Good news during Lent

Does that sound like an oxymoron? There's a lot on here about how difficult my life is and how I don't see God doing much in my life. But today has been quite the contrary. Granted, I did lose my patience when I couldn't understand a real estate conversation in Korean, we made peace with that thanks to my wife and I had a wonderful day. I was told that it might get my university to approve me working at another university in addition to what I am currently doing. But that turned out not to be the case at all. I was told the number of hours I could work and that has coincided very well with what the university (the second one) has available. Granted we both wanted me to do more, but given schedule conflicts and university policies, I am pleased with the results. I guess time will tell whether or not this is of God but I think I'm going to take a moment right now to thank God for smiling down on me. But right now it doesn't feel like God is smiling DOWN at me as much as God is smiling at me, like we are in the same place at the same time. I've still got an amazing amount of energy. I think I'm going to spend some time thanking God and see if that time surpasses the amount of time I spend complaining that good things don't happen. By the way, I don't think good news during Lent is an oxymoron. To the contrary, I think God wants us to spend some time mopping the floors of our hearts, or perhaps God just wants us to submit to the Spirit's work, so that we can see God smiling at us in the same moment in time, rather than smiling at us from another location and another point in time. I've mopped the floors of my apartment, now I think I need the Holy Spirit cleaning service to do a spic-and-span job on me.

"The Help" by Kathryn Stockett

I just finished reading, "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett. I was introduced to this book by watching the movie with the same title in a movie theater with my wife in South Korea. After the movie was over, we searched to see if there might be a real book that the movie is based off of. Sure enough, there was. The book is definitely better than the movie. To tell you the truth, I have to wonder why so many of the details were changed. I guess it has something to do with the fact that the book is over 500 pages long, contents which would be difficult to compress into a normal-length movie. Both the book and the movie speak to the evils of racism without doing so in an abstract, idealistic way. It just gives you the sense of, "That's right", leaving viewers oblivious to this reality in the dark. I wanted to express this to my wife but it dawned on me that this is a reality that you can't so easily comment on without experiencing it yourself. To tell you the truth, the most tear-jerking moments for me have been in the moments where reconciliation took place. Even though I have watched the movie at least five times, I am inevitably full of tears at the moment when Skeeter's mom tells her she's proud of her daughter for bringing courage back into the family. One of the coolest things about this book is that it includes the vernacular of black Americans. I confess that when I first tried to express this to my wife, I said that the grammar was wrong. But after hearing myself say that out loud, I corrected myself to say this is the vernacular of black Americans. This story has given me hope and reminded me of my own experiences with racial reconciliation and the blessings that lie therein. I see myself the most in Skeeter and I wonder why she had to leave. I also left my scenario. I thought it would be on a very temporary basis but one choice led to another and now my life is in South Korea where I see a need for reconciliation of another kind between Koreans and foreigners. NPR.org recommends this book with the following quote on the front: "This could be one of the most important pieces of fiction since To Kill a Mockingbird...If you read only one book....let this be it." I concur with this wholeheartedly. I hope many books of this kind follow with not just a hope of reconciliation being possible but a reality.