Hope begins now.

They may be beautiful, terrible, awe-inspiring, exhilarating, pathetic, comic, or merely piquant. Literature gives the entrée to them all. Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom realise the enormous extension of our being that we owe to authors. We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. My own eyes are not enough for me. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or bee.

In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in a Greek poem, I see with a thousand eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself: and am never more myself than when I do.

I spotted a mangy looking cat, cautiously poring its way through the rather weathered battered, broken down balcony of the top floor of one of the buildings i was blankly staring at. I didn’t notice the cat when i saw it. I noticed it when i realised it was on the top floor of one of the buildings, where the ground was an impressive distance away. I looked down to the bottom and calculated that if this cat lost it’s footing and fell, it would die. There was no doubt about it. Gravity would be it’s usual stubborn self, the cat would fall through the wind, and in seconds a once cautious mangy cat would become a dead mangy cat.
So I watched it. I watched it for a good 10 seconds, waiting for it to fall.
It never did.

I had to go over to the other side of the terminal to get home, so i lost interest pretty quickly. But I did wonder whether this cat knew it was so close to the edge. I wondered whether this cat knew that beyond the edge was a fall of about 15 metres, a simple number that would kill pretty quickly. I thought about what i saw and tried to see if I could get anything out of it myself. You know, do the whole ‘let’s analyse this scene and see if God wants to show us anything’.

God told me that inside the building, behind the balcony, was a room. And inside that room, lived more cats.
These cats wanted to go out to the balcony too, adventure out, just like the one i was watching.
These cats had insecruities and worries and fears and childhood memories, just like the one i was watching.
These cats let these things drive them crazy, made them live normal lives, made them believe ‘normal’ lies. These cats stayed within the walls of ‘safe’, inside the walls of lazy, apathetic, fear, zero-confrontation, perfect, worry, stress, insecurity.

The cat i was watching, did not.

Sometimes i feel like half the world is on the edge of themselves.
The world is beckoning them to commit scandalous and rebellious acts against their current characters; because their characters are defined by the walls of the above, this knarky self-culture thats bleeding them slowly away, until they grow old and indifferent and frustrated – not understanding anything except their own bitterness.

search oh, search for life.
Its simple, and hard.
Good God can you still get us home? I think he can, thats why the sentence above does not have the word impossible in it.
mt. 7:7

And what he said was good, beautiful actually, but they were words that I didn’t want to hear yet, too hard, too far out of what was comfortable for me, too loud. Anyway, God has been touching on that again lately. Actually, especially today, like right now, fingers hitting keys. It’s all good and well to give your life to God, as its ‘not your own’, but how does that look on a practical level? So often we give ourselves theology and principles to believe, but when do these things ever end up translating into physical action? Ask a Christian what they believe and they will give you a list and list and list. But ask how they live? Mmm.
Give me a prayer meeting and ill give you the car ride home after the prayer meeting, anger for your mother and ill thoughts for the driver that cut you off. Give me a conference and ill give you two months after the conference, forgotten words and habits still reoccurring.

Anyway digressing back to what it means to give your life to God as it is ‘not you own’, I guess for me it’s about security. I place my security too often in my hope for the future, in my person, in my ability to be a (possibly) good person or whatever. So it’s like I hold onto me, for me, for hope and security. And God has been saying you need to let it go.

Really, you are nothing. By yourself. All that I am amounts to a devilish and frightening zero if I leave God out of the mix. You see, it’s a tough balance. Everything that we are is beautiful when God is present. He enhances every part of us, makes it like gold, beautiful. But then if you exclude God, and use you, for you, then it’s like running after paper money that no one uses anymore. It’s worth-less.

Worth-less: Such a dredging, petty, awfully powerful word.

And there is pride there, revisiting the whole security part. It’s like saying, I don’t necessarily need you right now God, I have my ideals in ME, or I have the opportunities that the world gives me, or i have my friends who I can love and be loved back. These are all good things, but I guess God has been saying to me that they are only good when you know that they are worth-less without me.

“A proud man can never know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you’re looking down, you can’t see anything that’s above you” – C.S. Lewis

Last night was no exception. Once you buy your tickets, the line then gets divided into sections, like carriages, so when the tram comes you can easily board. So it ended up being that i had been sectioned off with this massive tour group, all of whom, were Japanese, most being men.
Anyway, i was contently reading my book, still in the line, when one of out of the blue, popped his head in my line of sight, which was down at my book, and asked me what my name was. Haha. He was cool, a sparkle in his eye, a smile on his face. I smiled, and told him.

‘Ahh David Beckam’, and with that he imitated kicking a soccer ball. All his friends Laughed along with him, and who now were also curiously gathering around me, to them, a little white kid. I asked the guy who asked me the question where they were from. He said Japan. I thought Korea actually. I don’t know why, he looked a little like my last new zealand natural boss, who was korean.
My japanese was non-existent, their english was terrible. I wish i could of told them that i was in fact in love with their country, and that i was dying to go. And that I was actually in Hong Kong because japan was too expensive. And that i thought Murakami was the best thing since Fitzgerald. But alas, I obviously could not.

I then asked where in Japan he was from. I dont think he understood. So i said a few names. “your home? Tokyo, Kyoto, Kobe?”
“OOHH”, he said in reply. haha.
Then he said something about Melly melly something. I was like what?
“I live in very very country”.
“very very country?”
“yes, we live in very very country, far away”.

HAHA. i laughed so hard. very very country? hahaha. Which to them, they all laughed too. They were probably somewhere between 50 and 60. I don’t think i have ever met such a merry company of old men in my life. They were all so content with each others company, laughing away, all smiles, all happy faces.
Anyway they eventually got across to me that they were farmers, and that they farmed rice. They asked me where i was from, if i had a girlfriend and if i liked Sake. When i told them i didnt drink they laughed so hard. They said that it was funny that david beckam didn’t drink.

Oh i so wanted to speak japanese. I so wanted to tell them i wanted to visit them in ‘very very country’, and that i would help them with harvest, and that i could drink coke with them, while they drank their sake.

I fell in love with them, so loving and fun hearted. It just made me realise, that everywhere around the world, people are living, loving and doing things the right way, even though millions of others are so lost in that. I didn’t care if these guys had practiced shinto all their lives, I saw something so real and so true. They were like brothers, with brotherly loved tagged so evidently alongside. The one guy who had a little better english than the rest of them told me that they had been farming together for decades.

Goodness. I want to love purely.

We can often get tempted to see the bible as a whole stack of chapters and versus stuck together, with boring chapters separating the better ones. I was watching a documentary on Evangelical American Christianity one day by some journalist, I can’t remember who. He talked about how this branch of Christianity sees the bible as the inspired word of God, which of course it is. But then he talked about how evangelicals take pride in quoting scripture and verse, telling crowds or friends or whoever is listening what their promise for the day is, or what spiritual insight they might conclude from the scripture they are quoting. Reciting scriptures becomes bases for theological arguments, scriptures quoted from both sides to try and prove whatever they want to prove.

I think too many of us only know the ‘quote-me’ scriptures and not enough of us know stories, not enough of us have taken time to understand the bigger picture of the bible. A book yes inspired by God with plenty of truth and morality in it, but also a book of God’s love affair with His creation, His acts of redemption, His stories of faithfulness, true tales of justice and righteousness.

I think a lot of us are unable to fall in love with the bible because we are unable to fall in love with reading. Of course, people who are completely unable to read can still love Jesus with everything they have and can be true in that love too. I’m not suggesting that. I guess as I’m reading the bible now, I’m really starting to see the beauty of it, and the care God took in writing it all. And I wonder whether we, as people, have made reading it somewhat a chore, or have made the practice the same as like reading a manual to some high-Tec piece of machinery.

Considering invested love for the written word can lend itself to falling in love with Jesus even more. I guess that’s where I have found myself over the last couple of weeks, and I thought I should share it with you. Because when God created the bible for us, He didn’t just create a book, He created something intensely personal.

It’s just that, to receive it, you have to read it.

Hence the title to this post.

Anyway my friend Steve says that the song was written for Asians. I laughed pretty hard at that. But then I had to tell him that he was a racist. We can’t have white guys running around saying stuff like that now can we? But we all still love Steve, even if he is a racist. I listened to this song while walking down the main road that connects my condominium block to the rest of Bangkok. I came out from my condominium for the first time that day needing a change in scenery. The condominium is nice but it can get a little stuffy sometimes and there isn’t really much to look at. My apartment faces inwards, so all I can see is the next door neighbour’s clothesline. It bummed me at first, but now I’m pretty used to it.

I ended up spending most of that morning reading the bible. I am going through a bit of a deconstruction of my faith at the moment. A big word for a simple process. I guess I’m just looking at my faith again, and trying to understand what it’s really all about. Even though I have been a Christian all my life, I have never read the bible from cover to cover. Waking up one morning this year, I can’t remember which one, I felt ashamed at that fact, and felt simultaneously inspired to change it. How can I really call myself a committed Christian when I haven’t seriously travelled through the complete article that my faith is founded upon?

A few songs later, I jumped on a bus, the 79, and headed for the main shopping district. Sitting across from me, on the other side of the isle, was a gleaming little girl who was in constant dialogue with her dad beside her. I had no idea what they were talking about. First of all I had my headphones on pretty loud, and well, even if I took them off, I probably wouldn’t have been able to understand the thai that they were speaking. But what I could tell was that this dad was telling his daughter the secrets of life. Why the trees were green, why the bus tickets were red, why the world was always a beautiful place when she was around. It really did make me happy, doing a bit of people watching, appreciating the love between a father and his daughter.

It made me think about God and us, His children. If you look through history, God made himself known through various ways, initiated and striked up relationship through different means. He seemed to be a lot more active in the Old Testament. I could be wrong, but that’s just the way I see it. Moses and the burning bush, guys like Noah and Abraham who simply just spoke to him, being so close and so tight.

Then there is of course the New Testament, where God actually takes the form of a man and relates to us that way. Take a look and you’ll see that most of the New Testament is either documenting God doing this or talking about it. This I’m sure was one of the most beautiful moments in all of history, God coming down to talk and be with man, to ultimately reconcile man completely to Himself.

And here we have now, the twenty first cen-ter-ree. How does God speak to humanity now? Of course there are dreams and visions and prophecies and ‘words during quiet times’ and apostles and teachers all speaking words of God. But what is the single thing that all of us can know God through, or rather, gives God the opportunity to strike up some relationship, do a bit of secret telling, just like that Thai father with his gorgeous little daughter? I realised what this was a little while ago.

If you’re asking all the big questions about God, what he is like, what he is doing and what he thinks about us, then all He would probably say to you is to go to the local bookstore and buy yourself a bible.

I’m sure God would want to travel on buses with us, telling us how everything works and the many secrets of the world. Instead, He decided that a whole bunch of words strung together would tell us these things. Now you may think, isn’t this terribly impersonal? You can’t exactly compare a book to a real living person. Well I agree, but I think God leaving us a 700, 800, 900 or 1300 page book, depending how big your font is, is something really BIG and beautiful and is something that we take for granted. I think God took incredible care in getting that book together, and it wasn’t made to sit next to Oliver Twist and Harry Potter on the shelf, gathering dust.

I believe He has put this together for us to read, and is something that He wants us to use now. I know this seems like it’s all commonsense, but how many of us actually read it? How many of us have read the whole thing from cover to cover? How many of us have looked to understand the different styles of writing within it, looked to see the beauty in the poetry, in the accounts, in the stories and letters?

My words might crease the sides of your mouth a little, might lighten your heart, give you some extra colour, make you want to love life just because it’s there. This is, until you look in the mirror or turn the t.v on and understand how the world really works. My words fall down some empty canyon that you can’t see the bottom of, and where my words end up resting. My perfect salutations of sorrow gives you nothing right now, and your still sitting with those magazines beside you, and those negative words in your head. My words don’t change anything.

Because you see we have to live with this world that boxes ‘perfect’ in this small little postcode in America where you drive fancy cars and have ‘negative’ dress sizes. Where you are only as valuable as the amount of friends you have, and the amount of friends that want you. Where charisma does matter, where looks do matter and where ‘not caring what other people think’ never really exists. As much as we don’t want to admit it, we are in this massive web of human co-dependency, nervously hanging onto each others insecruities like huge bags of precious stones.

People want to be loved, unless love has been abused in the past and misunderstood. Then you get lots and lots of bitterness, where they see the world without love, or ill-love, and snicker at everything that could be possibly real and true. People want to be accepted for who they are, they want to belong, they want to feel worth, that people actually care. If they hurt themselves then they want to know that people will visit them at the hospital. If they are sick then they want to know that people will drop off chicken soup or some other cliched comfort meal. If someone close to them dies they want to know that people will send cards in the mail to hope that they are okay.

The world is set up that most people have this, if not more, or less, much much less. Then there are those that don’t have any of it at all. They go crazy, they grow so lonely that they create imaginary friends and dream silly things just to keep themselves feeling human. Because humans were never meant to be islands, they were never meant to be alone, never meant to feel worth-less. Some drown themselves in bathtubs or hang themselves with ropes, loopholes perfect for heads to fit in. Some trap themselves in garages with their cars running.

These are the people that fall off the edge of the world. These are the people that you wouldn’t even know even through association. When i see someone at the train station, i wonder to myself how many people i would have to go through till i knew them through association. Hundreds? Thousands? There are people that no matter how many friends you went through, you would never know them. They are completely isolated, completely alone. The world dealt them a shoddy hand, they got the short piece of string, the bad end of the stick. The world tells them they have nothing to offer. All they have are their smelly clothes, annoying laughter or extreme disabilities. All they have to offer are your last thoughts, your frustrated glances when they ring, your rolling eyes when they annoy you.

This is the world that is, and these are the people we are.
Is this how it should be? I don’t think so. Can it change? I sure hope so.
I want to know why you feel so lonely. I want to know why other peoples opinions mean so much, why so many people are angry, unsatisfied, isolated and bitter. I want to know what God says about it all, and whether it will mean anything to us.

Because i don’t think people should just stay hurt and miserable and hope-less. I think people should ask questions, wonder why their lives are the way they are, and why the world is the way it is. Because to fix something that is broken, you must first know why it was broken in the first place before you attempt to fix it.

I think the world is more than plastic surgery and deepak chopra’s views on Jesus. This blog will work as a snippet of my life, as paintmesilly was a few months back. It wont be as structured as paintmesilly, and probably not as frequent. it will thai in thailand too, what is loved about it and what is not so loved.

I dedicate this blog to my friend and sister-in-Christ, Rachel Lee. Your writing has always inspired me, you know that. Thanks for being a friend over the years, i hope one day ill be able to write like you. I also dedicate it to my sister. I see Jesus in her everyday, thanks for everything sis, your a champion.
blessings friends.