Posted in reflections on January 29, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Photo by Sundaram Ramaswamy
If any of you are PBS television watchers, you may remember that one of their sponsors is Viking River Cruises. One of the commercials features Torstein Hagen, the founder and chairman of Viking,and he narrates, while beautiful European scenes scroll across the screen:
“When you really philosophize about it, there is only one that you don’t have enough of, and that’s time. (more…)
Posted in reflections, tagged autism, parenthood on January 24, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Photo by Ben Becker
By Joanne Moon
The first time I watched a musical as an adult, I was on a date in disguise – the kind where you don’t know you are on one and the other person counts on your naivete to take you on it.
At a whoppin’ eighteen years old, I was at a theatre I don’t recall now, watching the stories of these people with references I didn’t fully understand but their singing, the movements, the tension and its release in the air captured my attention. (more…)
Posted in reflections on January 8, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Photo by 4512 Image Hosting
By Melanie Mar Chow
I seized an opportunity to attend the Urbana 18 Student Missions Conference and was reminded that no one transitions from one year to another better than this. How awesome it was to be with like-minded people who love on the college campus and know what it means to join into worship and praise of our Lord Jesus. Urbana offers something that many don’t experience: the experience of being with thousands of people who intentionally gather for a week in a freezing cold environment (ok Cali bias) to praise Jesus and be encouraged to do something bigger than our individual experience could ever offer via missional communities sharing the infectious love of Jesus. (more…)
Posted in reflections, tagged seasons of life, women in ministry, women pastors on January 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »
By April Yamasaki
What is time?
I’ve been watching a mini-series on Albert Einstein, the brilliant physicist who asked this grand question, whose great intellect and imagination were so taken with it, to the detriment of his personal and professional life. (more…)
Posted in reflections on December 25, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Photo by Waiting For The Word
Today I forgot to buy red peppers for a dish I’m making for a church potluck. A week I ago I forgot I had a house community dinner. A few months ago I completely forgot a meeting and left a friend eating lunch by herself. Age, it seems, is catching up with me. It’s not bad if I remember to write things down. Still, it’s rather disconcerting when your mind, or body, begins to betray you despite your best efforts to live like nothing is changing. (more…)
Posted in reflections on December 18, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Photo by Nan Palmero
By Ajung Sojwal
Soon after I turned 31, having been a stay-home mom with two kids for six years or so, I became anxious that life was passing me by. I became afraid of waking up one day filled with regrets for having wasted my life. My conversations and reading materials seemed to begin and end with everything to do with children and nothing else. (more…)
Posted in reflections on December 11, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Photo by chico945
By Angela Ryo
My dad turned 80 last month. I never thought I’d see the day my dad would turn 80, but there I was, driving to Chicago from Detroit to celebrate his 80th birthday. He celebrated just the way he wanted: Eating take-out Chinese food from his favorite place, surrounded by his children and grandchildren, and talking to his 88-year-old brother in Korea over the phone. (more…)
Posted in reflections on December 4, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Photo by emdot
By Sarah D. Park
In the bathroom of my parents’ home, there is a poem scotch-taped to the wall. Should you sit down on the toilet, you can easily read it from there. I cannot remember when this poem first appeared — at least since the time I was in fifth grade — and it did not come with any explanation or fanfare when it simply appeared one day. And I’d like to share it with you. (more…)
Posted in reflections, tagged gratitude, seasons of life on November 27, 2018| 2 Comments »
Photo by Elisa Self
By Joy Wong
Beauty’s a tough subject for me — and, I imagine, for most women. It seems that nearly every woman I encounter is unhappy about some aspect of her appearance. One woman laments the size of her hips and thighs. Another mom marvels at the ability of a lady on a blog who gave birth seven times and is still able to maintain a flat stomach. Personally, I’ve been noticing an increasing amount of freckles and sunspots on my face. I also wonder when (or if) my tummy will ever go flat again, and if I will ever lose all my postpartum weight.
What’s funny (and horrific) about it all is that it seems that my ideal self is an ever-moving target. These days, I pine for my slim self when I was in my 20s, but as I recall, back then I wasn’t happy about some other aspect… perhaps some acne, or volumeless hair, or whatever. One of the graces I find about being a mom of three kids is that while I’m too busy to work on my appearance, I’m also too busy to spend too much time critiquing myself either.
“Beauty is fleeting,” as Proverbs 31:30 says (NIV). It makes me think of cut flowers — beautiful for a couple days, and if you’re lucky, for a week or so; but in a short time, it all starts to brown and wither. I find that roses tend to die most gracefully, but even dead roses are such a sad comparison to their former gorgeous blooms. Very depressing, especially when we think of our own beauty in the same way!
But a new metaphor is now dawning on me, and giving me a bit more hope: not the beauty of cut roses, but the beauty of a rose bush, planted in the ground. It reminds me of the tree “planted in streams of living water, which yields its fruit [or in the case of our metaphor, flowers] in season and whose leaf does not wither — whatever they do prospers” (Psalm 1:3 NIV). Or even of Paul’s exhortations to be “rooted and grounded in love” (Eph. 3:17) and/or “rooted…abounding in thanksgiving” (Col. 2:7) (NIV).
Perhaps it’s true that our beauty is fleeting, but just as a rose bush yields new flowers in new seasons, so also perhaps our lives yield new beauty in different seasons of our lives. In aging, perhaps there is new beauty in confidence, in joy, in maturation, in appreciation, in wisdom, in gentleness, in patience, in perspective… and the list goes on.
For me, something I’d like to gain is appreciation… for the beauty I have, rather than the beauty I’ve lost, or don’t have anymore. After all, beauty is fleeting, right? What I have now (and fail to appreciate), I may not have tomorrow, and perhaps I may be lamenting the loss of it in the next season. Instead of succumbing to the incessant nagging of my inner critic, I want to be grateful. Moreover, I want to be rooted, yielding beauty in the due seasons of my life.
Joy Wong has an MDiv from Fuller Theological Seminary, a BA in English from Princeton University, as well as four years’ experience in industrial distribution management. She is a contributing author to Mirrored Reflections: Reframing Biblical Characters, published in September 2010.
Posted in reflections on November 20, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Photo by newskin0
By Wendy Choy-Chan
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