Enemy Love

There is a huge difference between religious people, and people who live out of a devotion to God and His character.

This Sunday, my church was studying Luke 4:22-30. The basic gist is that Jesus came to the synagogue (place of worship) in his hometown, Nazareth, and read from the Scriptures saying that He was the Messiah they had been waiting for. The people of Nazareth actually praised him at first because they were impressed by his rhetoric and the way he spoke. As Pastor Gary mentioned, they came for the show.

Luke 4:22
And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?”

They were impressed by his speech but didn’t listen to his content…that Jesus was coming to proclaim the good news to the poor, liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who had been oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Well, maybe they did listen to the content…they must have been thinking, “Finally God has sent the Messiah to bless ME!” It’s a very exciting thing…to be blessed by God. And I’m definitely not against it. The people go on to ask Jesus to do for them what he did at Capernaum, which was supposedly Jesus' base of operations when he did extended ministry in Galilee.
But Jesus shares two stories in response to their request for blessing. He basically says, “I’m not here just to bless you. I’m here to bless your enemies too. That’s God’s character. Are you cool with that?”

Here are the two stories:

1) The story of the widow of Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, which is enemy territory of the Israelites. (1 Kings 17) She was poor to the point that she and her son were about to die of starvation. But she also did not believe in God…she worshipped another god. So from a religious person’s perspective, why would God help HER when there were plenty of other widows to help during that time? Why would God help a widow in ENEMY TERRITORY?

2) The story of Naaman, not only a man in enemy territory, but the commander of the army of the king of Syria that fought against the armies of the Israelites. (2 Kings 5) And not only was Naaman an enemy, he also had leprosy, which meant he was “unclean”. So Naaman hears of this prophet in the land of Israel that could heal him of leprosy, and he brings all of his riches (silver and gold) and his power (chariots and horses) to hopefully buy the right to be healed. Elisha the prophet doesn’t accept any of it, but instead asks him to do something that is humiliating… “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” He is pissed and walks away angry, but his servants convince him to give it a try anyways. He is healed and so grateful, he tries to offer Elisha a present, but Elisha will accept nothing, communicating to this enemy of Israel that God’s grace and healing are free!

Wow…so Jesus uses THESE stories to communicate more of his mission. He is not here just to offer freedom, good news, and favor to the “chosen people”, the Israelites. He is here on earth to offer grace, healing, and restoration to his enemies! Enemy love – that is what Jesus was about. This brought the people of Nazareth from a position of praise to a position of hatred as they tried to throw Jesus off a cliff. No wonder they were pissed. Enemy love is a hard word to accept for religious people.

When you’re religious, you cry out, “Bless ME! Bless ME!” But when you live out of a devotion to God and His character, you know that any blessing that comes from God is meant to be an opportunity to bless others and care for others. It’s not about being the “chosen people”. Although we are chosen by God to spend eternity with Him, we are also chosen to share that message with our enemies, so that they can be chosen to spend eternity with Him as well.

Luke 4:25-29
“But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up 3 years and 6 months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”
When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff.

To read an even more crazy story about not having a “Bless ME! Bless ME!” attitude, check out the rest of the story of Naaman regarding Elisha’s servant, Gehazi. (2 Kings 5)

The Fins Are On To Something...

Education in America has become an issue of justice. Just spend an hour in an elementary school in a low-income neighborhood, and you’ll see the teachers are overworked, have huge class sizes, and a huge lack of resources. My friend who was a teacher in a local elementary school did not have access to even pencils for her students. She was expected to provide basics for her students out of her own money.

There are a lot of recent movies and documentaries (such as The Lottery by Madeleine Sackler and Waiting For Superman) that are presenting the problem and showing the flock of parents sending their students to “lottery” schools, where families place their hope in a lottery to be chosen for enrollment in a school with better class sizes and higher excellence in academics.

My main issue with this is that families are placing their hope in a system that determines by chance whether students have the chance to be successful. If they don’t get in, the common attitude is then “I have no hope for my son or daughter to do well in school or have the opportunity to go to college.”

Public schools get a bad rap. When I was growing up, I loved public school and didn’t see anything wrong with it. But I also didn’t grow up in a low-income neighborhood where the resources were so lacking for schools as well.

I recently read an article that talked about the philosophy behind education and how America is viewing it in regard to Finland…

The Fins Are On To Something…
What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - The Atlantic

To quote the article, the main questions Americans seem to be obsessed with in order to make education better are:
• How can you keep track of students' performance if you don't test them constantly?
• How can you improve teaching if you have no accountability for bad teachers or merit pay for good teachers?
• How do you foster competition and engage the private sector?
• How do you provide school choice?

Finland differs in their perspective on education reform in the following ways:
First of all, Finland has no standardized tests.

The answers Finland provides seem to run counter to just about everything America's school reformers are trying to do.
For starters, Finland has no standardized tests. The only exception is what's called the National Matriculation Exam, which everyone takes at the end of a voluntary upper-secondary school, roughly the equivalent of American high school.
Instead, the public school system's teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. All children receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are based on individualized grading by each teacher. Periodically, the Ministry of Education tracks national progress by testing a few sample groups across a range of different schools.

Secondly, it’s all about responsibility, not accountability.

As for accountability of teachers and administrators, Sahlberg shrugs. "There's no word for accountability in Finnish," he later told an audience at the Teachers College of Columbia University. "Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."
For Sahlberg what matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master's degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country. If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it.

Thirdly, Fins focus on cooperation, not competition.

And while Americans love to talk about competition, Sahlberg points out that nothing makes Finns more uncomfortable. In his book Sahlberg quotes a line from Finnish writer named Samuli Puronen: "Real winners do not compete." It's hard to think of a more un-American idea, but when it comes to education, Finland's success shows that the Finnish attitude might have merits. There are no lists of best schools or teachers in Finland. The main driver of education policy is not competition between teachers and between schools, but cooperation.

Finally, school choice is not a priority.

Finally, in Finland, school choice is noticeably not a priority, nor is engaging the private sector at all. Which brings us back to the silence after Sahlberg's comment at the Dwight School that schools like Dwight don't exist in Finland.
"Here in America," Sahlberg said at the Teachers College, "parents can choose to take their kids to private schools. It's the same idea of a marketplace that applies to, say, shops. Schools are a shop and parents can buy what ever they want. In Finland parents can also choose. But the options are all the same."
Herein lay the real shocker. As Sahlberg continued, his core message emerged, whether or not anyone in his American audience heard it.
Decades ago, when the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the goal of the program that Finland instituted, resulting in so much success today, was never excellence. It was equity.

Education reform is definitely needed in America, but I wonder if we are asking the right questions. What if we started to ask, “How can we make school opportunities more equal” instead of creating schools that are better and more excellent than what is currently being offered. Of course, our whole American culture of competition would need to change for that to happen. So who knows where to start? We’ll have to start somewhere, and soon, because education is the major stepping-stone to “fullness of life” in our American culture and history.

Something 2 Eat

In teaching high schoolers about money, specifically how your values impact your spending, I’ve always wanted to help students understand about poverty. Many of the students I teach struggle with poverty themselves to some degree. When you struggle in poverty, it can be difficult to see past your own dire circumstances. That is why we wanted to help students see the kind of poverty that kids are struggling with in under-developed countries like the horn of Africa and hopefully encourage compassion in the students.

I am so in awe of what happened on December 3rd. I can’t stop thinking about how much people gave of themselves, their strength, energy, money and time to make such a beautiful thing happen.


130,000 meals were packed for kids and orphans in eastern Kenya who do not have “Something To Eat”. 300 students, teachers, volunteers, friends, neighbors, baseball players and fans, and people who just heard through word of mouth came together to pack these meals. Throughout the day we stopped periodically to learn about justice and poverty issues and reflect on the condition of the poor.

I want to brag on some of my teachers and students…

Mr. Caryotakis had just come from a memorial service, and said he wanted to spend his time doing something like this, which would have a lasting impact, after going to something like that.



“If we spent the day doing this again tomorrow, I would stay for that as well.”
Mr. Skillin was the first to come and last to leave. He was at the gym before the set up team, at 7am, making sure all the doors were open and ready for us. Then he stayed late, cleaning the gym floor. He gave so sacrificially of his time. He and the other basketball coaches even had their basketball teams participate in the event as their practice that day.
Ms. Henderson worked so fast with her tables that they were among the first to finish their stack of boxes at their table. They started helping other tables finish!


Coach Poulos and Coach Uhalde came to help throughout the day.


College Track sent a bunch of students. School Board Member, Sharifa Wilson, also CEO of College Track, came to encourage her students and is excited about East Palo Alto’s involvement in this next year.

Julie got a bunch of parents and kids together from her son’s baseball team to come. There were two tables full of baseball players packing meals.


Alex loaded up his Prius with kids from his youth group and drove all the way up from Visalia to have his kids pack. They were so focused that they didn’t get a lunch break until after 3! A couple of his boys came to help flatten the trash in the dumpsters so we could fit our trash in there.


Alejandro brought a group of students from Belle Haven Community School who stayed all day to serve.


My FutureProfits Volunteers were awesome! Randy, Brad, Marc, Steve, Emily, Marilyn and Dianna were there all day constantly giving 100%. Barbara faithfully served at the registration table. Geo took conceptual pictures of the event even after breaking his finger the day before. Ivan brought a friend to help. Many came throughout the day and gave what they could.



There were countless volunteers from Peninsula Covenant Church and Highway Community who came and gave their all.


And like Jeremy Affeldt said, the students who gave are my heroes. They worked faithfully throughout the day, and for those who had to leave early, they worked up until the last minute as hard as they could. FutureProfits students from Carlmont, Menlo-Atherton, and Sequoia High School all came and gave of their time. Morgan, Nehemiah, Kenia, Patrick, and Dalton are among those who came and stayed the whole day.



Here is a link from Comcast SportsNet who showed up and covered the event. SF Giants Pitcher Jeremy Affeldt was there the entire day and was wonderful as he interacted with the students.
http://www.csnbayarea.com/sportsnetBayArea/search/v/49207388/12-3-jeremy-affeldt-fights-hunger.htm?q=jeremy+affeldt

And here are some of our in house publications...

NCUD's Youtube Video

NCUD's thank you newsletter

Pictures from the day of:
Album #1

Album #2

All in all, a total success! Thanks for your support! Many of you played a vital role... it wouldn't have happened without you.

It Would Take 10 Years To Read Every Single Daily Tweet

So I was against Twitter for a long time. Why tweet when you can do the exact same thing on Facebook (plus more) with the status updates? But over the past couple of months, it's become one of my favorite sites. Not only can I "follow" people I don't know and enjoy their humor or insight, but I can also hear about local events, get connected with popular bands or actors of whom I'm a fan, and get the latest information from magazines like Time and Relevant. For people with the "input" strength like me (people who like to collect information -- see Strengths Finder), this is a noncommittal and fun place to go when you're stopped at a red light or waiting in a long line.

Check out this article from Time magazine about the daily Twitter feed...
It Would Take 10 Years To Read Every Single Daily Tweet

Here are a few pieces of information I collected this morning:
Personal Random Fun:
Some people got together to "redo" Pixar's Up house in real life!


Photography Enjoyment:
Here's a cool picture I found on the blog "Jesus Needs New PR" connected to his rendition of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8:


Financial Education (to keep me updated for my job):
Business Insider

Good times on Twitter.

Crate Training

I haven't blogged anything for a while, and I was inspired by Autumn when I read her blog today.

This last week has been crazy. My dog has regressed in her potty training. She was doing fine for a while (except for little piddles here and there when she got too excited -- she's a small dog) but all of a sudden, she started pooing in my room in the middle of the night! It SUCKS to wake up to the smell of poo and have to clean it up.

So I decided...it's back to her crate. No more freedom for her. Sunday night through Wednesday night I got no sleep. She would whine...but I'm not talking normal whine. This is a hyperventilating-bark/whine that will not stop. I would even try to slowly train her not to whine for an hour or so before trying to go to bed. I would wake up angry and have to calm myself down...sometimes it would take a whole hour. I guess this is what no sleep, frustration, and irrationality mixed together do. (Plus I started classes this week so I had to be "on" almost every day.)

Thursday night, I got so angry that I put a sweatshirt on her, and put her in the crate in the garage. She's never slept in the garage because it's cold and Roxy likes being around people. When we first crate-trained her, she whined out of separation anxiety, but eventually got used to it till the crate was too small, which is why we stopped crate-training her. She was potty trained and I didn't want to have to buy a new crate.

Anyways, I sat outside the garage waiting, thinking I'm a bad and neglectful mom/owner, trying to figure out what to do....and all of a sudden, she stopped! She finally gave up! So the last couple of nights, although she whines for about 5 minutes, she'll eventually stop once she can't hear anything. I know it's not the best dog-training techniques, but at this point, it's a compromise that is going to have to work for now.

So not Roxy enjoys even more her freedom when she has it. This is her favorite spot in the house:

Rhythms

God gave me a new word for this season of life. I've had it since September or so after the CCDA conference. My word is "rhythm".

Rhythm: movement, fluctuation, or variation marked by the regular recurrence or natural flow of related elements

I've been learning about rhythms in my life in multiple ways:
1) rest
2) eating well
3) exercise
4) renewing my mind with truth

Rhythms:


At that time in September, God was teaching me about the rhythms that He called his people to of consistent rest (once every seven days). See the blog entry here. I knew that I needed to learn to implement this in my life in order to be able to live a full life...not a busy life, but a full life. I also knew this would develop my trust in God.

What I wasn't expecting was learning about the rhythms of eating well and exercising. My sister asked me to join her in keeping track of calories on this app on our phones. I couldn't get the app, but I went online and started using www.myfitnesspal.com. There wasn't really anything special about this site, but for some reason, I experienced this new sense of motivation to exercise and eat well. Going grocery shopping was a joy to me and I was excited to see what healthy foods I could get (that would taste good too!).

Although I was taking care of my body physically, I've been going through a lot of transition that was difficult and discouraging. After a few weeks of living in discouragement, God reminded me through a friend that He hasn't called us to living from a weary mindset, but instead He has given us His Spirit which is FULL of life, joy, and peace. This doesn't mean that we can't ever be discouraged or struggling...there is plenty of that in the Bible. But in my situation, God was calling me to walk forward in faith and trust that God would provide and that He is faithful; to have faith that He would fill me with strength and joy like His word says, and to renew my mind in that truth. The new rhythm that God was teaching me was to renew my mind with truth.

Picture of the Day

Just a random creepy antique shop picture that I wanted to share with you.