against all hope

{11.19.2010}

Do you remember the holocaust of WWII? I remember freaking out in history class, that it took us (america) so long to intervene and stop such corrupt twisted behavior. How can so many people be killed and it go unnoticed? You can't pretend that kinda stuff is not happening and look the other way.

For so long I also maintained the assumption that Nazi Germany and their concentration camps were a one time tragic event against one people group... such an ignorant thought. Holocausts and genocide still plague our world. Struggles against severe cultural prejudice still leave bodies in heaps and piles, or worse, surviving people are subject to prisoners of the most dehumanizing acts.

Genocide in Burma has left hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee to jungles and across borders to Thailand and other neighboring countries (some even to America with the help of World Vision, my parents even adopted a Burmese family).

Hope keeps these desperate people alive. Aid from struggling organizations and missions might sustain them a little longer. The people that are not eliminated are sold as commodities, many of them as factory and field workers, and many, many more into the sex industries of Thailand, Cambodia, and elsewhere.

I have such a hopeless feeling myself, but the relentless smiles and struggle for survival that these people possess draw me toward their redemption. Not to mention, what kind of people are we if we just look away?

Against all hope,

Abraham believed...

Deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do.

But on what God said he would do.

romans 4:8 (NIV & The Message).

I am going in January, I want to be a voice for the people that have none...

**these photos are not mine

original love story

I love PDA. And all of these photos are the sweetest. But Frank Viola writes: "Yet the most powerful love story that any human has ever crafted pales in comparison to the epic romance that runs throughout your bible."

Put that Twilight poster awayyy, Jacob hasn't even survived his teens yet (acne is bound to strike), oh and fahgetabout The Notebook, turns out Allie didn't really have Alzheimers, she and Noah just fought so much in their marriage she was trying to block it out. BUT the ancient publication we call the bible contains an allegory running so severely and drastically deep concealing a dam of meaning, that tragically many will never understand it.

ok, so i am not THAT much of a skeptic, there really are lovely stories of people madly in love and absolutely committed to each other, but even these situations are merely an attempt of us, the created, to imitate what God our creator has played out before us and innately planted desire to love in our souls. Imagine that every plot of every romantic scenario is really just the human endeavor to display what we believe and feel, but is really just a pale shadow of what God is spotlighting throughout all of history.

Not a single word in the bible goes to waste. Every letter of every chapter is allegorical. Consider the introduction of Eve into the world. Eve was brought forth from Adam's side. Parallel this with the church (often referred to as the bride) within Christ. This would bring a whole new meaning to how Adam was "put to sleep" when Eve was created, and then how Christ was stabbed in the side by the Roman Centurian in his final fateful moments on the executionary cross and then was dead for 3 days. It was after Jesus was killed that the church came forth.

From Jesus' sacrificial death to you finishing reading this sentence, there is a story God has entangled through history of his pursuit of us, his creation and object of love. God is perfectly adequate within Himself. But because God is love, He is not content to be adequate in Himself. And because He loves us totally, He gives us the free will to choose to love Him back, or not. But this poses the question: why would we not choose Him?