A couple of minutes ago, I was randomly looking at some pictures recently posted by a friend of mine, and I saw a person with whom I've recently had difficult experiences. Sigh. I had thought that I was getting over it, but seeing her again brought back everything. How could I be so foolish in looking at the pictures? I knew that my friend knew her, but I braved clicking to see the pictures anyway... I think my heart still hasn't let go as much as I had thought and hoped it did. No wonder it still hurts at times. Maybe it would be wise for me to stay away from the Internet for a while.

It is a sad thing that I had brought things to that painful point of rejection, again. It is a sad thing that when I fall in love, I become a millstone cast into the sea. It is even a sadder thing when, in every single romantic endeavour in the past, all the seas have casted me out to dry in the harsh winds of the empty beach. This time around, God decided to rub it in on me that I had it all wrong, and that hurt all the more. All this over a bunch of females who themselves are fallible, imperfect beings. Why do I let myself get so caught up in pursuing them? Why do I quickly forget the previous pain the last rejection brought me, and make the same stupid mistakes over again? More and more, it makes me feel like I'm not really romantically attractive. Am I just too odd? It is it my super-deformable nose? Is it my obsessive tendencies?

Or, simply, God just doesn't want me to find anyone yet, and for His own good reasons.

It's at these points of thought where I realize that I still have a long way to go in my walk with God. They reveal that I am still trying to find my peace, my fulfillment apart from knowing Him. I find myself having to go online, having to blog, having to do all these things in futile endeavor to be liked, admired, and thought of as 'influential' in others' lives. I am falling into that same old pattern of trying to find my fulfillment in the praise and favor of others. That's what it boils down to, I guess.

God, I am the lost sheep. I keep going to places on my own, trying to create things for myself, when You are the one that knows what's best. Oh, let this foolish heart see what that best way is!

I met up with someone I knew from college for lunch today. It is striking to me that God can make people to be so different from each other.

Starting to solidify details for my church's upcoming praise night. God, please, have mercy, and do Your work in all of our lives.

Still trying to fight off those overwhelming sensations of lonliness! DANGIT. Why do they come in so strong, and so randomly?!

Dag.

There are those people that are comfortable with losing touch with people. They don't look back; instead, they are too busy dealing with what they're going through in life.

There are those people that can't stand losing touch with people. They look back, and strain to keep the ties that they had formed with people. Sometimes their current struggles are put in the backburner, and sometimes new struggles are created because they are refusing to let go of their social connections.

Since college has ended, I personally fit in the second category. I can't stand losing touch with people I've come to call brothers and sisters; it is almost a matter of life and death for me to keep the ties alive. This is a good thing, and a bad thing. It is good because it keeps relationships alive, it strengthens ties, it maintains community. It is bad because it keeps me from focusing on building new relationship with those around me. It keeps me from adapting well to the new environments in which God has placed me.

I can't let go of who God has led me to know. I also can't afford to live in the past. Where do I go from here?

****

'What do you do when the pains of life refuse to let you go?'

I pose this question because it is a question I have repeatedly asked myself, in one form or another. I'm not really going through any painful experience right now, but this question comes to mind. When I experience great pain in the future, how do I keep it from disabling me? In the past, I have always succumbed to its piercing grip. I have been rendered useless because the pain keeps me from concentrating on tasks.

Could the answer like in the Gospel that I have heard all of my life? Can it be found in something to which my heart can be so unresponsive? I am starting to realize that though I believe myself to be in a relationship with God, my life isn't always reflecting it. I don't see myself being dynamically changed by the message of the Cross.

The instant response would be to find fault in the message, but really, the fault is in me. I am too cowardly to truly face the facts it lays out, too scared to see the ugly truths of myself that it reveals. As a result, I miss my chance of being changed by the incredible Truth of God. It is my indifference and indecision that leaves me unchanged, not the Message.

We who think we are mature in Christ, who others consider as being mature in the faith.. are we really mature? As C.S. Lewis says, when we are going the wrong way, the most progressive thing to do is to retrace one's steps. To think that I've grown is folly, when I find my heart so cold and unresponsive to the message of the Gospel.

Some thoughts, that's all.

Kite

Something is about to give
I can feel it coming
I think I know what it means
I'm not afraid to die
I'm not afraid to live
And when I'm flat on my back
I hope to feel like I did

'Cause hardness, it sets in
You need some protection
The thinner the skin

I want you to know
That you don't need me anymore
I want you to know
You don't need anyone, anything at all

Who's to say where the wind will take you
Who's to know what it is will break you
I don't know which way the wind will blow
Who's to know when the time has come around
Don't wanna see you cry
I know that this is not goodbye

In summer I can taste the salt in the sea
There's a kite blowing out of control on a breeze
I wonder what's gonna happen to you
You wonder what has happened to me

I'm a man, I'm not a child
A man who sees
The shadow behind your eyes

Who's to say where the wind will take you
Who's to know what it is will break you
I don't know where the wind will blow
Who's to know when the time has come around
I don't wanna see you cry
I know that this is not goodbye

Did I waste it?
Not so much I couldn't taste it
Life should be fragrant
Roof top to the basement
The last of the rock stars
When hip hop drove the big cars
In the time when new media
Was the big idea
That was the big idea

****

I don't know why this U2 song pulls to me, but the sense of longing and forlorn emotions are what I was going through yesterday. No, this is not a feelings update. This is not a newsletter of my current emotional status. Simply, another train of thought to be recorded. Why does my heart become so randomly overwhelmed by these emotions? Nothing happened yesterday to trigger it, but they swelled up and left me struggling to get anything done yesterday. It is a mystery how the human psyche works; it is so difficult to tame. Thanks be to God for the Gospel, lest I would be in a worse place right now.

****

Can't wait till the new U2 Best of 1990-2000 comes out. However, now that I think of it, I have all the songs already... But I think I'll be buying both Best Of compilations, when I get the funds.

Random memories of me being bad in childhood:

1) In second grade, a friend and I were watching a riveting game of Battleship going on on top of a green metal box in of the courtyards of our apartment complex. I realized that it was time to go, but my friend wouldn't budge. I got angry, you see, because I was his ride home. Back then we rode in two on our bikes; if we didn't have pegs, the second person sat on the bar right behind the handlebars. So, since he wouldn't budge from watching the other kids play, I couldn't leave without him. I pleaded, I tugged, but he kept brushing me away. He didn't listen to reason, and my patience grew thin.

In anger, I walked my bike about ten yards away, got on, and rode the bike straight into his back.

2) Around the same time period, the neighborhood kids and I were playing Thundercats. I chose to be Tigra, because he had the cool whip and could turn invisible. I took up a long nylon jump rope with plastic handles, and proceeded to whip someone with it.

3) In fifth grade, I was at a friend's sleepover. It was fun and clean until it was late at night, and the parents were asleep. The friends decided, in excitement, to show me the sex scenes in Lethal Weapon II because I was the only one in the group that had not seen a naked woman. I think the beginnings of the sinful way of handling lust began during this period of life. Around that time, all the guys wanted to talk about 'who's hot' and female anatomy in vernacular terms. I recall a rainy day where one kid excitedly came into the classroom with a soggy, graphic cover of a XXX video. I didn't know that all of this was not a Godly way to view females or sex, until about a year later.

****

A constant struggle:

It dismays me that I am so easily influenced by those around me. I pick up expressions, ways of thinking, sentiments, etc. too quickly and deeply. I lose my identity. It reveals the weak will that I have. It is because of this flaw and other personality traits that I connect with Peter so much. He was passionate, emotional, and scared of people's opinions.

I have to make sure that I don't leave all of this introspection hanging, lest it be meaningless and a prime exercise of self-pity.

What do all of these episodes reveal?

— Leaving extreme passion unchecked causes me to do extreme things; if I am being self-righteous, I do very self-righteous things. If I am caught up with my fantasies, I can do things that may negatively impact others.

— There are many roots of the ungodly ways I sometimes handle lust. There is a lot of uprooting I still have to do.

— I fear others' opinions too much. Other people end up having more authority than I do, let alone the amount that God has over my life.

In other words, I listen to my body more than I listen to God. More to what I feel and see, than to the call of sanctification.

It is good that these things can be seen, so that the effectiveness of the Gospel will be seen more clearly when I continue to go through the cleansing process.

God, renew, and cleanse.

Jacob and I talked about the dangers of being a passionate person (seeing as we both can be extremely passionate). Our passion can lead us to delude ourselves into thinking that we are pursuing something good, and in the process, burn a lot of people along the way. For example, some people can be really passionate about spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but if they are too passionate in the sense that their emotions drive them to do it more than the actual call itself, they end up doing more damage than good.

I think an important factor about using one's passion for good is the issue of authority. Letting one's excited emotions rule us places authority on creation, not on God. We can even delude ourselves into thinking that we're doing things for and listening to God, when really it is our emotions in RESPONSE to God's goodness that drive us. I think that is a very subtle, but very important delineation that must be recognized and made. There are so many things that I have done, that many pastors, that church leaders have done that speak to the dangers of that. I won't go into supporting examples, but I'm sure many of you can list examples.

Passion is good, necessary and hard to find, but once we have it, it must be utilized with extreme caution and reservation.

For those of you who know Biochemistry, think about it in this way:

We all know that there is a LOT of energy stored up in Glucose, such that when it is oxidized all at once, that's a very high amount of energy being released. But, the body uses that large amount energy by taking a little bit of it at a time, storing it in useful little packets of energy such as ATP. The same should be for the highly energetic element of Passion.

Danny Dokko Korean Joke:

"So what did the fish say when it got smashed into a cake?

It said 'Oh deng!'"

Danny, things like making a Xanga site called Blogspot remind me how you always find a way to make me smile :-)

Hey.

So, yesterday was good. Had Biochem test that wasn't so good, got back a Biosignal exam that was good, then went to NY, which was uber-good.

Good, because simply, God provided in so many ways. I think the primary way He did was by showing me that I'm not alone.

I'm not alone. I'm not alone.

Walking through NY, I came across random friends from Hopkins, especially this one older sister that I had a great time hanging out with during my sophomore year. What a throwback... we had developed a system of greetings based off of the word "Yo", and it was funny that we still remembered it. Melissa Villanueva is such a great sis, God really blessed me with letting me see her again.

He blessed me with Jacob, Stan, HanNa, Yeun Joo. It was a great evening of laughs, memories, and stories up the wazoo at Carmine's and Edgar's Cafe. I had not met Yeun Joo beforehand because she transferred out before I had come in as a freshman, so it was good to meet another alum :-).

Jake and I then stayed up till sunrise talking about everything. What a great time of fellowship, of sharing thoughts and struggles, of expressing fears and joys, and of lifting laments and praises to God. We always had a good, brotherly connection.

Today, gonna meet up with some peeps for lunch, then probably study all afternoon with Jake, then head back home.

****

I love NY! More like, I like the life that bustles through, and the fact that people are together. Think of how the City of Heaven will be like... a bustling city of praise.

Upon further introspection in light of the Gospel:

Introspection - While studying this morning for Biochem, I found myself becoming very emotional because I couldn't get the right answers to the problems. This reaction has been a trait of mine since I can ever remember. When I'm doing something with all of my concentration but failing at it, I get very emotionally involved. I start complaining and venting my frustrations verbally.

In light of the Gospel - The cause of these emotional outbursts is sin. What sin? Sin itself, ie, the declaration of self-sufficiency. I expect things to work simply because I put my personal effort into them. When my efforts fail, I get emotional because my expectations aren't met. Patience runs thin, because, "it's supposed to work, this ideal I have MUST happpen." But, that is sin. That is my expectation of the way things I THINK should be, not the way that God has made them, not the way that they really are.
To counter that sinful tendency, again, Christ is right at the door of my heart, reminding me that I don't have to worship those idols of my ideals anymore. Things are in His hands, and are determined by Him, the Ruler of the Universe, not me. Therefore, because He bought me, because His strength is in me, I have the confidence to realize that things are, in fact, turning out the exact way they should be. What's the point of getting frustrated?

I just hope my slow heart can really understand this.

I miss Hopkins, in many ways.

People, mostly.

Though, I'm learning, I really have a lot of foibles that make me socially awkward in the 'normal' world. As in, I'm interested how things work, and I like to talk and discuss how they do. At Hopkins, there were a lot of people that didn't care, but there was at least a size-able contingent of people that DID care, and in fact, cared more than I did. It stimulated and humbled me. People here in general (or, maybe, in the world), I find, could care less. Hence, social awkwardness from high school, all over again.

Here, the humbling I get is that I'm too excited about talking to notice that NO one really seems to be interested. Essentially, I have to learn more, again, that I don't know that much, that I'm too careless with my words.

Bottom line: I'm really confused about myself. :-)

****

1:14 AM

So, I'm home now, after driving home from the library where I just typed the above entry. This addendum appears because I saw something today on the way home that I had never seen, and it made me think.

I had to drive through a flock of deer. It was the most deer I had seen together in my life, about 10-20 of them. Some were on the road, some were grazing on the grass to the side. It was quite a sight; I had to switch on the high beams and drive at 5 miles an hour to scare them off the road and simultaneously avoid them. After I circled the bend, I nearly hit another deer.

Why did this make me think?

The reason why there are so many deer like this is because there has been massive deforestation around the area to make way for a highway expansion project. I haven't seen so many skunks, rabbits, deer, and other domestic wildlife before until the past couple of weeks. It's quite sad, really, because they have no familiar homes to which they can return.

It recalls something else I read today: the church that my home church rents out has recently been adding a new sanctuary to their building. I read an article in the local paper that they had posted up on their bulletin board. Apparently, during the '60s, the government had torn down their church in order to make way for a new highway then (I-287, ironically, the highway I take to get to this church).

That recalled to my mind a co-worker I had in an engineering internship a couple of years ago that went the same dilemma: when he was kid, he had to move because the government tore down his neighborhood to make way for I-287.

This brings me to what I'm thinking about: the experience of dislocation, of not having a home. Is it a Godly expectation to try to find our home here on earth? Because ultimately, those who are in Christ have their home with God in the heavenly realms, so we'll have to go through an especially jarring dislocation from mundane existence to infinite glory. How mind boggling is that?

It also brings about a reminder of the sadness and pain that refugees in this world have to go through, like the Kurds in Iraq, people fleeing their homes in Israel, and even us in the east coast of the US. Our sense of 'safe home' was destroyed with the 9/11 attacks, and further blown away by the recent sniper attacks in DC suburbs. We are now like the deer I first mentioned, because the seemingly secure existence we once called home was bulldozed by humans with a self-centered/self-righteous/self-important agendas on their minds.

Is the solution a fleeting ideal of 'world peace', an escapist ideal of 'this world is not our home', or, possibly, a combination of the both?

Isn't that solution the Gospel? When Christ came, angels cried, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Christ, and through Christ to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through Christ's blood, shed on the cross. We who know Christ are to be the instruments of peace on earth, though we ourselves have a home elsewhere. It is us, the elect, those called by God to be holy and blameless, who are to work hard to find and implement the solutions to ills of the world. We are called to be the salt and light of the world, of the communities we live in, of the places we work in, not just the salt and light of our isolated fellowships and churches. It is not a call founded in humanistic pleas for tolerance, or tired pleas of escaping the pains of this world, but it is a call founded in the death, resurrection, and ascension of the Son of God. The Gospel has redeemed men to do good works:

"For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope--the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good." - Titus 2:11-14