Word of the Day

So, some news and some reflection.

Last night, I went down to the river with two friends (they tell me here that all the great places down at the river are best seen when its dark, and I quite agree). Check out the pictures I took, but view them with grace as my camera isn't the best for night pictures and I didn't have a tripod.

I have now worked for 4 days at the reception desk, and I can actually help people when they come to the desk or call on the phone!! I hate feeling helpless, especially when they are so busy. I have found that the reception desk is also a wonderful job because it is in the center of the flow of people here; I see people coming and going for meals, check their mail for them, answers their questions, and greet them when they go in and out of the building. I see the name of new arrivals six-eight times before actually meeting them and it does wonders for helping me remember what to call them.

I have been making friends with some of the residents and enjoying the variety and flavor there. I will name three specifically that I have conversed with the most - Ilse from Holland, Pournima from the US, and Josue from Burmuda (pronounced Jus-way). I have already made friends with all three, and am so looking forward to deepening those friendships over the next six months (the first two are only here until March). As far as I can tell, none are Christians, but I have already had the opportunity to at least bring up the subject of faith with the two girls. Please pray for more opportunity on my part to share my joy with them.

I am officially settled in - I got my library card today :) I will have to adjust to the British system though, the only free materials to borrow are books; CDs, DVDs, VHS, books on tape, etc, all cost between 40p and £2. Reservations (holds) are also charged. And I recognized very few books while browsing through the fiction, so I'll have to make several trips just to get to know the place.

I'm one of those nerdy people who gets a word and definition emailed to them everyday. Today, the word was "miscible" which means "Capable of being mixed together." It's used most often in chemistry, but you know I was thinking about this concept in relation to the community I belong to.

Our world really doesn't seem to testify to the facts that people of different countries and cultures are "capable of being mixed together." We have only our long history of violence and war upon war to testify to the fact that we don't like to mix. We like to say with our "elements" - those most like we are, those who make us feel comfortable, normal, and included.

As much as I am feeling a member of a large family, I am already finding that there are some brothers and sisters that I am more drawn to than others. I could easily pick out the four or five that I feel most comfortable with, that I most enjoy spending time with, and develop deep friendships with them while maintaining a warm and polite, but somewhat shallow and closed relationship with the rest. I haven't yet found the people who will really get on my nerves, but I'm sure that day is quickly approaching.

This has been on my heart all day, and I keep coming back to something I read for school several years ago. Its from Bonhoeffer's LIFE TOGETHER. Bear with me, this is really great stuff:

". . . a Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ. . . Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ's sake. Therefore, human love seeks direct contact with the other person; it loves him not as a free person but as one whom it binds to itself. It wants to gain, to capture by every means; it uses force. It desires to be irresistible, to rule . . . Because spiritual love does not desire but rather serves, it loves an enemy as a brother. It originates neither in the brother nor in the enemy but in Christ and his Word. Human love can never understand spiritual love, for spiritual love is from above; it is something completely strange, new, and incomprehensible to all earthly love."

That is weighty enough to chew on, but Bonhoeffer gets even more direct:

"Because Christ stands between me and others, I dare not desire direct fellowship with them. As only Christ can speak to me in such a way that I may be saved, so others, too, can be saved only by Christ himself. This means that I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love . . . Human love constructs its own image of the other person, of what he is and what he should become. . . Spiritual love recognizes the true image of the other person which he has received from Jesus Christ."

I hate admitting it, but I am used to loving people in human love. I'm used to using subtle manipulation to "regulate, coerce, and dominate" those I love to love me back, to show me preference, to be what I need them to be for me, me, me. Its not the kind of love that saves, builds, restores, but the kind of love that tears and destroys and requires healing. I don't know if it is because I have moved to such a unique community and am looking so purposely and intently at how I am building the foundations of these friendships, but more than ever before in my life I want to love this dear people THROUGH the person of Christ rather than through my flesh.