update 10
the squeeze in love, the ladder, and the slave-savior life
hi guys!
what’s up? I did warn you that updates would be more sporadic this term… but I wanted to substantiate a few epiphanies that have been floating around in my brain, document some precious little memories, and pass on some prayer requests!
tbh, this is kinda also so I can hear from you all since it’s been a while and I miss you!
have the leaves in Boston changed color yet? the closest thing we’ve had to autumn here is team trips to starbucks for pumpkin themed coffee…
how is school, the kids, the pets, serving, working, life in general?
what have you been enjoying, encouraged by, struggling with/figuring out, or learning?
how can I pray for you?
send me aaall the replies and pictures pretty please :)
so, how’s 4th term going, Alicia?
first few weeks:
chilling. sending out job applications and enjoying being a fourth termer with great seats and companions, soaking up the speaking like a happy lil sponge. this pre-training was the best one yet and I was so excited after some of the meetings that I literally couldn’t sleep and had to bottle up that joy into words:
what absolutely amazes me is that although the classes are basically the same time every term (which means this is my 4th time hearing most of them), it never gets old. In fact, it really just gets richer, deeper, and more subjective every time. if this was college, hearing the same lecture 4 times would be such a waste of energy and time because it’s just knowledge - once you hear it, you have it; it kinda just sits in your brain. But the fact that I was just as (if not more) mind-blown now than the first time I heard about the high peak of the divine revelation, the New Jerusalem, and the Lord’s Recovery [feel free to ask me what any of these things are!] - it’s confirmation. These are the real, divine, eternal LIVING things.
my other absolute favorite part is seeing the growth in each and every trainee. Being a 4th termer means seeing where each one began and where they are now. In class overflow, little conversations, and even just brief interactions - there’s more Christ in them than three terms or even three months ago.
the giant trust exercise [the last few weeks]:
One of my housemates shared with me how in Song of Songs, there’s the verse about leaning on our Beloved, which objectively sounds all cute and romantic and stuff. But if you lean on someone and they let go… you fall. it’s scary.
Basically, 4th term seriously feels like a giant trust exercise on so many levels.
And lately, I’ve been struggling with the feeling of mounting pressure on all sides and endless to-dos circle around in my head. but I’ve just been appreciating a few things:
the squeeze in love
in Song of Songs, a wild mare is squeezed into the covert of the precipice, and out emerges a gentle dove. being pressed is actually a line throughout the Bible. Paul writes that he was pressed on every side (2 Corinthians 4), surrounded by a crowd of cares, anxious concerns (2 Corinthians 11:28). But also… he was constrained by His love (2 Corinthians 5:14). according to the footnote - to be constrained is to be forcibly pressed, limited, restricted. the love and the pressing environment are the same thing.
God’s way is His economy, organic salvation in divine life - to make us partakers of the divine nature (1 Peter 1:4), to transform us from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18), to conform us to the image of the firstborn Son of God (Romans 8:29). And these things don’t happen in a vacuum. they happen in the squeeze.
but it’s not a cute little story arc where we struggle through, learn a lesson and can recount it in a little two-minute testimony wrapped up with a bow. It’s not writing the narrative that fits so I can fix this or change that, to replicate the desired behavior in the future and/or pass it on to others. everything is just to gain God.
God’s way is not to merely change our outward behavior to be better. That’s merely redemptive love; just to outwardly forgive us of our sins doesn’t change who we are. He wants to go deeper. His love is a love in life; His heart is simply to work Himself into every crevice of our heart. Every sovereignly arranged environment is solely for this - the pressing environment, the covert of the precipice is the constraining love He has for us to not remain the same, but to match Him in life and in nature.
the ladder
we’re prone to thinking the spiritual stuff is abstract, intangible, up there in the heavenlies. And the day-to-day real-life physical things - adulting and sticking to a schedule and being a responsible human being - are down here in the earthly realm.
But we need Christ as the heavenly ladder to be the bridge between heaven and earth. (John 1:51 + this blog post also unpacks it). To come down to our level and to bring us up to care for the eternal things in the midst of the temporary. If we really saw Christ as our heavenly ladder, we would realize:
no point of truth is completely objective. Everything God is doing and arranging has everything to do with man.
no situation of mine is too inconsequential or petty to allow the Lord into. Because He desire to be our very living. (Galatians 2:20).
every time there’s a seeming incompatibility between the spiritual and the earthly, I can pray for the Lord to set up His ladder in me. It’s an anchor, a balancing. I can so easily veer towards false spirituality and shying away from practicality, or have zero trust in the Lord and try to take care of everything myself. but Christ is the most practical, prudent, and wise One (character has also been a HUGE thing this term)! All His riches are for us to experience and enjoy in the midst of our daily living. What a sweet and blessed life to live with our heavenly ladder :)
to be a slave is to stop weaseling your way around your preferences
maybe it’s the PM in me, but I recently realized that I’m always trying to engineer solutions to match everyone’s (but tbh also my own) preferences.
and there are SO MANY preferences. preferences for responsibilities and assignments. preferences on the food we eat and the clothes we wear. preferences on timing. and I have a lot of grumpy conversations with the Lord (especially this term, related to so much going on literally all the time) that go something like: Lord. It’s too much. if literally JUST ONE THING was a different it would be SO MUCH better.
But one of my termmates (with no idea about my inner moodiness) shared with me from our God’s economy class:
the life that God chose to live and express Him was the life of a slave.
And it just hit me - slaves don’t have preferences. They don’t get a say on whether something is too much for them to bear, whether something is according to their preference or not. They just take it. And it becomes their food. Even before He was crucified, the Lord prayed: Not as I will, but as you will Father.
in Genesis, Jacob was also pretty good at weaseling His way in and out of things to get what he wanted. But the Lord dealt with Him by stripping him of his natural preference (favorite wife dying, favorite son supposedly getting eaten). And these dealings brought Him on to maturity, to eventually be a source of blessing to all those around him with no trace of self-interest.
Having a “life of submission” always seemed so abstract to me, but I’m realizing now that it’s only because I’m so used to getting my natural preferences. But actually, there’s something very sweet about just learning to say amen to all the things He’s throwing at me. In order to be useful to the Lord, we bear it, learn how to dispense Christ in that situation, and depend on Him as the real slave savior in us.
bye!
some prayer burdens for now:
our term. a few are struggling with visa situations and most are still considering post-training plans.
for the Lord to release the right job for me! meta is doing a hiring freeze right now, so the chances are slim that I can return. applying again has been kinda rough.
my family! I’ll hopefully be spending thanksgiving with some of my cousins not in the churchlife. We’re really close, and I’ve been praying for them for a while now.
much love! don’t forget to reply 🙂. Also reminder to come for semiannual in December!! my graduation is Dec 24th and I would love to see you there!! let me know if you’re signed up to come :)
Alicia
Wow! You were right, this one is indeed very rich. There were so many life-giving parts and plenty of hilarious ones. I'm so encouraged by your pursuit of the Lord in the midst of all the craziness. Your prayer burdens will be on my heart. Love you!!