A Reminder

"But thanks be to God! He gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain."

1 Corinthians 15:57-58

One of the most discouraging ideas that can creep into one's head is the notion that what she does is without effect or purpose. Lately this has been increasingly tempting for me to believe. Often I ask myself what all I do really adds up to. I want to see the fruit of my labor, to see some product or result. I don't think that this is all that uncommon of a desire. We all want to have evidence of the value of our efforts. Often we work for the results, for what our labor produces. Honestly, I cannot say that I have seen the results of my labor in any traditional sense. It is strange for me to grow accustomed to a "job" that essentially has no distinct parameters or description other than to pursue and love youth so that they may encounter Jesus and come to a right relationship with God. I am not even so certain as to what this looks like in a practical sense. This is something I am figuring out. I am used to working for a wage, or as a student to work for a grade, but to labor without a clear idea of success is difficult. Being here is not easy for me. Often times, I feel a deep longing for home, for the familiar, for family, and friends. If I had no purpose in being here, my discomfort and struggles in being here would be pointless. However, there is purpose, but this purpose does not exist because my labor has results that I can see. I have read the verse from 1 Corinthians that I quoted above many times and have found great encouragement in knowing that my labor in the Lord is not in vain. That is a nice concept, but without an understanding of why our labor is not in vain it becomes a shallow, but beautiful idea. Something to be written on a placard or printed on a mug. This past week I went back and read all of the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians and I realized something that I had never noticed before. The whole chapter speaks about resurrection, victory and newness, freedom and forgiveness. Paul essentially says that if resurrection is not possible, if Christ did not raise from the dead, then we are fools to be pitied above all others and that we do not have salvation. The resurrection is the very cornerstone of our faith and the very thing that gives us victory from sin and death. I noticed something else though about resurrection. The verse I quoted above says to let nothing move us, to give ourselves fully to the labor of the Lord, knowing that it is not in vain, but why? The key to this verse is the previous statement "But thanks be to God! He gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore..." Oh, that sweet "therefore" that is so characteristic of Paul's writing. We should stand firm, we can know that our labor in the Lord is not in vain not because it produces results that we can see or because it produces results at all, but because we have victory in Jesus Christ. Laboring for the Lord is a response to Christ, to the power of his resurrection in our lives, not because we are expected to achieve something on our own or of our own, some success to testify to the validity of our service. Our labor is not in vain because there is already victory in it and it is motivated by something that is unchanging, something that happened not in vain, but to bring us into a relationship with God, free from sin and from human regulation. What a peace it is to labor not in vain, but with freedom and with victory. 

Arizona On My Mind

I absolutely love my landlord, Mr. Divis. He is simply one of the nicest landlords that I have ever encountered. Not only does he regularly stop by to give us jars of homemade pickles or fresh chives and parsley, but he actually engages us in conversation. Which must be painful for him considering the pathetic level of my Czech abilities. So yesterday he stops by to see if we want to buy fresh eggs from him. We now have over two dozen brown eggs sitting on our coffee table. He starts having a conversation with Leah, who he affectionally calls Maruska. 

Mr. D: "Hey Maruska! How are you?"

Leah: "Oh, I am fine."

Mr.D: "Do you want to buy some eggs?"

Blah Blah Blah...

Mr. D: "Hey does she ski?" (he points at me)

Me: (To Leah) "No, not really. Unless you count that time I ran into another woman while going down the bunny hill."

Leah: (To Mr. D) "No she doesn't, she is from the desert. She is from the state of Arizona."

Mr. D: "She is? Oh, I knew  a girl from Arizona. Do you remember Ruth Leah?"

Leah: "Yeah I do. I forgot she was from Arizona."

At this point Mr. D leaves the apartment and comes back in about five minutes with a book for me. The book is "Arizona On My Mind". A collection of pictures from around the state. Seriously, what a sweet man. Looking at that book made me really nostalgic. Pictures of sunsets, lightening storms, down town Tucson in all its glorious ghetto splendor, the mountains, Bisbee, my favorite quirky mining town, etc. Oh, Arizona! How I love thee. 

Whenever I am away from Arizona I always miss it. I will defend that desert land and its beauty to anyone. I have still not seen a sunset that can top the ones I have seen there and the mountains still hold for me a certain beauty, one that has been carved into them over year and years. I wonder if I will ever be able to get this place out of my heart. So here's to Arizona. Yes, you are on my mind. 

The Czech Scarf

I really like wearing scarves. Yes, I am from a desert where the temperature rarely gets cold enough to validate wearing one, but never the less i own a ridiculous amount of scarves. I even wear them with T-shirts, which didn't used to be cool when I first started doing it, but is now acceptable, especially if paired with some skinny legged jeans and an indie looking shirt. I still don't have the skinny legged jeans thing down (believe me, I have tried) but I can really rock a scarf with confidence and I listen to indie music, so that should count. Right?

Well, when I am in a new culture I like to acculturate myself through picking up on the fashion of the country. In Guatemala this was a challenge considering it would have been slightly offensive, not to mention ridiculous, for me to wear traditional Mayan costume, but here it is different. Anyways, of all the "in" fashions here in the Czech my favorite is the "druggie" scarf (named so because it is generally associated with hippies and druggies who often wear them. I have always wanted to be a hippie, at least in theory, so this is great for me). I finally bought one and have felt instantly more Czech, and, if I say so myself,  look pretty cool when I wear it. That is depending on your definition of cool. These scarves are everywhere here. Absolutely everywhere.  It is like a symbol of Czech youth and style. However, this scarf seems to be showing up other places also.

Last night I was watching Heroes, my one connection to American popular culture, when what do I see? A czech scarf! One character is banished to some unnamed remote part of Africa

where he is approached by an African (I know this term is really broad, but I don't know specifically where he is from) man wearing wearing a Czech scarf (See picture).

Obviously, this scarf is not exclusive to the Czech Republic. In fact, I know that its origins are of another country, I am told Egypt (that makes sense) but still, I was so excited to see it being rocked out on the show. Yes, the scarf is officially cool now and apparently very versatile. If the African man can wear the Czech scarf in the desert, then I can work it in AZ for sure. Wait a minute, I will be in Colorado. Oh, well, I guess the point is that I am bringing this fashion home. The perfect Czech/African/American accessory whether hot or cold. 

Bratislava, Slovakia

Fortune Cookie

I opened up my Bible today and out fell a fortune from a cookie I ate a month ago.

It reads: Der Humor bringt Dich in schwierigen Situationen weiter, verliere ihn nicht.

Oh great, I can't read German.

Wait a minute...I flip it over and...

In English this time: Don't lose your sense of humor. It helps you through difficult situations.

Finally a fortune cookie that tells the truth. I have to remember this for times such as when I forget to label the prices on my fruits and vegetables and I have to struggle through my limited Czech to tell the girl at information about my slip up while the entire line waits for me. Or the times when I get on the wrong train and end up miles away from where I want to be. Or how about when I get yelled at in Czech because I am texting and standing in someone's way but don't realize it because I have no idea what she is saying. Each day I face moments where my foreignness makes me feel ignorant and foolish. But I take heart. Really all I can do is laugh. Thanks fortune for reminding me.

Presence

"A loving Personality dominates the Bible, walking among the trees of the garden and breathing fragrance over every scene. Always a living Person in present, speaking, pleading, loving, working, and manifesting himself whenever and wherever His people have the receptivity necessary to receive the manifestation."

A.W. Tozer

The Pursuit of God

There are a few things that have become more apparent to me as I have gotten older. One is that I don't know as much as I think I do, and the other is that I desperately need God. I need to experience him in more than an intellectual way. I need to know him as a father, as a brother, as a friend. I need to find my self in his presence, not simply viewing the brilliance of his glory through through a veil of self imposed distance. It is immensely easier to be contented with such a distance when there are so many noble things to fill it. I have always been a runner. By that I mean someone who runs to one thing or another, to one friend or family member to share my pains with, my joys, my thoughts, desires, and burdens. I seldom find my place of rest in the presence of God. When trouble strikes, when pain pierces my heart, when a burden comes that I cannot carry on my own I am all too quick to pick up the phone and call a friend, to escape in some activity or company of people, to busy myself so as to forget or to postpone. Being here, away from all the common comforts and pleasant distractions of my "normal" life, has only made it unavoidably evident that when it comes down to it, it really is just me and God. As I walked home from the train station the other day I started to cry. The ironic thing is that I had just gotten back from a great weekend with a youth group I work with. However, as I walked home by myself and in the quite of my own thoughts a sense of being completely alone came over me. I wanted to grab my cell phone and call a friend to reassure myself this was not true and to set my mind at ease, but I realized that with all of my good friends being across the Atlantic Ocean that this was not an option. So I kept walking, wiping tears, and avoiding eye contact with passers by. I prayed. I prayed with more honesty than I have in a long time. I prayed to God as if  he was my friend on the line. Not with eloquence or with well phrased requests and adoration, but with simplicity and honest pleas. I have always been drawn to the Psalms because of the way they portray and express unhindered human emotion and experience. I mean, the psalmist was one messed up and confused man, crying out to God and asking why he has forgotten him in one breath and in the next praising God for his abundant goodness and proclaiming the great deeds of the Lord. But aren't we all like this? Grasping for God and yet at the same time cursing him for his supposed distance or distraction from us, form our needs. I want to pray to God as the psalmist does, with shocking confidence and vulnerability. He does not hold back, he doesn't pretend, he doesn't reserve his prayers for only praise but for confession, for admitting his great doubt and need, for honestly laying his most painful experiences of his heart before God. The psalmist doesn't offend God with this vulnerability, he confesses his belief in his presence in his nearness to his need. He cries out to God knowing that he is not crying out in vain, his cries are expressions of trust, expressions of utter recognition that God is among him, within him, near to him, intertwining himself in our deepest desires, pain, and burdens. Intellectually I know this is true of God myself. I know that he is forever present and intimately aquatinted with all of me, but I don't act this way. I act as if I need something more, as if God were distant and uninterested, incapable of meeting my needs or untrustworthy with my pain and supplications. The reality is that I will always treat God as distant as long as I accept him intellectually but refuse a relationship with him that is experiential. In other words, I must experience God. I must experience his presence and simply know that he is there. A.W. Tozer writes, "God is so vastly wonderful, so utterly and completely delightful that He can , without anything other than himself, meet and overflow the deepest demands of our total nature, mysterious and deep as that nature is. " This is what first drew me to God and this truth is what must sustain me in my relationship with him. I regret that the only thing standing between me and the presence of God is my own self living on unrepentant and uncruicified, to steal the words of Tozer. Coming into the presence of God requires a coming out from behind the veil of ourselves, but the death of self is painful. I think what I am experiencing here is a little bit of this death. Though I am resistant and I complain whole heartedly for having to go through it, it is a death that I cannot escape. It seems impossible to be here and refuse to be in the reality that I can experience God's presence. God is a knowable God, a God that has always chosen to be present among us, to be aquatinted with our sorrows, to know fully the pull of temptation. After all, was Jesus not Emmanuel, God with us, the Word that dwelt among us? God "is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:27-28). If only I would realize how truly present God is. What difference that would make. 

Ontoño

 Has entrado al otoño 

me dijiste 

y me sentí temblar 

hoja encendida 

que se aferra a su tallo 

que se obstina 

que es párpado amarillo 

y luz de vela 

danza de vida 

y muerte 

claridad suspendida 

en el eterno instante 

del presente. 

By: Claribel Alegria

List #2: Thanksgiving

I find at times when it seems things seem difficult, when I would rather mourn that which I don't have, it is better to be deliberately thankful. These are some things I am genuinely thankful for right now here in the Czech.

1) My roommates: Leah and Bonnie

2) My fellow ESI's

3) Erin 

4) Melissa

5) My Strakonice girls: Eva, Naomi, Lucka, Leni, Zuzka, Kakuse, Jana, Lydie, Hanicka, and so many more lovely ladies that teach me and encourage me.

6) Great neighbors: Alca and Martin

7) Friends and family that I know are praying for me and love me back home

8) Conversations on Skype at 1am

9) All the JV staff

10) Exit 316 Club

11) Elim Church and Youth Group

12) Getting emails from people I care about

13) The beautiful Czech countryside

14) Having time to simply love people

15) That my job is to build relationships

16) No homework

17) I have time to read

18) The All Star Girl's Bible study

19) The fact that I am growing up through staying young

20) The simple wisdom and encouragement of teenage girls

21) Cesky Budejovice Youth Group! (Kikina, Marketa, Martina, Dr. Eddy, Sarka, Anicka, Bara, Katka, Lukas, Marek, Honza and Petr H., and so many more awesome people!)

22) Trains

23) Having time to really think

24) Being humbled by everyday tasks (i.e. grocery shopping, going to the store, sending a letter, etc.)

25) My lovely flat and the park outside

26) Having more than I need

27) The fact that my roommates are always willing to eat my cooking experiments even when they fail miserably

28) Tea houses

29) That everyday I learn something new

30) That I can finally understand a lot of what I hear

31) Leah's translating abilities

32) Great Indian food

33) Learning how to be a conservationist Czech style. This culture is so creative with how they reduce, reuse, and recycle. I even turned a spaghetti jar into a fancy change container.

34) Laughing and making random comments with Leah when we watch movies

35) The leaves changing colors

36) Everyone in Tabor, especially Lenka

37) For being part of something bigger than myself

38) Being able to travel around CZ to visit old friends

39) God's abundant goodness and provision

40) families that shower their hospitality on me and show me what it means to live in community

I think that is enough for now. I am thankful that there are so many more things I have to be thankful about.

2x3 Campaign: A Generation Waits

Next Generation from Josiah Venture on Vimeo.

One Percent from Josiah Venture on Vimeo.

FALLing Slowly