Greetings from Thailand,
the land of smiles!
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| Tiida is graduating, and we are so proud of her! |
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| Cold weather art projects! |
This has been such a
full, fun season of life I thought it would be worthwhile to share with some of
the many things we are excited about in here in Chiang Mai.
(Brace yourselves, it is a long one!)
(Brace yourselves, it is a long one!)
Faithful
Heart continues to grow in Breadth and Depth
A: We have another
college graduate, Tiida, who is finishing her teaching program and has a heart
to return to her home village and provide a good education to children
there. We are so proud of this beautiful, slightly introverted (from one
to another Tiida :-) , kind young lady.
We love graduates like Tiida! This
is the goal of orphan care, to fill the gaps in childhood to allow the
individual to grow and thrive and become the person God has made them to
be----and consequently to become a blessing to others. Tiida embodies
what we hope for in caring for orphaned children at Faithful Heart.
B: We have
received a gift to help open a new home for girls this year! We have
already begun to look for new house parents and children in need. It is a big process, but a joyful one!
C. We continue to
move forward on the land purchase and we even received an additional gift to
help us get started with developing and building!
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| Legos! |
D: We love our
staff! These great people are an on-going blessing and is an honor and a
privilege to call them friends.
Our staff retreat this
year is being sponsored by Berean Baptist Church (Thank You!) and we have some
special guests in Steve and Becky Storkel coming to help.
E: Special thanks
to Isaac Foundation and my uncle Doug Pound, who is coming in February, for donating
laptops to our homes! This is a huge blessing to our families!
Thank you!
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| Peter is a great runner like his house father. He did very well in a recent race! |
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| John passing out blankets to needy families in the mountains |
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| Champion has his sisters figured out! |
Matt
& Audrey & Ezra
A: We continue to
study Thai twice a week. It is getting better, but still has a ways to
go. The new conversations with our neighbors and Thai friends are good
inspiration to keep at it.
B: Matt preached
at an Indian wedding (Ezzie was a super cute page boy), Audrey was a Bride's matron in a Thai wedding, and we
both got to do some marriage counseling with a Thai couple.
C: Audrey and I
are working on (and enjoying!) our 9th year of marriage, Audrey will be 30 in
March!! and Ezra is racing towards 2.
D: We are coming
to the US this summer! We will be back to visit and share this summer
from June 14 through July 25. We would love to catch up and see you!
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| Indian wedding in Thailand! (And Matt in a suit coat?!!) |
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| Three amigos! |
All that reminds me how
grateful we are to be where we are, and supported and loved by so many of
you. Thank you for sharing this journey with us.
Life is a journey, and
it is often not a pleasant or easy one. But it is good.
There are times it may
not feel like it, and that is why it is so vital to our happiness that we
approach it realistically, but hopefully.
Broadly speaking, we
have two ways we can approach life:
(I am generalizing, but in order to help clarify, not to deny the need for further clarification).
(I am generalizing, but in order to help clarify, not to deny the need for further clarification).
1. To approach life
with humble mystery and wonder.
or
or
2. To
approach life with a dissection knife.
Let me try to give an example.
A child who discovers a
frog is in wonder.
It is colorful, weird looking, makes funny sounds, and
wonder of wonders, it can jump and catch flies with it's tongue.
The frog is a
wonder. And it is a mystery.
The other approach is to
see the frog and be unsettled by the mystery. Not a curious desire to
understand, but a fearful insistence that the frog conform to our expectations.
It doesn't want to enjoy
the frog, it wants to dissect the frog.
Then once it has seen
inside, it will explain the frog.
It has the
"answers." The mystery is gone. And so is the
wonder.
It is just cells and
organs, tissue.
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| Love watching this little boy grow! |
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| Our neighbors love Ezra |
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| Audrey and Joy on the Big Day! |
Now let me try to apply
the example.
To clarify, this is NOT a
distinction between faith and science.
It is the distinction
between a fearful grasping for certainty and a humble appreciation of mystery
and wonder.
It is not about the
answers we find (that is important), but how we go about looking for them, and why.
CS Lewis wrote:
"There is something
which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the ‘wisdom’
of earlier ages.
For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue.
For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious…."
For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue.
For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious…."
When we embrace the
mystery and wonder in life, no matter what our religious beliefs or
convictions, we are acknowledging an old wisdom---we are conforming ourselves (we are the ones who need to change)---to reality, to our world.
You learn, you study,
you analyze, but you also laugh, and enjoy beauty, and rest comfortably with mysteries
you don’t need to fully understand to appreciate.
When we demand black and
white answers, a complete knowledge, or a system of knowledge, we are pulling out
our dissecting knife.
Instead of dwelling
as a small person in a wonderful world of infinite complexity and beauty, we want to subdue that reality to our wishes, to be in control or at least to have the illusion that we have things "figured out."
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| Grandma time! |
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| Saturdays at the gardens! |
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| Nam Pet and Ezra are good buddies |
What strikes me about Lewis’
words is that they apply equally to scientific people and religious
people.
It is not what we believe, but how we believe it.
There are narrow minded atheists
and narrow minded religious people.
It isn’t having a
strongly held belief that makes you narrow minded, but the refusal to hear and
consider other viewpoints.
What does that have to
do with our approach to life?
There is something we
must all make peace with, or we will always be frustrated and unfulfilled in life:
There are mysteries
about life and the world that we will never unravel.
There are questions that
have no easy explanations, that cannot be distilled down to a few pithy sayings, or systematized into a neat, tidy list.
I am troubled by many of
my religious friends who view their faith as a remedy for mystery, rather than an
invitation into mystery.
Mystery is vital to a
healthy, happy life.
It keeps us small, and
allows us to enjoy things without possessing or dissecting them.
We can embrace life as constant learners.
Fear wants certainty, black and white answers, and easy explanations.
But reality refuses to conform.
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| Little page boy. |
Now we are in a dangerous position.
Fear demands certainty, and reality demands mystery.
If we give way to fear, we may, for a time, experience the false peace of an easy certainty.
(Many cults have this hold on their people because nothing is more comforting than certainty, except maybe certainty with company---our 'group')
But many laboratories and classrooms also promise a false certainty.
And that false certainty can lead all sorts of people, religious and nonreligious, to do wrongs we would never otherwise do.
Real certainty is not something religion or science can supply, regardless of what they claim.
And it is not what we really need.
And it is not what we really need.
What we need to live well is not certainty, but humility.
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| Liesl wrote a great Pen pal letter to one of our Thai girls (below left)! |
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| Ploy (middle) and Robin (Left) and Rachel at Joy's wedding! |
There is only one way to respond to something you don't fully understand, but appreciate very much (like a sunset, or the ocean):
Humbly and Gratefully.
This is the key to our individual happiness and our corporeal happiness.
Certainty in religion or in science, leads to arrogance, abuse, exploitation and domineering.
Mystery leads to humility, deeper study and thinking, wisdom and learning.
I like to gently remind those who share my faith that is was not the atheists who murdered Jesus, but the religious zealots.
Not the God deny-ers or the God mockers, but the God-worshipers; who were so confident they were right, when God himself tried to correct them, they murdered him.
And we can all agree, that when science runs ahead without ethics, all sorts of terrible things follow, in the name of "progress."
This is not coincidental.
It is cause and effect.
When you cut out mystery and wonder, whether with religion or with science, you are on the road to pride.
And Pride is the road to destruction and ruin.
So what does a humble, happy life embracing mystery and wonder look like?
Like this:
Meet George Washington Carver; the man who is known for discovering over a 1,000 uses for the peanut.
He was a brilliant scientist, and a committed man of faith.
He embraced the mystery and wonder of the world even while he studied it.
And he lived well.
Listen to the way this man approached life and the world he lived
in:
"When I was young, I said to God, "God, tell me the
mystery of the universe."
But God answered, "That knowledge is
reserved for me alone."
So I said, "God, tell me the mystery of the
peanut."
Then God said, "Well George, that's more nearly your
size." And he told me."
Embrace mystery and
wonder.
Embrace humble happiness.
Embrace your peanut.
Living and learning with you,
Matt, Audrey, & Ez
