Words Words Words (5/4/13)

For every one hundred men who can stand adversity, there is only one who can withstand prosperity.

- Thomas Carlyle

Invalid Excuses

We live in a day and age where almost any behavior is excusable by saying, “Well, that’s just who I am.” A person is extremely aggressive and constantly belittles others: “That’s just who they are.” Someone never finishes a task and isn’t reliable: “That’s just who they are.” Etc. etc. etc. But, should we overlook these things and cast all the blame on personality? I feel that this has become so prevalent that I sometimes don’t even think twice before excusing someone’s behavior or even my own. Thankfully, I have a loving Father who has promised to carry on to completion what he started in me, who enlightens my eyes and heart to areas which need his chisel.

I’ve asked some friends to speak into my life of things they see in my personality or behavior that need to be checked. I often use hyperbole in conversation. Is that just my personality, or should I be consciously making a change so that my words are always clear, so that I speak things like they are? Is this a personality quirk, or something I need to submit to the Father? I often look to others for approval, wanting others to be pleased with the work I have done and who I am. Is this just my personality, or do I need to learn to find myself more in His grace and only seek approval there?  I can be forgetful, forgetting to email others back, return phone calls, or do something needing to be done. Is this a quirk? Or, do I need to lay this before the throne, and beg the Father to help me be more reliable and consistent, to be actively disciplining myself? I think that, in most of these cases, the latter is the correct answer.

Something I have often been asking the Father over the past few weeks is, “Dear Lord, please let me clearly see sin as sin.” I know that my heart is deceitful; I have a little attorney inside my brain who spends all her time justifying my thoughts an actions. But, I also know that sin can be subtle. It’s not only cheating, lying, stealing, and other “well-known” sins that pose a danger to me, it is a thousand seemingly small thoughts and behaviors that focus my attention on my own comfort and needs, rather than seeking to know and glorify the Father.  It is ‘personality quirks’ that society has taught me to embrace when really they need to be surrendered and subdued.

So, what am I to do when all of society is shouting, “Be who you are! You were born this way! You’re a firework! Embrace who you are”? I should shout back, “No! I am not my own. I have been bought with a price, paid for with blood. I am His!” The Father has made me individual and unique, and I love how He crafted my brain and my heart, and I want all of me to be beautiful and honoring to Him. That takes work.

Words Words Words (5/1/14)

She chose His service. For the Lord of love
Had chosen her, and paid the awful price
For her redemption; and had sought her out,
And set her free, and clothed her gloriously,
And put His royal ring upon her hand,
And crowns of loving-kindness on her head.

- Francis Ridley Havergal



(Her biography, written by Rev. E. Davies, is so worth the read!)

Hu La Tang

It seems to me that most towns in China have some dish that they are known for. In Zhengzhou, it is Hui Mian (special hand-worked noodles). In Chongqing, it is Hot Pot.  In Wuhan, it is Duck Neck. The special dish from one of my students' hometowns is a soup called Hu La Tang. A few weeks ago, he asked me if I had tried it.

I replied, "Oh, yes. I've had this soup in the cafeteria."

"The cafeteria?!?!" he replied aghast, "That does not deserve to be called Hu La Tang."

"I think it's pretty good."

(student staring at me in disbelief)

"Sarah, next time I go home, I will bring you some real Hu La Tang from my home."

Today, I got a phone call from this student, saying that he was downstairs from my apartment with the soup for me, made specially by his uncle. Apparently the soup takes many hours and much skill to make correctly. Let me tell you, this soup blows the cafeteria soup out of the water! My student had arrived back at campus and come straight to my apartment with the still-hot soup right from home.

I really don't know how to describe it to you, other than delicious.

Words Words Words (4/26/14)

"And this I also say: you are our captain and our banner. The Dark Lord has Nine. But we have One, mightier than they: the White Rider. He has passed through the fire and abyss, and they shall fear him. We will go where he leads."

- Aragorn in The Two Towers (Tolkien)

A=X+Y+Z

Our campus is situated on Science Avenue, and if you ride your bike a few miles to the east, you will find a rather large statue of Albert Einstein. While he is most famously known for e=mc2, this statue instead has the formula A=X+Y+Z.

I looked this up on the interwebs, and found this quote:

“If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z, with X being work, Y play, and Z keeping your mouth shut.”

Very interesting... This statue will have new meaning for me as I see it so often.

Words Words Words (4/10/14)

November 2, 1856

I already love in you your beauty, but I am only beginning to love in you that which is eternal and ever precious — your heart, your soul. Beauty one could get to know and fall in love with in one hour and cease to love it as speedily; but the soul one must learn to know. Believe me, nothing on earth is given without labor, even love, the most beautiful and natural of feelings.

—Leo Tolstoy