If you weren’t able to go to the World Con because of the whole flight fiasco following the war in the Middle East, schedule conflicts, a family emergency, or some other reason, here’s something I wrote that I hope will give you some encouragement.
Today, my siblings and I missed the Arrows PK meeting (I’m staying behind as taong-bahay; my sister and brother were supposed to go – my sis can’t go to Manila anymore because of her classes and the indefiniteness of return flights; my brother is currently sleeping on the airport floor in Istanbul otw to Manila), and I’ve been watching the event’s IG stories, knowing some of my friends from Sharjah, Turkey, Malaysia, and other places were there. It looks like everyone had fun and important and deep insights were imparted, and I’m grateful. Of course, I couldn’t help thinking, I should’ve been there. I need that too.
But I’ve learned from the past instances where we missed the World Con (the 2016 and 2023 ones in South Africa) – and I don’t want to make the same mistakes of harboring jealousy and resentment over not being able to attend this global family reunion again. That’s why I had to run to God’s Word before my emotions could run awry and take over me.
Firstly, why do I care so much about the World Con? I feel like this hurts me more, compared to a Filipino based in the Philippines who also can’t make it to the World Con… Living away from my home country, being in the nations for years and years- barely getting to see these people from different countries who are my church family, that’s the stinger. It’s a spiritual warzone out here – I mean, it is, everywhere, but I’m more aware of that Ephesians 6 reality out in the field. And reinforcements are so hard to come by.
Yesterday in social psychology class I was talking to my professor about being a Filipino in a country where there are a few Filipinos & we barely have Filipino cultural events; how I feel a sense of deprivation, of not being able to be with my people. And so I decided awhile ago to read Psalm 42 because I remembered this passage:
My heart is breaking
as I remember how it used to be:
I walked among the crowds of worshipers,
leading a great procession to the house of God,
singing for joy and giving thanks
amid the sound of a great celebration!
I hovered on the preceding passage, particularly in the phrase in bold:
As the deer longs for streams of water,
so I long for you, O God.
I thirst for God, the living God.
When can I go and stand before him?
Day and night I have only tears for food…
“I thirst for God, the living God.”
Last night, after we sent off my dad and brother at the airport, I listened to a podcast interview of a friend – he lost his girlfriend to an illness (lupus) the day after Valentine’s day back in 2019, and he talked about how in that dark valley of grief, he saw how God’s promises to him were being tested. They were just ordinary promises before, but this time he had to see whether they were true. And in the end, after years of grief, they held up. I want to experience the same thing. I want to know God as the living God.
For the past couple weeks, I’ve been meditating on the phrase from that song, “Christ is my all in all.”
It’s kind of hard to explain how I understood its meaning emotionally poetically, but I’ll try. It helped me confess and declare how He fulfills all our needs; every crevice, every deep abyss of need – emotional, spiritual, physical, financial, social… He is all in all.
6 Now I am deeply discouraged,
but I will remember you—
even from distant Mount Hermon, the source of the Jordan,
from the land of Mount Mizar.
7 I hear the tumult of the raging seas
as your waves and surging tides sweep over me.
8 But each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me,
and through each night I sing his songs,
praying to God who gives me life.
To personalize it: “I will remember you even if I am 7,846 kilometers away from Manila here in Yerevan. I will remember you even if I won’t be there celebrating with them.”
And I also like the older translation of verse 7: “Deep calls unto deep, under the roar of your waterfalls.”
As Bible commentator David Guzik wrote: ‘The psalmist knew, “I’m in deep trouble on the outside and I’m in deep trouble on the inside.” These two depths seemed to collide in him, sending him deeper still. […] F.B. Meyer thought of this as the depths of God answering to the depths of human need. “Whatever depths there are in God, they appeal to corresponding depths in us. And whatever the depths of our sorrow, desire, or necessity, there are correspondences in God from which full supplies may be obtained.”’
Even in our discouragement, He pours out His unfailing love on us day after day. He fills our lives with good things, He gives us new strength as we trust in Him.
I recently felt this kind of love last week as I trusted in Him for something impossible – it was getting a visa for my studies, and I was so afraid because of all the delays and the odds stacked against me. I was walking home, listening to that song from “Joseph: King of Dreams”, Better Than I; sobbing like I was in some movie.
If this has been a test
I cannot see the reason
But maybe knowing I don’t know
Is part of getting through
When my sense of lack and shortcomings revealed a need for total dependence on Him, I felt like a bird opening its wings and revealing its weakest, most vulnerable spot. And I allowed His Spirit to comfort me and speak to me.
I saw one cloud and thought it was the sky
I saw a bird and thought that I could follow
But it was You who thought that bird to fly
If I let You reach me,
Will You teach me?
Then, I felt a sense of trust in Him that I have never had before, and it gave me strength. And for the first time, knowing that song since childhood, I finally understood what the song is about.
You know better than I,
You know the way.
I’ve let go the need to know why,
I’ll take what answers You provide…
For you know better than I.
Thinking back to this week, I also remember 1 Peter 2:
But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.
Now I know it really takes faith to see and believe and feel that I am part of an “unseen nation,” a spiritual one, because I can’t physically be there with them. But God chose us for Himself. That is powerful enough.
And it takes faith to keep holding on to the hope that I’ll see my church family again in the capacity of the World Con gathering, but, as Paul says – hope is not hope if you can already see it.
Which reminds me of Romans 5:5 – “And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.”
Even if hope is in the future, God gives us a guarantee now – His Spirit sheds His love abroad in our hearts right now.
“For we know how dearly God loves us…” even though we may sometimes not feel loved or seen by our bigger church family because they’re busy back home – God, God Himself dearly loves us. He’s been waiting to tell us that whenever we’re stuck in a whirlwind of our emotions. He just wants us to experience that.
Think of the last person you saw who had a really kind and caring expression toward you. It might be their eyes, it might be their smile, their words, or the gentle way they talked to you.
My silly personal example is this Broadway singer, Ben Fankhauser, who had these IG livestreams during the 2020 pandemic. He would cook breakfast and play some songs on the piano to cheer people up; asking if there were people graduating or celebrating a birthday and greeting them. It helped that he has really kind eyes lol 😆🧡 basta it was touching how he was willing to help and show care to people at that terrible time. (I mean, c’mon, it sometimes help to have a visual illustration and God speaks through them 😂🙈)
Well, God? He’s just like that, y’know, He cares. And He’s ready to comfort you and quiet you like a child in its mother’s arms; tenderly and attentively. You can find succor in His voice and His love.
“For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.” – it’s not just the Old Testament-style Spirit of God, who, when people would be filled up with Him, they would have so much power to do miraculous, superhuman feats, and receive and deliver prophetic revelation – but it is love, it is God assuring Elijah in the desert that he is not alone, that even if he’s tired he can take a nap and eat, and God shows that He loves him through the whisper after the whirlwind and fire, and He values him so, so much. As He says in Isaiah 43:4, “You are precious to me. You are honored, and I love you.”
And who is the God who says such things? The God who went through hell and back to save you. The Jesus who endured the most, and worst pain as a human – as well as millennia of rejection from our human race – to redeem you… back into His family.
I still wish I could be there with the World Con people and to enjoy their company, along with everything else. But I believe my turn will come soon. Even if it takes three more years. I know there will be a changing of the guard.
For He who keeps me is faithful. He is my delight.
I am learning to behold Him in His Temple, admiring His beautiful attributes and sitting with Him and just looking into His eyes. The eyes that love me.
Why am I discouraged?
Why is my heart so sad?
I will put my hope in God!
I will praise him again—
my Savior and my God!
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