patch of grass.

we are in!

look! i can still remember how to get in!

this is the annual post, it seems.
or it could not be- perhaps we could tulmounteously try again?

anyhow, i came in because i talked about our team yesterday. and reread manyx2 of our posts today. i realised what a special team we were, when trying to share about us at grinning gecko. and the posts here are quite remarkable, on top of what we already are./were?

i don't hide that we have changed in the past year; i think the past year was incredibly, personally, overwhemling on team level and it will take even more time before a new balance (of sorts) is assembled.

but i just wanted you guys to know that i still love you all a lot. not that yous don't also know it, so this is just extra to publicly re.affirm it. and that this love goes both ways, if the past four years are anything to go by. remember the night by the courtyard when the ice was practically, tangibly broken?
i could go on, but that'd take (42 + 7 + 1) posts + xxyz to tell and we've already done that mostly.

may every team's byword be Love.

because we wondered about salvation

Salvation then, is not "going to heaven", but "being raised to life in God's new heaven and new earth". But as soon as we put it like this we realise that the New Testament is full of hints, indications, and downright assertions that this salvation isn't just something we have to wait for in the long-distance future. We can enjoy it here and now (always partially, of course, since we all still have to die), genuinely anticipating in the present what is to come in the future. "we were saved," says Paul in Romans 8:24, "in hope". The verb "we were saved" indicates a past action, something that has already taken place, referring obviously to the complex of faith and baptism of which Paul has been speaking n the letter so far. But this remains "in hope" because we still look farward to the ultimate future salvation of which he speaks in (for instance) Romans 5:9, 10.

This explains at a stroke the otherwise puzzling fact that the New Testament often refers to salvation and being saved in terms of bodily events within the present world. "Come and save my daughter," begs Jairus; as Jesus is on his way to do so, the woman with the issue of blood thinks to herself, "If I can only touch his clothes I will be saved"; "Daughter," says Jesus to her after her healing, "your faith has saved you." Matthew, telling the same story, abbreviates it drastically, but at this point he adds an extra note: "And the woman was saved from that moment on." It is fascinating to see how passages like this- and there are many of them- are often juxtaposed with others that speak of salvation in larger terms, seeming to go beyond present physical healing or rescue. This juxtaposition makes some Christians nervous (surely, they think, salvation ought to be a spiritual matter!), but it doesn't seem to have troubled the early church at all. For the first Christians, the ultimate salvation was all about God's new world, and the point of what Jesus and the apostles were doing when they were healing people or being rescued from shipwreck or whatever was that this was a proper anticipation of that ultimate salvation, that healing transformation of space, time, and matter. The future rescue that God had planned and promised was starting to come true in the present. We are saved not as souls but as wholes.

(All sorts of things follow from this. We might notice, for instance, that theories of atonement, of the meaning of the cross, are not simply a set of alternative answers to te same question. They give the answers they give because of the question they ask. If the question is, How can I get to heaven despite the sin because of which I deserve to be punished? the answer may well be, Because Jesus has been punished in your place. But if the question is, How can God's plan to rescue and renew the entire world go ahead despite the corruption and decay that have come about because of human rebellion? the answer may well be, Because on the cross Jesus defeated the powers of evil, which have enslaved rebel humans and so ensured continuing corruption. Please note, these and other possible quesitons and answers are not mutually exclusive. My point is that reframing the question will mean rethinking the various answers we might give and the relationship between them. This is a large topic for another occasion.)

But as soon as we grasp this- and I appreciate it takes quite a bit of latching onto for people who have spent their whole lives thinking the other way- we see that if salation is that sort of thing, it can't be confined to human beings. When human beings are saved, in the past as a single coming-to-faith event, in the present through acts of healing and rescue, including answes to the prayer "lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil," and in the future when they are finally raised from the dead, this is always so that they can be genuine human beings in a fuller sense than they otherwise would have been. And genuine human beings, from Genesis 1 onward, are given the mandate of looking after creation, of bringing order to God's world, of establishing and maintaining communitites. To suppose that we are saved, as it were, for our own private benefit, for the restoration of our own relationship with God (vital though that is!), and for our eventual homecoming and peace in heaven (misleading though that is!), is like a boy being given a baseball bat as a present and insisting that since it belongs to him, he must always and only play with it in private. But of course you can only do what you're meant to do with a baseball bat when you're playing with other people. And salvation only does what it's meant to do when those who have been saved, are being saved, and will one day fully be saved realise that they are saved not as souls but as whole and not for themselves alone but for what God now longs to do through them.

The point is this. When God saves people in this life, by working through his Spirit to bring them to faith and by leading them to follow Jesus in discipleship, prayer, holiness, hope, and love, such people are designed- and it isn't too strong a word- to be a sign and foretaste of what God wants to do for the entire cosmos. What's more, such people are not just to be a sign and foretaste of that ultimate salvation; they are to be part of the means by which God makes this happen in both the present and the future. This is what Paul insists on when he says that the whole creation is waiting with eager longing not just for its own redemption, its liberation from corruiption and decay, but for God's children to be revealed: in other words, for the unveiling of those redeemed humans through those stewardship creation will at last be brought back into that wise order for which it was made. And since Paul makes it quite clear that those who believe in Jesus Christ, who are incorportated into hiim through baptism, are already God's children, are already themselves saved, this stewardship cannot be something to be postponed for the ultimate future. It must begin here and now.

In other words, to sum up where we've got so far- the work of salvation, in its full sense, is (1) about whole human beings, not merely souls; (2) about the present, not simply the future, and (3) about what God does through us, not merely what God does in and for us. If we can get this straight, we will rediscover the historic basis for the full-orbed mission of the church. To pursue this further, we need to look at the larger picture within which all this makes sense: the kingdom of God.

Surprised by Hope. Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.

N. T. Wright.

P.S All bolded emphasis was mine, other stylistics the author's.

response 1

if i may be a wise person for a day, this would be what i would say.

Man denies himself, that he might be taken closer his Self.

Self being the likeness and the image of God, and a more whole representation of the loves, pleasures and individuality of a person. Besides, the vitality of a fellowship with God through Jesus Christ necessitates our abiding in Him and the denial of the selves that mar the Self. Denying oneself so that one can be closer to the Self, brings a person closer to bearing the image of God and advancing the authority of the Kingdom.

That being said, i think the denying of self comes in accordance with the gifts and pleasures that God has given to us. I really don't think God would call us to deny the very things He gave us to live life in abundance. The measure might be the extent to which these pleasures distract us from discovering and living more like the Self (the unfinished work of God that we all are).

whilst rach is pondering such cheem things in the southern hemisphere, i am being confronted with north american superiority and cultural disparities. for more insight, read tschustoday.blogspot.com and please offer responses.

jubilee and the kingdom

dear teammates,

you have been on my mind for the past few days now. i've never been so far from all of you, not since we first came together. new zealand, singapore, canada x 2 but still so far apart. it messes my mind somewhat to realise we're so far away from each other.

just so you guys know, i'm living in karori, a suburb in wellington. i've been attending karori baptist church, and recently started using their group discussion material as my qt guide. it's titled '50 days of jubilee'. since then, i've been brought back to daily reflections on the kingdom and i have questions i don't know how to answer. i want you guys with me.

i've been having problems reconciling Self, and the denial of Self. the following question is clumsy, but it's the best phrasing i have-
if God made us as individual souls, why should we deny our Selves?

if God made me, gifted me and knows that i take pleasure in certain things, why do i have to deny them?
As an example: dancing.
I know the arguments against clubbing (and I do believe them; I’ve seen and experienced them), but. For all that, for all the burnt fingers and bitten times there’s this part of me that still thinks it’s okay (as far as okay connotes vagueness and gray truth) to be slinking to beats, with bodies all around. Compelling rhythm affects the body, and the body just wants to fit into the music.
Why is it wrong, what went wrong, what is wrong with the night life in the perspective of God's kingdom?
If God made me, and i enjoy dancing to music, why should i deny that?
Yet sometimes there are consequences. and these can be so insidious, and so lasting, sometimes. And that’s the way it is about sin, isn’t it. Somewhere along the way perfectly sound reasons get twisted, and I don’t know where it happened in the dark alley. Is something alright, as long as we had fun and nothing drastic happened, just a piss or two at cars and half-remembered contortions and so much laughter, at a drunken night on a drunken playground.
how do i resolve this?

Secondly (and finally, and linkedly), a question from the book:
If fellowship with God through Jesus Christ is vital, then how do we indwell that fellowship and how does our abiding in Jesus relate to our bearing the image of God and advancing Jubilee?

That question took me so long to answer. And even then, I have more questions than an answer. I don't know, but this is what i have:
1) By remembering our relative positions?
2) through thawking away at the securely seated dirt.
we start to want His wants more. (when will i get there.)
3) God's grace for me and He's done it all.
(then why do i feel so obliged? have i spent too long away?)

heartache

i miss the philippines too.

pea was telling me about jino + the rest at care channels, and suddenly i was-
need to see jino, must find out how arvin is doing, and spend time with the people of cc. like mushi.

den, your reminsicing of that part of our trip was really powerful. just that, we bathed in cold water because we were brave (and did not ahemboilwaterahem). and all the throwing rachel around- i might win now though! and, i simply must add miss pearlyn chen's using of MY SLIPPER to kill a cockroach.

den, you serious about going back? cannot joke you know..

Change...

I'm glad we met once again, to mark the 1st anniversary of our trip...

Yes, it's been a year since we spent a memorable experience at Philippines...

We have grown...
We have matured...
We have learnt...
We have suffered...

we have changed.

Thou we are the same Pea/Eugene/Rach/Den den, so many things have become different...
Haha, change really seems like the only constant...

But I'm comforted to know that we have another constant...

GOD!!!!