Normal Christianity #2

Most days I feel my set-apart-ness slipping away. I laugh at the same jokes and complain the same complaints as everyone else. Sometimes though it takes an oldie-but-a-goodie to bring you back to what it’s all about.

On the train ride back from Connecticut my phone decides to play Hillsong United’s Salvation Is Here. Wow, I couldn’t imagine how refreshing that was. It was surprising given my recent foray into the works of John Owen, whose writing can only be described as having a lumbering literary gait. But this song makes its point clear and fast: God has brought salvation in our midst (Matthew 16:18, 28:20, Luke 17:21).

No other religion has this claim, that salvation is not just a future thing but a very near present thing. Nay, salvation is a person.

It is this person, Jesus Christ, who will be with us until the end of the age, and all the while we are his instruments in proclaiming the gospel. By this gospel will the kingdom be ushered and the gates of hades shall not prevail against it. Ye Christian brethren, may our lives reflect the courage worthy of these promises.

Normal Christianity #1

One retreat that impacted me like none other was Bethel's winter retreat in 2009, titled, "Christianity A to Z." Pastor Hank blew open my mind, and soon after my heart, to the way God revealed the person of Jesus in every story of the Bible, from Abraham to Moses to David. This supposedly basic Christian teaching was a hard thing to swallow, in large part because of its peculiar absence in my initial Christian years when I would ostensibly be learning the "basics."

And so it is with all "basic" Christian teachings. We never stray too far from our baby "spiritual milk" (1 Corinthians 3:2) because sin is never too far in grounding us (Genesis 4:7).

All that was to really preface this first reflection in how I am attempting to live out normal Christianity in my maturation to full independence. I mean "independence" in the sense that the student environment provided many guards and brackets that shielded worldly temptations I now face, and "normal" in the sense of a "basic" Christian walk.

The first basic principle I must remind myself overandoverandover again is that every individual -- of the thousands that surround me everyday -- is in part a reflection of the eternal God (Genesis 1:27). Let's start with that. The implications are as such:

    There is a beauty about every individual because of God's own beauty.
    There is a respect due unto every individual because of God's own authority.
    There is an infinite value ascribed to each individual because of God's sovereign purposes.

This principle has been most effective in my everyday relational attitude. How can I disrespect any individual if God himself is imaged in him? How can I not have compassion on any individual if God sacrificed his son to bring him close? Innate human dignity is an epic level-setter that vertically silences my righteous heart and molds it into a vessel of grace for its daily horizontal transactions.

What Coworkers and I Laugh About #2

Let me totes end this non-series series.

• Using a rolling backpack at work elicits the same responses as it would in middle school.
  
• I am famous among security guards in Frisco because I badged incorrectly. I also invoke memories of the Vietnam War.
  
• A lesson in resource estimates: “Throwing more resources in this situation would be as useless as telling a pregnant woman that she can cut her lead-time from 9 months to 4 with help from another person.”

2014 Houston, Dallas Trip

• Houston: Breakfast Klub, Galleria, +Peter Wu + Jennifer Wedding, Dim Sum + Museum, Pool Park, Goode Company +Kevin Lee +Dustin Shung 
• Dallas: Boiling Crab, Tapoica Bar, Plano, , Holy Grail Pub, LA Burger +Jonathan Kang +Yonjoo Jane Lim +Samuel Lui +Eric Chen 
• +Lucy Song +Yolanda Z