Realizations

I'm winding down already, and there are still 2 weeks left. But it's good that I'm starting earlier this year. I realized last year after finals, that suddenly when you have nothing to do, life hits you really hard, and you realize that you've been distracted by school the whole time and not really thinking about how you are doing.

I didn't know how I was doing today, until I began talking to someone I haven't seen in a long time. She asked me how I was doing. With people you see every day, you can be like "I'm good", but with people you haven't seen in a year, you feel bad not telling them a more complete story of your semester or life. So I was like "Hmmm... let me think about how I am doing" and I began rambling, and it got longer and longer and I was just thinking out loud. And then finally I came to a conclusion about how I am doing and it hit me. I was like WOW, I didn't even know how I was doing until I told you how I was doing.

And I realized that I don't feel connected with people (not specific people, but people in general--like the human population), when I don't have extended conversations with people about stuff in my heart. As in rambling conversations. I had quite a few today, and I'm so thankful for them. It's so nice to have people who are willing to just sit and listen to me think out loud. And I find out so much from these conversations.

This is it!

This is it!

My life is a sum total of every today.

and yet, I still resonate with the song Consuming Fire:

"there must be more than this"

What's the next verse to the song?

There must be more than this

O breath of God come breathe within

There must be more than this

Spirit of God we wait for you

That is why there must be more than this. We need to wait for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on this campus, for campus transformation. We need God to transform us from the inside out. We need to be consumed with His love, and the knowledge and depth of His love. It is not His love that is lacking, but our knowledge or understand of it that is lacking--our knowing of Him, that is lacking.

Consuming Fire, fan into flames

A passion for your name

Passion. It's not a bad thing. I used to associate passion with emotion, and emotion with BAD, because of our culture that dislikes emotion. Even the Christian culture does that. We warn people excessively about how to not base our faith on emotion, but in fact the bible is filled with affection from God to His people, and from His people to God. Our faith is based on the Truth, not on emotion. But God created emotion and affection. And it is good.

At Ivy League Congress, someone asked what they should do if it's hard for them to feel love towards people. The guy said, to repent and ask God for help.

A friend of mine remarked that she had forgotten how not seeing God's beauty, or not appreciating God's love, or being in awe of Him, is sin. Not loving God is sin.

Repent and be passionate about God.

It's been over a year!

I'm going to celebrate how God has brought me through all this way, in terms of academics.

I had almost forgotten how painful it was to be borderline failing. I was looking through my email drafts today and found one titled "Reasons I shouldn't do this anymore". It was an email to myself that I wrote last spring (saved as a draft), of all the reasons I shouldn't do engineering anymore. haha. I can finally laugh at it, out of joy.

And yesterday, I had my first Academic Integrity Hearing Board meeting (as a student representative), and I was reminded, as I listened to people's comments on the offender, of what it was like for people to not think you would make it as a Cornell student. Or a Cornell engineering student.

And yet, it's just school. Maybe I can say that now that it's not so bad anymore. But it's really similar to any family problem or relationships or any other hardship. It's big when you're in it, even though it's all very small compared to eternity. And yet, God comforts us in every struggle and hardship.

yay. Thanks God.

Schoolwork

Thank you God for schoolwork. Thank you for the things I am learning. Thank you for diffusion, for vacancy sites and the interstitialcy mechanism. Thank you for radius of gyration and holes, even though they are imaginary.

I declare that I love it because I love you.

--

I heard testimonies at Ivy League Congress, where people said they used to hate school, but after college they realized they loved learning. I don't hate school, but I do treat it as something I have to do.

But I want to be like one of those field workers that sings while she gathers grain. To be full of joy while I work. To see it all as amazing because, well, God is amazing.

I don't want to run after the big picture amazing things and miss the little amazing things all around me. I don't want to be so consumed with the big picture mission that I forget how to love people around me. I don't want to be a hypocrite.

haha... it's been a big picture week for me.

SIGH God

It was really encouraging to see God do so much during Ivy League Congress--in other people and also myself.

For me personally, I almost felt that I was over-challenged, as in challenged beyond what I was ready for. But then, after a while, I am encouraged again, the fear is removed and I am again willing to hear God's call for me for the rest of my college days.

I realized that I am like one of those people that Francis Chan talks about in Forgotten God... one of those people who asks God to speak to them, but is afraid He will tell them to do something they don't want to do. I thought I had given everything to God, but I still have so much to lose that I have not yet counted as loss.

"I have nothing to lose"...I struggle now to believe that. I also am struggling with fearing God. I do not fear Him enough; instead I fear man. And I fear losing cohesiveness, acceptance, respect.

I am beginning to see why Jesus declared in Luke 7:28 that John the baptist was the greatest man who ever lived.

I mean.. dude, John the baptist was CRAZY. What kind of person wears camel hair and lives in the dessert and eats honey and locusts? I bet people were skeptical of him and judged him. I wonder if he was ever lonely.

SIGH God.

I hear that some people pray that God would "wreck" their lives so that they would not be comfortable. That seems like a very scary prayer right now. I am like the father in Mark 9, in that I will have to say 'I believe; help me overcome my unbelief'.

In other words: 'I am not there yet, but I want to be there'.

God's grace is enough for me. And He loves me no matter what.