Camp Quality is a camp for kids who have cancer and their siblings. Each volunteer, or companion, is paired with a camper, and they do everything the camper does for the week. Working with kids with cancer is a truly amazing experience, and I am certain that anyone who volunteers will not regret it. Today, I got this email from the camp director, Chris Jennings:
"Good morning,
I know this is very last minute but we have added a few more campers this week and need more volunteers. We [need] people for this Saturday (yes in two days) through next Friday the 19th. And if someone needed to wait until Sunday morning to arrive we should be able to work with that.
Please let me know or forward this on to anyone you feel may be able share this amazing week with us."
A few days ago, I read that Egypt has ordered the slaughtering of all their pigs (250,000 to 300,000) because of the swine flu. At first, I found this to be somewhat humorous and vastly ignorant. After all, swine Flu (H1N1) is not spread by pigs.
Since then, it has crossed my mind several times that this was a bizarre situation. Egypt is predominantly Muslim (90%), and Muslims don't eat pork, so where are these pigs coming from?
Well, apparently, the pigs are owned mostly by Coptic Christians in Egypt. These Christians in general seem to be rather poor, so having their pigs slaughtered is a big deal. The question then is whether this slaughter is actually a horrible act of persecution, or if it is a genuine action from a concerned government.
Unfortunately, I fear that the former is the case, and that the Coptic Christians are being targeted by the Egyptian government.
(And on that note, I'm off to study for a test that is in a few hours...seriously, who writes on a meaningless blog 3 hours before big tests).
Philip Yancy begins Where is God When It Hurts? by approaching the thesis that "pain is a blessing." While this is hardly something someone who is suffering wants to hear, Yancy supports his thesis brilliantly by discussing a number of diseases, such as leprosy, in which the afflicted loses the ability to feel pain. The damage endured by a leper is secondary to the disease. That is to say that once one can't feel, one is more likely to severely injure oneself due an inability to perceive pain. Thus, lepers will gradually end up with severe wounds which lead to their digits and extremities to be deformed.
Indeed, pain is a blessing. It is through pain that we know to remove our hand from the fire, to withdraw it from a sharp object, or more simply to "not do that again." Pain guides us to safety. Without it, our life is in danger.
Physical pain is clearly good with this in mind. It is protective and is a marvelous example of how we were designed. Describing emotional pain as a blessing is perhaps more controversial, but that does not make it any less true. Emotional pain is a blessing, even if it is a blessing that often results from misuse.
Love is the requirement for emotional pain. We hurt because we love others; we love things, and most of all, because we love ourselves. Love is the most treasured of all of God's gifts, but we rarely direct it toward Him. Perhaps, if we directed all of our love to God, we would be safe from pain. God might be the ultimate analgesic.
Yet, of this I am skeptical, for God, even in His perfection, loved us so much that he hurt for us. We see God hurt in a number of ways: through the pain Christ endured, in the tears of empathy shed for Martha and Mary as they mourned for Lazarus, and through the pleading of the prophets as they begged the Israelites to repent. As we learn to love God, we love the thing He loves, which is to say that we love people, and we love them very much. Through this love, we open ourselves up to a myriad of pain.
Unfortunately, most of the time, the reason for emotional pain is self centered. Even upon death of a loved one, we are not so much sad at the pain the person endured or the fact that they are no more, as we are sad that we will no longer have the person in our life.Of course, this is not entirely true. I am not suggesting that mourning is an entirely selfish process, but instead, for most of us, it is a large component of the process.
Pain- emotional and physical- is a gift from God and evidence that He loves us. Yet, more often than not, the emotional pain we experience is due to misplaced love. For when we love ourselves too much (and we all do), this opens us up to hurt that is associated with that love (or pride).
An example of this occurred to me today, when I thought about how utterly weak I am, and for a moment, I felt profoundly sad, on the verge of tears.As I drove along, in my self pity, I realized that I was marveling at the wrong thing.For instead of marveling in my weakness, I should glory in the strength of my God, who is more than strong enough to take care of me and everyone else.
The world that we live in tells us that we need to love ourselves.I don’t know if anything is further from the truth.We need to find God, and be satisfied with His love for us.That is sufficient.
(The writing of this was segmented, and thus, I'm not at all sure it is coherent. If it is, that is rad.) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
School is going well.It is tough, and I have hit a rough patch in terms of grade.I’m passing, but I’m not doing as well as I’d prefer.Yet, through this tough patch things have been very well with my soul.The past few weeks have been very good for my heart, and I will take that over a grade any day (although, it would be nice to have both).
James 1:23-24, "Anyone who listens to the Word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like."
