We just killed a monster spider, she was about the size of the palm of my hand as she sat on the floor. Eight eyes and hairy legs. We know it was a she as we could see the huge egg sac on her underside. Our contact, Ray, threw his notebook at her and demolished her, and broke open the egg sac and I am guessing at least one thousand little spiders scurried out and spread out all over the floor.
These are the obstacles I face as I try to type, how can a guy possibly get anything done?
On Sunday we spoke in a small wooden church. This has to be the nicest little village church we have been in, I am guessing everything was made out of something like mahogany or teak…I might be exaggerating, but the wood was nice.
I was supposed to speak some, and then Rusty would follow it up. When we first started this trip I was pretty scared to talk in front of a crowd, and was especially scared to ‘preach’. I would write everything down and read straight from the notebook. Now I have spoken a few times without notes. Just a prayer and hope God brings something for me to say.
So I was standing getting ready to speak, staring at a picture of Jesus. This portrait of Jesus, done in mostly browns, with Jesus looking off into somewhere, maybe he was daydreaming when the artist had him sit for the picture. Maybe Jesus was thinking about what he would do next to try to get his point across, but then I think, oh yeah, we don’t really know what Jesus looked like do we? We always make him look like a woman with a beard when I think he probably looked more like the Che Guevera shirts we see everywhere. (which makes me think about how many young men are wearing wrestling shirts with Rey Mysterio and Batista or shirts with heros like Guevera or Bob Marley. How can we see all these boys in their hero worship, hungry to know what a man is supposed to be, and we keep giving him something religious or feminine…or usually those two words look the same to a boy. Ok, maybe the words don’t look the same, just the world view. ok, get off that tangent)
This portrait is the same one I had hanging in my bedroom when I was a kid. I won a carnival game, and the prize was a picture. I looked through all the scantily clad women and rock n roll pictures, and the only picture I thought my mom would approve of was the Jesus one, so I picked it. I put this picture up on my wall, and many times in my childhood I would look at that picture and wonder about Jesus.
I shared this with the Corinne people, many former and presently practicing Buddhists. I told them how I would often look at Jesus and wonder if he were REAL. I mean, I knew he was the proper person to believe in because he died on the cross for me and bridged the gap that occured in life because of Adam and Eve. I knew all this because that is what I was taught in church and in christian school and especially by my Christian family. But I would often sit and wonder.
I shared that in the area where I come from, we have statues and pictures of Jesus everywhere, the same way that they have statues of Buddha. (when we did the tour of the temples our first weekend here, someone said “imagine if we took christianity as seriously as the buddhists take buddhism. I would say we do, and that is the issue. We take “Christianity” seriously, we don’t really take Christ seriously. I think that Buddhism and Christianity and pretty similar. Or the effects of following the religion seem similar. People who are trying and succeeding at being really really nice. People working on gaining merit, going to the temple and putting money in the jar and going through rituals to somehow better their future, whether in this world or the next. People scared about the after life. People who would rather sit at the feet of a representation of a master done in bronze than actually pursue what the master pursued, or at least take the words of the master seriously)
I shared that I always believed in God, because that is what was correct, but actually knowing God, I still did not have a grip on this. I shared that the bible was always just a book of rules, written by some group of people in a grand scheme to control the masses. As I read the bible now, I am starting to understand that this book is such an incredible, mind blowing, revelation of an all powerful God who loves me. Who wants me to be his son. I had them read 2 Corinthians 6:18, that this God is saying that he wants to be a father to us, he wants us to be his sons and daughters. I have heard that for years, but this year is the first time in my life that this was becoming something almost tangible to me. The implications of this understanding should completely change the way a christian lives. No more wasting time in worthless religion or at the feet of whatever idol motivates him at the moment.
I also shared on Philippians 1:6, to this young church and to the young believers that God would be faithful to complete this work in them, and in Jeremiah 29:11-13, that God has plans to prosper them, plans to give them a hope and a future.
Well, that is enough typing for tonight, I am getting attacked by bugs and sweating to death and I am really sore from playing basketball barefoot. Then Josh, Tim and I did some ‘Dinosaur Training’, flipping water jugs and feed bags around. So, I am going to bed.
