A Journey Into, and Out of One's Self

In the aftermath of the South Korean Sewol ferry disaster my pastor was preaching a sermon from the book of Psalms on comfort. In some of his opening remarks he made the following statement: "We are a nation in mourning." Now this seems rather innocuous as a statement in itself, and perhaps these weren't the words he meant to use (however I think pastors ought to generally be careful about words especially in a national tragedy), but the context here I think is important. My pastor is a Korean-American, married to a Korean (if I remember correctly), and is pastor of the English speaking ministry at Onnuri Church in Seoul, which means Global Church. Various nations like Thailand, Madagascar, Canada, Nigeria, and others are represented on any given Sunday at one of two services. The statement quoted above caused me to wonder (especially since my pastor is fond of calling us to pray for "this nation" to have it return to being a "Christian nation", what...

     Recently a friend of my started encouraging me to learn when to say no. My tendency is to say no whenever someone pushes me too hard to do something I'm unsure of. Ironically this friend also was somewhat pushing me to do something that while in and of itself was beneficial, when faced with other burdens and being pressured I felt I had to say no to.      If I don't feel safe with the way someone is trying to convince me I tend to doubt them. I don't like to feel as though I'm being sold on something, and pressure makes me feel that way. If I cannot have adequate time to sit and think about something I'm unsure of then I feel like I may have missed something. I'm not sure I really want to change this habit of mine. In many cases it has served me well and kept me out of trouble.  Sometimes though, my reason for not making a decision quickly is that I just don't want to be direct and say no right away, because that seems rude (to the other person)...

After my recent frustration with Facebook and the rather disconnected way it will present a person in terms of full image, and status updates come out sporadically often without various comment threads easily visible, I've decided to return to my own space back here at my blog. Hopefully it will be an enjoyable experience. A blog is more long format which I like anyway. Facebook seems to have done away with "Notes" or buried it.