Do you hate yourself?

Well do you? I was reading a blog the other day that I can't seem to get off my mind. It spoke about verses that are challenging to us. I didn't respond, but since then, I think that Jesus has answered for me... and there are so many. (all of these are NKV: New Kara Version. For actual verses click on the link at the end)

I took you into the desert to humble you and to test you and to see what was in your heart. (Deut 8:2)

Anyone who is not disciplined is illigitimate and not a true son . (Heb 12:8)

Woe are you when men think well of you, like you, you are well fed, are fat and rich. (Luke 6:24-26)

There are so many more, and maybe I will keep adding to this as more are shown to me.... but one that keeps coming back to me over the past couple of years is when Jesus talks about the price tag that is stuck on the product we sometimes call discipleship.

Anyone who wants to follow has to kill everything he knew about his life, and leave it behind to follow a different life. And if you like the old life better, in fact, unless you HATE the old life, you are not worthy to come.

I remember once sitting in a Dunkin Doughnuts in Bankok, Thailand and just weeping over this text. I was longing for an earthly home, and yet I knew that I was going to get on a plane in a couple of days, and I was going to go back to China for another semester- going back to this other foriegn home that I had made. I felt the weight of denying my father and mother for the first time in my life. But hating myself. This has been a much longer journey.

When I was in DC I went to the Holocoust Museum. It was a really amazing experience, but one of the things that I stopped to write down- was a quote from a German Jew who was a famous writer (so famous that I can't remember him) and came to America during the holocoust. This is how the quote read:

"I think I am so lucky to be alive.
But last night as I lay in bed
I thought
'survival of the fittest'
and I hated myself."

Do I hate myself? He had been among the "saved" yet he felt the weight of self-hatred because he knew of those who were dying. I know this is not the same thing that Jesus meant when he said we are to hate ourselves... but for some reason I can't help but think that there has to ba an anology there. To find the weight of the lost in the light of my own salvation. What does this look like?

how might ours read?

I am so lucky to be alive.
But last night as I lay in bed
I thought
"predestination"
and I hated myself?

Slanted perspective

It's been a while since I have posted. I was in Washington, D.C. most of last week, and then I returned home to a pressing deadline (which came this morning, thus leaving me to waste the rest of the day away/ “work on my thesis”). I have several blog thoughts sketched out in my mind and scribbled quickly on whatever I had in my purse at the time, so hopefully those will come through sometime soon.

While I was in DC I had the amazing opportunity to visit the National Gallery of Art. I love going to art museums. So many lessons are infused through my little eyes I always wonder how to take it all in. We only had 30 minutes to spend there, so my eyes quickly scanned the walls of splattered paint on canvas. Somehow I came to the impressionistic section. I always find these painting so interesting. Monet… Renoir… as they begin their masterpieces, surely they must have looked like utter fools to those around them.

As I approach those who are looking at these works of art, standing a fair distance away, I always like to buck the system.

I love to walk right up to the painting, as if I am going to kiss it. Face to face.

And look it in the eye.

From this distance the painting does not look so masterful. From here it is hard to even tell that it is a coherent painting at all. Clumpy textures, jagged edges and seeming random brushstrokes compose the life of this painting. If I were there, I would tell the painter that this is not what the outline of a sun looks like. There is not red in the sky. You should not put yellow in the water- can't you see that it's BLUE!

But then I step away and the chaos comes into view.

Slowly my eyes focus on the dark strokes that seemed so out of place, and I realize that they were accentuating a bridge. I look a little longer and I see that the white was not an attempt to cover up a mistake, but in fact it is a cloud.

It is only when I step away that I see that the composition was made by one more talented than I. With a mind, a perspective, that could see what I could not see.

This is Easter. NO ONE was about taking the obligitory Easter pictures, including the dog, so I'm amazed that these turned out! I can't believe that they are so big. (do I sound like an old woman, or what?) 

This is the William, the coolest second nephew a girl could ever hope for. Isn't he the cutest thing you've ever seen? 

Noah (the coolest first nephew ever) with his bass- Chewie... yes, he named it, yes it's short for Chewbacca.