Something I came across while looking at my friend Enoch’s blog… He writes about something he heard on NPR, sage words from the tenant president of some of Newark’s housing projects.
she said “you gotta realize something, the world you see outside of you is a reflection what you have inside of you. If you only see problems and darkness that’s all there is going to be, but if you can see hope and light then you can make a change.”
I was really bowled over by this statement. I think lately I’ve been thinking about some serious global and local issues, and it’s easy for me to conceptualize obstacles as just these huge boulders. And to protect my own heart, sometimes I feel like it’s easiest to be stoic about them or whatever, but in doing so it’s so easy to slip into forgetting the human face behind so many of the issues, the hope that we have, and the light we are called to be. Love triumphs over dutifulness.
Additionally, I was able to turn in a rough draft of my thesis today, which means I’ve made exciting progress! And I’ve been able to sneak in some free reading time too (probably at the cost of sleep). Jesus for President has been pretty thought-provoking, although I haven’t gotten through much of it yet. So far, Shane and Chris have a lot to say about empire, which makes for really engaging reading because of some the other things I’ve been learning.
God would save the world through fascination, by setting up an alternative society on the margins of empire for the world to come and see what a society of love looks like. It would be the city on a hill that God would use to light up the world…
Definitely some stuff to chew over.
I also started in on another book, Peter Hessler’s Oracle Bones, which I recently purchased. I got a copy of Hessler’s earlier book on China, River Town, as a Christmas present from my Aunt, and I quickly gobbled it up. River Town, about Hessler’s two years on the Yangtze teaching English with the Peace Corps, was fascinating, and the little I’ve read of Oracle Bones leaves me with high hopes. Hessler has an excellent narrative writing style.
