Greetings from the past month that involved a gained hour of sleep and days where the sun all of a sudden sets before 5 pm everyday. Hmmmmmm. What else happened during this past month? Oh yeah, happy belated thanksgiving to those who are reading. Hope it was a fun time of thankfulness with the fam. Ummmmmm, oh oh oh, crazy month for leaves everywhere. Y’all. The trees here (please do not get confused, I love every one of them), they just never stop shedding leaves, needles, acorns, etc. Honestly name anything and trees here probably drop them. I cant even see a single inch of grass or cement in my host families front yard. Like I am not joking there are a lot of leaves that fall here. I will try to snap a picture. Maybe. Potentially. Also maybe I forgot. (I definitely forgot, whoops)
Anywaysssss, the month of December is here and another monthly recap is being demanded (s/o to my fans). Similar to the other months that have passed since I came here, the pace of this program is moving at a full out sprint. It is truly crazy to think that December is already here. In order to combat this fast paced environment where things are very easy to forget about from month to month, whenever I write these blogs, I utilize a running note on my phone of things I want to talk about. Over the month, In the heat of a thought or experience I write a few words down to make note of something I want to share with y’all. The motivation behind it, as I said, was to stay organized on the tracks I try to put down for the ride that these blogs are, but indirectly it has been genuinely refreshing before typing away to have a moment to reflect on the past month of my thoughts and experiences. Reflection and remembrance are so good y'all (random Segway alert). The Old Testament is a brutal grind to get through, but reading it and being able to reflect on and remember what the Lord has done for His people has been so fruitful. With that thought, I encourage y’all to take a moment and try to reflect and remember on moments where the Lord was ever-present. All that being said, in the spirit of trying to successfully transition and move on, I am having trouble deciding where I should start. Okay, I think I have decided. Actually, I still haven’t (tough). Okay, now I think I am ready. Yep, I am ready now.
Contrary to the month of October, we had a few retreats this past month. The one retreat I would like to talk about was our Micah 6:8 retreat, which we ventured to the regionally famous camp Oak Hill to attend. If you pull out your bible and whip it open to page 780, and you have the ESV translation, (which is probably the undisputed champion of translations (I swear some biblical scholar said that once, just like that too, same exact phrasing and everything (I really need to calm down with these layered parentheses))), you might find a verse that reads: “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”. Thus the retreat centered around the topic of a Christian’s call to do justice in the world. One thing that was said that stuck with me was that: “When trying to figure out our vocational calling from God, it should be understood that as Christians we all share the same primary calling of being those who do justice in the world.” I don’t know if y’all have ever read the ol’ test, (that’s slang for Old Testament. Feel free to sling it around as us young folk do), but I have been reading a lot of it these past few months for one of our classes. In the rapid reading of it, which at times has been an absolute gauntlet to get through, I have noticed that the text is littered with moments of God trying to create a structure that justly takes care of the poor in the community of Israel.
I believe that when most people think of justice, they think of catching someone in their acts of injustice and giving them rightly due consequences or, in simpler words, punishing wrongdoing (at least that is what I initially thought). However, if you look at the Hebrew word for justice (which is “mishpat”), there is this retributive translation but there is also another translation pointing to restoration of the victims who were caught up in the injustice. It can be seen in the Old Testament that this latter translation is forgotten often, which ends up kindling God’s anger. Various times did He stop blessing the people of Israel due to their treatment of the poor and their avoidance of those who needed a restorative justice. It was obvious that justice mattered a lot to Him. Before this Fall, I had never once heard of the concept of gleaning in the Bible. It was a command from God that basically said that whenever people harvested their fields, they should leave the edges of their fields unharvested so that the poor and needy could freely be able to harvest food for themselves. Not in a way that created a competition for rations, but in a way where there became truly enough extra on the edges to provide for those who were in need. It is obvious that this mattered to God and it begs the question: “How can we be gleaning in our lives today?” Obviously we are not all farmers, but are we leaving edges of our harvest for the poor? For me as an engineer, this was a weird question to be faced with. There’s a portion of my possible answer that points me towards wanting to glean the financial blessing the Lord has given me. Though, there’s another portion that points to me providing services in my profession in order to further help those who are in need. An example of this at our retreat was an architect working extra hours past what was required on their workload to help with a plan for affordable housing at a charge that was almost free. Obviously that is a very specific example but the topic is something very interesting to chew on and was something that stuck in my mind during the retreat.
Quite the transition but I just wanted to state that I love music. There is this feeling you get when you listen to some songs where all you want to do is dance. There’s like a magic that leaks out, no matter how bad of a mood you’re in, which reaches you and just makes you start nodding a head or tapping a foot. I love the songs that are capable of doing this and I hope all of y’all can relate to this experience. I think that magic lies in the beats and production of the song. Now I love a good beat that gets you moving but I want to talk about the other magical element that I believe lies in music. This element is lyrics. Some songs really just give you words that stir something up in you. Maybe it’s a stirring of something that you have already felt before. On the other hand, maybe it’s a stirring of something you have never felt before (or maybe its giving you words for something you couldn’t have possibly come up with on your own). The reason I bring this up is because I heard a song this past month for the first time and I would love to share it’s lyrics with y’all. Honestly, you should probably just look up the song and listen to it in it’s wholeness but I will still share it with you anyways. The song is called Gratitude by Brandon Lake and the Lyrics go:
“I know its not much
But I have nothing else fit for a king
Except for my heart singing
Hallelujah, Hallelujah”
I don’t know if initially this stirs anything up in y’all but let me tell you it really stirred something up in me. I believe that either subconsciously or consciously, we are always trying to prove our own worth. At least, I know that is true for me. Rather than coming to terms that God made each one of us equally and that everyone is worth a multitude in the eyes of our creator, I highly seek the validation of those around me. I love these lyrics because it carries my imagination to a spot where I am in front of the Lord and I am not too sure what to do. In the sight of Him, I am overwhelmed by the thought of how He has been involved in my life, constantly moving things for my good in His great love for me. What can I do to repay this? I have had so much gratitude for all the ways that I have clearly seen Him at work. I owe Him so much. However, what can I possibly offer to the God of our universe? I truly have nothing at all in my possession that could be fit for our King. In the truly overwhelming realization of this, the only thing I can do is let my heart pour out an endless amount of Hallelujahs in my natural desire to praise Him.
As you can see I have started a new paragraph. I really wanted to add more to that last one but it felt like it didn’t really need anything. Speaking of the word “anything”, I don’t think I have anything else left to share on this installment of my monthly blogs. It is also almost midnight and my eyes are telling me that I need to wrap this thing up so maybe I should try to do that.
If you have been praying for my past few months here, I just wanted to take a moment to thank you and ask for ways that I can be praying for you during my next month here in Raleigh. To provide an update on myself, here are some ways that you can be praying for me for this next month:
Energy and rest
the fire-hose of information and activities is really getting to me, I will be honest
Eyes to see the Lord everyday in the little things
A compassionate and sympathetic heart towards those who need
To be overwhelmed with His love for me
To stop comparing
Community at work
I would love to start talking about my faith with them so just prayers that I can get windows to do that
Thank you so much for taking time to read this installment of my blog. I hope it wasn’t too long and that you got something from reading it. Shoot me an email/text if you’d wanna hear about anything else I am learning or if you’d wanna just chat about the few things that I thought about this month. In typical fashion here are a few highlighting photos over this past month to end the blog:
This be the squadron taking one of our iconic “Neil going horizontal” pictures at the famous Camp Oak Hill. Please ask me why it is famous later.
Also at Camp Oak Hill there was an ultimate frisbee competition where we got to compete with the Memphis fellows program. We 1000% brought the energy but unfortunately did not bring home the ship. As they say though, there’s always next year.
Also went to an UNC game. Nowhere near as electric as Allen Fieldhouse is for the Jayhawks but we all already knew that. Sadly I did not have the gall to wear a KU jersey into this arena but maybe one day I will.
Here's a photo of me back home with my roommates in Wichita, KS. It felt unbelievably good to be home. Also my roommate Ryan hand-painted that picture in the background. Hit me up if you want any “modern art” from him.
That is all for now. Thanks for reading.
May He bless your month of December,
- Alec