Calm amidst Corona

Likely, you’re tired of hearing about the newest coronavirus. But don’t worry—despite the title, this post is less about the coronavirus and more about Christ. Regardless of your opinions about the virus, I’d imagine that you’ve felt at least some uneasiness in recent days. If you’re like me, you’re less worried about catching the virus and more worried about how the reaction to it will affect current and future plans.

It’s easy to get caught up in worries about the unknown. We are finite creatures, after all. But giving into those worries is not something we have to do. In the face of the unknown, we can choose to take a different path. And the best thing to do is to intentionally fix our eyes on the One who knows all. Instead of fixating on the news, feeding our minds and souls a steady diet of social media, and passively letting the worries build inside of us, we can face them head on by actively focusing on the Truth of who God is and what that means for us.

-          God is all-knowing. That means that not only did none of this take Him by surprise, but also He knows what tomorrow holds—and next week—and next month—and you get the picture. (See 1 John 3:20, Romans 11:33, Job 37:16, etc.)

-          God is outside of time. That means that He is already fully present in our future. Mind-blowing, I know, but that’s why He’s the infinite One and we’re not. (See Genesis 1:2, Psalm 90:2, John 1:1, Deuteronomy 31:8, etc.) 

-          His mercies are new every morning. That means that regardless of what we face in a given day, He gives us a fresh dose of mercy to sustain us. (See Lamentations 3:22-23)

Put all of this together, and we see that the One who knows all things and is already literally ahead of us is also the One who provides us what we need. We’re not left in the hands of an incompetent Being, one who is caught off guard by hardships we might face. Nor are we left in the hands of a cruel or apathetic Being, who delights in our struggle or couldn’t care less about us.

Jesus, the Son of God and God Himself, came and dwelt among us, His creatures, as one of us. The God who is outside of time experienced life within time in the person of Jesus Christ. He faced spiritual oppression, literal storms, physical exhaustion, and grief, just to name a few—so He knows. Not only because He already knew all but because He chose to know experientially as well.

For those of us who have accepted the gift of His sacrifice on our behalf, i.e. are trusting in His perfect life, substitutionary death, and bodily resurrection instead of in our own good deeds to have right standing before God, we also have the indwelling presence of His Spirit with us every. single. moment. That means you’re not walking into any situation without God already having been there and without God accompanying you intimately—oh, and without God praying for you. That’s right! Jesus is right now interceding for us before God’s throne in heaven, and the Holy Spirit intercedes for us when we don’t know what to pray (Romans 8:26-27, 34).

Maybe you don’t know what this feels like, though. Maybe you’ve never experienced the peace that passes understanding, the confidence that comes from knowing that there is a God who loves you—loves you enough to suffer injustice and die in your place so that you could have a relationship with Him. Maybe you live your days with no sense of purpose and without hope for today, much less for the future. If that’s the case, there is no better time than now to run to God and let Him teach you. Let Him show you why you lack peace, why you feel hopeless, why you can’t shake that fear of the future.

If you want to do that—to seek after the God who is pursuing you with a relentless love—but you’re not sure how, please reach out, and I would love to help you find the way. If you don’t have another way of contacting me, you can leave a comment at the end of this post. The settings are such that no one else will see it besides me unless I publish it (which I won’t). But be sure to let me know who you are, so I can respond!

We live in a world that has fallen from its original God-fashioned design, a world in which evil exists, humans go to war against each other, and viruses lead to panic, illness, and death. But followers of Jesus know that this world is not our ultimate home and that whatever struggles we face here pale in comparison to the eternal joy that awaits us when we finally see our Beloved Savior face to face and can worship Him purely without having to fight against the remnants of our sinful nature.

So if you’re a follower of Jesus, when you feel the worry rising in your spirit and the tension building in your body, preach to yourself the truths of Scripture to remind yourself about Who you serve and Who is holding you always in His hand. And if you’re not a follower of Jesus, don’t ignore the anxiety you feel in facing the unknown. Let it be a force that pushes you to seek the answers and peace that only God can provide.

In the uncertainty of our lives that has been brought into sharper focus in these coronavirus times, look to Christ, take up His easy yoke, and rest in the calmness of His presence each day.

The Waiting Christ

The Christmas season that we came out of just a few months ago is a time of emphasizing the humanity of Christ. We emphasize His deity during this time, as well, as we recognize Him as Emmanuel, i.e. God With Us. But as we think of the incarnation, or God becoming flesh, we marvel at the fact that the God of all there is willingly subjected Himself to becoming one of us, to putting on a body of flesh and blood, so that He could restore all things to their rightful design, including but not limited to our relationship with Him.

When we think of Jesus’ humanity, we often think of how he needed sleep, needed food, and felt emotions such as gladness, wonder, grief, and anger. But as I was reading Scripture one day, another way in which He is like us jumped out at me, one that I hadn’t thought of before. The verse can be found in Hebrews chapter 10. Verses 12 and 13 read, “But when this priest [Jesus] had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool” (NIV).  Did you catch that one little clause? He waits.

This verse speaks of the time after Jesus had completed the sacrifice, after He said, “It is finished.” And yet He waits. He has already achieved the victory, yet He waits for His enemies to be completely vanquished. Lest we think Him impotent or His victory ineffective, we see that He is sitting in a position of authority—at the right hand of God.  So why does He wait? Well, as is the case many times, we don’t completely know, or at least we don’t fully understand. We know that He is waiting for the right time as is set by God’s own authority (Acts 1:7); why that time is the right time is beyond our understanding.  Regardless of why, though, we know that He willingly waits until that right time arrives.

He does not try to usurp the Father’s authority by rushing into things or coming up with a different plan as Abram and Sarai did in waiting for their promised offspring (Gen. 16), or as we so often do. Instead, he submits to the Father’s plan and patiently waits until the time is right. The God who is outside of time uses it to accomplish His perfect plan in our world, and He waits.

This is not the only time we see Jesus waiting, though. In John 7, he waited to go to the festival until after His disciples had gone ahead because his “time ha[d] not yet fully come” (John 7:8, NIV). In John 11, after hearing that His dear friend Lazarus was ill, He waited two days before journeying to see Lazarus’s sisters and raise Lazarus from the dead.

Well of course Jesus could wait, you might be thinking. He’s God, so He’s all-knowing and all-wise, so He knows why it’s important to wait for the right time. That’s true. But it’s also true that because He is God, He is all-powerful and sovereign, and could just as easily change when the right time is. Yet He waits.

Okay, but so what? What does it matter to us? It matters a great deal, because it means that among all the other ways in which Jesus can identify with us, He also knows what it feels like to be patient and to wait for something expected to happen that just isn’t happening yet. Plus, He was tempted to gain the kingdoms of the earth on a quicker route, one that would avoid having to die, but one that would involve worshiping His Enemy rather than His Father. So He knows what it is like to face the temptation to take matters into our own hands, to speed up God’s timeline and try to change God’s plan.

So as we wait for things, whether things we might not be guaranteed to receive or witness, or things that are certainly coming, we can draw strength from the fact that we are not alone and we are not being forced to wait by an impersonal being who likes to torment us creatures. No, we are invited to wait by a loving God who created us and knows us better than we know ourselves, who in His perfect wisdom has crafted a beautiful story for our lives, who loves us deeply and eternally, and who chose to experience life as we do so that we can know He understands.

If you’re waiting for something today, even if you’ve been waiting for years and years, I pray that you will turn your eyes to Jesus who is at this very moment waiting too. As He is waiting for the final fulfillment of His kingdom, He is also interceding for you as you wait. Take courage in that, my friend, and worship the waiting Christ as you patiently wait as well. 

To read the Arabic translation of this post, click here.

.لقراءة الترجمة العربية لهذا المنشور إضغط هنا

PC: Pam Galagan. Used with permission.

How I Fell in Love with an Arab, Part 3

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, I shared what had happened in my life from childhood through college that God used to prepare me for the man He would later bring into my life. For those of you who have been eagerly awaiting his appearance in the story, I have good news! Your wait is over! Well…almost. Just a few more paragraphs to go.

After college, I followed my family to a new city and a new church. Each move in my life (college excepted) had been to a progressively larger city, and this move was no exception. In addition to being the largest city I had ever lived in, my new home was also the most international, a fact that my church emphasized in helping us be aware that the nations we were called to reach for Christ were not just “out there” but were right next door—sometimes literally.

I was fairly confident that the Lord was not calling me to serve as an overseas missionary, but as I learned how many people from around the world were right here beside me, I began to wonder if perhaps the Lord wanted me to use my love for interacting with people from other cultures to demonstrate His love to those who did not know Him and who were here in my city. Around the same time, I heard a member of our church speak about his work with Bridges International at the city’s largest university. Bridges is the part of Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) that ministers to international students at universities all around the world. So when I was hired at the same university in 2016, I asked how I could get involved with Bridges.

Over the next few years, I volunteered at Bridges events and built relationships with students from around the world. Then one Friday evening in January 2019, I went to a workshop hosted by Bridges and a few other similar ministries. To be honest, I didn’t really want to go. It had been a long week; I was in my second semester of living the work-plus-grad-school life, and I was tired. I wasn’t sure I would even be able to stay awake. But I went anyway—and I’m so glad I did.

As I sat at a table at the edge of the room, a café at a local church, I listened to a panel of men with years of experience ministering in different parts of the world share their experiences to help us know how best to relate with students from different types of cultures. Several minutes into the session, one of the men called on one of the workshop attendees to share from his own experience being an international student from the Middle East—and specifically from Palestine. And that’s when I heard his voice.

I couldn’t see him, because he was on the opposite side of the room and other people were in the way, but I listened to him share about Middle Eastern culture, and I immediately remembered the man from Bethlehem I had heard in college. I knew since the student speaking was at this training workshop (and from what he said) that he was a Christian, and I was excited at the chance to hear from another brother from Palestine.

During a break, as we were getting refreshments before moving to breakout rooms, I passed by a few people talking in a group and realized that he was one of them. That’s when the thought popped into my head, “I really wanna talk to that guy,” quickly followed by, “Where did that come from?!” Not being one to barge in and introduce myself to a stranger with no reason, though, I didn’t act on my desire. In my younger days, I would have tried to manipulate the situation, attempting to nonchalantly hover nearby hoping he would look my way or trying to concoct some reason why I needed to talk to him. And it’s not that I wasn’t tempted to do so that night. I knew I had never seen him at any Bridges events before, so I was fairly certain the chances were low of me seeing him again. And I didn’t even know his name. If something was going to happen, I needed to get on it, right? Or did I?

Over the years the Lord had been breaking me of my tendency to manipulate situations, teaching me to rest in His timing instead of trying to grab control. So I left that evening, not with the angst that used to come from trying to make things happen in my own strength or ingenuity, but with perfect peace, thinking to myself, “If God wants me to see him again, I’ll see him again.” I had no doubt of that, and it was a moment of sweetest surrender.

When I got home, I told my mom about “the guy from Palestine,” but after that I didn’t think much more about him—until a couple of months later, that is, when I saw him again . . .

It was a Bridges game night at one of the leader’s houses, and the icebreaker game to start off the evening involved pairing up with someone you didn’t know yet. As I looked up, I saw him on the opposite side of the room. Our eyes connected, and we both smiled huge, toothy smiles. It was the first time he ever saw me, and I was thinking, “How quickly can I get over there,” and somehow I just knew that he was thinking the same thing (come to find out later, he was!). I know, I know—it sounds like a cheesy Hallmark moment, but that’s really what happened, folks. But alas, there were too many people between us, so we weren’t able to pair up. But over the course of the evening we interacted with each other indirectly as teammates either on the same or opposing teams in various games. At the end of the night, though, I still wasn’t sure of his name—but unbeknownst to me, he had figured out mine.

He had been in the U.S. for about eight months, having come on a Fulbright scholarship to earn his master’s degree at the university where I work. During this time, he had continued something he had been doing for around five years—praying for a helpmate. So while I had been waiting, wondering what God had in store for me regarding marriage, he had been specifically praying and alertly watching, looking for someone who fit what he had been praying for.

Another month passed before we would see each other again. In the meantime, I saw a friend’s post on Facebook that convicted me that, while I had been telling myself God had my future in His sovereign hands, I hadn’t really been talking to Him about it. So I started praying differently than I had before, specifically and explicitly surrendering my future to God.

A couple of weeks later, the Bridges Easter party came. I honestly wasn’t thinking about him being there, but when I went to the end of the food line after helping set up an activity, I turned and saw him making a beeline towards me. He got in line behind me, and I knew this was the time. So I turned around and officially introduced myself, and as they say—the rest is history. We talked for a long time that evening, and he was sure to find me before he left to see if we could exchange some sort of contact information. The hesitation I’d felt in similar situations before was nowhere to be found, and I knew that this was something different.

Just over a week later, we met for lunch and spent four hours talking. He was the perfect gentleman and was honest with me from the outset about a lot of things I would need to know if things were to progress between us, like his scholarship requirements. The crazy thing was the things we talked about didn’t seem crazy to me. We talked about so many things that were definitely not typical first date material, but everything felt completely natural, and I felt as if I had found a long-lost friend.

But what stood out to me the most in our interactions, over and above his sense of humor, his intelligence, his handsome features, and his love for his family, was his heart for and relationship with the Lord. When we talked at the Easter party, he spoke of the Lord in “normal” conversation in ways that I had heard few people do. On our first date, his prayer before our meal stirred my heart and made me sense that he would be one who would spur me on in my walk with Jesus.

Although we were raised in very different worlds, we found that we have a crazy amount of things in common—silly things like not drinking coffee; inconsequential things like being only 11 days apart in age; and significant things like agreement on doctrines of our faith. Our conversations soon let me know that this man was one with whom I could truly have a “meeting of the minds” in discussing deep topics but also one with whom I could let my long-buried silly side run free and feel completely at home. He possesses the perfect blend of responsibility and spontaneity, of seriousness and silliness that the Lord knew I needed. And as my mother always said I would find—he’s not perfect, but he’s perfect for me.      

So how did I fall in love with an Arab? It’s pretty simple really—I fell in love with a man, and that man happens to be Arab. Are there cultural differences between us? Yes. But thanks to the work the Lord has done in our lives, to us those differences are seen as assets to our relationship, not obstacles. That’s not to say that navigating the differences is always easy, but it is always rewarding. And more than that, what we have in common is an infinitely stronger foundation than any difference that presents itself: we follow Jesus, and we keep each other second.

Jesus is our first love. And by fixing our eyes on Him, we are able to love each other as we ought—selflessly, with a view toward the other’s good in all things. Do we always do this perfectly? Heavens no. But walking in the grace and forgiveness that has been granted to us by Jesus, we are able to extend that grace to each other.        

This is just the middle of our story, a story the Lord has been writing since before we were born and one which He will continue until He brings it to completion. He will continue to teach us as He has always done, and we will continue to tell of His goodness and grace in our lives—because while this may seem like our love story, the story is really His.

PC: Pamela Hollis. Used with permission.

How I Fell in Love with an Arab, Part 2

Last time I began telling the story of how a little girl who was afraid of Arabs grew up to be a woman about to marry one. If you haven’t had a chance to read Part 1, I would encourage you to go back and read it, especially the beginning, before you read any further here.

We left off at the end of the last post with me sitting in a chapel service at my college listening to a Palestinian Christian from Bethlehem share his story. So why was that experience so transformational for me? Here’s the backstory: I had grown up in the American South, in a church culture that championed political involvement and thought of America as a “Christian nation.” This meant that the political system of democracy (or, as I liked to correct people as a history major, democratic republicanism) and the religion of Christianity were often thought of as inextricably tied together. Enemies of democracy were enemies of Christianity, and friends of democracy were friends of Christianity. That was the general thinking. There was also no distinction made between the modern country of Israel and the Israel of the Old Testament. Instead, the two were treated as one and the same.

Add all of this together, and I had been conditioned to have a rather low view of Palestinians. By the time I was in college, I had at least come to understand enough to know that Arabs—just like Americans—are not a homogenous group of people and thus did not associate Palestinians with the frightening images I had seen on television surrounding 9/11 as a child. But I still thought of them negatively because of the limited understanding I had of their world and the misconceptions I had about the connection between the country of Israel and the Old Testament.

At the same time, I was aware of the global Church, of the fact that there were followers of Jesus scattered all across the globe with whom I shared a connection because they were my brothers and sisters in Christ. But for some reason, it had never occurred to me that the Church extended into Palestine. (Now I almost laugh at how ridiculous it is that I never thought of that, considering that Palestine is the very birthplace of the Church and that Palestinian Christians, like my fiancé’s family, trace their roots directly to the ancient Church.)

So the man from Bethlehem shared his story, and as soon as I recovered from the realization that such a person as a Palestinian Christian did exist, I suddenly became aware of the degree to which I had subconsciously let my priorities become misaligned. Instead of caring more about how my brothers and sisters of faith were being treated, I had cared more about internally supporting a secular government. I had let my affections for my country and by extension its political allies blind me to the fact that I have blood-bought family among a people whom I had thought of as “enemies.” They are men and women who are covered by the blood of Jesus just like I am, with whom I will spend an eternity in heaven worshipping before the throne of Jesus, and they are the ones with whom my greatest affection should lay, because my ultimate loyalty lies not to my country but to my Savior.

And just like a strong aftershock rends the ground after an earthquake, another realization shook my heart and mind. Yes, my heart should be full of love for Arab Christians, but it should also be full of love for Arabs. Period. And for Jews. Period. And for fill-in-the-blank. Period. Because as a follower of Christ, I am called to show His love to all. Regardless of whether or not they share my political opinions, regardless of whether or not they love my country, regardless of whether or not they speak my language, regardless of whether or not they believe in Jesus, I cannot help but love them if I have a true understanding of the depth of Jesus’ love for me and for them.

So from that point forward, rather than having a one-sided perspective, I came to develop a more balanced one, one where I pass everything through the lens of the Bible and see the humanity and dignity and brokenness in all peoples. And instead of seeing Arabs and immediately thinking of terrorism or thinking in terms of politics, I began to think of the Arab people as just that—people. Not stereotypes, not fear-mongers, not political agents, not categories or labels, but people.

And that’s why hearing from that one man from Bethlehem opened my eyes, my mind, and my heart to a whole new world, a world of better understanding how another Man from Bethlehem wanted me to live and love. I knew I had been changed, but I didn’t yet know why.

It would be over five years before I would again encounter a Palestinian Christian, and for that part of the story, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait ‘til next time.

[Read Part 3 here.]

PC: Pamela Hollis. Used with permission.

How I Fell in Love with an Arab, Part 1

Many people that I know have not yet had the privilege of meeting my fiancé and have not heard the story of how God brought us together. For some, all they know is what they see—that I’m engaged (rather quickly by modern American standards) to a Palestinian Arab man, and that realization brings with it a host of questions and preconceptions about what that means. So in this inaugural post in the new Cross-Cultural category on An Iris Awaits, I seek to begin telling the story. In doing so, I am cognizant of the fact that my audience is no longer strictly American, and it is my deepest desire to share honestly while not being unnecessarily offensive to readers from any background.

For those who are new to the blog and might not be used to my writing style, it will be helpful to know that I often describe mindsets in such a way that seems to indicate I agree with them only to turn around and show why I do not. In some cases thought patterns that I used to hold are described in present tense as if I still hold them, in order to help readers feel what it was like to inhabit such a point of view before leading them to see why I shifted to hold a different one.

So with that groundwork laid, let’s begin. . .      

September 11, 2001, was my introduction to Arabs. As a nine-year-old girl, I saw faces on television— faces of the men who attacked my country and faces of men and women who were celebrating the attack. Before then, I have no recollection of ever seeing people of Arab descent. My introduction to Arabic was of a similar nature. I only ever heard the language spoken in the context of angry chants directed toward my country and its people as loud tirades of unknown words pushed their way through the English translation overlays on the news. While terrorism does its job of effecting fear, the media often does its part as well, and suddenly in my country Arabs were looked upon with suspicion and were lumped together into one category—terrorists. In the general thinking, the entire Middle East became synonymous with Arab and Arab with terrorism (spoiler alert—neither of those is accurate), and that was my understanding of the world as a child.

Now, nearly two decades later, I find myself in love with and engaged to an Arab man, learning to read and speak Arabic, and about to move to the Middle East, a place much more beautiful than the media let on. So what changed? What happened to break the walls of distrust and fearful prejudice that subconsciously had been built inside me as a child? What happened to ease the internal tightening of the chest and stomach that came with hearing the Arabic language? What happened to cause my heart to swell with love for the Arab people?

Well, as with most things, there’s a story. . .

A year after 9/11, my family moved from one southeastern state to another. Although the move was within the same region of the same country, I still experienced pretty significant culture shock. To move twelve hours away, from the mothership of the “South” to the heart of the “Mid-South,” only to be called a “Yankee” was perplexing to say the least. To find that people ate different food, shopped at different grocery store chains, spoke with a different accent, and endured very different climate and weather patterns enrolled me in the school of learning how to adapt, how to be proud of where I had come from but still to embrace where I was then. I was happiest when conversations turned to talking about my new culture and sharing about my home culture with my new friends.

Over the first few years in our new home, my family had occasion to develop friendships with people from all over the world—Indonesia, the Philippines, Korea, Malawi, Russia, Moldova, Brazil. I began to pick up tidbits of information about their countries and cultures, and I loved connecting those tidbits to my growing knowledge of the world’s geography that I was gaining through my schoolwork. I also met several cross-cultural couples who continued to expand the awareness I had of cross-cultural marriages that had begun in my previous home with knowing of my best friend’s grandparents who were an Irishman and a Filipino woman.

In high school I traveled out of the United States for the first time and experienced an international culture. I was learning Spanish in school and, with this trip to Brazil, was exposed to Portuguese as well. I loved being able to learn about new languages, even if it was only to speak a few words. It was like being able to break a code and understand a secret message. My mind was also opened to the variety that exists in the world, to realize that things we take for granted, say, at the grocery store, are not always available in other countries, but at the same time to realize that this reality goes both ways. There are treasures that other countries hold that America is deprived of.

Fast-forward to college, and I had the opportunity to travel outside the country once again, this time to England to learn at L’Abri. Once there, I spent 10 days living, working, relaxing, and studying with people from all over the world including Canada, the Netherlands, Brazil, England, and Australia. One night in particular stands out when a Dutch couple invited me to their flat for Swiss hot chocolate. We spent a couple of hours talking about our countries, asking and answering questions that we had always been curious about regarding each other’s home. It was invigorating, and I loved every minute of it. I learned so much that week in so many areas of my life, but the one thing that is relevant to this post was a conscious awareness of how much I enjoyed learning about other cultures and helping others learn about my own.

All of this contributed to the broadening of my perspective, to the priming of my heart and mind and personality to embrace intercultural connections, but you might have noticed that one people group has been conspicuously absent in the story thus far. That’s right—Arabs.

I went to a Christian college where we corporately attended chapel services three times a week. Sometimes these were like church services with worship music and a sermon, but sometimes we heard from guest speakers on a variety of topics. One chapel in particular is forever burned in my memory. The speaker that day was from Bethlehem. He was a Christian from Bethlehem. And he was a Palestinian (Arab) Christian from Bethlehem. Those are three identifiers that my brain had never put together before. But there he was, in the flesh, talking about his experience as a follower of Christ in the town where Christ was born and where there presently exists politicoreligious and racial tension of a high degree.

You know those movies where the scene is playing out, and then suddenly everything in the periphery blurs out as the camera zooms in quickly to focus on the main character as he has an earth-shattering realization? Yeah, that’s what it felt like. I felt in the core of my being that I had been thinking of the world all wrong, and it shook me.

And with that, I’ll have to leave you hanging to find out why next time on An Iris Awaits.

[Read Part 2 here.]

PC: Pamela Hollis. Used with permission.

The Constant Christ

Have you seen those memes that say something like, “We survived 2019,” or “Can we all just agree that [insert year, usually the one just ending] was the worst?” If those images have popped up in your news feed on social media, you also probably don’t have to scroll much further to find friends posting about how 2019 was their best, happiest, or most successful year yet. The juxtaposition of such polar opposite sentiments is enough to make us reflect on the inherent subjectivity of much of our lives. Was 2019 the best year or the worst year? Well, it depends on whom you talk to. 

It’s not just 2019 either. Every single year for the past few years at least, I can recall “[insert year] was brutal” comments and “[insert year] was incredible” ones. Even historians argue over whether a year was “good” or “bad,” whether a president was the best of the 20th century or the worst, whether social movements were effective or not, and so on. For some the past year was one full of loss, grief, anxiety, and struggle. For others it was full of excitement, happiness, peace, and ease. So when we reflect on a year, as we are so often prone to do when a new year—or new decade!—rolls around, there are a few things we should keep in mind. 

For one, we should be careful that our self-reflection does not become self-centeredness. It can be easy, when thinking over everything we’ve experienced in the past year and the ways it has shaped us, to project that onto everyone else and assume that their year was the same as ours. Even for those who went through the same events as us, they may have been affected by them differently. So it’s good to keep in mind that a year is not defined by our estimation of the quality of our personal experiences. 

This realization should cause us to be humble in our interactions with others, not expecting them to have the same feelings about the previous year as we do. We shouldn’t begrudge them if they weep while we are laughing or laugh while we are weeping. Instead we should seek to be empathetic and should ourselves rejoice or weep with others (Romans 12:15). It also should cause us to hold our evaluations of the past year lightly, recognizing that we are not the ultimate authority on reality. 

For some, this subjectivity is not comforting in the least. Those, like me, who can tend to be overly analytical find it sending them into a mental tailspin where they lose track of what it is they can actually hold on to with certainty. “Well I had a good year, but so-and-so didn’t, so maybe my year wasn’t so good after all…how do I even know? Does it even matter?” So if we can’t define any given year, if we can’t objectively say that it was inherently good or bad, then what can we do with it? How and where do we find the meaning we so desperately crave? 

The good news is that there is Someone who does define reality, Someone who can look at a year from a vantage point that no one else can, Someone who can pronounce goodness or its opposite with complete objectivity. His Name is Jesus Christ. Because He is the Creator, Author, and Definer of reality itself, we can take our subjective perspective of our experiences and examine it in light of what God tells us in His Word, there to find meaning and understanding. 

We can also take comfort in the knowledge that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8, ESV). This means that whether our year was happy or sad, whether it was full of joyful elation or crushing heartbreak, He is still Himself. Everything that He provides for us out of Himself is still available to us regardless of what kind of year we have had, are having, or will have—His presence, His peace, His forgiveness, His grace, His righteousness, His mercy, His love. None of it depletes; none of it wavers; none of it runs away and hides; none of it becomes diluted; none of it fails. Jesus Christ always IS. He always will be what He has always been. 

So as we enter this new decade, looking backward and looking ahead, we can sink the anchors of our souls into the Truth that is Jesus. We can look to Him to help make sense of our past year and to give us confidence, peace, and strength walking into the present one—because in addition to revealing that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, He has also promised that “He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you” (Deuteronomy 31:8, ESV). We have a constant Christ. Let’s rest in that through whatever 2020 may bring.

Back at It: Relaunch of An Iris Awaits!

Welcome to 2020! Over the past six months or so, I took a bit of an unplanned sabbatical from writing for An Iris Awaits. Balancing work, grad school, and a new relationship among other things meant this side project of mine needed to move to the side for a while. But I’m excited to say that I’m back at it and to reveal a few new things you’ll find here with this relaunch of the blog!

First off, if you’ve been around here for a while, you’ll remember my posts generally fall in the categories of Church, Culture, or Catch-all (for more about those, check out the About page). Well now there’s one more category—Cross-cultural! For those that don’t know, one element of the new relationship I mentioned above is that it is both cross-cultural and international. And as my fiancée and I are preparing to become one, and I am preparing to move overseas for a time after we’re married, God is teaching (and will teach) me so much about Himself, His Church, and His world. So in this new section on the blog, I’m hoping to be able to share some of those things with you all.

Another new thing is aesthetic. I’m excited that An Iris Awaits now displays a beautiful original piece of artwork by Nathan Bennet Adams in the blog header. Nate is a friend of mine from college, and it’s been a joy to see his artistic talents develop. It’s my hope that in the future you can hear more from him about his work and passion for art in a Conversations post here on the blog, but in the meantime please go check him out on Instagram @nathan.b.adams!

Lastly, if you don’t want to miss any new posts, be sure to subscribe by entering your email address in the “Follow by Email” box under my photo on the right side of the page and click submit. If you’re viewing on a mobile device, click “View Web Version” at the bottom of the page first.

If this is your first time visiting or if you’ve been a faithful reader all along, thank you for sharing in this journey with me! I look forward to seeing where the Lord takes us next. Stay tuned for a brand new post on Monday!

Happy New Year!