planning and writing lessons so that they receive a quality education.

In those moments...

"It's here that I call out,

It's here that I fall down,

It's here that I find out

You are everything I hoped you be.
...
I found You there." ~ Bebo Norman

That's where I find Him. In the midst of everyday. And I am reminded of and overwhelmed by the sense of how there is really nothing more I would ask for.

Sometimes I get a glimpse of Him in the ordinary moments such as when I walk into the kitchen after an encouraging talk about seeking God's will with our 5/6th Grade Thai teacher. As I walk in I see almost our whole team standing in the kitchen talking with each other in two languages smiling and laughing. It smelled like Thanksgiving and I thought of the past two Thanksgivings we've spent together and I knew we really are a family.

Or a moment where my little 3rd grader came running into the cafeteria as I was eating lunch with three of our English staff members. He bounded up to me with his hands full of clay exclaiming, "I found you some!!!" He had heard me asking our 5/6 grade teacher if he would mind helping me find some clay for my science experiment. This precious little boy took it upon himself to find it for me. It required some searching and digging but his perseverance produced the treasure which I was overjoyed about.

There's not enough space on the Internet to share the many moments such as these or the more difficult times which teach me to be grateful for what is and to remind me that there is never any need to ask for more. He is enough. "God meets us on that level- every day's most quiet need. He will have a new word, a new sweetness or a new fellowship to help us press through to victory. And when the thrill of victory dawns upon us, we will whisper, 'O Lord, it wasn't in me. It was your sufficiency for every day's most quiet need."

The Word

She asked me where she should put her brand new still packaged Bible, and I answered. I looked at her face and I knew then, she wasn't really asking where to put it, she was asking for someone to give her permission to be excited about it. She was asking for someone to tell her it was a big deal. So I did. As I held the Bible for her she tore off the plastic with great enthusiasm. As I asked her to find our memory verses I realized that she hasn't ever read a Bible before. This is quite possibly her family's first Bible. She listened as I showed her the Table of Contents and talked about the Old and New Testament. She found Romans and I explained how to find the chapter and verse. Then she found it and started reading, "For all have sinned..." She exclaimed and looked at me so excited that she already knew that verse.

You know, I pray to hunger for God's word, but she puts me to shame. Every day since then she has looked for opportunities to read her Bible. During math she asked me "When can we read the Bible again?" So, we ended math a little early and everyone got out their Bibles (a required textbook for our 4th-6th graders). We practiced finding verses and all of my kids loved it and asked to keep reading. On the ride home she pulled her silver Bible out of her backpack and asked what verses to look up. As we sat surrounded by new Thai books (thanks to a generous church in Australia) she read to me a book with Jesus' parables. As we finished the story there was a Bible reference. She looked at me and said, "Oh! Can I go get my Bible?" She ran upstairs and quickly returned and found the book of Matthew just like I taught her.

Visiting with her mom at the end of the day I told her that her daughter has been so excited about her Bible and had read it virtually non-stop. She smiled and said, "I know, she came home yesterday bursting about her new Bible and read it to me last night."

When she was opening her Bible for the first time some of my other students came in to see what was going on. They saw some of our Bible story books in Thai and English and asked if they could read them. After they read for awhile and I read with my little girl we decided to play catch with a plastic ball. More of our students ventured in and we sat in a circle to play a new game. One of my boys said, "How about we play that we pass the ball around the circle and when Miss Emily says stop, whoever is holding the ball has to say one of our Bible verses." I said, "Good idea," Miss Brittany turned on music and the game began. As the ball stopped the kids would tell the other kid what verse to say and what language to say it in. Miss Brittany stopped the ball on me and the kids said that I should say Romans 6:23 in Thai. I got nervous and asked them all to say it with me. And the sweet children they are, they helped and we all recited it together. They really surprised me with how well they did reciting the verses on their own in both languages.

And I'm so thankful because God's word does not return void. "So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it." Isaiah 55:11 I pray that the Lord continues to work in their hearts and that they always love His word.

Grateful

As I prepared to write this blog post I read a blog by a woman named Ann Voskamp. She had two quotes in her post "When You're Finding It Hard to Be Patient" that jumped out at me.

As I read her words I thought of my fourteen beautiful children who last Thursday drove me up a wall and this Wednesday brought joy to my heart. And I was convicted, "Love is only patient if it's first grateful for what is." In order to be loving and patient toward my kids I must also grateful for each imperfect moment we have. Though I don't always show it I am without a doubt, grateful for the privilege to hear their little voices calling me teacher. I'm so grateful for the abundance of little boys with mood swings because I know the lives they've led. I'm grateful for the little girls who work so hard because I know who they get that work ethic from. I'm grateful for the kids who fight through so much that at school they're doing good to keep a smile on their faces. I can't imagine what it would be like if anyone of them were missing.

Ann Voskamp also said, "Patient people dare to gratefully accept people where they are. Grateful for who they are now, appreciative of works of art not yet finished, but still deeply loved." As I think about each of my little ones that applies perfectly to each of their lives: "works of art not yet finished, but still deeply loved." So in the studio where we work on building our characters, theirs and mine, I must remember to be grateful that I get a chance to be a part of their development. I pray that who we are tomorrow is more like Christ than the people we are today.

Rain and Tears

I'll be honest. This week...wasn't great. Tears came unbidden and irritation got the best of me. I felt overwhelmed and under skilled.

Our days are much like every one's... ordinary, unpredictable, and much more than we can handle. We wrestle with curriculum that despite the best efforts of many just doesn't match. We stumble around with words that just don't make sense. We spend hours planning, preparing and the work just isn't finished. We have hundreds of last minute changes and too much work with not enough hands.

Life is made of the days when I'm just so irritated that our kitchen roof leaks just about everyday, that one thing after another breaks on our car (I'm almost convinced that everytime we take the car to the shop they intentionally break something else so that we have to go back), that the cockroaches enjoy living under our roof. I'm annoyed that I live in a hot humid climate, that it may sound like its raining but it is actually the sound of many termite wings beating against our windows, that our Internet works in short intervals (when it's not too hot) and mocks me the rest of the time. That my students would decide to be crazy the day we have visitors in our classroom. That half the computers in the lab refuse to work as I'm trying to calmly teach a computer class to prove that really things aren't normally this crazy. That I ending up having to have one of the aforementioned visitors write the students scores on the whiteboard as they finished their computer activity every thirty seconds, while another volunteer reviewed flashcards with the half of the class that didn't end up with a computer. Meanwhile I spent most of the class in the hallway with two little rebellious and broken hearts and four eyes with big tears. You get the picture.

Sometimes the challenges of teaching my students, the termites, the floods, and the communication barriers drown out the voice of truth. They make it seem as if absolutely everything is terrible and that it will never get better.

BUT. But, the truth is that...

He whispers that He is my life. My salvation. My joy. My love. My strength.

And just as He graciously gave me salvation He has also granted to me suffering.

I know that heat, gross bugs, and constant challenges in our work do not compare to the suffering of many Christians and especially do not compare to the sufferings of Christ. Yet, for us, right now this is what has been granted to us as a privilege. A privilege for the glory of Christ and for our good.

"To you it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake."

The suffering, it's worth it. Why? Because it has been granted to me to believe in Him. Because He has laid hold of me, because He has poured out His blood to give me grace. Because suffering is often His means of spreading His message to the people who are far off. Because He suffered while walking on this earth, and He is our example. Because He loves me enough to die a horrible death to allow me to be His own. His own. As His own I know that what He allows in my life is for a good purpose and that one day He will wipe away all my tears.