My cup overflows

I just got back from RUF's end-of-year Golden Gardens event. My heart is just so full right now.

I just feel so connected right now, so filled with joy and peace. In the car ride home I was just thinking about how different this kind of joy is from the happiness that I usually look for in my daily life – the happiness of watching a good K-drama, or of eating a cupcake, or of getting a good grade on a test or paper at school. In the moment, it feels like the best thing ever, but if you really think about it, that joy is just so fleeting. And it's also, in a way, kind of restless-feeling — I get this feeling that it's going to be over soon. K-dramas only have 16 episodes. That test score will be forgotten in the stress of studying for another exam. It takes only a minute for that cupcake to be finished. It's silly, but I feel like that search for happiness feels so real in the moment, but so fake when I look back on it. The joy that I'm feeling right now after coming back from RUF's Golden Gardens event feels different — quieter, calmer, mixed with peace and a feeling of rest. It's a joy that feels lasting and makes me feel reflective and sort of hopeful.

Praise be to the Lord for precious friendships and relationships with fellow believers in RUF. I just felt like all of the fear of what people think and self-consciousness just fell away and I felt so free. It was so easy to walk up to people and say hello and ask how they're doing and crack jokes. The sun was shining on the sea and you could see what looked like a club of sailboats on the water close to shore. But the best part was just reconnecting with my dear brothers and sisters in Christ one last time before the end of the school year.

I just feel like the past few weeks have just filled my cup to overflowing. Yesterday was my sister's graduation senior send-off at church and it was just such a treat to get to hear and see a glimpse of what the CBC youth group has been up to, how God has been working in these seniors' lives. They're so spiritually mature. It was so humbling seeing them lift up their hands and sing out praises to God during the worship section of the night, seeing seniors lead worship, give short messages on sharing the gospel, choosing humility, prioritizing prayer, running to Jesus in mental health struggles and in experiencing failure, being intentional in seeking out community, finding joy in Christ, and so much more. And then seeing how their small group leaders pour into them and the youth pastors love these seniors so, so, so deeply, so tenderly. It was just the tip of the iceberg of how much the Lord has been doing in CBC youth ministry, and it was truly, in every sense of the word, awesome. How awesome is our God who changes lives and rescues us in our darkest moments and is always near. Last weekend there was also a potluck picnic for the CBC Korean American fellowship at Lake Sammamish Park and I had a chance to reconnect with other Korean American and Asian American families, play soccer with the kids and catch up with some of the girls my age and younger. It was so different entering this space with a new mindset with all that God has taught me in RUF about seeing others and not just thinking about myself. It was just incredible and refreshing and just so wonderful seeing Christ's love in the families who have led this fellowship so faithfully and tenderly. I just felt so refreshed and joyful around all these dear friends that we've seen at church for so long and being around kids and not worrying about impressing people.

Because God is always near and fills that emptiness in all of us, I feel so much freer in my relationships and friendships. I feel that it's easier initiating conversations and enjoying being with others and really seeing them, and listening to them. Though I'm still so, so, so far from perfect. How God's power is perfected in our weakness! If left to my own devices, I am self-pitying, selfish, angry, resentful, envious, jealous, proud and arrogant. But in Christ I've experienced such selfless love and mercy, and through Him have found a true family at UW, men and women who inspire me every day I see them with their compassion in Christ, love for His Word, intentionality with encouraging one another, humble and gentle serving. I love them so much. I never thought I'd come to a place in my college career where I just feel so connected, so much warmth and belonging.

One of the things that was said at the Korean American fellowship gathering, and at the CBC senior send-off, and that has appeared as a theme in RUF Senior Speak night, and just has been in my heart lately as I think about all the seniors leaving and family friends moving away…is that this kind of community that we’re experiencing on earth is not forever. It’s not forever!

Sometimes when we say goodbye to people we love, who are dear to us, it feels like they are passing away because we don’t expect to see them again anytime soon. Goodbyes are so, so hard. And yet it’s just so true that just as we look foward to seeing our brothers and sisters who have passed in heaven again, we look forward to a time when we will never have to part from those dear to us in Christian community. I truly feel like this kind of Christian community is a tiny, tiny taste of heaven; a tiny taste of eternity. I felt this way at Sacred Road, too, even though I was only there for a week – the love that pours out of this place in Christ was just so beautiful and so powerful. The diversity in Christian community is also so beautiful, a picture of heaven as my friend mentioned to me, which I also think is so true. Diverse racially, ethnically, culturally but also in personal gifts, strengths, dreams, talents, spiritual gifts, struggles, family backgrounds and home life backgrounds…every single person adds innumerable value to the RUF community.

I’m going to miss these seniors in RUF so much. They have added so, so much to RUF. Making newcomers feel seen and loved. Modeling a deep commitment to Scripture and to God’s Word. Encouraging their friends and those around them. Breaking through the fog of stress and pressure to succeed and get a great career and achieve success in life to hold fast to Jesus, the only Person in life that truly matters. I honestly don’t know what it’s going to be like next year without them. They leave such huge shoes to fill. How we will miss them! But it gives us such comfort to know that we will see each other again in heaven, and that there we’ll never have to say goodbye.

I’m hoping to read Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer this summer. It has already been such a good book so far with its reminder that Christian community is all about JESUS – to put a dream onto it about what a Christian community should ideally look like, without making it about Jesus, is not right, nor will it satisfy. I realized that coming into UW I was looking for this kind of Christian community – people who knew me well, that I’d have late night adventures with, people with whom I’d hang out with, laugh my head off with, share dreams and struggles and sins with, pray with, pray for, worship alongside. I wanted all of these things, especially hearing about my parents’ experiences in college finding a really close Christian group of friends. I especially wanted to meet people who were like me, who understood me, with whom I could just be myself with. All of these things took the focus off of Christ at the center of Christian community, and I started to get dissatisfied with RUF because I didn’t feel as connected as I should be – didn’t feel as close to people as I thought I should be given how much time I’d spent coming already. I felt isolated even though I was surrounded by people and friends. It’s crazy how our minds convince us that we are isolated and that no one sees or cares about us.

It’s in those moments when the Lord’s nearness becomes so desperately precious to us. He sees us, knows us, loves us, cares about us. As one dear friend put it in interpreting John 21, Jesus is always on your shore. He loves you even when you make mistakes, when you’re petty, when you don’t read your Bible even though you know you should. And it’s in those times when we feel most isolated that God calls us to reach out to others and love His flock of sheep. Jesus restores us and reaches for us, and that is what allows us to reach out to others. Just as He restored Peter who had denied Him three times, and called Him to feed His flock and tend His sheep.

I remember after Senior Speak I walked through the crowd of RUFers chatting and laughing and I just stood there in the middle, feeling alone and deceiving myself into thinking that no one cared about me to talk to me or acknowledge me. It was so selfish of me, that on a night to celebrate the seniors and make them feel loved and celebrated and honored in Christ all I could think about was myself in that moment.

And I still struggle deeply with loving others and not thinking about myself first. I struggle with listening to some of my friends and trying to grasp carefully to what they say to pray for them and check on their specific challenges in the future. I struggle with loving those who are different from me, who don’t respond in a way that resonates with me. I need help to be generous with my time and full of patience, need help to joyfully and gladly carry others' burdens with them like Jesus does for us. May He walk with them in their struggles, sustain them, open up Himself to them in His word. I'm praying for the strength and love and courage to share the gospel and carry others’ burdens with them.

I want to end with a few lines from Life Together that have just been really powerful to read and ponder.

“The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us…That dismisses once and for all every clamorous desire for something more. One who wants more than what Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood. He is looking for some extraordinary social experience which he has not found elsewhere; he is bringing muddled and impure desires into Christian brotherhood.” - Life Together

And some Scripture verses that Bonhoeffer quotes as well:

“Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another …But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more” (1 Thess 4:9, 10)

“Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God” (Rom 15:7)

Amen and amen!