2 Corinthians 4

4 Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God,^[a] we do not lose heart. ² But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice^[b] cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. ³ And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. ⁴ In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. ⁵ For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants^[c] for Jesus' sake. ⁶ For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

⁷ But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. ⁸ We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; ⁹ persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; ¹⁰ always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. ¹¹ For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. ¹² So death is at work in us, but life in you.
¹³ Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, ¹⁴ knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. ¹⁵ For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
¹⁶ So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self^[d] is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, ¹⁸ as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
  --- 2 Corinthians 4

In chapel yesterday, a woman spoke of her struggle with not being able to conceive a baby and depression. The message of her talk was that we will face hard times. Or at least, that's what stuck out to me. Most people left chapel either red-eyed or in tears. She didn't share this passage in her talk, but her talk pushed me to the Scriptures. I read a chapter from my normal devotional time, but was yearning for more instruction so I started flipping to Paul. I landed on 2 Corinthians because I had the second page dog-eared and wanted to rediscover whatever it was that caught my special attention however long ago. This whole chapter spoke to me.

We like to think that following Christ is easy. We get eternal life, a wealth of community and family, God provides, and we grow. But sometimes, the community or family we have hurts us more than our enemies, God provides less or differently than we anticipate, growth is painful, and according to this passage, having eternal life is, well, hard in our mortal bodies. This passage guarantees physical, emotional, and spiritual troubles. 

Have you ever considered your body or heart to be a representation of Christ crucified? "For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh" (v11). We are not alone in this battle, this fight, or struggle. Jesus has gone before, shared our humanness, and has already felt our heavy heart, the tears that roll down our cheeks, the anxiety, the pain, the isolation. 

The Father promises resurrection. "Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison" (v16-17). Notice the word light. 'This light affliction.' Whatever taxing experience we go through, it certainly never feels like a light affliction. A miscarriage, a broken relationship, joblessness. It is a light load we bare in comparison with Christ. He bore God's wrath so this affliction would be light, bearable. Yet, we will still see a glory we cannot even wrap our brains around when all our afflictions cease.

"But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us" (v7). 'Jars of clay.' The perishable. The mortal. Anything and everything that is not eternal. I used to think that 'jars of clay' were material possessions. Now I believe the connotation is broader than that. I've discovered my treasures are specific people or the relationships I have with them. For the chapel speaker, her treasure was to be a mother, a dream she'd had since childhood. When things go wrong in my relationships or friends fall away, I can't control them. I have to surrender them to God. We're simple and powerless for a purpose. That purpose is to magnify God's character. If we were powerful, where would God be? Forgotten. Neglected. Not glorified. Our work would be of ourselves which is directly contradicted by this passage.

The phrase "we do not lose heart" is used twice in this chapter. In case Paul's message isn't clear, he tells us in Ephesians and Galatians to 'not lose heart.' 
Galatians 6:8-9 --- "For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not lose heart." 
Ephesians 3:11-13 ---"This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory." 
Do not lose heart, brothers and sisters. God will sustain you. "We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;" (v8-9). God sustains, renews, carries the situation for us. He sustains us through his Body. One of the things the speaker at chapel pointed out, is that God uses the body of Christ to help us carry our burdens. When we need to hear Biblical truth and have an example of God's love to remind us of who He is. Community with the Body is important. The Body prays for us and with us when we cannot. The Body lifts our burdens when it is too heavy for us to carry on our own.

"For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God" (15). The affliction and suffering are for your sake. How often we plead for God to take away our affliction and not consider what He wants to teach us through it. As God gives grace to you, he also passes it to others through you. This reminds me of a family back home where the daughter has been incredibly sick for two years now. (At least, I think it's two years.) She's been in and out of the hospital constantly, has had numerous trips to Cleveland to see specialists, and was in a nursing home for two or three months. Talk about affliction! But God. I want you to think about that for a second. But God. Their family has become strong as a unit and as individuals. They give me hope. They give friends and family hope. The grace God has given them has poured out to other who know them. If this family can pull through this affliction with God's grace, maybe I can too. I'm confident that this family would not be such a strong example of Christ without this affliction in their lives. It has not been easy for them or anyone who knows them, but the reward they are reaping is significantly greater. God is given glory in this affliction.

Do not lose heart during your light afflicted, brothers and sisters. He's got a plan and He will carry you through it. If you are afflicted, burdened, I encourage you to read this passage and ask the Spirit to comfort you. <3
 

 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. --- Ephesians 3:20-21

In Our Own Tongue

This link, brings you to a website with a video of the Kimyal people receiving a New Testament. In their own language. For the first time. Videos like this touch my heart and help me remember why Bible translation is so important.

Enjoy. :)

Two is Better than One... Unless They're Wives.

For my hour of contribution to the lovely SIL program, every day I spend a little over an hour with the five-year-olds (The Get-Along-Gang). There are nine of them this year and they're from all over the world. Very few of them were even born on the North American continent (if at all).

Whenever I go to the Get-Along-Gang classroom, they're usually eating snack or returning from playing outside. After their snack, it's time for a Bible story. Miss Aubrey (the childcare staff for the 5s) must think I do a good job because she frequently asks me to read it to them. Last week, one of our stories was about Jacob, Rachel, and Leah. I'd never read the story of Jacob quite like it was in this particular child's Bible Story book before. In fact, none of the stories are written in your 'usual' children's Bible Storybook way. A number of the stories point straight to Christ or to the deep message that the story symbolizes.

The story mentioned that Leah was ugly and Jacob loved Rachel, not Leah. Ok, we're normal so far, but then the it said something like, "But God loved Leah, even though Jacob didn't. People thought Leah was ugly, but she was not ugly to God. She was His beautiful daughter, His princess. So God gave her lots of children to show her how much He loved her." There was a picture of a happy looking Leah with five or six little boys clustered around her and she was looking toward heaven with a smile.

I'd never really thought about it that way before. Yes, God blessed Leah with children since Jacob didn't love her, but I hadn't thought of it as God showing how much He loved her. I guess I only ever really thought about it as a pity thing.

In my personal Bible time today, I read the real story (Gen 29-30). Leah acknowledges the Lord in the naming of her first four sons. I think there's a difference between the first three and fourth, however.
Reuben- "the LORD sees my affliction; therefore my husband will love me"
Simeon- "Because the LORD has heard that I am unloved, He has therefore given me this son also"
Levi- "Now this time my husband will become attached to me"
These three are yearning for the attention of her husband. Notice the third time, she does not mention the LORD. It could be she was growing in desperation for his affection. Any normal woman would.

Judah- "This time I will praise the LORD" 

I looked through a couple of online commentaries to see if they had anything to say about this particular difference. It's not talked about much. The family drama between the sisters throughout the rest of the story and comparing Rachel to Hannah (1 Sam) is a more common topic. The only commentary that talked about said this: "Her fourth she called Judah, praise, saying, Now will I praise the Lord. And this was he, of whom, as concerning the flesh Christ came. Whatever is the matter of our rejoicing, ought to be the matter of our thanksgiving. And all our praises must center in Christ, both as the matter of them, and as the Mediator of them. He descended from him whose name was praise, for he is our praise. Is Christ formed in my heart? Now will I praise the Lord." (Wesley's Explanatory Notes)

Did Leah know the Promised One would come from Judah? I don't know. But I like to think that the children's Bible Story was right. I think Leah did find comfort in the LORD. Not only in His gift of fertility, but in who He is. Yes, Leah had her bad days. Wouldn't anybody related to someone like contentious Rachel have bad days? Her life, whether she agreed in deceiving Jacob or not, was hard. But she was still chosen and used by God. His promise was for her too. And He loved her.

It's hard to remember that the stories we read our children are for our benefit, too. We can never be reminded too often of God's care. We can never be reminded too frequently of His sovereignty. 


"Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her." --Hosea 2:14

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." --Matthew 5:8

Intellectual

I'm not the sharpest spoon in the drawer, the brightest candle in the box, the strongest timber in the forrest or whatever they say in your region of the country or world.

I'm no intellectual. Yeah, I'm taking a few graduate courses, but I can't say I'm all that fond of them. Maybe if they were about phonology and morphology instead of abstract theories about anthropology and how to do language survey. Because I know those things. I understand phonemes. They directly relate to something I understand. Phonetics, sounds I can perceive with my auditory nerve, graph on paper, or (in a sign language sense) form with my hands.

I don't understand computer systems or how you program an iPad program to be a cutesy Inuit girl or a Japanese puppet. Last evening, I attended SIL's weekly colloquium which is an academic lecture by a special guest about some project or research they've been working on. The first two summers at SIL I didn't usually attend colloquium because I didn't understand what people were talking about. Er, maybe I did, but only to a very small and shallow extent. I was fascinated by this summer's first colloquium based upon data from an Asian language of Myanmar. Tone of the language reflected patterns that are common in African tone languages. Not Asian languages. Excitement!

But I digress...
Last evening, our speaker was a professor from UND (Dr. Tim) who talked about technology (particularly for the iPad) that's used for language acquisition for children. A number of us had brought other things to study or glance at while the talk went on. We all thought it would be boring. We never touched our materials. Dr. Tim's presentation was fascinating. Everyone's lungs was filled with the inflation of awe. It was exciting and fun! None of us, or very few of us, at SIL would have even thought of using programs like that as a language tool or how to implement it.

Are programs ready for use directly on the field? Certainly not. Is it a starting point? Absolutely.

I really enjoyed Dr. Tim. I was impressed by the amount of respect he showed for Albert (the SIL director) and SIL in general. A number of people asked him questions during the Q&A afterward that he couldn't answer. His way of thinking was slightly different. Of course, he's never been on the field in third world countries or undertaken a term of literacy, but he recognized them as important and appreciated our input.

There's usually a snack 'n' chat time after the Q&A. Lo and behold, Jim Waters who teaches the Morphology and Syntax course for Package A (1st summer) came up to me and asked me what my plans were. Now, I have a lot of respect for Jim. He's one of the calmest guys you'll ever meet, super sweet, loves his wife, loves Jesus, loves linguistics, and has a doctorate.

I'm slightly intimidated by instructors/consultants/doctorates because I don't want to look stupid. I've gotten okay with handling these people in a one-on-one setting. During my talk with Jim, who should walk up to join our conversation of Kieth Snider. Now Kieth has spent most of his life working with tone in African languages. He's the sole teacher of SIL's class on Tone which is offered every other year. He received his doctorate in African Linguistics from Leiden University (for those of you who don't know, Leiden is in the Netherlands). Crazy smart Canadian.

Now it's both of them and me. I figured, "I could learn some pretty interesting things from these guys." I proceeded to ask Kieth a question I had for a class I'm taking. Before Kieth could answer, Jim asked me if I had met Jim Roberts. Yeah, I'd met Dr. Jim Roberts, the linguist from Chad who always has an enthusiastic tone in his clear voice, loves to crack jokes and be the first to laugh at them with his hilariously fake sounding yet genuine laugh. I suddenly realized that these three men were all wanting to know what I was taking and what I planned to do and why. Three of (what I consider) the best minds in linguistics in all of SIL gave me their attention. To say I was slightly nervous would be a bit of an understatement.

I thought more about this encounter afterward. None of the men I've mentioned above think of themselves as anything spectacular or special. At SIL, everyone is on a first name basis. That goes for the director as well as for the children. Doctorates with big egos don't go for that type of stuff (believe me, I've seen them). Each one of these guys started out in Linguistics 101 or got their undergraduates in something totally different before they discovered linguistics was their calling. These are all men who've spent blood, sweat, and tears in the African or South American sun analyzing syntax and tone so that other people could learn about The Son.

Maybe intellect is in the eye of the beholder. I certainly have more education than many unliterates around the world some of which I'll come in contact with one day. But if these men aren't classified as intellectual, I don't care much to be an intellectual either. I do hope to earn a masters degree some day or maybe even earn a PhD, but I hope to be like these men: Nerds with words who love Jesus.

A Vision For Missions: A Book Review

This review will be based on Tom Well's A Vision for Missions. You can find this book here on amazon.

I checked this book out of my church library at the advice of my pastors, Bill Glenn and Jerry Dill. I was surprised to see how small a book it was (only 157pp).

The book is based around three things:
1) Tom's first thesis: "God is worthy to be known and proclaimed for who He is, and that fact is an important part of the missionary motive and message." (p 9)

2) Tom's second thesis: "Those who know the most about God are the most responsible and best equipped to tell of Him." (p 9)

3) A quote from Williams Carey: "It's taken from a talk Carey had with a Brahman in 1797. At that time Carey had not yet baptized his first convert. The Brahman was defending the worship of idols. Carey cited Acts 14:16 and 17:30.
       God formerly 'suffered all nations to walk in their own ways,' said Carey, 'but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent.'
       'Indeed,' said the [Brahman], 'I think God ought to repent for not sending the gospel sooner to us... If what you say is true, why  have I not heard of it before?'
     In brief, Carey says two things: 1) At one time it pleased God to keep back gospel from India. 2) God has His reasons for doing so." (p 12-13) 

After laying these three things before the reader, Tom goes on to explore the character of God in the two-thirds of the book. This was probably the most beneficial and wonderful part of the book for me. Some of the characteristics he talks about are The Graciousness of God (ch 7), God, Self-sufficient (ch 3), and God's Sovereign Power (ch 4). Tom makes it clear that God is God. We do not have to apologize for who our God is. All of these things are tied into God's heart for His created peoples. I had never thought about God being a missional God and what that truly and practically meant.

The last third of the book is about how William Carey, David Brainerd, and Henry Martyn specifically were influenced by the character of God in their missions and their attitudes about God.

I highly encourage you to read this book. Tom is to the point and blunt. His message is clear, strong, and he backs everything up with Scripture. I found it particularly encouraging and refreshing. If you want to understand the heart of God and learn more about His heart for the nations, this book is for you.

Weddings, Graduations, Birthdays, Life, and Deaf

I apologize for the delay in my posting. Life has been pretty busy and intense in the last couple or so weeks. I'm never able to accomplish all that I mean to before I leave for the summer and my new job, though I love it, made it that much harder to get things done.

I left West Lafayette on May 30th, drove through the rain and storm, and arrived in Sedalia, MO for the wedding I was to be a part of there. There was more than one crisis leading up to the wedding, but it was beautiful and it honored God. I'm very happy for my SIL roomie, my sister in Chris, my dear friend, and her husband.

 London & Andrew Brumleve

I left shortly after the reception. I went through the drive-thru at Hardees, filled up with gas, and headed toward Kansas City where I hopped onto I-29 headed for North Dakota. But the time I reached KC it was around 10:30pm. About an hour or so later I decided that I needed to sleep. I slept at a truck stop for about 3hrs and resumed my journey. I only drove for an hour before I realized I needed more sleep. Rest areas are few and far between on that portion of I-29, but when I found one on the Nebraska border I slept like a beast for another 2hrs. By then, it was 6:30am and the sky was light. I felt a switch in my body flip and I was ready for the rest of the trip. 

I pulled into Grand Forks and the University of North Dakota around 2:30 in the afternoon (roughly a 12hr trip excluding sleep), signed into the dorm, unpacked my car, and headed back to Fargo for a graduation open house.

A family of friends were having a graduation open house for their youngest (high school graduation) and their middle child (college graduation). Our families would go camping together when we lived in Minnesota. We've had lots of fun camping and biking times with them and I was glad the open house was on exactly the perfect day for me to make it!

By the time I returned to my dorm, my new roommate had joined my humongous dorm room. Her name is Beth and she's from Texas. I must admit, I was nervous about the roommate I would receive this year. You may recall that London (in the above picture) was my roommate for both previous summers at the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL). Beth and I get along splendidly and have had some pretty provoking talks about faith, linguistics, and the deaf community. She's pretty fluent at American Sign Language (ASL) and is evening interpreting chapel meetings as her work assignment. I'm looking forward to getting to know her better.

I'm hoping to reach out more and meet more people this summer. Last year I kind of blocked people out inadvertently and don't want to repeat that. I'm meeting new people and trying new things.

As far as classes go, this summer I am taking 3:
Language Survey
Ethnographic Methods
Sign Language Phonetics

The first two are required for me to do Language Survey with Wycliffe. I plan on telling you more about them when I have a better idea of what they're all about. I wasn't initially planning on taking Sign Language Phonetics, but I thought, "When at SIL, do what the linguists do!" I have no real knowledge of ASL or any other sign language, but sign languages interest me and I won't likely have this opportunity to study the phonetics of signed languages again. Carpe signum = seize the sign. Hopefully, when I start actually producing signs, I can record me signing and post it here.

With all this excitement going on, I forgot that my birthday was on Wednesday until... Monday night. Beth was ecstatic and insisted we go to the Blue Moose to celebrate. The Blue Moose Bar & Grill was my initial plan for birthday shenanigans to begin with, so I did not protest. Two first summer students and a recent acquaintance who is studying her 2nd summer at SIL came with us. We had a lovely, girly time. We ordered dessert since we went after dinner, they sang Happy Birthday obnoxiously loud for me, and a few of us climbed the moose and had our picture taken with him. (pictures to come?)  

I hope to be more specific about what's going on in my classes when I have a better understanding of them. I also have another book review for you. :) Stay tuned.

Have a Moosie Day!
<3