Thursday, October 30, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
The Upended Bag Of Blessing
So, for those of you who have been wondering what has been happening to Zach lately and where exactly the post before this one came from, I am going to explain. You see, this past week has been the most wonderful, world-shaking, nerve-racking, tremendous week of my life. A whole lot of Providence aligned itself for to create this moment in my life. I am still not able to wrap my mind around it. But, to explain, we are going to have to go back many years.
The first WGM missionaries to Japan were David and Edna Kuba. They did some amazing ministry with college students here in Japan. One of the colleges they ministered at was Rikkyo University. A student went through that Bible study at Rikkyo and then went on to become a missionary with the IGM church her in Japan to Jamaica. He packed up his family and left, spending many years on the mission field.
My name is Zach. I come into the picture a long time after the previous event. Those of you who know my story know that I have been on the path to be a missionary since I was in high school. I am now a missionary in Japan. I have never been a very successful person in relationships. I make friends easily, but I am not a person who dated much. Not much at all, in fact. Anyway, looking at being in Japan where the population is 0.7% Christian and there are many cultural differences, I did not have a huge amount of hope that something like that would happen to me anytime soon.
The missionary to Jamaica had a daughter named Tomoko. Edna Kuba gave her the English name Esther. Esther grew up in a Christian environment, but rejected Christianity and turned away from God for many years. She eventually found God again, but that is a story for another time. You will have to ask her. She decided that she would go to seminary in the US and attended Wesley Biblical Seminary in Mississippi. Then she returned to Japan and began working at her home church. However, she was not a sensei (pastor). In IGM, pastors have arranged marriages to other pastors. Thankfully, she was not a sensei.
I met this young lady soon after arriving in Japan, almost exactly a year ago. I met her four times after that or so. I thought she was a nice person, but did not go any further than that. I cannot claim love at first sight, but I think there may be something better than love at first sight.
After coming back to Japan, she decided that in order to get closer to God and focus on ministry she would take a vow of celibacy for a year. No dating during that time. So, a relationship was not on the radar for her at that point, but she had made a request partway through. She requested that Jesus would put someone in her path about when the vow ended. Then she laughed about it, because she really did not expect something like that to happen.
Well, I was invited to her church to share my testimony on a Wednesday night. I did. She translated for me. Again, she seemed very nice, but I went home and then went back to language school. That Sunday, I was at a church out in the country to teach a Bible study. In the morning service, they read Psalm 127 and 128. As I was reading that passage, all of the sudden, it was Esther. I heard no voice, I saw no vision, but there was suddenly this realization that I had to ask her out. It was like something that I knew I must do. Even with this realization, it still took me three days to work up the courage to ask. I decided to ask to talk to her about youth ministry, working with the church, and her testimony. You know, make it more of a meeting than a date.
When Esther got the call, she did not know whether to respond or not. She asked someone else and they said, “Yeah, Zach just probably wants to know your perspective on ministry and that sort of thing. No problem.” She called me back. Since I did not say anything about a date, she decided that it was okay. It was just a meeting, nothing more. She did, however, notice that this was exactly one month before the end of her vow. That almost made her wonder, but she decided not to think about it.
So, we met for the “meeting.” It went very well. I sat there and was mesmerized by a beautiful, funny, young lady who was passionate about God and ministry and life. It was great. However, as wonderful of a night as it was, it ended. I now had a problem. I had to actually ask her out. I did not have a reason to meet a second time, so I was stuck. I really had to stick my neck out and ask. So, I did.
She wrote back that she was in the middle of a vow of celibacy and could not answer that question at this point. However, she did write that the vow ended two weeks from that point on the 18th of October.
It is always hard to be rebuffed by a vow of celibacy. Not that anyone who is reading this has ever had that experience. Most of the time excuses run along the lines of, “I am washing my hair.” Yet, I took the fact that she told me the end date as a hopeful thing. So, I told her I would wait, not write or call, until the 18th of October. I was a little amazed at this point, because my asking coincided with the end of the vow, not the beginning. I knew her a year ago, and if I had fallen in love at first sight, I would have had a miserable time. However, this desire to ask was awakened in me at the end of the vow. That seems a little too coincidental.
She continued on with her vow.
I decided that I wanted to ask her by sending a package. However, she lives at the church and I did not want the package to be intercepted in such a way that would cause rumors to spread. If she was going to say, “no,” I did not want it to affect her reputation in any way. In those two weeks while I was waiting, we had a WGM Prayer Team come to Japan. They brought a couple of books from a friend in the US for Esther. That allowed me to send her a package inside the package with the books. So, there was an excuse for her getting the package. I was trying to be as discreet as possible.
She got the package the day before and waited until the next morning to open it. Then, she said, “Yes, I would be honored to go out with you sometime.” I just realized recently that the 18th of October is Sweetest Day. Sweetest Day is a holiday that originated in NE Ohio. Anyway, it was the best Sweetest Day of my life, for sure.
We talked on Skype that evening and went through some of the ramifications of what was about to happen. Dating and relationships in the church in Japan work a bit differently than they do in the US. This sort of thing has never happened in IGM before. We really had no idea how it was going to happen. Thankfully, my boss, Kevin, stepped in at this point.
Every year, there are Japan Holiness Association meetings. These meetings bring together many of the IGM pastors as well as many pastors from all the holiness denominations. Because these meetings were going on, Kevin was able to talk to the president of the denomination. The president said it was fine with him, but that we had to get the approval of her pastor. That evening, Kevin told Esther that he was going to talk to her pastor and that she should probably talk to her dad.
Now, these are big steps for people trying to go on their first date. When I heard about what had happened that day (I was teaching English that evening), I realized that I needed to tell her everything that had brought me this far. If she was going to have the courage and do all of this for me, I had better be clear about what I was thinking. I had been trying to keep it to myself to not influence her in anyway (I definitely do not want to be the guy who walks up and says, “God told me we should go out.”). However, I laid it all out in a long e-mail which I sent at 2 am.
She was wondering about all these steps herself. Before she went to bed that night, she prayed that Jesus would show her clearly whether the next steps should be progressing as they were. She woke up at 2 am. She could not sleep, so she checked her e-mail.
In that e-mail I had written about the two chapters of Psalms that had started me down this path: 127 and 128. When she read that, she knew her prayer had been answered. She was looking for a passage of some sort that would direct her. She had prayed a prayer from Psalm 128 about the time that all of this had started.
I was astounded. As I said in the previous post, I am not the type of person to expect miracles. I do not expect lifetimes of Providence to suddenly coalesce into something so sure, so tangible, and so breathtaking in a moment. I never expected love to ever find me like this. It was amazing. It was overpowering. The love that God was showing me, this unmerited divine love that has been moving my life in this direction was so clear in the existence of Esther. I fell on my face. I do not know enough ways to be thankful. I have to change the entire way I look at God because she exists. God is not out there being generally loving to everyone. He is like a father giving good gifts to His children. He is not a general father who worked then, but not now. He is the Father who intensely and individually loves us. He intensely and individually has loved me. If you want more expansion on this idea, you will have to read the previous post.
Kevin talked to her pastor and her pastor gave us the thumbs-up. She talked to her father and her father was happy. He seems to like me. I am blown away. God has been good in ways that I never expected. It has been the most amazing week of my life. When we talked to each other on Saturday, it looked like we were going to have to move heaven and earth to make this work. Here I sit now and I know that God has moved heaven and earth for us.
That is how I got to this point. God has been so good and I am having trouble keeping it to myself. I was not expecting all of this. I really did not think that this was a way God would ever work in my life. I was not looking for signs or miracles. I was not expecting a relationship to surprise me like this. I did not require God to show me love in this way. However, here I am. Here I am. This is the most amazing week of my life. I have a girlfriend. I know that God loves me intensely and specifically. I know that all things work together for good for them that love God and are called according to His purposes. I know I do not deserve blessings so fabulous, but fabulous blessings have been dropped on me.
As Esther says, “I feel like I have been smashed by a million blessings,” or, “I feel like Jesus has this bag of blessings that he has been giving out my whole life and He suddenly tipped the bag over and dumped a lifetime of blessings on me.”
The first WGM missionaries to Japan were David and Edna Kuba. They did some amazing ministry with college students here in Japan. One of the colleges they ministered at was Rikkyo University. A student went through that Bible study at Rikkyo and then went on to become a missionary with the IGM church her in Japan to Jamaica. He packed up his family and left, spending many years on the mission field.
My name is Zach. I come into the picture a long time after the previous event. Those of you who know my story know that I have been on the path to be a missionary since I was in high school. I am now a missionary in Japan. I have never been a very successful person in relationships. I make friends easily, but I am not a person who dated much. Not much at all, in fact. Anyway, looking at being in Japan where the population is 0.7% Christian and there are many cultural differences, I did not have a huge amount of hope that something like that would happen to me anytime soon.
The missionary to Jamaica had a daughter named Tomoko. Edna Kuba gave her the English name Esther. Esther grew up in a Christian environment, but rejected Christianity and turned away from God for many years. She eventually found God again, but that is a story for another time. You will have to ask her. She decided that she would go to seminary in the US and attended Wesley Biblical Seminary in Mississippi. Then she returned to Japan and began working at her home church. However, she was not a sensei (pastor). In IGM, pastors have arranged marriages to other pastors. Thankfully, she was not a sensei.
I met this young lady soon after arriving in Japan, almost exactly a year ago. I met her four times after that or so. I thought she was a nice person, but did not go any further than that. I cannot claim love at first sight, but I think there may be something better than love at first sight.
After coming back to Japan, she decided that in order to get closer to God and focus on ministry she would take a vow of celibacy for a year. No dating during that time. So, a relationship was not on the radar for her at that point, but she had made a request partway through. She requested that Jesus would put someone in her path about when the vow ended. Then she laughed about it, because she really did not expect something like that to happen.
Well, I was invited to her church to share my testimony on a Wednesday night. I did. She translated for me. Again, she seemed very nice, but I went home and then went back to language school. That Sunday, I was at a church out in the country to teach a Bible study. In the morning service, they read Psalm 127 and 128. As I was reading that passage, all of the sudden, it was Esther. I heard no voice, I saw no vision, but there was suddenly this realization that I had to ask her out. It was like something that I knew I must do. Even with this realization, it still took me three days to work up the courage to ask. I decided to ask to talk to her about youth ministry, working with the church, and her testimony. You know, make it more of a meeting than a date.
When Esther got the call, she did not know whether to respond or not. She asked someone else and they said, “Yeah, Zach just probably wants to know your perspective on ministry and that sort of thing. No problem.” She called me back. Since I did not say anything about a date, she decided that it was okay. It was just a meeting, nothing more. She did, however, notice that this was exactly one month before the end of her vow. That almost made her wonder, but she decided not to think about it.
So, we met for the “meeting.” It went very well. I sat there and was mesmerized by a beautiful, funny, young lady who was passionate about God and ministry and life. It was great. However, as wonderful of a night as it was, it ended. I now had a problem. I had to actually ask her out. I did not have a reason to meet a second time, so I was stuck. I really had to stick my neck out and ask. So, I did.
She wrote back that she was in the middle of a vow of celibacy and could not answer that question at this point. However, she did write that the vow ended two weeks from that point on the 18th of October.
It is always hard to be rebuffed by a vow of celibacy. Not that anyone who is reading this has ever had that experience. Most of the time excuses run along the lines of, “I am washing my hair.” Yet, I took the fact that she told me the end date as a hopeful thing. So, I told her I would wait, not write or call, until the 18th of October. I was a little amazed at this point, because my asking coincided with the end of the vow, not the beginning. I knew her a year ago, and if I had fallen in love at first sight, I would have had a miserable time. However, this desire to ask was awakened in me at the end of the vow. That seems a little too coincidental.
She continued on with her vow.
I decided that I wanted to ask her by sending a package. However, she lives at the church and I did not want the package to be intercepted in such a way that would cause rumors to spread. If she was going to say, “no,” I did not want it to affect her reputation in any way. In those two weeks while I was waiting, we had a WGM Prayer Team come to Japan. They brought a couple of books from a friend in the US for Esther. That allowed me to send her a package inside the package with the books. So, there was an excuse for her getting the package. I was trying to be as discreet as possible.
She got the package the day before and waited until the next morning to open it. Then, she said, “Yes, I would be honored to go out with you sometime.” I just realized recently that the 18th of October is Sweetest Day. Sweetest Day is a holiday that originated in NE Ohio. Anyway, it was the best Sweetest Day of my life, for sure.
We talked on Skype that evening and went through some of the ramifications of what was about to happen. Dating and relationships in the church in Japan work a bit differently than they do in the US. This sort of thing has never happened in IGM before. We really had no idea how it was going to happen. Thankfully, my boss, Kevin, stepped in at this point.
Every year, there are Japan Holiness Association meetings. These meetings bring together many of the IGM pastors as well as many pastors from all the holiness denominations. Because these meetings were going on, Kevin was able to talk to the president of the denomination. The president said it was fine with him, but that we had to get the approval of her pastor. That evening, Kevin told Esther that he was going to talk to her pastor and that she should probably talk to her dad.
Now, these are big steps for people trying to go on their first date. When I heard about what had happened that day (I was teaching English that evening), I realized that I needed to tell her everything that had brought me this far. If she was going to have the courage and do all of this for me, I had better be clear about what I was thinking. I had been trying to keep it to myself to not influence her in anyway (I definitely do not want to be the guy who walks up and says, “God told me we should go out.”). However, I laid it all out in a long e-mail which I sent at 2 am.
She was wondering about all these steps herself. Before she went to bed that night, she prayed that Jesus would show her clearly whether the next steps should be progressing as they were. She woke up at 2 am. She could not sleep, so she checked her e-mail.
In that e-mail I had written about the two chapters of Psalms that had started me down this path: 127 and 128. When she read that, she knew her prayer had been answered. She was looking for a passage of some sort that would direct her. She had prayed a prayer from Psalm 128 about the time that all of this had started.
I was astounded. As I said in the previous post, I am not the type of person to expect miracles. I do not expect lifetimes of Providence to suddenly coalesce into something so sure, so tangible, and so breathtaking in a moment. I never expected love to ever find me like this. It was amazing. It was overpowering. The love that God was showing me, this unmerited divine love that has been moving my life in this direction was so clear in the existence of Esther. I fell on my face. I do not know enough ways to be thankful. I have to change the entire way I look at God because she exists. God is not out there being generally loving to everyone. He is like a father giving good gifts to His children. He is not a general father who worked then, but not now. He is the Father who intensely and individually loves us. He intensely and individually has loved me. If you want more expansion on this idea, you will have to read the previous post.
Kevin talked to her pastor and her pastor gave us the thumbs-up. She talked to her father and her father was happy. He seems to like me. I am blown away. God has been good in ways that I never expected. It has been the most amazing week of my life. When we talked to each other on Saturday, it looked like we were going to have to move heaven and earth to make this work. Here I sit now and I know that God has moved heaven and earth for us.
That is how I got to this point. God has been so good and I am having trouble keeping it to myself. I was not expecting all of this. I really did not think that this was a way God would ever work in my life. I was not looking for signs or miracles. I was not expecting a relationship to surprise me like this. I did not require God to show me love in this way. However, here I am. Here I am. This is the most amazing week of my life. I have a girlfriend. I know that God loves me intensely and specifically. I know that all things work together for good for them that love God and are called according to His purposes. I know I do not deserve blessings so fabulous, but fabulous blessings have been dropped on me.
As Esther says, “I feel like I have been smashed by a million blessings,” or, “I feel like Jesus has this bag of blessings that he has been giving out my whole life and He suddenly tipped the bag over and dumped a lifetime of blessings on me.”
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Being Smashed By A Million Blessings
I am a person who believes in miracles. I believe that God can break in upon life and change things whenever He wants. However, I had become a person who does not necessarily look for miracles or ask for miracles. I am a person who believes in the providence of God. I believe that God is ultimately directing the universe toward the ends that He has in mind. However, I guess I had become a person who does not expect God to specifically take a huge amount of interest in my life. I had become content just being obedient and doing those things that I know need done in the world. I have not been expecting the providence of the God of the universe to be intricately weaving generalities into specifics in my life. I have been thinking that He probably has better things to do with His time, and that was fine. Also, there is the love of God. I know that God loves us and I am amazed by the love God showed us through Christ, but I have not expected God to show His love in any specific way to me. I was quite satisfied by seeing the love of God through Christ. I did not expect Him to do anything more to say, “Zach, I really love you.”
I was not expecting anything like that, but in the last week of my life I have been barraged by what an atheist would have to call “a long series of unlikely coincidences.” I am left with no other explanation than that, all of the sudden, my entire life was brought into sharp focus by God. A huge, invisible wave of providence had been building all my life and it suddenly crashed in upon me. I did not see it coming. I did not know all the decisions I had been making and others had been making were being brought into alignment for this moment in time. If the universe is a giant dance, it was like God choreographed the steps so that the dancers were all suddenly dancing in step with me. I thought my dance was some rather mundane two-step over in the corner of the cosmic dancehall which nobody was really paying attention to, but I was dutifully dancing along. Then I look up and realize, for a few moments, everyone is dancing my two-step. It was like my dance was an integral part of the whole or the Lord of the Dance just wanted to show that He was enjoying my part.
I have not looked for miracles, but I cannot figure out what else this would qualify as. I did not expect to be overwhelmed by providence, but I am. I did not long for another amazing gesture of love from God, but He leaves me speechless. I am so unworthy. I do not deserve this. Grace keeps pouring over me all of the sudden and I do not know why. I do not know why. It is changing the way I look at God. It is amazing. What will I do? I am drowning and it keeps coming. Oh God, you are so good! You are God! For some reason, I find that God, who I would not blame for casually ignoring me, is working all the random parts of my life together. How are you so good? You are more good than I hoped. You are more good than I ever dreamed. Why do you care about me so much? I am so insignificant. You are holy, You are perfect, You are God, and yet You love me like this.
I was not expecting anything like that, but in the last week of my life I have been barraged by what an atheist would have to call “a long series of unlikely coincidences.” I am left with no other explanation than that, all of the sudden, my entire life was brought into sharp focus by God. A huge, invisible wave of providence had been building all my life and it suddenly crashed in upon me. I did not see it coming. I did not know all the decisions I had been making and others had been making were being brought into alignment for this moment in time. If the universe is a giant dance, it was like God choreographed the steps so that the dancers were all suddenly dancing in step with me. I thought my dance was some rather mundane two-step over in the corner of the cosmic dancehall which nobody was really paying attention to, but I was dutifully dancing along. Then I look up and realize, for a few moments, everyone is dancing my two-step. It was like my dance was an integral part of the whole or the Lord of the Dance just wanted to show that He was enjoying my part.
I have not looked for miracles, but I cannot figure out what else this would qualify as. I did not expect to be overwhelmed by providence, but I am. I did not long for another amazing gesture of love from God, but He leaves me speechless. I am so unworthy. I do not deserve this. Grace keeps pouring over me all of the sudden and I do not know why. I do not know why. It is changing the way I look at God. It is amazing. What will I do? I am drowning and it keeps coming. Oh God, you are so good! You are God! For some reason, I find that God, who I would not blame for casually ignoring me, is working all the random parts of my life together. How are you so good? You are more good than I hoped. You are more good than I ever dreamed. Why do you care about me so much? I am so insignificant. You are holy, You are perfect, You are God, and yet You love me like this.
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