April 29th, 2006 - ...hey churches, don't forget about the part about repenting.

setting: subway train going to church on sunday afternoon for my usual 3 o'clock contemporary service.

i see a grandmother eye-balling her grandson as he wears his gilligan hat (from Gilligan's Island) up rather than down. the grandmother tells the child's mother that he's wearing it upwards. the mother goes to her son to show him the proper way to wear it. and i remember thinking to myself about the grandmother why the hell are you so stressfully concerned about your grandson wearing his hat that way, mrs bitchy lady?

setting: 3 o'clock church service in myeung-dong @ IWE, international worship in english.

the preacher's sermon seemed long and drawn out. seemed almost too irrelevent for somebody like me. but for about 3 minutes i suddenly started to listen and see things like a rabbit or a fox. the preacher started to talk about repentance and the changing of a christian's life when he/she makes the commitment at heart...of all sunday messages that message brought me to remembrance of my spiritual faith conviction and where i stand with it. of all the messages and songs i've heard over the past year this is the one i needed to hear just once again. a message about repentance, to change my ways and thinking and its ramifications and the reasons behind it... all the talk and readings about the new kind of christian or spirituality and all the messages about a 3rd culturally relevant church body in a new era... all that talk and all that jazz couldn't bring me to this, not in a million years. sometimes the message needs be black & white and clear as glass. and this truth is not always the truth we are willing to acknowledge and accept. repentance is the hard truth we must give in to. the 3 minute spiel, so simple and to-the-point, was all about describing what repenting is, which is all i needed to hear. and of all the places to get this point, this point that is such a critically massed junction in my life that only God and I know about, happened to hit me soft, like falling leaves, from the other side of the world.

setting: after 3 o'clock church service.

a good friend of mine, powerful and committed to Christ, tells me what i need to hear, that i must trust in God and that everything happens according to His time. and she also reminded me that God will give what i ask for with my heart. she said she will pray for me and told me that my decisions in life will come from God. i'm happier knowing this.