Kosovo Reflections Part 4 - The Realization of Grace

When I was a child I liked to play games with my mom.  Sometimes I would hide and wait for her to find me and other times I would ask her if I could be her hand servant for an evening, at her command for whatever she wanted me to do.  I would be put to task vacuuming, wiping down the kitchen floors and other various chores that would take the day’s burden of work from the shoulders of a single mother raising a boy.  I did these things because I loved her, but looking back I see how I was also seeking her favour.  I wanted her to be proud of me and to return the love that I so desperately sought.

It is so easy for us to become subjects to the opinions of other people. Where I sought favour from my mother, I wanted to gain her favour by my actions or words.  Often I would be rewarded, but it was never enough to make me feel better about myself.  Much of my life has played out like this, where I sought the approval of others through my actions and words.  I have even based my involvement in ministry off of this mentality.  However, the truth about myself made itself known to me while I was in Kosovo…

At the beginning of our tour, we headed east from Prishtina into the rolling hills and beautiful countryside.  The roads wound back and forth in the valleys of old, old mountains that had been eroded into nubs.  Forests covered the hills like blankets and fields spread out in the valleys, making it suitable for farmers to claim land for their families.  As we came down the other side of the hill lands, a massive valley opened up before us and in it sat a town with the name Kamenica.

It was approaching evening time in Kamenica when we gathered on a hill overlooking the town.  In the center of the town was a mosque complete with dome and tower.  It stood as the town’s monument for the religious life.  It was the totem for attaining Allah’s mercy and it was as I was looking down on this spectacle that I realized I had more in common with these people than I had first thought…

~~~~~

If religion is considered as mankind’s various attempts to find God, then the motivator of religion could be said to be mankind’s attempt to find God’s (Gods’) favour.  Let’s look at some examples. 

In animistic folk religions, people revere the spirits (of ancestors or mischief) and make sacrifices to them in order to sway them to act in the people’s favour.  Every natural event is connected with a spirit’s action and therefore a person’s devotion to the spiritual world gives them good fortune in the physical world as the spirits favour them.  Many people of animistic cultures have been known to sing to the spirits as they are working in the fields, so that the spirits would give them good fortune in their harvests.  Others will sacrifice animals or even children to stay the wrath of evil spirits that they believe are responsible for great tragedy. 

There was a similar mindset in the ancient Greco-Roman era.  Polytheism was widely accepted across the Roman Empire and people would make sacrifices of animals in order to attain favour or blessing from whichever god they entreated.  Women would petition Diana (the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Artemis) to make them fertile for childbearing or even to protect their child during childbirth.  There were many gods and goddesses (one was created pretty much any time Zeus fancied another woman or goddess and took them by force) for people to desire favour from.

But this thinking also popped up in monotheistic religions as well.  It pops up in the Jewish Law and the Qur’an. The most obvious example to westerners might be the ideal behind most of Catholicism in the way of gaining God’s approval through good works and financial giving.  However, it is certainly not limited to one branch of Christianity.  Many evangelical Protestants places great value in a person’s belief of certain doctrines to truly be right with God.  In this regard it is what “doctrine” a person believes that gains them God’s favour. 

And so this cycle of self-validation takes place, and perpetual entrapment of the heart.  Some laws have been set up to abide by in order to receive favour from God, as if doing good things gains us merit we can use like currency. It seems to be mankind’s natural inclination to seek or buy its own salvation for the afterlife.

But can we buy out God?

At college I learned much about the teachings of the Bible.  I learned about how certain themes continued throughout scripture which “doctrines” could be formed out of.  Many of the Christian “doctrines” surround a well known notion called grace.  I learned all about grace; I read about it in the Scripture and in textbooks; I heard sermons preached on the subject.  I thought I understood what grace was, but I was lying to myself.

I once heard someone refer to grace and mercy as two sides of the same coin.  They said that mercy is “not receiving that which we deserve” (wrath and punishment) while grace is “receiving that which we do not deserve” (blessing and favour).  Though I feel that this is a utterly simplified version of what mercy and grace really are, the meaning of grace is undeniable throughout the New Testament.  Grace is in essence “unmerited favour”.  Unmerited meaning that it cannot be earned; it must be given freely without payment or debt.  The notion suggests to us that something has been afforded to us that we could not afford on our own.

When pastors and biblical scholars think of the word grace, one person comes into mind (besides God).  The Apostle Paul’s writings were heavily laden with the subject of grace.  For Paul it was essential for the believer to know that their received salvation through grace alone and not by merit or good deeds.  In Romans 3:24 we find Paul explicitly saying that mankind is justified only through grace.  Ephesians 2:8 repeats that those who have faith are saved by grace, which is the “gift of God”.  This teaching of salvation through grace is littered throughout scripture.  It’s as if the writers wanted to make sure that the most blockheaded of people would understand the relationship between salvation and grace.

This is what I knew to be true…

…but something was missing for so long.  I hadn’t identified it until that moment overlooking that town which sprawled across the valley like a vast river of white and orange.  Something was missing.  Something that left me alone with my attempts to be a good person.  Something that left me grappling with my sinfulness and imperfection.  Something that left me constantly falling short in life.

For so long I had understood grace, accepted grace as the process through which I was saved…but I had not extended grace to myself.

Like the people of Kamenica, I had an established book of divine morality which I had tried to abide by and which I constantly failed to abide by.  Like those people, I sought out to gain favour with God through good deeds and when I failed to stop sinning, I would punish myself.  For years upon years I had lived in a personal prison of spiritual self-mutilation, trying to burn the sin from myself by my own strength.

And it was on that hill, as the sun set just above the surrounding peaks, that I finally forgave myself.  I finally chose to see myself in the same light that God saw me.  I finally extended the same grace I had extended to others, the grace that God extended to me when I first believed, to my own aching heart.

Tears were born as all the texts, sermons and knowledge of what grace is were fulfilled by the presence of grace itself.

~~~~~

Accepting that we are broken and sinful people is hard for most people to accept.  Everyone thinks that they are “okay” people, somewhere on the good side of the figurative good/evil line.  Even if we have accepted our sinfulness, we can still seek to control our sin.  We strive for holiness and purity above everything else and find ourselves coveting the word “godly” as an adjective to be used before our names. 

But by chasing after these “good” things, we are missing the big picture.  Pursuit of godliness is like the pursuit of a rainbow.  It is like trying to pin down moonlight or to catch a whisper in a jar.  Godliness is not something that we can work for or attain.  We will always be disappointed in ourselves if we have made that the goal of our ambitions.  Those who believe that they have achieved godliness are lying to themselves, because godliness is something cultivated in us by God.  It is a part of grace.

Instead, we must chase after God!  When we chase after God, we realise that the object of our pursuits is what makes us godly.  It is what changes us and conquers the sin in us.  Attempts to change ourselves and to stop sinning are useless.  Sin is inextricably graphed to us as we are now.  What's more is that when you are against the dark, all you can focus on is the dark.  But when you are for the light, the dark will naturally fade away.  That is the power of divine grace!

And by accepting grace, we can then share that grace with ourselves, to let it transform who we are.  When we have forgiven ourselves, how much easier will it be to forgive others?

Imagine a world where grace reigned?  Where grace rained down from the sky and was felt by every person.  What would the world be like then?  When no wrong was the seed for bitterness and revenge?  When our shortcomings were overcome by forgiveness and encouragement?

It is no wonder that John Newton (a slave trader in the 18^th century) wrote the words:

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav'd a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev'd;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believ'd!

Thro' many dangers, toils, and snares,
I have already come;
'Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

~John Newton 1779

Kosovo Reflections Part 3 - Art and the Infinite

It doesn’t take you long to figure out that art in Kosovo is a big deal.  As you walk down the main streets of Prishtina, you encounter restaurants, music stores, coffee shops and apparel outlets.  The call to prayer is sung from multiple Imam towers just as the sun is rising and dance beats pump out of club speakers as it sets.  Statues stand in public squares as timeless reminders of those whose hands formed the foundations of the country.  The national library, various church cathedrals and mosques were erected as pathways to enlightenment. 

Art is everywhere.

It is inescapable.  It is bound to culture as much as language is.

However, what is perhaps most surprising is that art defies definition.  Something that is so widespread and obvious escapes all attempts to box it in and give it an identity.  Many different people have attempted to define art.  Leo Tolstoy was quite possibly the first man to question what art is.  He tore down his society’s view of art as a way to acquire pleasure and urged people to consider it as a condition of life, namely the interaction between man and man.  He described art as a process where one man, who desires to “join others to himself in one and the same feeling, expresses that feeling by certain external indications” (by picture, story, song, etc.).  By Tolstoy’s definition, art is a way of relating to others through artistic communication.  In fact, relationship is the initiator of the desire to create art.

Other philosophers have taken this thought further by describing art as simply (or not so simply) form and content.  The forms of art are the elements, the principles, and the materials used to make art.  The content of art is trickier to pin down as it encapsulates the underlying message, emotion or idea that the piece of art was created to communicate. 

An example of form and content could be drawn from Van Gogh’s “The Church in Auvers”.  The form would be the use of the elements (texture, space, shape, colour, etc.) and principles (movement, unity, harmony, etc.).  The content would be the message of the painting: noticing that the light of the sun brightens the foreground yet the church is in shadow and holds no light of its own. John van Sloten noted that Van Gogh’s conflicted feelings about the Church were represented in his view of the Church’s shortcomings, which is why the church stands in darkness.

Art, then, is something that expresses human life to bring union between all people.  It is like a voice to culture, describing it and enriching it.  It is the vision of the human soul’s passion and yearning.

During my trip to Kosovo, I was privileged enough to meet many different types of artists.  Music is a very large part of the culture, whether it is in the secular city circles or the traditional village circles.  I played with emerging guitar students, met beatboxers and dancers, and was blown away by the beauty of some people’s voices as they sang with passion and sincerity.

One of the towns we played in organized a cultural exchange of arts as a tribute for unity and peace.  We watched as young Kosovar artists displayed their craft in traditional dancing and in music.  In return, we exchanged our music and had many conversations afterward about music, arts and the meaning of these in our lives.  It was as if, by viewing each others' artistic expressions, we began to understand the other people.  The walls that had displayed how we were different from each other didn’t seem as high or as thick anymore.

How could art work in this way?  What is in the purpose of art that makes it function in this capacity?

History traces art back through the evolution of human cultures and the need for people’s expression of life (marriage, war, death, etc.). Indeed, music did come out of culture and out of the need to express the events in our lives; however, something that I have found lingering around the concept of culture and what it means to be human is a connection between our desire to create, our desire for relationship, and our ability to perceive beauty.

While Tolstoy was eager to reject metaphysical philosophy, many others have raised questions as to how art even exists.  For art to speak, beauty must be present in it.  For art to be meaningful, desire for relationship must move the artist to express themselves.  For art to exist at all, it needs to have a conscious intelligent being with an aesthetic vision to create.

So the question becomes more complicated.  The question “Where does art come from?” becomes “Where does creativity, beauty and our desire for relationship come from?”

Whether you read it literally or figuratively, scripture paints us a vivid picture of our original nature, before sin and before the fall.  We see God as the Creator of creation.  We see the relationship between the Father, Son and Spirit united in one being.  We see the quintessence of beauty portrayed in the goodness of creation being ruled by its Creator.

And we see humanity, created, stamped with the image of the One who created it.  To be human was to be in relationship with God, to enjoy beauty in its fullness, and to express the creativity given to us by our Creator.

What has changed?  We have fallen, yet we remain in our humanity with God’s image stamped into the fabric of our souls.

Art points to who we were created to be, to reflect our Creator.  We were made to be creative, relational, and able to distinguish beauty.  In art, we find part of our original natures...and also the connection we have with our Creator.

And more...

Art comes not from ourselves, but from the highest forms and content.  Life, we realize, is the artwork of the Creator.  It is the canvas that the divine Artist applies paint to.  It is the drama that slowly unfolds, ever nearing to its conclusion...

~~~~~

Around the time that he finished his painting of “The Church in Auvers”, Vincent van Gogh wrote to his friend Bernard:

            “[Christ] lived serenely, as a greater artist than all other artists, despising marble and clay as well as colour, working in living flesh.  That is to say, this matchless artist, hardly to be conceived of by the obtuse instrument of our modern, nervous, stupified brains, made neither statues nor pictures nor books; he loudly proclaimed that he made…living men, immortals.

            …Though this great artist—Christ—disdained writing books on ideas (sensations), he surely disdained the spoken word much less—particularly the parable.  (What a sower, what a harvest, what a fig tree!)

            …These considerations, my dear Bernard, lead us very far, very far afield; they raise us above art itself.  They make us see the art of creating life, the art of being immortal and alive at the same time.”

In Loving Memory...

2 days ago I sat in a chair at the Hamilton General Hospital.  Florescent lights cast a harsh white glow over everything in the room.  I never really liked being in hospitals.  Perhaps it was because I always felt that death was just around the corner or in another room, waiting for the time when it would be allowed to steal a person’s life away.  Its presence was elusive, but always constant.

I saw there looking at the rigid and broken body of my grandmother as she lay there in her bed.  She was a shadow of her former self, stricken with the degeneration time brings to us all.  On this day, death was in the same room, waiting to take my grandma from this world.

Though I was aware of her laying there, my thoughts were not of the present time.  I was in a moment of reminiscence, recalling a time when she was healthy and well…

~~~~~

Having been raised by a single mother who needed to work twice as hard to support two people, my grandma shared the responsibility of raising me.  Even since I was a toddler, she was looking after me while my parents were working during the day.  After my mother and father divorced, she would often look after me when I came home from school.

During those times we would watch the classic movies from her era.  I grew up on movies like “A Night to Remember”, “Great Expectations”, “Robin Hood”, “Ben-Hur”, and many others.  We would also play board games a lot of the times, and I got quite good at the game “Uno” by the end of elementary school.

left to right: Myself, Grandma, Great Aunt Pat

She was also a faithful woman of God and she knew her Bible more than many people I knew growing up.  I’m not sure how many times she had read through the Bible, but I know she participated in the “Read a Bible in a Year” schedule every year up until I was 23 years old.  My grandma was also the one who really taught me all about the Bible and the works of Jesus Christ.  It was through her that I came to have some knowledge of God and though I went through many dark times in my teens, that knowledge lifted me out of the darkness and saved my life. 

My grandma’s faith was simple and she found much satisfaction from it.  Many people in my generation don’t understand what it is like to have a simple faith, especially the people I know from college.  Today, one needs to be able to defend one’s faith using non-religious evidence.  We often need to be certain about what we believe before we are able to believe it.  The faith that doesn’t need justification is lost to us.  At the very least it is deemed irrational and of those that are of poor intellect.

What was beautiful about my Grandma’s faith was that she never needed to have her faith justified.  She was interacting with God on a daily basis and no information from science or philosophy could ever change what she experienced.  She knew God existed because He was active in her life.  That is something that I find both challenging to understand and incredibly beautiful to witness.

As I sat there, I dwelled on who she had been, but I also began seeing her for who she would be.  I saw her as a woman glorified in Christ, running around with a newly resurrected body that would never be broken.  I saw her catching up with her brothers and sister, who had been waiting for her for several years.  I saw her walking with God, being embraced by His love and affection for her.

I saw her, for the first time, as the woman that God has intended for her to be.  And that was more beautiful than anything I had seen in my lifetime…

I was brought out of my ruminations by the time…it was time to leave, and I knew it was the last time I would see her in this world.  I held her hand gently in mine and said, “See ya later grandma.”  Then I walked out of the room with my mom beside me.  2 days later, she passed away…

~~~~~

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, "He is my refuge and my fortress,

my God, in whom I trust."
Psalm 91

Kosovo Reflections Part 2 - NEWBORN

We arrived at Prishtina airport at around noon.  The weather was surprisingly similar to that of Southern Ontario.  As I stepped off of the plane I got my first glimpse of Kosovo, rolling hills that surrounded the airport.  In the distance I saw the edges of Prishtina, the capital city.  The houses were orange and white, the colour of baked clay shingles and plaster.  Prishtina was the city I was to spend the next few weeks in.  It was a completely new experience for me since I have never traveled to Europe before as an adult. As we drove, cars whizzed by us in the slow lane.  The roads were packed with cars ranging from jury-rigged DIY vehicles to BMWs and Mercedes.

During our first day in the country, we were just trying to stay awake in order to sleep off the jet lag later that night.  Just before dinner, we decided to take a stroll around the city center.  We had to learn traffic etiquette very quickly.  Cars don’t normally stop if you just wait at a crosswalk.  You have to begin to walk across for cars to stop for you, which they do (usually)!

We walked around for a bit, enjoying the new culture and scenery.  The sun was just beginning to set as we arrived at a strip plaza with an interesting monument standing in front of it.  There before me was the word NEWBORN, constructed from pieces of sheet metal that had been welded together.  At 3 meters high and 20 meters wide, this typographic piece of art was a very strong expression of how the nation felt when it finally achieved its independence.  It was a symbol of their freedom and liberation.  It described their birth as a new country and a renewed people.  I stood in wonder at this monument wondering how I could convey the feelings I had within me.

~~~~~

The idea of freedom is one that is confused and muddled here in the west, as it probably is elsewhere in the world as well.  What is freedom for one person can be the opposite for another, yet all we seem to talk about here in the west is individual freedom, rights and liberties.  In North America, freedom is often thought of as the ability to choose for oneself, to be expressive or outspoken, or to have political rights.  But is that was freedom really is?

If freedom is the ability choose, then won’t having the most choices we can have to choose from in any given situation make us more satisfied and happier?  Barry Schwartz, a psychologist, presented evidence of the opposite.  He notes that a particular dogma is frequently found in western industrial societies which states, “To maximize the welfare of our citizens, we must maximize their individual freedom.”  Freedom in this sense is the ability to take control of our own welfare by acting on our own, thus to maximize the freedom to act on our own we must maximize our choices.  He then shows how at a certain point this freedom of choice becomes paradoxical. 

Imagine walking into a chocolate store and marveling at their wall of chocolate bars.  Each one is different, some look appealing and others not so much.  You have not tried any of these varieties before, so you are eager to taste them.  After narrowing down your selection to a handful of choices, you realize that you only have enough money for one.  You must take your pick of the best of the best of the best of the selection of choices.  It is hard to make up your mind because you are considering what each experience will be like and you want to have the best.  Finally, you make your decision and make your purchase.  What Schwartz found was that people will tend to contemplate a reality in which they chose one of the other options.  By the time they finished eating the chocolate bar that they had purchased, they felt less satisfied with their purchase because they (in some fashion) were aware of the many other realities in which they were more satisfied with the other products than they were satisfied with their choice in the present reality.  The more choices there were, the more realities there were to cause regret.  So if this is true then does maximized choice really create maximized freedom, or does it make us a slave to our desire for ultimate satisfaction?  In this sense, can we define freedom as merely our unlimited ability to choose?

Freedom of speech is an popular topic of many media sources these days.  Anything from Westboro Church’s protests to the occupy movement, people are eager to express their opinions because they believe it is their right to be able to express them.  Of course, legally in North America, it is…but it is here where we run into problems because some of what people say can take other people’s freedom away.  A prime example is the aforementioned Westboro “Church” of Topeka Kansas.  This is a group of people who protest people’s funerals with such statements of hatred and offence, that it cannot be ignored.  The family of a deceased soldier have the right to be free to bury their loved one in peace and respect, yet the people of Westboro deny them of this freedom by shouting out things like “God hates American soldiers.”  This freedom of speech then serves to oppress.  This is not to say that we should not have the freedom to speak our opinions.  The occupy movement was recognized as at movement for social justice for those affected by the increasingly capitalist economy in America.  In this case, a person's suffering is expressed in a desire to be free to work.  It is when our speech becomes rotten and oppressive in nature towards others that freedom of speech just becomes another weapon to wound and enslave.  And the idea that freedom can be used to enslave is also paradoxical if not outright contradictory.

But what about political rights?  Democracy is the best, right?  We have seen the news headlines of America helping other nations like Iraq, Egypt, Libya and even Kosovo achieve “true” democracy.  People seem to think that all humans should have the right to vote.  Obviously this is true in democratic countries, but is democracy freedom?  Sure it puts power into the hands of the majority, but what about the minority?  How can the majority explain freedom to the minority?  Is it just about the greater good in an individualistic culture?  Try to explain the greater good to an unborn human baby that has had its life ended, its body removed from its mother and discarded like a piece of rotten meat…all decidedly ethical by people who have reduced human life down to mere biological processes and stages of cell division.  Does freedom oppress and destroy life for the mere satisfaction of others?

If these things are not what true freedom is, then what is true freedom?

In the western worldview, we are all individuals competing for success, recognition and reward.  The corporate ladder is made to climb.  Our opinions are made to be heard.  Our choices are our own to make.  Is this really the best paradigm for living a fulfilling life?  Will we always be stepping on other people’s toes to catch a glimpse of the freedom that we long for, but will never see?

What if freedom was something else entirely?

Let me tell a story about a people.  This people became separated from their Creator, the One who gave them complete freedom.  This people were given chance after chance to become reconciled once again with their Creator, but they failed repeatedly.  They were instead enslaved by their religious laws, their selfishness, and eventually by other nations.  They yearned for release!  To be freed from oppression and slavery!  Even more so, they sought freedom from the fallen state of the world, from humanity.  They looked forward to the promised day when their Creator would renew them as a nation, to free them from their slavery and cure them of their brokenness.  They sought to be resurrected and reborn free from their separation from their Creator.

This is the story of Israel and Yahweh, the God of Abraham.

Freedom, then, is not about being able to do more and say more.  It is not about being able to vote against “liberals” or “conservatives”.  It is not about experiencing the most that we can in life.  It is not about maximized choices. 

Freedom, instead, is about becoming who we were created to be.  It is accepting our true selves, the people we would have been had we not become separated from the One that created us to be free.  In accepting freedom from the One who created the desire in us, we are then free to forgive. 

We are freed from bitterness and hate.  We are freed from self-loathing.  We are freed from “seeking our self-worth from the opinions of other people”.  We are freed from the standards we have for ourselves which we constantly fail to meet.

"We are free to love. 

We are free to be loved”…

~~~~~

Israel looked forward to a day when the imperfect would fade and the perfect would be made fully known.  The day when all wrongs and rights would be judged by the supreme Judge.  The day when all that is wrong in the world is made right.  When nations will have no reason for borders.  When wars and speeches of hate are silenced and peace flows through our hearts.  When love overcomes all and our satisfaction is found in the very One that made us who we are.  The One who understands us more than we understand ourselves.

In that time, we will be reborn.  We will be liberated from the oppression of sin and brokenness.  We will be NEWBORN…   

Kosovo Reflections Part 1 - Getting to Know Kosova

Several day ago, I returned home from the country of Kosovo.  Most of the people I have talked to about this trip responded to me by asking questions like, “Kosovo…Where is that?” or for those who remember the news headlines many years ago, “There was a war there a while ago, right?”  My guess is that this ignorance about Kosovo is in part due by the small size of the country, but also because it was officially recognized as a country by NATO in the year 2008.  I hope that anyone who doesn’t know anything about Kosovo, will learn much about it through my posts.  In this post I will list some interesting tidbits about the country that I found to be important in understanding Kosovo and its people.

1. Geographically, the Repulic of Kosova lies north of Greece and directly south of Serbia.  The climate is similar to where I come from in Canada, hot and muggy in the summer and cold and damp in the winter.  The landscapes vary depending on where you are in the country.  I had the opportunity to travel to all parts of Kosovo and witnessed its rolling hills to the east, soaring mountains and their lush valleys to the west, and expansive farmlands in between.  All in all, the landscapes are beautiful as is the weather (most of the time). 

2. Kosovo is home to approximately 1.7 million people, 92% of which are Albanian and 4% of which are Serbs, and 4% are other peoples like the Turks, Bosniaks, and Roma.  About two-hundred thousand of those people live in the capital city, Prishtina, which is also the city I stayed in during the three week trip.  The people of Kosovo are warm to foreigners and are (for the most part) pro-American due to NATO’s involvement in their independence.  Their patiortism for the United States can even exceed those of Americans, especially on the 4th of July (remember, fireworks can kill!). 

3.  Something that the people of Kosovo have that many people in North America miss out on is strong emphasis on family unit.  Kosovo has a soft honour based culture (that is typically found in eastern cultures) due to the influences of the Ottoman Empire in their past.  This honour is what motivates people to do many of the things that they do (western cultures are typically guilt based) and to the goal is to bring honour to oneself by bring honour to the family (though this traditional mindset is becoming less the case with the introduction of secularism).  Still, even today families stay together for most of their lives in houses that are four or five stories high and large enough to fit an entire extended family in it.  In my time there I did not see a single western style single floor house made for one couple and their children.  This showed me how the importance of family in Kosovo even influences the construction of houses and neighbourhoods.

4. Kosovo is filled with young people.  There are so many young people that the nation's median age is actually 26.7 years old. One man I talked with said that over 50% of the population is under 30 years old.  That being said, there is a growing gap between the older traditional generations and the younger secular generations.  It becomes more evident that the youth are slowly taking over as you walk through Prishtina's core at nighttime and observe club after club pumping out music until the early morning.  We were fortunate to spend time with many young people at an arts camp and after our concerts, but we were also privileged to meet some older individuals who retained the knowledge of their tradition as well as the events of the Kosovo War that took place in 1999.

5.  The food in Kosovo is some of the best that I have had.  Much of it is inspired by other European countries, however there are some traditional dishes that I unfortunately didn’t get a chance to try.  The most common thing to eat is something like Doner (meat roasted on a vertical spit, usually beef, lamb or chicken) or Burek (a thin flaky pastry that is filled with cheese, minced meat, or fruit sauce).  A good drink to have with your dinner is Ayran (plain yogurt mixed with salt and water) which could be considered an aquired taste for some, but is delicious with pizza or other rich and spicy dishes.  In Kosovo there is a bakery on almost every block and each one offers freshly made pastries.  There is also no shortage of coffee shops, which act as the local hangout spots for younger and older adults.  The people of Kosovo are known for their café hopping (jumping from café to café), especially on rainy days.

6. Music in Kosovo is a big deal!  Most of the mainstream music channels are saturated with pop and hiphop genres; however, there are smaller and newer subcultures that prefer rock, metal and country music as well.  We had heard that the most popular metal band in Kosovo was called Troja (pronounced Troya), but unfortunately we were unable to grab a taste of the band while there.  Very few city dwellers seem to listen to the traditional Albanian style music.  To be exposed to that one would have to travel to a town outside of the larger cities where their style of folk music is handed down through generations.  The çifteli is one of the primary instruments used in Albanian music, which is very reminiscent of traditional Greek music with a middle-eastern flare.

There is much more that I could go on, but I wanted to save some for more focused posts.  Kosovo definitely made a mark on my heart and its people a fond impression in my memories.  There is no doubt that I will be back to play some music again in Kosovo, only a matter of time…

On Waiting...

Way back in the years of my childhood, I remember how I spent time with my grandmother.  She was the quintessence of patience and virtue.  I remember one specific day when she took me with her to the doctor’s office.  We sat down there in the waiting room (where were the toys that medical practitioners usually keep in the lobby?) and waited  I still am unnerved by how slow time passed by when I was 6 compared to now.  What must have been hours went by and still no nurse came into the room to admit my grandmother in.  I became jittery and fidgety.  Sitting there in that room was the worst torture anyone could do to me.  I whined and complained.  How could my grandmother do this to me?  Make me wait for hours on end for something that had nothing to do with me?

…and waited.

Her eloquent response to my whining was profound, “Patience is a virtue, Dear.”

~~~~~

Patience is one of those virtues that seems to be put to the side in my culture.  In North America, patience seems to be a worthless virtue.  Literally everything is designed so that we don’t have to be patient!  Computers are getting faster, access to internet is more widespread, work schedules are tighter, and even food can be made and served in under five minutes.  It somewhat disturbs me how the mindset of my culture has been conditioned to expect prompt service and to always be 120% efficient with our time.  Waiting is unheard of!  If we are made to wait, it is to the point of offense.  Our time is being wasted and time, of course, is money.

I am occasionally deluded by the thought: you know, I’m actually a pretty patient person.  Then I promptly look down at my smartphone because I can’t wait to get home to check my e-mail.  Sure, society is always on the go and you have to keep up or get left behind, but are we losing a valuable virtue just because we don’t have time to learn it?

Nothing in my life shows me how impatient I am more than my times of self reflection and prayer…especially in time of prayer.  This past spring, I was made very aware of how much my culture’s impatience is flowing through my veins.  The speaker of my college’s conference spoke about waiting on the Lord.  He spoke about how, as an international worker, he needs to spend a lot of time in prayer.  He admitted that the first few hours are usually spent climbing through thoughts and feelings before his mind is clear, at which time he just waits.

This concept of waiting was not new to me, but in that moment as he spoke of it I knew that I had no knowledge of what it was like to wait on the Lord in that manner.  The most I had ever spent in prayer was an hour, and that was difficult enough!  How could someone spend up to 6 hours or more in prayer?  I wouldn’t know what to…say…

Why do we have to say anything?  Do we have to constantly have words at the ready?  Why are we so opposed to silence and stillness?

The Bible’s authors knew a good amount about this.  To be still and know God.  To wait on the Lord.  In the Old Testament a psalmist wrote:

 “I wait for the Lord, my soul does wait, and in His word do I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than the watchmen for the morning.” (Psalm 130: 5,6)

Waiting for the Lord means many things according to this passage.  Note how in this passage the psalmist compares his time waiting for the Lord to a watchman waiting for dawn.

Waiting involves the passage of time.  I hate how time passes by now like water through my fingers, when it once stood as unmoving as glass.  I forget many times when I feel that I am off course or not doing enough, that God’s timing is much different than mine and that I must exercise patience as that time goes by.  Like when I was young, this process is torture to me.  It is sometimes accompanied by periods of feeling that God is not there, that He has moved somewhere else for the time being.  It is hard not to feel depressed in these times.  Though it is tough, we must move on and hope…

Waiting involves the hope that what we are waiting for will come.  I find myself continually looking to the future for a time when God would make Himself better known to me.  I think that this culturally engrained vision of only looking forward prevents us from seeing what we have now.  Instead of seeing how God is with us, we look to see where God might be leading us.  Maybe we should be more concerned about the present?  We might be surprised by what we find…

Waiting involves trusting that God will move and speak.  I under exaggerate when I say that this part is really hard for me.  Again, my culture’s imprint on me is by how much we plan for the future so that we can be prepared for anything.  Unfortunately, we can’t control most of what comes our way.  The weather cannot be stopped, I cannot end my constant aging, and many other events come to pass without warning.  One of my struggles is to trust that God has things under control, even when I don’t.  This is a work in progress for me that makes itself evident every day.

Lastly, waiting involves seeking.  Unlike many other concepts of waiting, this one was a brand new concept for me to swallow.  Through my first years of college, I found myself expecting that God was just going to start talking to me or give me signs without doing anything myself.  I was rarely reading scripture or spending time in prayer.  I wanted God to just make Himself known to me, to fix me and change me, without getting my hands dirty and stepping out of my ‘coasting’ shoes; but how would the Lord ever be seen if I were not seeking for Him?  How would a watchman see the sunrise if he fell asleep?

Seeking while Waiting

So how do we wait and seek, that we might find?  Spending time in Scripture and in prayer is a good start.  The conference speaker compared his time in prayer to waiting for the bus.  He said that one cannot wait for a bus and work in the garden, or wait for a bus and do the dishes.  One must be at the bus stop to be waiting for a bus.  Similarily, you must be in a position of waiting for God if you are ever going to hear from Him.

One of my friends put it this way: if you are planning on catching a fish, you have to cast your line into the water.  It doesn’t mean that you will catch a fish every time you cast your line, but you will never catch a fish if you never cast your line.  In out seeking for God, we sometimes hear from God.  It doesn’t happen every time, but how would be hear unless we are in the act of seeking?

Prayer is only one way to open yourself up to God, but it is something that all of the prophets and apostles did to seek God.  It is well known that Christ often left the apostles to go off and pray alone, that he might hear from the Father.  Prayer is the heart of a person.  If we are to made to put out identities in God yet we are not praying to Him, it is like a marriage where one spouse starts ignoring the other.  Eventually there will be a large rift between the two that can only be remedied by communication.

~~~~~

I am constantly learning what it means to wait on God.  Life tests my patience everyday.  I end up having to shift my mindset from “my time is important” to “God will work when He deems it time”.  Does this mean I just wait in life?  Well, no.  We have to live, earn money, pay bills, etc.; however, out connection with God should be lived out as well, so that the hook is in the water constantly throughout the day.

In under a week I will be in Kosovo.  I have no clue as to what God will show me while I’m there, or what God will accomplish in the hearts of men and women.  I pray that God would show himself to my team and I as we try to relate to people about life and music and what is beyond all of that.

I feel as if I’ve been waiting for so long, but now God is moving in incredible ways.  The sunrise is approaching.  I just hope that I will be awake when it comes.

The Cost of Discipleship (Part II) - From Worship to Sacrifice

At the end of January, my college hosted a conference of ministry leaders from all over the globe.  This conference is held each year and tends to be the largest and most anticipated event of the school year.  It consists of three days of music, fellowship and information packed seminars that share with everyone how God is moving in the world.  I had seen four conferences in my time at college, but this one felt much different right from the get-go.  The conviction in my heart from my winter’s dark night of the soul still burned in my heart when the speaker began his four part series…

The music had just ended for the opening session and as I sat down, the man began to speak.   

“This, what we are calling worship these days, is very good emotional preparation for self-sacrificing love.”

The words which he uttered carried great meaning, beyond what many members of my culture would understand.  I will attempt to journey through the thoughts which were presented and which changed the way I viewed the world and my own faith.

The Beginning of a Journey

When I began my time at Heritage College & Seminary, my goal was to become a worship pastor.  I loved music and had a passion in my heart to serve God through the gifts that he had given me.  Throughout my time in the Church Music program, I learned a great many things about what worship is and is not.  I discovered that I had many misconceptions of the nature or worship and I also discovered that many (not all) church goers today are as clueless as I was about worship.

In North America, the word worship has almost been reinvented.  People throw the word around when talking about a certain genre of music, or for a time in which we praise God through music.  I do not discount the qualification of these things as worship, but worship is such a deep concept that merely using the word to describe these things teaches people a very oversimplified concept of worship that ends short of what true worship calls us to do.

So what is worship?  We immediately arrive at a problem with the word as we deal with translation issues from the original Hebrew and Greek languages.  The word worship originated from the old English word weorthscipe which, when broken down, means worth/value (woerth) and shape/condition (scipe).  Together it can be defined as acknowledgement or recognition of God’s worth.  This seems to be more congruent with our understanding of what worship is; however, there is a large gap between the old English language and the Hebrew and Greek of the Bible.

To start, there are several words translated into the word worship.  Aboda (Heb.) in the OT typically refer to service associated with work done in the temple.  In the NT, latreia (Grk.) is linked to service or sacrifice, such as the OT allusion that Christians should offer up their lives to God as a sacrifice (Rom 12:1). 

Another set of words is also used: proskyneo and its Hebrew equivalent shachac.  These terms refer to a position of submission (and therefore a recognition) of God’s sovereignty.  Positions such as bending the knee or bowing down are paired with the acknowledgement of God’s sovereignty and are observed as ways of expressing a worship filled heart.

The words show us the ancient cultural understanding of our relationship with God, but how does this affect our view of what worship is in relation to humanity?

Many people have written on the topic of worship and how it operates within the human heart.  Louie Giglio sees worship as “our response…to God for who He is, and what He has done”.  John Piper understands that worship is the end to all things, that the universe was made to display the worth of his glory and that humans were created to reflect it.  Two common elements remain constant in every definition of what worship is: a) worship is something that includes God as He is, and b) we respond or reflect His glory through our words, actions and lives.

Worship is a relational concept that even stems into our understanding of the Trinity.  Harold Best describes the Trinity as the "uniquely Continuous Outpourer who continually pours himself out between the persons of the Godhead in unceasing communication, love, friendship, and joy."  

He continues in his book Unceasing Worship:

“We were created continuously outpouring. Note that I did not say we were created to be continuous outpourers. Nor can I dare imply that we were created to worship. This would suggest that God is an incomplete person whose need for something outside himself (worship) completes his sense of himself. It might not even be safe to say that we were created for worship, because the inference can be drawn that worship is a capacity that can be separated out and eventually relegated to one of several categories of being. I believe it is strategically important, therefore, to say that we were created continuously outpouring—we were created in that condition, at that instant, imago Dei.”

By understanding how we were created, we attain a glimpse of what we should strive to become.  If we understand that worship is constantly coming out of us, we can identify the objects or entities that our worship reflects.  If we worship sex, our lives reflect it.  If we worship money, our lives reflect it.  If we worship God, our lives reflect it.

To Lose One’s Self

What does all of this talk about worship really lead us to?  What is the relevance in our lives?

As we reflect back on the conference and the speaker’s words, we see more of the picture.  Our western understanding of worship is highly emotional and limited to musical worship.  His words are a critique and a challenge.  Why do we go to church each Sunday, raise our hands in “worship” and not follow it up with our lives?  The worship in which we participate on a corporate level should serve as preparation for the rest of our lives.  The time we spend in worship at church prepares us for self-sacrificing love in the world with our lives.  It prepares use to give ourselves up for Christ and the good news which he has left for us to share with the world.

It is, then, the offering up of our lives as sacrifices to God that worship calls us to commit to.  That is the cost of discipleship.  The prophets knew it well, the apostles knew it well, the martyrs knew it well.  What will our response be?

*****

As the speaker continued, he cited the same passage which had been convicting me every since I arrived home from Kazakhstan.  He emphasized a painful passage that continually shows me my selfish and sinful nature.

“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.” (Mark 8:35)

It was apparent for me that I valued my life as a westerner a considerable amount, even more than I valued the mission of Christ.  The words finally sunk in.  To deny myself was to lose my life for Christ.  Not to specifically go out and die in His name (though that is sometimes where the path ends in this world), but to give up all I know and love so that Christ is the highest desire that I have, that I may lift my cup to that height and have it filled with nothing less than the love and glory of God; not money, not relationships, not any of the many pleasures of the world; that my worship would reflect only Him.

It is a tough call, one that is completely unnatural.  The speaker mentioned that to seek God in the full degree of the task is the most unnatural thing that humans can do.  We will scoff and try to justify our lives.  That is the nature of western culture.  We do not understand these things the same way that believers do in areas of the world with high levels of persecution and oppression.  Sometimes we need to hear a different perspective, from someone who understands what the cost of discipleship is in an intimate fashion.

Though my rational mind screams at me to stop and be reasonable, my heart yearns for a sweeter aroma.  It longs for freedom. 

It places its hope in that which the eye cannot see.