Space to Breathe

Living here on the other side of the world teaching for SPH schools, has given me the opportunity to experience more than I ever imagined in life. For example, this week during Easter holiday I am in Bali! Not only is that AMAZING, but . . . I get to travel with my best friend and her husband!! Today we began exploring Bali by visiting one of it's many temples Uluwatu. While I can't say much for the temple itself, the view from the cliffs was utterly breathtaking. There at the top of the cliffs there is space to breathe. Check it out.

Temple on a cliff

We are together in Bali, what?!? 

Random doors at the temple

Aren't they cute?

There were monkeys around the temple

I use to think all baby animals were cute . . . 

This is how I feel sometimes at the end of a teaching day, haha

No Place Like Home

I have these days, like today, where an irrepressible longing for home rises up in my soul. A longing to watch the last rays of sunshine dance across a clear sky before hiding behind the mountains. Or to walk the streets of my little town, tucked between fields of golden wheat. A longing to drive up to my parent's house wrapped in fog, windows glowing in the dark. To open the front door and be met with the scent of brownies wafting from the oven. A longing to feel arms wrapped lovingly, protectively around me. I have these days where this longing for home commands complete residency of my heart and mind. A thought about any other subject simply cannot reside. There is no section, no corner of my heart left, for other feelings to occupy. It is painfully full, threatening to burst without cure.

If only I were Dorothy so I might click my sparkly red heels and whisper, "There's no place like home, there's no place like home." It's not that Indonesia is bad, in fact it is good in many ways, but its just not home. I am a foreigner, or as Indonesians say, a "bule." Try as I might, I do not fit in. Darn freckles and white skin. Indonesia holds parts of home with fellow college graduates, dear friends, and of course Jif peanut butter, but still it isn't home. I am not home, in fact, none of us are.

As children of God, this earth and all it holds, is not our home. Paul tells us that our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20).  Through Christ's death we are "no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household . . . with Christ Jesus as the chief cornerstone" (Ephesians 2:19-20). We don't belong down here on earth. We won't fit in, we shouldn't fit in. Our lives should be so entirely different the world recognizes immediately we are foreigners. We are "aliens and strangers in the world" (1 Peter 2:11) set-apart for Christ. Earth may hold glimpses of heaven, but let us "not love the world or anything in the world . . . for the world and its desires [will] pass away" (1 John 2:15,17). May we wait in eager expectation, even groaning inwardly like creation, for the world to pass away. Our hearts, our minds, completely focused on that day. The day of "our adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:23). The day we meet our Saviour. The day when we shall finally go home.

"But, our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body." Philippians 3:20-21

I can't wait. Can you?

Lombok

This last October I had an opportunity to visit one of Indonesia's many islands, Lombok.  There are so many interesting things you can do in Lombok, however I spent my two days just hanging out at the resort by the pool and taking pictures of beautiful sunsets. Maybe someday I will go back and book some tours...

Sacrifice

It is loud. It is busy. Blood, warm and fresh, pools on the ground around bare feet. Children push to the front, standing on the fence, straining to get a better view of the slaughtering. The men's hands move methodically, quickly stripping each animal of its hide before moving on. The bull chewing cud in the corner is next, restrained with ropes its life is brought to an end. Its blood poured out. This is the courtyard of the mosque, the sacrifices of the Muslim holiday Idul Adha. It is how Muslim's remember Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his only son, Ishmael (not biblically accurate).

Seeing the sacrifices in the courtyard of the masque for Idul Adha made me think about the sacrifices in the OT temple. I've always had this picture in my mind of the OT temple being sort of like St Paul's Cathedral in London -- big, open, clean, quiet, beautiful. I mean after all, the supplies used to build the temple were cedar, pine, bronze, and gold. Carvings and engravings of cherubim, palm trees, open flowers, lions, and wreaths decorated the walls and doors. There were even pillars with tops shaped like lilies surrounded by pomegranates. Everything was made of gold: sprinkling bowls, wick trimmers, lamps, tongs . . . everything (1 Kings 5-7). However, I think the temple was much more like the mosque I visited for Idul Adha and much less like St Paul's Cathedral. 

At Idul Adha it took at least half a dozen men to hold the ropes for a single bull to be slaughtered. On the day Solomon dedicated the temple there were twenty-two thousand cattle and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep and goats sacrificed as fellowship offerings (1 Kings 8:62)! It must have taken hundreds of men slaughtering from sunrise to sunset to accomplish the offerings that day. The temple must have been a hoppin' place with all the sacrifices made on a daily basis. It must have been loud and dirty. With animal sacrifices there would have been no way to avoid the stench of blood and dung.  Blood -- it must have been everywhere! In the tabernacle, the temple's precursor, blood was sprinkled on the sides of the altar, blood was sprinkled in front of the curtain, blood was put on the horns of the altar, and blood was poured out at the base of the altar (Leviticus 3-7). When Aaron and his sons were ordained they had blood put on their ear lobes, thumbs, big toes, and garments (Leviticus 8). So much for the starched white robes of holiness I imagined!

Women, in the same courtyard as slaughtering were cutting up the meat to sell or give to the needy. Really sanitary right? 

While the courtyard of the OT temple may have been messy, there was a place set apart from the chaos and the noise. This place was known as the Inner Sanctuary or Holy of Holies. There the Ark of the Covenant was kept and only the high priests entered once a year (Hebrews 9:7).  I saw this idea at the mosque as well. Through a doorway from the courtyard was a place set aside for prayer, a place of cleanliness, quietness, and beauty. 

A sacrifice is a chilling event to watch. What moves and cries out in one moment has no breath in the next. After visiting the mosque at Idul Adha, I can no longer read the scriptures about sacrifices the same way. A sacrifice is messy, awful, and such a high, high payment. One life given for another. Christ came to be a sacrifice, my sacrifice. Hebrews 10:10 says, "We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." Willingly, out of love for us, Christ suffered the brutality of crucifixion. He endured a flogging so severe he medically should have been at the point of collapse or death. He was then forced to carry his own cross and was nailed to it until death. This sacrifice was horrific and bloody. 

Today is Thanksgiving and I am first of all thankful for Christ's sacrifice on my behalf. The animal sacrifices were never designed to remove sin, but rather to remind us of our sin and the debt we owe (Hebrews 10:3-4). My sin, offensive to a righteous God, had payment. It was not a clean or quick payment, it was barbarous. His life for my life. His breath for my breath. His blood for my freedom. I am SO thankful. I owe him EVERYTHING! I needed this reminder today, to be once again awakened to just how great a price Christ paid for me. 

Lord, help me grasp just how much you have done for me. Make the gravity of Christ's sacrifice fresh in my mind. Do not let me become accustomed to it. Do not let me take it for granted. Remind me oh Lord, that you took my place that it may spur me on to live radically for you. Amen.

Below are some pictures of more localized cultural customs being mixed in with Idul Adha:

Bare feet . . . Indonesia.

We talked with these girls for an hour or more.

Mountain of food, given to the poor

Supposedly, these were baskets full of sticks that symbolized fertility or something...?

Everyone racing to get their stick of fertility, haha, I really don't know what the sticks were for but everyone wanted one!

Singapore

It's hard to believe that I am half way across the world. My journey to Indonesia included a stop in Singapore to get my visa. Singapore is a very westernized place. English is one of the four official languages and used for all business and government functions therefore making it easy to get around. During my stay in Singapore I went with a couple other teachers down to the Marina Bay area. There we saw a great view of the city and world's tallest ferris wheel, the Singapore Flyer. We also walked around the Marina Bay Sands which was a hotel, museum, casino, restaurant, and shoppes all in one. I've never been to a mall that carried Coach, Gucci, Prada, and Loui Vuitton before. According to wikipedia, "Singapore has the world's highest percentage of millionaires, with one out of every six households having at least one million US dollars in disposable wealth." The architect work in Singapore was quite amazing!

Singapore Flyer

Marina Bay Sands

City Scape

Amazing buildings! 

Inside of the mall, love the architecture!