Hello, stranger.

You made me smile, unexpected kindness in an apathetic world, unprecedented warmth among cold people. Such a sense of being deliberate, yet nothing to connect it to. No one’s looked at me like this before. No… no romance, no attraction, nothing like that… but a peer into my heart… I wonder what you saw?

Yes, I felt something with you today. 

And will you now say goodbye?

I walked the same street I always walk, from the mundane job I lend my brain to for 8 1/2 hours, to the same brown apartment building, with nothing on my mind but the show I recorded for tonight, and the fact that today, is Thursday… the weekend, meager as it, is in sight.

Yes. Yes, that’s my wallet. thank you… I didn’t realized that I dropped it. You may not know this, but for this second, my routine was disrupted… Because I don’t know. I don’t know what hope is. I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know what’s beyond my world that’s so small and so not even about me. So what’s your deal? You have in hope in you? You have answers?

 And will you now say goodbye? And will you now just walk away?

Do you feel that war waging inside you? When time slowed down and you realized that at this moment all of heaven peered on you and I, that the blur of the crowds of thousands of people walking on the brink of death brought your focus to me, do you see me beyond my language, my color, my occupation, or mood? Do you see me with the same eye that He saw you with? Was this homeless, Jewish man culturally irrelevant to you? A source of embarrassment? Do you see Him as a mere byproduct of your American culture, surely incompatible to an Asian woman like me? Is He just a man? Does He love me?

Does He love me?

Does He love me?

Does He love me?

What price will must I pay for your embarrassment, over your fear of my rejection, over your adherence to cultural ideals? 

My soul?

Is love just politeness to you? A dollar to a homeless man? A smile to a tired woman? And open door to a crippled man? 

How will I know unless someone preach to me? How will I believe if I do not know?

Will you now say goodbye?

Will you now say goodbye?

Goodness and Mercy

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…” Psalm 23:6a

When we read this text, where are our hearts? do we expect coming days of prosperity? Do we look for our physical well being to defy the rest of creation that groans? Do we seek an exemption to death itself? Our God must be BIGGER than these things. For to ask God to fit goodness and mercy within the human definition of it is below His character. Goodness and mercy are in the here and now. They are even in the things plague us because those things drive us to Him. Goodness and mercy are in our ailments because those things set our hope in the eternal. Broken hearts are earmarks of those who Jesus said are poor Spirit… to those that Jesus has given the kingdom of Heaven. Goodness and mercy is in the knowledge of God, the gift of His eternal presence we will one day enjoy fully, with no need of faith, as our very beings will be devastated by His majesty. 

Do not believe this text is merely of a future earthly situation better than the one you have now. God is bigger than this. This text is for the here and now and the “forevermore.”

“… and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”