Thinking out loud

So I will apologize in advance for doing something that I generally dislike reading on other people's blogs, which is referencing things that are going on in life without clarification. It generally leaves the odd feeling that the thoughts are important enough to voice publicly, and yet too private to actually share. (so then, better to keep them to one's self?)

But somehow, as one may infer from the massive outpouring of the innermost thoughts of so many individuals onto the web for anyone in the world to see, we find solace in getting things out when we know people will see it, yet hesitate to fully divulge.

So, Mea Maxima Culpa, I fear I may indulge in this practice today as well.

First, however, I note that my life is changing. Life tends to alternate between periods of continuation and change, I've found. I submit that resisting those periods of change is what leads to a lack of personal growth in many people, yet perhaps some can be forgiven for wishing to stay in their current state.

I was in Taiwan for a year. The length of time tends to pale now in comparison with the significance of the time. A year is not long, and yet so many things can happen in that time.
I could have stayed there, for an indefinite period of time. I would have been very happy.
There are various motivations for this, some altruistic, some godly, and some merely selfish. One personal inclination is to bury myself in the endless, trackless wonder that is the earth, ceaselessly cataloging its wonders, people, realms, and climes. There is enough to be seen and experienced here for many, many lifetimes, let alone however long is allotted to the remainder of mine. I comfort myself in that I will have eternity to explore the new earth, and that despite the common misconceptions of eternity, it will be even much more interesting than this one.

But I did not stay, of course, I returned. There were many good and practical reasons why this should be so, and I do not regret leaving except in a temporary and irresponsible sense.

Now I am taking practical steps to return, but really, can you ever return?
I am going back to Taiwan only in the sense that Taiwan is a geographical location to which I have previously ventured and will (Lord Willing) subsequently again visit.

Save perhaps a short visit in the summer, devoted to work, it will be a few years before I can count on living there again. The people I knew will have experienced those years independently, and some things will have changed. The ever-dynamic cities will have changed, the political landscape will certainly have changed. I will have changed.

So in a sense, one can never "go back". One can only move forward.
And so I do. But with a sense of loss that I feel more keenly every year, it seems.
Life is passing by, and we cannot bring it back. The only One who has the power to do so has placed us in the sort of universe in which this does not occur.
Older people generally mark this passing more anxiously than younger people, as the years seem to fly faster and faster. And yet, they do not. Time passes at exactly the same rate for a 12 years old as it does for a 92 year old. What feels so different about it?

I would submit that most 12 year olds are too busy living life to mark its passing, while for a 92 year old, nearly all of life has already been lived. A good lesson for us all, perhaps, though reflections on life's brevity are certainly healthy if handled in the appropriate manner. I once read the statement that "your senior year of highschool is the best year of your life".
What a depressing thought! Imagine that your entire life from 17ish onwards is merely coasting towards the inevitable grave, with nothing better to look forward to than that which has already come.

But yes. Changes. 3 years ago, I lived in Huntsville. I had my own apartment (shared, but equally payed for), a promising career, a car which I payed cash for, and enough money that, had I cared to spend it, I could have bought a little sailboat, or put money down on a small house.
I also had many friends, a stable environment, no debt, and in short was beginning life after college about as well as anyone does.

Now, I live at home again. My job lies in the past, though thankfully my car still serves me, and the savings that seemed bound to increase every year have parked as they are, with that fateful title of "life" appended as a prefix. Thankfully, still no debt, but now my financial obligations for seminary are such that without help of my family in Christ, debt would be all but inevitable.

But God is great. Could I exchange the past two years for thrice the income I would have made during that time, I would not even consider doing so. You cannot buy a life, and the life I now live seems nothing less than new. And being entirely other than that of which I could have conceived on my own, this life is clearly something God has determined for me. I have learned quite well part one of the never-ending lesson that the unexpected things God throws at you can lead to results dramatically greater than your own plans.

And yet, now my life seems to be changing again, in as dramatic a way.
I leave this fall for seminary, something that up until a year or two ago I had only contemplated as something I could not imagine myself doing.
When I complete that degree, Lord Willing, I ought to be fairly well-equipped for ministry.
And what ministry will that be? Only He knows. My own plans to return to Taiwan seem godly and reasonable, but so did my plans to be a prosperous engineer who remained active in my church.

And other changes are occuring as well. The "home" country I returned to isn't looking much like home. Our nation is in an unprecedented situation of becoming something entirely other than what the founders intended. And not through defeat by some foreign power, but by the efforts of our own elected leaders, enabled by a generation of Americans who do not understand or appreciate the freedoms they inherited from those who bled for them.

There are those who question how I could go so far away and live in an entirely foreign culture.
Yet surely it's far easier to encounter a different culture far away, where it is expected, and not at your doorstep? I want to ask them instead, how can you passively watch your own country become something foreign? Foreign lands are exactly that, and can be enjoyed as such. Even when they become home, as Taiwan surely to a large extent has, a place that I love and am comfortable in, I do not expect from it the same things that I expect from the nation of my birth.
I have been able to go forth easily, knowing that America lies safely behind.
What if the country I return to as "home" becomes changed to the point of unrecognizability?
I say "what if", but this is already occurring.

And still other changes. Certain elements that have long been absent in my life have now flickered in and out of it. I find the continuum in which I have lived does not possess the inertia I thought it did. Soon instead of simply continuing in it, it will be my own energy and will which sustains it. What had simply been the way things were is now becoming something I must actively choose to maintain. Certainly, it can be so, but do I want that? Does God want that?

I am not an optimist. Things will happen in my life either because God allows me to cause them, either by action or inaction, or because God intervened and caused them in spite of my efforts.
Nothing happens in life for any other reason. Hoping very much that it will be better than it is likely to be may be a helpful way for some people to maintain good spirits, but it certainly seems like an invitation to disappointment to me. If I have reason to hope, it is because God has blessed me beyond anything I could imagine, not because "life is good". Life is not good, life is Christ, and to die is gain. Yet my prayer is that God keeps me alive for as long as He has a purpose for me.
My life is forfeit to Him who ransomed it, and He teaches me increasingly how much this is true.

"So that it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me."

Why can't Christians see that? Why are they hell-bent (wording intentional) on pursuing their own lives in their own way? Why do they see it as their time, or at best a power-sharing agreement, not God's time, which He created and loans to us? Yet I am the same. Every day, every day, I begrudge God what is rightfully His.
And somehow on those times when I come before Him, so much less often than He has infinite right to claim, He meets me there and blesses me. How can it be so?

The only explanation is love. As unfathomable as it may seen, God loves what is surely unlovable but for that fact. We say that we love God because God loves us, but it must also be true that we can only be loved by anyone because God loves us.

That is my only hope, as my life changes and I begin to dance to stay upright as the earth shifts beneath me, and my deepest hopes for my life become unsure, even irrelevant.
Somehow God actually loves me, I who surely know how unloveable a person I am.
There is literally no way I can conceive of repaying that love. Even a life of total, perfect service is only the honor due Him. It does not even begin to repay a debt that we are no more capable of paying than of creating ourselves.

All is Gift.

-Joseph