Part 1
Mm. Interesting. I guess more than ever I feel as I leave the college bubble, that for the first time, the “battle” of living a counter-cultural life in this spiritual warzone makes sense. In the back of my mind, every time I encountered this analogy I understood it as applicable while perhaps entertaining the notion that it was an exaggeration for my life. Yet these past few months have seen me challenged with things that outstripped the mere temptations of my past – stealing, lying, honoring. I found myself dealing with issues of premarital sex, of seriously desiring a life of comfort and prosperity and rejecting a calling to live among the impoverished, of wanting to withdraw into my own ethnic circles and live in ignorance. And during these moments, I found myself for the first time seriously wondering if God was real. Yet, while these moments brought me into some of my darkest fear, that perhaps the faith I thought I had amounted to nothing, because they could so easily be shaken in such a short amount of time, I can look back on my life, and my life as it is today, and be blessed, because I can tell you of how God does not stand for me to waste His time. I know that there are times that God is patient with us as we veer in and out of the path He calls us to, and He waits for us to snap out of our misguided ways and He awaits us with outstretched arms a la the Prodigal Son, but in my life, so many times I feel that God is more the shepherd with the lost sheep, that he actively goes out to get me and slaps me really hard if need be for me to come back to my senses. I can almost feel God at these moments telling me, “Eugene, my plans are too great for you to be wasting my time, so wake up and let me use you.” I guess my greatest fears now, is fear of loss as I face the future. I’m really not worried about my future, in any kind of worry like I used to have about things – but sometimes when I think about my future, I’m afraid of losing things – I’m afraid of losing my family one day, I’m afraid of not having friends, I’m afraid of one day not being able to remember what it’s like to live in Korea…I’m afraid I’m preparing myself for a lifestyle I want to be able to handle, but I won’t be strong enough to survive. Yet my one reassuring thought amidst all this, is that God has revealed to me that He guides us in steps, only one at a time, without revealing to us our final destination, and the strength He provides is only enough to get us to that next step. So as it stands, I won’t be able to survive the life I will have in the future with the strength I have now – only enough for one day, one hour, one minute of my life – and that’s how we continue to walk without growing faint, run and not be weary, and sometimes we’ll soar on wings like eagles. I don’t worry like I used to, but often to escape my fears, I’ll choose not to think about things – I wish to one day be able to think about my future, to hear about the successes of medical students like me, to be confronted with what may lie ahead and NOT assume that future is mine, and know JOY without ignorance.
Part 2
I guess I’ve felt really inadequate this past quarter. I started out this summer really disappointed at how little vision team developed my initial idea of a prayer guide from way back in March and how little I had to start out with. I pushed on despite vision team’s warnings with a non-chapter specific prayer group, which ultimately fell apart because the dedicated leaders of IV in all 5 chapters are too over-taxed as it is. So I broke the group apart near the end of the quarter – I’m wondering how to lead a chapter in prayer, and how anything I do can make a lasting difference beyond this one school year. Barely anyone knows I’m the prayer ministry leader for MEIV and it discourages me that our weekly chapter meetings are by necessity during the daytime, when I have class. As a worship team member, I enjoy being on the team immensely. I wanted to grow musically, which I feel I am doing slowly, and I wanted to grow in my understanding of worship, which I also am doing slowly – my most memorable moment has to have been when I worshiped in Korean this quarter. Yet I feel inadequate, being the least musically able of the group, and often it doesn’t matter, though at times I’m reminded of this. I was reminded during Christmas LG, being the only member of the WT besides Rachel not to have participated – I know these thoughts are wrong and sometimes amount to nothing beyond selfishness, but accumulated, give me cause to stop and think about my continued role as a leader in MEIV – I know I shouldn’t limit God by what I perceive are my limitations, but I don’t know how to prioritize my two leadership calls, especially when I don’t know how to proceed at all with the former. I need guidance.
Part 3
What I think about from time to time is the flaky nature of the Christian commitment, especially in Asian-Americans. I know so many of my brothers and sisters from high school who seemed so on-fire, just die away when they came to college. I know so many more still of those that I know from college will go on to wither away after graduation. I know a big part of it has to do with the amount of Christian immersion we experience growing up, where our closest friends may be from church or IV and where in the workplace, these social surroundings change. Yet it doesn’t really explain everything. We’re so sure of our faith sometimes, but before we know it, we just care less and less, or the things we were so on fire for just seem to mean less and less, until before we know it the days have blurred so much together that we’re old. More and more, it seems less and less unlikely that after I graduate, this could perhaps be true of me. How do we keep our faith from seeming more and more childish as we enter the American workforce, and keep our ideals from the jadedness that is to follow? Find a good church? I just talked to a friend who works most on Sundays and can’t afford to go to church as a first year restaurant manager. Strong disciplines in prayer and bible study? Without community, these things are infinitely harder and much less rewarding than they were before. I don’t want to wait until I’m old enough to actually be living with the impoverished and being reminded every day of my choice to see and work against injustice for my faith to make more sense again. I want my faith to be stronger years later, when I’m drowsy with sleep competing with the top students of the nation for scores in medical school, or vying for a residency in the workforce as they are now. How?
Part 4
I love the worship team. I look forward to every Wednesday when I get to go down to Parkes to practice and lead with you guys. At the core of it, for me it’s a lot of fun and I think it should be. Bible study leading for me was fun last year, and so it grants me so much peace to reconcile what I’m doing with something that resonates so intimately with who I am. I love what we discuss at meetings, and I love how we’re pretty comfortable with each other and it’s only been a quarter. I love that everyone has a different personality and things are always going to be different with just one person missing – I hope. I want to see some of the stuff we talked about happening – I want to see the singing on the street, singing on the El, the body worship, the drawing – all that stuff we talked about. I fear we’ll be as busy next quarter with things as we were this past quarter and these things’ll be pushed to next year, or we’ll do them in a wishy-washy way if at all. I want to see the Winterfest/Cedar-ish chapter meetings for large group like we discussed, Barney and Phil, where things are relaxed and people discuss the vision and things together and it doesn’t matter who’s a leaders or who’s not. While I love the songs we sing, I’d love to branch out from the kinds of songs we do – the type that’s becoming classic MEIV. Maybe more traditional, maybe something more exotic – I feel we sing Te Alabare or Montana too often, and I know a little bit of it has to be that it’s logistically easier to repeat songs with some sets, particularly sets with new pieces. But it’s been very good. Lastly, I’d love to do a prayer concert again soon, but with elements of 05-06 Concert, where we had pure performance pieces. It’d be an opportunity to perform Christian pieces that are not as conducive to joint sing-along but still provide a powerful worship experience. There are many pieces I could suggest for those.
Prayer Requests – well. All this is me in a nutshell, maybe more dramatic than it really is, but you can garner hours of prayer from this . “Prayer Requests” often seem so fleeting because they’re already pre-processed and pre-packaged for us and we don’t have to think as much. But pray for my parents – for them to find God, for them to be healthy, for them to stop stressing and taxing themselves – for them to know Joy, Peace, and Rest in Him. Soon.
