Category: Thoughts

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Recap on an issue: Excommunication for divorcing?!

So I got to see an old friend of mine… I had heard and then confirmed that another friend of mine was getting divorced.  🙁  So I wanted to show up and see him to give him support…

What made me madder than anything was how his church, of all places and people, excommunicated him for it!   😡  WTF?!  Excuse my language but I am mad as hell… church was made to be a place for people who are broken to come and be healed and made whole again before God!  So Christians can forgive murderers but not dirvorced?!  There’s a bit more to the story but that should not change the fact that it is especially for these times that the church should embrace both of the broken parties and work to heal the family…

Erg… I’m so freakin’ mad!   We as church need to realize that just because we make a mistake should not end in being cut off from the body of Christ!  For goodness’ sake…  I’m just glad that my friend was taking it better… not hating these clueless people… or God.  In fact, all things considered, he was doing well… but just couldn’t attend a church (physically) for now.  Really.  I hope we all strive to be more forgiving and receiving…

/Rant

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God’s Sense of Timing

So in light of finding my lost friend, there’s a rather funny and amazing story attached to it. You see, before having found my friend, I had offered my sister-in-law that I would pick up her friend from the train station at 9 pm since my brother was out of town due to his church’s youth group retreat.

Then, I had found Won Suk Lee by the miracle of God that same day and due to being out of town that weekend, and busy work schedule next week, that same day was the only day he was available to come out and see me. This was 7 pm when we spoke. By the time we would meet, it would be 8 pm and so we would only have an hour, especially since he wanted to be home by no later than 10:30 pm.

We met up in Fort Lee/Palisades Park area since he needed to eat anyway. So we catch up and eat and it was raining. However, a good bit before 9 pm, my in-law calls me apologizing that her friend would be coming later now more likely at 10 pm. Well, that was a God-given gift for us to catch up more.

So we chatted till about 9:45 pm at which point, he left for home and I went to pick up my in-law’s friend. Turns out she couldn’t get on due to overflow in the previous bus ride, and so the funny(?) point is that her being delayed was a “welcome” gift for me to catch up with my friend. It was funny to me… 😛

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A Friend Lost, A Friend Found

So there’s a friend of mine who I’ve lost touch with for several years now.  His name is Won Lee, who now goes by Jacob.  O_o  He was… eccentric, at best.  He is a very good at being a job pusher as he was KUSA president in the year of ’95 thru ’96, while I was at UT Austin.

He was very efficient at what he did.  Perhaps too well, and burned lots of bridges in the process.  To find him again, I started a Facebook group by the name of “Do you know Won Suk Lee”.  😀  There are so far 9 people in it but I was doing it as a semi-experiment to see if I could find him through it.  ‘Lo and behold, Yuri came to the rescue, as she happened to know Won’s younger brother, John’s phone number!  How weird is that?  So I call him up though I’ve never met him before, and got the dork, I mean, Won 😛 and called him up.

We had good dinner to catch up.  He’s now working at GE Finance making the big bucks.  Why am I writing all this up?  You see, he is a bit anti-social and proud of not having much (in fact, any) presence on the web.  So there you go, Won!  LOL…  Many people asked me why I wanted to “bother finding a guy like him” again?  Sure he has his difficult moments.  But to me, everyone has his/her faults.  I, reminded by the words of Jun Kang, another eccentric saved for another time and entry, have very bad short-term memory and it ends up irritating a lot of people.  But that’s who I am and can’t really help it … much.  Since we are all “incomplete by nature”, I believe that we all should be embracing others no matter how odd and strange and difficult that other person may be.

After all, we all want to be simply accepted for who we are… just as Christ received us.  Unconditionally.

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The Pursuit of Happyness: Personal Review

I’ve been afraid of many things before… and weirdly enough, watching this movie is in that same place.  Wondering why?  It’s because I can see myself in that same place.  Losing everything, having nothing going right, and having to sacrifice just about anything so that he could provide.  For his son.

I cried practically from the get go of the movie.  I felt and saw every bit of this man’s struggles and heart tearing life… The last 5 minutes of the movie… was the best tear jerker in my life.  Fatherhood is something no man should ever think lowly of… he sure didn’t.

I can only pray that I can be that committed to my family and our well being.  I don’t own a home.  Life may be hard but I have a family to be thankful for… roof over our heads, food to eat.  Watch this movie … to understand the heart of a father.

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Ask not what your God can do for you…

… but what you can do for your God!

That’s what I’d say now. I used to say, borrowing from the words of JFK, “Ask not what your church can do for you, but what you can do for your church!” But I am realizing lately that even that is a selfish statement and request. In fact, in light of discussion with PS after tonight’s Bible study, I am realizing how selfish I have been and am… and how selfish we all are.

We grew up with everything expecting to be certain way… be it same or different from what/how others perceive that as. And because of that, we, more than another person, are more prone to resisting change. That’s not necessarily bad… but it is when that change is mandated by God! I feel that more than often, that I myself am that factor that resists the change that God wants to bring.. for the good of His kingdom! John Ortberg spoke of many things in the following video from this year’s PGF (Presbyterian Global Fellowship) but one thing that stuck to me was when he used the word “conduits” to imply our role to bring God’s Kingdom to hear on earth.

The way double pane windows and thermos work is by using vacuum inbetween two materials. Vacuum is what prevents the heat from being transferred between two places. If you wanted the heat to be transferred faster, you’d either use better conducting fluid (like water) or just use metal inbetween. Sometimes, we Christians act more like vacuum than water and keep from God’s kingdom from coming down to here on earth. And we must stop that by being less and less selfish. More of Christ, less of me. Less of you.

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Hot Choco and God

With the “colder” weather around, I decided to make hot chocolate for the kids for snack   What is interesting is afterwards.  Evidently, JJ decided to clean up after himself and wiped the spilled hot choco that was on the placemat.  I somewhat chuckled at seeing his rather lame effort at the clean up.

Then it reminded me of how God would look at my way(s) of cleaning up my own mess in life, only to come after my attempts and He does His own clean up.  I wonder if He chuckles as well seeing at His son’s lame attempt at cleaning up.    It also reminded me that I shouldn’t mock anybody else’s mistakes, but rather keep myself in check.  It’s rather funny how God can re-teach lessons of life in so many ways.

I am humbled… yet again.

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Visiting people at their home

Soojin has had an opportunity to get closer to someone lately at our church. Usually, she’s somewhat reserved as she’s a bit … afraid of what others’ perception is of her. However, Soojin told me that this sister doesn’t seem to possess any negative feelings towards Soojin. In fact, I know she doesn’t. So Soojin has been more open towards her each time she saw her and encouraged her. For the first time, Soojin called her this week.

I don’t know what they talked about but she was then very determined to make a meal for her and wanted me to deliver it. You don’t know or understand how determined she can be if and when she sets her mind on it. So she made her recent new recipe of version of Mapo Tofu. It’s got loads of tofu and mushrooms. Let’s not forget that she’s a health freak. So she finishes it and wanted me to deliver it to her but then it turns out that our Wednesday meeting wasn’t at Formosan Church like it has been but instead it was at our church. Upon hearing this, the sister tells me to just give it to some other people that she sees regularly and they can give it to her. I agree and relay that to Soojin.

Remember how I mentioned that she can be very determined?! She was insistent on my delivering it to her personally. That same night. Even after church as we hung out at Teahouse to pre-celebrate Eric’s b-day , others (incl. PS) tried to convince me to just give it to them to have it delivered. However, I saw Soojin’s side of things and understood (at least better than others) why she so insisted on delivering it. Korean Christians are old school when it comes to visiting people. There’s even a Korean word (shim-bang, ie. visitation) for it. One of the many things that I believe Korean Christians have been doing right is visiting people personally, as in face to face time. They go to where the person(s) lives, and at their home, they pray for the person(s).

Sure in Korea, distance is shorter, but I feel that as we yield to the excuse of “long distance”, that personal touch of visitation and praying for each other in person has been lost. That I think is an awesome Christian art. So for me, it wasn’t an ordeal for me to drive out further, to see where the sister lives, and to pray for her there, at her home. We need to bring that back.

American culture may seem nice at first, keeping the distance, but at the heart of it, it only asks for one thing: alienation. Christ told us to meet together, and where two or more are gathered in His name, there He is with us. So despite others’ thinking that it’s waste of time and resources (mainly gas), Soojin and I think otherwise.