Surprises in Korea

I have traveled a lot and lived on four continents, but a lot of things surprised me in my recent month in Korea with my daughter's family. Here are ten:

Surprise #1: Korea is amazingly first-world—more so even than our last overseas assignment in South Africa. In Korea everything is high-rises, cell phones with ubiquitous selfie-sticks, and state-of-the-art transportation--along side traditional architecture like this restored gate in Seoul. We saw no homeless, little poverty, nothing old or traditional that hadn’t been rebuilt in the past 60 years.  

Violence and Romance in Historic India

I grew up in a missions oriented home. When I was thirteen, my dad took us out of school for three months to journey to India and Pakistan where he worked with a couple missionary doctors he knew. My brother, sister and I knew them too. We had grown up praying nightly for their families.

Those three months of seeing other cultures—not just the tourist sights, but the way real people lived (cooking over dried-cow-dung fires), the way missionaries adapted to simple living (don’t shoo the frog out of the bathroom; he eats the mosquitoes), the different ways Christians of other cultures worshipped the same God I loved (with their shoes off)—changed my life. In the end I spent my adult life, not in India or Pakistan, but nevertheless in cross-cultural ministry. 

Praying for Adult Children

I’m now at that stage in life when my kids are grown with families of their own. When they were small, I saw them every day and sent up hourly prayers for their wellbeing. Now it is a little more challenging to know what to pray beyond, “God bless my kids and their families.” There is so much that I want for them, but despite Facebook and Google Plus, I know so little of the details that need prayer.

Praying through Messiah

Last December I was in New Haven, Connecticut, and attended a Messiah sing-along with the Yale concert choir and orchestra in their marvellous chapel. This fall I joined a local choral group to perform Handel’s Messiah with another regional choir and a small local orchestra. Even though I drove nearly an hour each way for rehearsals and an hour and a half for one of the concerts, it was worth it. We gave three performances, well supported by the small-town communities. 

A Story of Love, Loss, and Grace (especially Grace)

I am not a dog person. I dislike getting licked and slobbered on. I can’t stand yapping. When I see the toothpick legs of a skinny little Chihuahua everything in me wants to see how easily they will snap. (At such times, I carefully keep my hands to myself.) At least I have gotten over the terror of dogs I had as a child. That terror was based on my grandfather telling me that the little girl next door didn’t have any ear lobes because a dog jumped up and bit them off. Now, I can’t in my wildest dreams imagine that he actually said that, but for years that belief was the basis of my hysterical screams when a dog came near. I tell you this to let you know that David Wheaton must be quite a writer to have won me over with his book My Boy Ben. 

[Disclaimer: I was hired by the publisher to edit this book, but these thoughts are entirely my own.]

When Your Students Succeed

 I once attended a one-day writing workshop. At the end of the day the leader asked us to visualize where we would like to be in ten-years time in our writing careers. He probably suggested a book signing as one possibility. By that time I had done at least one book signing for my first YA novel, The Wooden Ox. The desire to do writing workshops in Africa may have already been in my mind. What I remember is picturing the book signing of one of my students. Recently I have gone one better—one of my Kenyan students was short-listed for the Golden Baobab Award for African Children’s Literature.

Yahweh, Show Your Power!

In Valerie Comer’s fantasy novel Majai's Fury reviewed here, Shanh, the Jonah-inspired character sent from his legalistically god-fearing culture to invite a sinful city to believe, calls on his god to protect him. “Azhvah, show your power!” and he does, often in miraculous ways. But then, as with the God of the Bible, there are times when he seems not to. He leaves his followers to suffer while he brings Shahn out of his strict legalism into true relationship.

There are so many times when I have no idea how to pray.