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Sunday, November 20, 2011

Living out of Abundance+Funny China Story!

Hello everyone, it has been a while.  Like we say in China long time no see, and that saying did come from China,  no jokes.  To start off I hope everyone is doing well, living out of the abundance of your heart, easier said than done though.  Life is such an interesting thing.  How it circles around us and so often feels like the same situations happen over and over again.  Even though time is moving and everything around us is changing, it feels the same things happen over and over.  It is coming to a close, my first year in China.  It has been amazing, challenging, joyful, growing, testing, it has been real life.

I first want to tell a short story about my new found obsession.  I would guess most of you know that ping pong is huge in China, but it is probably bigger than you would imagine.  So since being in China I have started playing ping pong and loving it.  The other day I wanted to get out, so I went to the ping pong shop to look around and maybe play some pong.  I started to hit with the owner of the store, and after ten min or so an older Chinese man came in.  The owner said something in Chinese that I didn't understand.  I was guessing that he said this guy was a coach.  So I was like nice, I will hit with him.  He started to give me advice that I only understood by his hand motions and facial expressions.  Then this 80 year old Chinese man came over and started grabbing my arm and yelling at me, again I didn't understand.  I knew he was telling me to relax my arm, because he was grabbing it and shaking it violently.  By the end the coach had stood behind me and grabbed both my arms to help me understand the technique, he needed to do this because I was a not so smart white skinned non-ping pong playing foreigner, I didn't hold it against him, no matter how uncomfortable it was.  He helped me for about an hour and a half. It was a lot of fun, and he really helped my technique.  Ping pong is so much more technical than it looks.

Recently, for many reasons, I have been thinking about life and how we were meant to live.  Not just breathe and go through the motions, but to thrive.  The word thrive might throw you off, I don't mean thrive by the world's standard. I am talking about thriving in the way that we were meant to.  I recently have been wrestling with thoughts about giving and sacrifice.  I sometimes feel sick inside and don't know why.  Maybe it is because I half know what to do, but the thought of it scares me half to death.  Looking around at the world and understanding that there are so many who have nothing.  I have soooo much, yet what do I give up so that someone else can live.  I recently watched a video that talked about living with abundance, not scarcity.  Not abundance in what we have, but abundance in how we give.  It doesn't say in the Book, "it is more blessed to give than to receive" for nothing. It is a revolutionary truth, that I don't fully live.

I don't write this to make people feel guilty.   I hope it opens my eyes a little more to what true life is.  To understand the reality that the life He meant for us is often not realized, because of different reasons.  Fear is a huge one, I believe, especially in  my life.  We must live out of His love, grace and provision, not our strength and wisdom.  Unless we fully surrender to His love and live out of his hands, we will never thrive in the blessed life He has for us.  Because when we let go of control and fear, He moves in ways we wouldn't imagine.  This is when, I believe, we truly live like He meant us to, out of the abundance of our hearts.  I am sorry that I have not put up pictures in awhile, I think I need to hire a photographer.  Please comment if you have thoughts on this post. I appreciate your thoughts.  Until next time.













1 comment:

  1. YEAH! agree agree agree

    hey you should meet me and kristina in germany in january ya?

    ReplyDelete