Adventure

If you have been following our adventure blog, or if you knew we were off to a six months adventure to Japan, you were probably not very surprised to see that this blog stayed virtually untouched. It isn't that I haven't had any musings. There's been a plenty! But it has been very hard to put into words. I needed some time to digest it, and put into words.

We left BC with the idea to stay in Japan for 6 months, as you know. Well, if it was still according to our plans, we should've been home already, but we are not. Plans, when one is on an adventure where God is at the helm, tends to get changed. In our case, it was with a sudden realization that we will be graced with another member to our family... very soon.

As exciting as that is, that is not what I really want to blog about today.

When we set off to this adventure, my conviction about God was really personal and hadn't broken out of the cultural divide into the Japanese side as much. Knowing Japanese, too, I was a bit hesitant as to how to approach them with the Good News that is the Gospel. I knew hitting them with "talk" can backfire miserably. I didn't want to just talk. Having seen how my dear husband lives it with hardly a "talk", I was hoping to just live it out loud. However, I had my doubts whether that'd be enough. I know it is not a coincidence that God made me a talker. Sometimes I just cannot hold it inside. It is part of God's design in making me that I should put my thoughts into words and "communicate." I can see that the past few many years were a training time to learn to reign in my hasty tongue and not let every thought out, but filter it through the Lord first.

Another thing was that I knew God hasn't been absent entirely in cultures that haven't had the Gospel influence prior to missionary work. In finding these out, it was exhilarating, and at the same time very perplexing. I had to face the question: Can one find God without Jesus?

A number of weeks ago, my husband's cousin was asking the same question on Facebook, and it hit me that I had resolved this issue without really realizing it. I found myself answering with confidence, God leaves his invitation to us all around us in HIs creation. It is a clue to who He is. However, it is incomplete. God chose specifically to reveal Himself in Jesus, because there was no other fit way to express Himself and get the job done.

This brought me back to a conversation I had with a WWOOF host in Wakayama. A very lovely honest woman, kind, lively and energetic. We all have come to really love her dearly. One day she drove us to the mountains to see her daughter's family so that my hubby can see her son in law's wood working workshop. (He's a carpenter.)

On the way back, we got into this conversation where she asked me, "You keep mentioning this God. Who is it that you believe?" She knew I was a Christian, so I knew she was wanting more than a label for an answer. I told her that I believed in the Creator of Heaven and Earth, who so loved us that He expresses Himself in the creation surrounding us, but even sent HIs only Son in person so that we can come to know Him more intimately, and in that He would experience it all that we go through here and be close to us. She sounded taken aback.

Then she told me how she felt turned off towards Christianity. She has an older sister who went to a Christian College. When she came home on holidays, way back when, she asked her sister what this Christianity was all about. All those unbelievable stories in the Bible; aren't they just a crazy stories just like in Shinto tales? Long story short, this sister only knew Christianity as rules and regulations and her response tells me that she herself wasn't very sure. She probably felt put on the spot and didn't really want to explain what she herself hadn't figured out. She told her little sister off and didn't answer. It didn't help, too, that these two went on to have an enmity that still lasts to this day. A very sad witness. At any rate, she muttered then that she didn't feel like this was a same God I believed in.

I felt at this point in the conversation that I wasn't to push. So I emphatically said that I was very sad that her sister didn't hear her well and answered her honestly. I also said that we humans complicate the simple profound truth of God. God asks us to love one another. We don't know how to love properly. So we make all kinds of descriptions like rules saying "it isn't this" but rule keeping isn't the same as loving. True loving comes from within.

That is how this conversation ended. I felt full even though I hadn't had a "life committing conversion" talk with her. At the same time, I felt also a sadness. How can she know all the ways God revealed Himself if she doesn't read the Bible and know Jesus? There is so much contrary beliefs and information out here. Nature is crippled as is. Even the fingerprints He left in the origin on Shintoism has been corrupted into rituals and traditions. The person of Jesus IS the only clear representation!

I had a similar talk with her daughter-in-law. She was sharing with me how and why she feels attracted to Shinto right now. In the course of the conversation, she mentioned how she felt Christianity unreasonable because unbelievers were condemned to hell and believers' sole benefit was going to Heaven. Now, she also knew that I am a Christian.

My response to this? Well, I didn't jump on it like I think she was expecting. She went on to say that she liked how agriculture was part of worship in Shinto. In farming, we humans were communing with the gods. The she asserted that agriculture is described in the Bible as toil and only bad things were promised at the Fall.

That is where I came in. I said, that is a sad fallacy. I asked her if she has read the Bible herself. She answered NO. I said, be careful because Bible gets twisted more frequently. The reality is God created men in a garden. He worked with Adam in the garden at the time of Creation. God is the originator of growing things. God in the Bible is the Gardener. Tending plants was the first thing men learned and was a way of communing with Him. The only reason it turned to toil was because men chose to do the one thing God said not to do for the men's own sake.

Then I pretty much repeated how men complicate the simple message that comes from God. What we perceive as right or loving is so arbitrary and not necessarily what God would think Right or Loving.

I experienced the same feelings again. Both the joy and the sadness.

But you know what? She trusts me now. They both know that I won't be defensive and I am open to questions. I didn't rudely walked all over with muddy feet (arrogance) trampling over their conviction and beliefs. I just planted some truth as seeds. I am praying that those seeds will get watered. If my experience proves me right, I know that God will follow it up. Because it isn't a coincidence that we went there. I was meant to be part of that chain of events that leads them to the Truth who is Jesus.

In my twenties, my zeal for God often drove my tongue to quick and rash speech. I do care. I always have. I'm just grateful that He has grown me this far to care enough to choose wisely, wait on His lead. So many times "I" got in the way, I have come to fear I do more harm than good.

The other day, here in Nagano, I was talking to a young girl who has a very clear boundary and has been talking to me about her last relationship. This was oddly familiar, I tell you. I remember a similar scene ... oh what, twenty years ago?!... during University with a classmate over lunch. I have entirely lost contact with this classmate after that lunch. She pretty much avoided me like a plague. ... but I digress. This time, I was able to choose my words better to suit my listener. Not just a mumble excited spew of words like I did way back when. That was a verbal diarrhea! This time, though, it went way better.

So, I say to you today. What is an adventure? Is it really going away to distant lands and experiencing different cultures? In a way it is one kind of an adventure. But I must say, it pales in comparison with this adventure I've been on since Jesus came into my life. He not only has taken me physically to different places, but has explored the inner parts of me and changed me inside out. The process I still am on. My heart has been on the ride of its life ever since, but joyfully! With Him at the helm, I can truly and sincerely say, I am safe and secure even if it doesn't seem like that to some looking in on the outside.

Our life, since we embarked on this adventure, so far hasn't looked "normal" for sure. But is "normal" a real thing? Average, maybe. But there is no such thing as "normal." It may not be average or what the majority does, but it is ours and His. What would've freaked me out a couple of years back, I am now taking in stride only because of His grace and presence. At times, when I get off this trusting peace and fret over someone else's life, it is as though I can hear Him say "But that is not your story" just like Aslan says to Lucy in Prince Caspian.

Let this peace continue to rule us!