Saturday, October 25, 2008

Live and Let Live



I saw that video a while ago, and was really moved by it. I watched it again, and again, and again, and soon enough, the bigger picture began to unfold. Why is it that we so often avoid things because of our limitations, incompetence, or inabilities? Why, when there are so many other people who can be our support and help us do the things that we alone cannot? Is it just because we want to steal the show? To be the only spotlit, center-of-attention performer -- or else not perform at all? 

Seeing this video makes me wonder how much could we do if we could only let others be for us the things that we are not... and do for them what they cannot do. It seems as if we live our lives fruitlessly trying to perform an arabesque without a leg to lift, while our healthy arms dangle uselessly. We try to choose what we want to do, when God has already chosen other roles for us -- roles that might not be as glamorous or fun as those of others, but roles that are perfectly allotted by God to make the Christian body into one complete, unified being.

I mentioned a while ago about the hard (for me) decision to become a writer. I had been jumping from one thing to the next -- trying to teach myself piano, trying to master wheel pottery, trying to learn to sing, trying to learn Italian on my own -- and ended up leaving my gift for writing stagnant and under-nourished. I was like a gardener who planted a hundred different seeds, and spent so much time jumping around from one to the next that none of them ended up growing.

I'm all for trying new things, but there's a difference between a focused, concentrated effort on several key projects, and spreading yourself too thin. I think that, if -- figuratively speaking -- God gave me a "hand" so that I could be a hand to those who have no hand, I should focus on using that hand instead of bemoaning the foot that I don't have... there are others who "be" that foot for me. That's how we are made: there are no trials that have no way out, no deficiencies that cannot be filled in by others. 

One of the central characterstics of a servant is to do your part to the best of your ability, and let others do their part. I mean, Jesus, who has absolutely no incompetencies, imperfections, or inabilities, still allows and encourages us to be his hands and feet. It's not that he needs us to do these things for him -- it's that he entrusts us to do his work here on earth. He lets us do it so that we can grow.

I guess we sometimes misinterpret messages such as "expand your horizons," or "do hard things," and turn them into instruments of selfishness. It becomes a race for quantity, not quality. You learn to sing, though you nave neither talent, nor desire, nor passion for it -- you just want to put your hundredth accomplishment on the list of "Things I Can Do." Your lackluster efforts are copied by other people who are looking for easy ways expand their lists. The standards of quality in the music world begin to fall. People who are passionate, anointed musicians get discouraged by the low standards invading the industry, and either fall to meet those standards, or choose a different path.

And all this time, your God-given talent for drawing is left neglected and forgotten by you. 

Wouldn't it have been better for everyone if you'd fulfilled your role and let others fulfill theirs? You see, that's what Jesus does -- he lets us do his work so that we can grow from it. Sometimes, you've just got to give up the microphone to the people who were meant to sing -- who will actually grow by singing.

The young woman in the video didn't try to perform lifts using her one arm -- she let the man do that, and he ended up strengthening his arms. Likewise, he didn't try to do jumps and footwork that required two legs -- he left that job to the young lady's strong legs. Together, they reinforced their strengths and filled in each other's weaknesses.

And it was beautiful.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

A couple of things

...that I felt like blogging about, but which didn't really deserve separate posts of their own. This post isn't going to have a ton of insight of depth, just a list of interesting and not-so-interesting things that have been going on in my life.


1. MMM is out! The new issue is now up on the website (which has undergone a major redesign). Please click on the cover to your left to go read it. And maybe tell a friend or two... pretty please? :)

2. I'm very busy. I've got a lot of homework and assignments piling up on me, so my blogging will be on the more sporadic side for now. I hope to get back to it soon, because I find that in many ways, it's a really fulfilling exercise -- it prompts you to reflect on your day and search your life for lessons and knowledge that can bless others. So I want to start blogging regularly at some point...

3. Today was the first "serious" frost of the season -- absolutely beautiful. :) Of course, I'm wearing gloves as I type this (I never knew how warm apartments were 'till I went to live in a townhouse) but I'm looking forward to tomorrow's frost.

4. A skunk tried to break into our back door. (I think it was trying to get back at me for using skunks as metaphors for sin/evil a few posts ago. Oops. ;)

5. A couple of weeks ago, something strange happened. In the middle of the night, for no rational or explainable reason, the battery fell out of my alarm clock. Which made no sense, since, for 8 years (yes, my clock is old), generations of batteries have sat tightly in the battery compartment with no problems at all. Anyway, back to the point. So I woke up and put the battery back in. The next night, one of the hands fall off! Wha-? How do you explain that?!

6. The song, "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," by Casting Crowns, is indescribably beautiful. 

7. Google notebooks is seriously one of the most helpful, useful resources you can find for organizing major school projects. I think I'll start using it to put together ideas and drafts MMM.

8. Apparently, "dwelve" isn't a real word -- the right word is "delve." I honestly never knew that.

9. I need to block out some time to spend with God, because I've been getting very distant lately.

10. I can't wait to get my hands on the new ESV study Bible. It hasn't been available in any book stores in my area, but I really hope it gets stocked soon, because I'm going through the OT right now, and I'd love some visuals and commentaries to help me through.

So there you go... a hodge-podge of things that have happened since my last post. Be back later!

Oksy

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Life is But a Dream

heaven on earth

I had a dream today. In it, I was working on a painting for a school project, and somebody I am very close with came up to me and tried to help me. She was more of a hindrance than a help, though, and -- long story short -- she ended up mixing the entire contents of two bottles of paint together so that I no longer had the most important colour I needed to finish the painting with. I lost it. "Get away from me!" I yelled.

Then I woke up. Gee, I thought, that was nothing to get angry over. It was just a dream.

That's the point, God gently told me.

If this had been real life, I can bet you this whole blog that I would have probably reacted in a very similar way. But 'real life' -- this life -- is but a dream compared to all of eternity. Do I really want to look back someday and think, what a thing to get upset about. What a superficial, fleeting, transient matter to get caught up in. How quickly it passed -- how unnecessary was my anger!

Yes God.

That's the point.


Love, Oksana

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Me from my


I've been studying Psalm 34 lately; going through it line-by-line to really savour the meaning of each word. As I was reading, several verses reallys truck me, and have been tumbling about in my head ever since like stones when they are being polished into gems. By now, a clear-enough message has emerged from the rough, but I'm still struggling to find just the words to explain what I mean. I'll try to do my best...

Here are three verses from Psalm 34, each following a distinct pattern:

4: "I sought the Lord and ... he delivered me from all my fears."
5: "The Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles."
19: Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all."


I've generally been in the habit of asking God to take my fears, afflictions, and troubles, from me. This Psalm opened my eyes to the fact that, if I want God to change something in my life, I'm the one who has to be moved. You see, God does not deliver your problems from you, he delivers you from your problems, by taking you to higher ground. If you want deliverance, you can't just open one small part of your life to God: you have to let him change everything that has been affected by your sin, and that means he's going to lift you out of your comfortable world and into a place where none of your past can enter.

To illustrate this better, take a moment to imagine a beautiful, comfortable, luxurious room. It's a room that's practically perfect in every way, except for one little thing. A skunk has decided to make one of its corners his residence. 

You're left with two choices. The first is: take the skunk out of the room. Which -- as you'll know if you've ever had the good fortune of coming near a skunk -- certainly won't make the room smell any nicer! The second choice is to relocate yourself and move to a place where the skunk can't follow. You've not only left the source of the problem, but you're also leaving everything that has been affected by it, as well as sparing yourself any future trouble.

In a spiritual sense, it's the same thing. If you want to be delivered from a sin, you have to realize that your whole life, not just part of it, has been affected. Which means that you can expect a huge upheaval in everything that has been comfortable and familiar to you. God isn't going to weed out the sin and leave you in the same place as you were before, he's going to pluck you out of that situation completely and draw you to a place that may be completely different from anything you've ever known. A place that is closer to him. A place where not a single scrap of your past can survive.

This speaks to me right now, since I've had several problems with my approach to Multi Media Ministry, my e-zine: I feel I'm not glorifying Jesus through it as I should. And I spend so much time making lists of things I need to change and pointing out specific errors and whatnot, when God just wants me to leave behind all of my comfortable, familiar, preconcieved ideas about what this ministry should be, and let him take it to a place that I can't quite comprehend, control, or imagine yet. It's not the problems that need to be removed from my e-zine, it's that the e-zine needs to be moved closer to God.

The only thing I can do is let go.

Love, Oksana

Thursday, October 2, 2008

What I've been doing

The last post hopefully gave you a little update and insight into my thoughts on my lovely new location on this planet... now I'll tell you what's been filling up my time during this literal and figuartive 'season of change' ...

1. Multi Media Ministry. The newest issue of my e-zine (see the link on the sidebar) is in its final stages of production: it's been amazing to see everything coming together. I'm tempted to tell you about an important lesson that God taught me several weeks ago while I was working on a feature that didn't seem to be coming along, but I'll leave that for the next post I have planned. Meanwhile, here's a quick list of what you can expect from the fall 2008 issue: an extensive Photography feature, with work and interviews from several teenage photographers; a back-to-school special feature with dozens of practical ideas and tips on serving God in school; an interview with CCM artist Tayla Hodges; as well as articles on The Rebelution, Ananias and Sapphira, and persecuted Christians. Hope you guys check it out when it's done (next week, God-willing :).

2. Reading Mansfield Park. I was really unsure about whether or not to take this book out of the library -- when I'd looked it up on the web, most of the reviews called it things like 'flat,' 'long-winded,' and 'undimensional.' However, it was the only Jane Austen available at the time, so I decided to take a chance, and I'm so glad I did -- I actually enjoyed it more than Pride and Prejudice. The problem with P&P was that it was a bit too predictable -- predictable enough that the ending was given away on the book's back cover! With Mansfield Park, I had no clue how the story would turn out, even 20 pages from the end. I think part of the reason for that is the 'unidimensionality' that people complained about so much. The characters in the book are indeed so typical, so 'set-in-their ways' and clichéd that they barely ever act out-of-character, so you're left with a lot of suspense over who will give in first. (The characters do end up developing over the course of the story, but in a really natural, slow, and unforced way. I love novels that are allowed to run their course that way). The situations in the story are very real, many of them still relevant to our lives, and I think you'll be surprised at how much food-for-thought you'll find in this novel. Highly recommended!

3. Writing a short story. It's funny -- I started writing about a little girl called Jamie, who was poor (I definitely think Mansfield Park sparked that idea!). She was walking to school during the wintertime and hiding her hat in her pocket because it was a second-hand hat which had belonged to another girl at her school, and Jamie didn't want to reveal her financial situation.

Somehow, the story sort of evolved into a tale about abortion during the mid-20th century.

Yeah, I know. Don't ask me how. I just think it's so cool when a story takes on a life of its own, and turns into something you never expected it to become. I'm not even close to having finished it, but I'll post it when I'm done. It still involves the little girl and a hat of some sort, as well as a teacher (that's where the abortion part comes in), and it might be set during the Great Depression; I'm not quite sure yet. (If it is, I'll have to find a less modern name than Jamie). I'm not trying to make it into some preachy social commentary, though I am pro-life; I'm just telling a story... and I've enjoyed doing that so far. :)

4. Trying not to have too many emotional break-downs over university. This has really challenged me to put my faith in action. I write so much about giving things up to God and trusting him to take control, but I've lost count of all the times I've cried this summer/fall over not knowing what to do with my future. As I researched more and more uni programs, my list of options grew smaller and smaller, until one thing was left for me to apply for. It's not my favourite thing to do. It's not my dream job. It is, however, something I am good at, and it's one of the most-needed skills in Christian ministries -- and that's my greatest aspiration: to have a career in which I can actively glorify God. The career I'm talking about? Writing.

It's taken me a lot of 'wrestling with God' to realize that he wants me to be a writer, even if my personal preference is, by a large margin, graphic design. I've always taken my writing ability for granted, and I think God wants me to finally offer it up to him, instead of letting my gift stagnate while I veer off into other things. Which is hard, because I don't actually enjoy the writing as much as I enjoy those other things (art!). I guess this is a lesson in denying myself and doing what's best for him. (No doubt learning a lot along the way, as well!)

Other than that, I've been sort of drifting in and out of my walk with God... consistency is something I really need to work on. I've been learning many things about him, though, which I plan on sharing on this blog now that I've gotten all the updates on my life out of the way.

Hope everybody has a blessed Saturday! :)
Oksy

PS. In case anyone's wondering (and has actually read up to this point in the post without falling asleep! ;), that pastel drawing I was working on is far away in a box somewhere, so you won't be seeing any progress on that front for a while! Sorry!