jealousy in check

when i see you touch her, smile at her, my heart burns. because i know she has her eyes set on you.

in that moment where there is the two of you, i do not matter. the world does not matter. for you only have eyes for each other before God. is this a union set by Him? i do not know. i cannot hope to pray for it to be or not to be.

for if it is, my heart shall be broken. and if it is not, then theirs shall be broken.

so who has the Lord prepared for me? is it you? is it him? or is it someone i have not met yet.

i will not hope in man; for man is fallible whereas God is infallible. Christ, my beloved, passion and purity toe a thin line between sanctioned and sin.

My Lord, how am i to fathom your jealousy for my heart? and in the same, how do i fathom your patience in love to wait for me to reciprocate?

Lessons

10 Things I Learned while being with my Parents + Bro:

1) There is grace in a community of grace. any sin, from pride to sexual lust, has no place being there. but when exposed, it is punished accordingly and then covered with love and forgiveness.

2) as mature as i think i am, i still have so far to go.

3) i am loved for who i am by more than just God.

4) i can't cover all the bases even though i try. if anything, God's been covering all the bases that i worry about (health, wealth, emotional stability)

5) my parents are proud to have a daughter who wishes to go to missions for her summer instead of going home.

6) being an adult (parents definition: 21+ years, college grad) is so much harder emotionally than i thought it was.

7) seeing my spiritual growth has spurred my parents to continue their own growth. in this way, God is working in our family. i don't think we've prayed as a family on a vacation, like, EVER.

8) my parents haven't been the best spiritual leaders, but they're trying.

9) i can now die happy as an (amateur) artist now that i have not only seen 10 real monet paintings, but also Vermeer closet paintings, the ear-less van gogh portrait n' a da Vinci piece...

10) my dad still remembers a lot about civil engineering than i give him credit for (..."the ceiling of this subway tunnel has no pillars but its curved shape creates tension at a point to distribute the total pressure from the ground above"... etc etc)

weariness

looking for rest in the only place possible...

when the world crashes down.... you watch the Nuggets on ESPN (zomg Anthony is a BEAST)...

j/k....

heh. small afterthought after a long day spent at the Smithsonian air/space museum.

thank goodness we've got Jesus....

learning to trust

what does one do when your own flesh and blood seeks to fall into sin the way you did?

and how do i continue to trust in the Lord who allows these pitfalls to come into our lives so that though we lose parts of our hearts, our souls experience richness of grace?

oh my Lord Savior, my heart breaks to see this sin continue to flow through our family.

on beauty (II)

you know Gomer? yeah, the wayward wife, that one... the one that runs off to find her lovers even though she's redeemed by God/Hosea.

what i'm figuring out is... i think i know WHY gomer runs off to be with her lovers.
most of us just credit her adultery to being something in the form of physical lust.
like, she feels sexually unsatisfied with her husband and seeks something more fulfilling...but i think that's just the manifested fruit of a deep root.

you see, i believe the reason why she kept running off is because she didn't believe she was beautiful. as in, she didn't believe she was beautiful in Hosea/God's eyes alone. her heart had to believe that such beauty was not because men desired her, but because she was desired by someone holy

......
.....
....
...
..
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i'm starting to realize how much i respond to the imagery of the unfaithful wife because, like her, my own sense of beauty is flawed.

while standing at the mirror today, i acknowledged God's view of me being beautiful (regardless of size, pimplage, fat content, PMS-ness, etc). and in that moment, i felt, ever so slightly, a small tip of the iceberg of God's love.

i'm valuable and beautiful because HE LOVES ME. PERIOD. that's it...

scary to realize and makes absolutely no sense logically...

Wait on the Lord

why not? one last post at 2:30am... lol. idk, it sucks being up so late, but this is kind of interesting, the four of us, at the apartment, up studying...

on Shangdi

Was writing a paper on Chinese religion for one of my GEs today. basically looking over Shangdi's role in centuries and centuries of Chinese religion - especially Shang oracle bones and the big three religions of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism.

but what's struck me all is that in the beginning, the Shang had it right. Shangdi was a god meant to be feared and revered, he was a god whose approval needed to be asked.

Yet as Chinese history goes on, vain philosophy and Buddhism takes over. Di's worship diminishes until it became something perverted as selfish local worship for protection/favors. Basically, Di was reduced to a vending machine.
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my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.
"Because you have rejected knowledge,
I also reject you as my priests;
because you have ignored the law of your God,
I will also ignore your children.
~Hosea 4:6
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Israel did that, didn't they? traded their worship to the perfect God for an imitation and chanting of foreign gods. Amitofu amitofu etc. The names are different, but adultery is adultery...

Thank goodness our God is forgiving and in the business of redemption.
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Assyria cannot save us;
we will not mount war-horses.
We will never gain say 'Our gods'
to what our own two hands have made,
for in you the fatherless find compassion

"I will heal their waywardness
and love them freely,
for my anger has turned away from them."
~Hosea 14:3-4

procrastination

bittersweet.

the year's ending. senior ICAers are going to leave (pretty much forever), my friends that i've been with these last 3 years are all going our separate ways. the freshmen are going to be sophisticated morons (according to Min), and i'm going to another campus...

it's like a chapter of my life is closing. but then another is opening. yet no matter what, i can't go back to those times i had in undergrad.

but what struck me today is the feeling that i love USC. mostly because it is a place where i found God and had fellowship with him.

even though my friends are all leaving, even if i'm the only one left (which i'm not), i can rest assured that God has never changed in all this. he has never left me nor forsaken me.

and that makes it all worth it...

finals time again (artist appreciation!)

I like this...

what i mean is, the emphasis that it has. that's what i feel my mind's like, that all these "christian" things are crowding me out n' even when i'm following Him, that there's so much to do and so much to accomplish and the rush to turn things in and trouble and my sins and i know this and that and the other thing about following God and and...

well, i just forget what my focus is in all of this.

and it should simply be "JESUS."

(artwork "Jesus" by abandoned25 on deviantart.com)

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Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her...
In that day, declares the LORD,
"you will call me 'my husband';
you will no longer call me 'my master'"

~Hosea 2:14,16

in wake of a stye in the rose garden

as i was going through one of my journals from the beginning of this year, i came across this sappy thing:

How sweet my Lord's call is
as it comes in quiet whisper
through rose tinted wind I hear his voice
and in meekness do i find comfort

For love fills my heart
follow sorrow and conviction
surrender, return
and true freedom from hunger

as eyes swollen shut
now see in all colors
seen beauty fills with awe
and makes the soul warmer.