Open and Vulnerable

Hey friends,

I was having an extended time on Sunday and I decided to journal on my computer. I'm sending you what I wrote, because I'm trying to stay in community via the internet. It's unedited and you can read as much or as little as you want. It's just me thinking and reflecting and struggling and reminding myself of truth and stuff. I just wanted to share where I'm at with ya'll. Hope you're all doing well.. write me when you get a chance.. I'm fond of emails :)

27 Janeiro 2008

What does it look like for me to love God and to love people here in Brazil? I'm caught in this tension of how to relate to people here. I want to fit in, and have friends, but I'm scared of seeming too different and too much like a moral freak for people to accept me for me. I want to remain true to who I am, but up until now that person operated under totally different circumstances. I feel like I knew how to be really good at loving God and loving others in the context of New Life Church and my Christian circle of friends. Maybe loving God shouldn't be something that can change based on circumstances, but my needs are different in this new season of life, and I'm trying to understand my creator, king, and savior in a very different context than anything I'm familiar with. I'm not going to Starbucks to plan lifegroup over a grande, vanilla latte. I'm not pondering how best to invite my classmates to church or lifegroup. Now I'm trying to figure out how to love people who have a completely different background and culture than I do. I truly am different. These people didn't grow up in the church and just decided to chuck it all and party through college. That's more of what I'm used to. My friends and coworkers here are totally immersed in this materialistic, super-sexualized culture (much more than the US). It really is foreign to me. Community is one of the things that was not lacking at home in A2. Love, confession, accountability, and sound teaching were all things that were part of the ebb and flow of daily life. Loving others was easy to do in the context of encouragement, honesty, reproof, and just being together. I'm figuring out now how to love others from thousands of miles away, and how to be encouraged when the people I love most aren't physically there to give ma hug and walk with me in the struggles.
I like how Gregory Boyd describes how the church should love people. I wonder if my life and my love for people make people cry out for an explanation. I don't really think so. I think I've been more drawn into the tendency of Brazilians to gossip, make fun of other people, and to value certain people more than others. I don't want to be that kind of person. I really do want to love outrageously and ascribe unsurpassable worth to each person I meet. As CS Lewis says, "You have never met a mere mortal." Everyone is an eternal being whom God loves enough to die for, and with whom He longs to have an intimate relationship.

"If the church lives from the center and not the perimeter, and if it therefore loves as God loves, it will puzzle the sick and hungry as much as it outrages the religious. How can people love like this? In God's plan, this puzzle is what prepares people to believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and to surrender their lives to him. The evangelistic task of the Christian community, in other works, is to live and love in a way that draws people and cries out for explanation. Our proclamation only has as much credibility as our love requires explanation."
~Gregory Boyd, Repenting of Religion

I think I need to be more secure, confident and unmovable in my commitment to live as God has called me to live. If I act cool about my convictions, others should accept me for who I am, right? I guess I have no guarantees. That thought is so scary to me. I realize that I am still pretty dependant on relationships with people, even if they're people who barely know me and who don't speak the same language most of the time. If they choose to reject me, I don't have a back-up plan for my social life. I love it when I'm thinking about something and a song comes on that mirrors your thoughts at just that moment, or speaks truth that you need to be reminded of. I want to be above the influences of this world and not care what comes at me, because I'm steadfast in God's truth. For example:

God above all the world in motion, God above all my hopes and fears, and I don't care what the world throws at me now. It's going to be alright. Cuz I know my God saved the day, and I know his word never fails, and I know my God made a way for me. Salvation is here.
~Salvation is Here

I think about my passions and gifts, and I wonder how to use them here. I am a Christian, a child of God, and an heir to the kingdom of God. I have a corny sense of humor, I love to play volleyball and go running, I think I'm a good friend to people, I love to dance and sing (especially when nobody else is around), I'm vibrant, clever, well-loved, beloved, and steadfast. I mix easily with different kinds of people, and I'm happy to play cards or watch a movie with friends, have a deep conversation, or dress up, go out drinking and dancing. I consider myself a leader- socially and spiritually, but so far in Brazil, I'm following everybody else around.

My heart is steadfast, O God; I will sing, and make music with all my soul. Awake, harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn. I will praise you, O Lord, among the nations; I will sing of you among the peoples. For great is your love, higher than the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, and let your glory be over all the earth. Save us and help us with your right hand, that those you love may be delivered.
~Psalm 108:1-6

It's cool how scripture how the power to minister to you differently as you change and experience different things in life. I never really paid much attention to the phrase, "among the nations" before. Interesting how that's the phrase that jumped out at me in this passage, huh? I guess being among the nations and among the people's away from your own culture heightens your awareness to God's love for all nations.

That's all for now. Hope to hear from you soon.

Love,