What a Friend we have...

As this portion of my summer comes to a close I am gathering up all the parts of me that have grown and viewing the woman God re-created this summer.  He spent a year ripping out each individual thread of my being so He could stitch me back together following His pattern instead of my own sloppy one. 

Revelation 7:9-10

"After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: 'Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.'"

I have felt a sense of homesickness for my eternal home before, missing my Abba Father and longing for the day when the pain and salty tears of the earth will leave me forever. But more than that, as we discussed those verses in Revelation last night, I realized that I miss my sweet sweet Jesus. I’ve identified the feeling of homesickness for my true home and the peace it will bring.  I’ve understood that I miss God the Father, my Daddy in Heaven; I take joy and comfort in the Holy Spirit’s constant presence; but Jesus is in Heaven and last night I was struck with an intense missing Him.

When I leave here on Monday I will miss the relationships I’ve formed here.  I currently miss my school friends, my sister, and most of all my mom.  Those people all know me so well and that’s why I do and will miss them.  I desire the comfort that comes from having your loved one’s close by.  More than anyone on earth Jesus knows my heart to it’s very fullest.  He took my sin and not only saw it, but also felt it, experienced it, suffered and died for it.  He took the full blame and the full punishment for it.  He knows the sins even I can’t remember and sees the depth of the sin I’ll never admit to anyone.  And yet, after all that, He keeps no record of my wrongs.  He doesn’t harbor anger or hostility towards me for the price my sin cost Him.  He isn’t self-righteous, though He has every right to be.  My Jesus Messiah doesn’t shun me with the knowledge of the darkest pits and depths of my sin.  He embraces the rotten, filthy, dank pit that is my soul and fills it with His love till it’s overflowing.  My selfish pride, vanity, gossiping, etc, held him bound by nails to a cross for gut-wrenching hours and somehow He sits in heaven today fully understanding all of that and pouring His love in heaps and bounds out on me anyway. 

How could I not miss such an indescribable perfect Savior? What a glorious day it will be when I am given that white robe to forever truly offer my entire self to worship my Jesus Messiah, Name above all names.  

Pretty Woman

A good friend this week pointed me towards some verses in I Peter that have been on my mind ever since. 

I Peter 3:3-4 says, “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as the braiding of hair and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes.  Instead it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.”

My week of practicing the fruits of the spirit has been trying but exhilarating.  It most certainly pushed me to rely on the Lord in a very constant way. Don’t be intimidated, I didn’t do the best of jobs. But it was refreshing to find such dependence on the Lord. 

I’m not giving up the fruits; my mangoes and pineapples and grapes and oranges are all staying in my fruit basket as best as I can make them fit.  But this week I’m caught with these verses from I Peter in my mind. I truly and completely desire to be a strong woman of the Lord, one like my best friend and Mom always modeled for me.  A gentle and quiet spirit. Someone who loves the Father above all else and embraces being His daughter.  Someone who is forgiving, doesn’t gossip, practices intentionality and pours kindness onto everyone she meets.  
Often as women we find our beauty in our physical attributes, our great sense of style, our name brand clothing or the classy way we apply makeup.  But this week I’ve just been longing to desire to gush that kindness and gentle spirit on those around me. I pray that God will change my desires from that of worldly beauty to a spirit wholly pleasing to my King.  I know the Most High treasures me and it isn’t even enough to present Him with my stumbling gentle spirit, but I want above all else to behave in a manner that my Abba finds ‘great worth’ in. 

Asian Persuasion

             This week I built relationships with some very unlikely characters.  First came my sweet foreign coworkers who are living here for the summer through a program with their school in China. 

            Last week we took them all bowling.  It was a hodge-podge group for sure, but it turned out to be one of the best nights of my summer thus far.  One girl in particular has stolen my heart.  Nikki is an English major back in China, and she desires to be a translator someday so her English is pretty well developed.  She stands about 4’ll but has a smile that makes up for her small stature.  That night we bonded over our horrid bowling abilities, had numerous girly bursts of laughter, and whispered about her small crush on one of the boys in her program.  Then, a Buddhist bracelet she had given me as a gift brought up a conversation about my faith, which snowballed into a fervent interrogation where she asked me question after question.  I gave her some verses to go home and find on the internet, and we promised to continue our conversation as soon as possible.

            Now fast forward to Sunday evening at our Beach Project Co-worker Picnic.  Nikki was thrilled to be there, and finally she brought up the verses she’d read, and admitted that while she understood what they said she felt she needed a real life example to truly grasp their meaning.  At that exact moment my friend Josh got up to share his testimony, and Nikki listened with rapt attention. 

            Afterwards, she turned to me with tears in her eyes.  In her soft-spoken voice she told me she just wanted to go back to China and tell everyone she knew about this love, but that she needed to figure out how she could be a Christian first.  I was so overwhelmed and hardly knew what to say, but we talked a bit more and then decided she would really think about the weight of that decision over the next few days and we’d meet together Wednesday night. 

            I’m desperately praying for the Lord to call Nikki to Him.  Her questions and searching are such an encouragement, and I’d ask everyone pray for my darling new Chinese best friend as she searches for God’s love and gets closer to making the decision to follow Christ. 

            My new friends aren’t isolated to the Eastern Hemisphere.  I also had the pleasure of chatting with a cheerful man named Richard for the good part of an hour this week.  He is a pretty regular customer at the Golden Arches and we got to have some discussion about God and the sinner’s in the church.  Richard is an agnostic, and he was pretty open about how the negative experiences he’s had with members of the church caused him to turn against it. Richard definitely gave me a chance to brush up on the old debate skills, but we parted as friends and I can’t wait to run into him again.  My prayers are also with Richard this week; I ache for him to see that as hateful as church members have been towards him God is that much and even more loving. 

            Pray that I will be bold in my faith in all my conversations with these unlikely friends.  And Wednesday Nikki is teaching me to cook some traditional Chinese recipes… So pray I don’t poison us in the process.  

Mango Love, Pineapple Patience

Growing up I knew that as a Christian people should be able to see fruit in your life.  Not pineapples or mangos (both of which are new smoothie flavors at McDonald’s this week, go check them out!) but the fruits of the spirit.  Galatians 5:22-23 says, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."  An extremely common passage, but boy am I re-learning how to actually live that out this summer. 

Today I overheard one of my more antagonizing co-workers tell another girl from Beach Project to ‘lighten up’, because he ‘only likes to rile up the missionary girls.’ That’s what I am to him, a missionary girl.  So it is completely my responsibility to show him what that term means. Christian, little Christ, missionary girl, Jesus Freak. Pick your label, I am comprehending today what the full weight of my title at McDonald’s this summer really means and the affect it should have on my actions.  So from now on, the goal isn’t to get my serving times in the 90’s or to pass out each tray with the perfectly arranged order, because those things don’t really matter at all.  When eternity stares my co-workers in the face they won’t be answering to the Lord about the quality or fries they made in this life. So I’m done stressing about the amount of money our store earns in an hour, and I’m going to start focusing on bearing my fruit.

Love, when a customer makes a wrongly directed spiteful comment.

Joy, when the hours in the workday multiply with every tick of the clock hand.

Peace, when the lobby is full of impatient guests and you’re the only cashier taking orders.

Patience, when your sweet foreign co-worker takes 10 minutes to make a small fry.

Kindness, when the new trainee has to ask where the grape jelly is 36 different times.

Goodness, when it’s already 15 minutes past your shift end and they beg you to stay another half hour to cover the labor shortage.

Faithfulness, when you just don’t feel like getting up at 4:00 a.m. for work but you show up smiling anyway.

Gentleness, when stress bubbles explode and the opportunity comes to yell back or smile and quietly continue.

Self-Control, when a chocolate milkshake is made instead of the requested vanilla and it gets offered to you before the trashcan.

But if I just don’t eat the whipped cream topping on those milkshakes I’d say that’s avoiding gluttony pretty well, wouldn’t you?