sick and ugly

At work today i read this article found on yahoo.com. It made me sick. I have seen documentaries about N. Korea before, and i am sad to say that there is even worse things happening there then what this entails( story below).

I am having a hard time writing about this because reading things like this kinda of kill the parts of my soul that believe in beauty and humanity. So i guess one of the reasons i put this in here is to help raise awareness about the crimes against humanity that occur whole sale in N. Korea. Then i start to think, well, there is the Congo too, and Darfur, and Somalia, and drug wars in Mexico, and the Middle East, and in America i turn on the news and hear about little kids getting kidnapped and killed, and my 92 year old grandmother is slowly losing the ability to function on her own and i can't stand to think that this is how she will leave this earth. With all this going on i know people will turn to me and say, Where is God? How can a loving God allow this to happen?

I can't give you some crazy awesome theological answer, i just can't, I'm not that smart. But the answer is easy, its just very hard to explain. So what i will do, cause i need time to better explain the answers (at least my ideas on what i think are the answers) i will give the short answer and then in the next post expound upon them, but for now i just want people to read the article.

Q. Where is God? A. Everywhere. Q. How can a loving God allow this to happen? A. He doesn't, these things are a result of our rebellion against God's plan for us. He will, however, fix this. How do i know? Gen 3-:14-15, says that '...he(Jesus) will crush your(the serpent/devil) head and you will strike his heal." I John 3:8 'the reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the work of the devil.' Death is a result of man's sin, not God's lack of love or power, 'Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned...' Rom 5:12.

Sorry for the kinda randomness, but this is how i think (scary i know), but please pray about making a difference in someone's life, whether sponsoring a child through Compassion International, or tutoring, or spending time with people who are lonely, are whatever, this world is too dark for us to hide our light.


SEOUL, South Korea – The condemned inmate, his body torn apart by guard dogs, slumped unconscious as the three executioners fired. The bullets shattered his skull, splattering blood near other prisoners forced to watch.
His offense: trying to escape from the remote prison camp in North Korea.
"People were seized with fear but no one could say anything," former prisoner Jung Gyoung-il said, recalling the 2001 execution. "That's worse than the way animals are slaughtered."
For a decade, North Korea has denied such accounts from defectors, and South Korea has shied away from them to maintain good relations with its wartime rival. But now, under new President Lee Myung-bak, South Korea is investigating alleged abuses, including the prison camp system. South Korea's state-run human rights watchdog is interviewing defectors and is hosting a two-day international forum this week on the issue.
Meanwhile, President Bush has made the push to crack down on rights abuses in North Korea one of his last missions before leaving office in January. He signed a law promoting the U.S. special envoy on North Korean human rights to ambassador and making it easier for refugees from the North to settle in the U.S.
The focus on alleged abuses has infuriated North Korea, which dismisses the accusations as a U.S. plot to overthrow its government. The country's Central Committee of the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland called Seoul's moves proof that South Korean officials are "sycophants toward the U.S." and "maniacs" who risk confrontation with the North.
North Korea runs at least five large political prison camps, together holding an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 inmates, according to the U.S. State Department. The gulags remain one of the Stalinist regime's most effective means of controlling its 23 million people, analysts say.
Last week, the U.N. investigator on human rights in North Korea said large numbers of people remain in prison camps. Satellite images show the camps in valleys tucked between mountain ranges, each covering up to 100 square miles. Former prisoners say the camps are encircled by high-voltage electrified fences and have schools, barracks and work sites.
Offenses meriting banishment to a prison camp include everything from disparaging North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to trying to flee the country, defectors say.
Former prisoner Jung said he spent three years in Camp No. 15 in Yodok, about 70 miles northeast of the capital, Pyongyang, on charges of spying for South Korea.
Jung, who was working for a state-run trading company, claims the charges were fabricated by security agents seeking promotion. After months of torture, Jung said he acknowledged the charge. By then he had lost nearly 80 pounds.
Shortly after his release, he fled to South Korea in 2004 with his wife and two daughters and now works for a civic group on North Korean prisons.
At Yodok, Jung said, the 400 inmates in his section subsisted on 20 ounces of corn each — the equivalent of one medium-size can daily — while toiling at mines, farms and factories for 13 to 15 hours a day. Many died of hunger and diseases brought on by malnutrition, he said. Some managed to trap vermin and insects.
"People eat rats and snakes. They were the best food to recover our health," said Jung, 46, adding he still suffers from ulcers, headaches and back pain.
One inmate, Choe Kwang Ho, sneaked away from his work for 15 minutes to pick fruit. He was executed, his mouth stuffed with gravel to prevent him from protesting, Jung recalled.
"I still can't forget his emotionless face," he said.
Life at the four other camps was even worse, Jung said. A former North Korean prison guard said only two inmates have ever escaped from the camps known as "total control zones."
"Inmates there don't even have time to try to catch and eat rats," An Myeong-chul said in an interview in Seoul.
An said he served as a guard and driver at four camps before defecting in 1994. If a female inmate got pregnant, he said, she and her lover would be shot to death publicly. Then, An said, prison guards would cut open her womb, remove the fetus and bury it or feed it to guard dogs.
Forced abortions are common, and if babies are born, many are killed, sometimes before the mother's eyes, defectors say. Grandparents also may be punished since whole families are imprisoned.
"We were repeatedly taught they were the national traitors and we have to eradicate three generations of their families," he said.
An, 40, defected after his father, a former Workers' Party official, killed himself after being accused of criticizing the government food rationing system as inefficient. Now working at a bank in South Korea, An said he pushes for the abolishment of North Korea's prison camps as the least he can do to offset his work as a guard.
Public executions are not limited to the gulags.
Before he was imprisoned, Jung took his eldest daughter, then 8, to the execution of a prisoner in 1997 in the city of Chongjin. She watched solemnly as the inmate's skull was smashed to pieces.
"She asked me, 'Hey Daddy, is he vomiting?'" Jung recalled, a bitter grimace curling his lips. "I should not have taken her there."
___
Associated Press writers Kwang-tae Kim in Seoul and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Jonny Cash

Last night i was reading 2 Tim. 4. Paul is writing instructions to timothy and during this time that Paul is writing he is about to be killed. And Paul comes to this point in the letter where he begins to look back at his life and this is what he says, "For i am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, i have finished the race, i have kept the faith." 2Tim 4:6-7. And i think you could read this and say well maybe Pau just has a very high view of himself, but remember this is the same guy who championed righteousness through faith and who wrote romans and said things like, "For i have the desire to do what is good, but i cannot carry it out. For what i do is not the good i want to do: no, the evil i do not want to do - this i keep on doing." Rom 7:17b-19.

So a couple of things come from this mostly on the first part of the verse cause i have already touched on the latter earlier.

One, i hope that when my time comes i can say that my life has been a drink offering to God. Its kinda funny cause i absolutely love this picture of my life being a drink offering. I think that I/we probably don't completely understand the idea of offerings to god and there symbolism and meaning and what not, so to help me i think of Johhy Cash. Jonny Cash lived a lot of wild years and got lost in drugs and lot of other messy things, but at some point he turned his life around (there is a lot more to his story). Not unlike a modern day Paul. Jonny Cash died recently and 3 months before he did, he preformed one last song, and it is very similar to what paul says in timothy in terms of perspective. The reason i thought of this is in the last minute of the video, Jonny is sitting at a table, and he pours out his wine and sings about his empire of dirt and its worthlessness. Its amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go

Second, i'm not about to die, or least not that i can foresee. Therefore, i can't look back with a lifetime of wisdom, but i can look back at two periods of my life. Highschool and college. I became a christian in highschool, but i cannot say much about it. In college, i can say my life began to reflect what i said i believed, and hope on my last day i can sit and say that i have poured my life out on the table for God. I want my life to be a gift to God, not because he needs it, but because it is pleasing to him and that's why i was created (Rom 12:1-2).

On a more personal note, i'm struggling with a decision i will probably have to face in the coming months. I feel that i should follow my heart, and in the worst case i'm afraid that if i do i could hurt some people who i care a lot about, and in the best case, i could look very foolish, but if i don't do anything i won't be true to myself. So in the event that this comes i pray that everyone can understand, and know that sometimes 'rules' can't predict what comes next. (i know this doesn't make any sense, but it does to me and just needed to say it here for my sake)

god is good

UNwoven

Just the other week i had one of those moments where i began to think it can't get any better than this. Everything was coming together, relationships were great, job was going fantastically well, weather was good, family was good, it was as if my little world was just the way i wanted it, and i thought how good is God that he would bless me with all this. And i really think God has a sense of humor, i know he does, because for the past month or so i have been praying that my joy would continually come from him, so naturally as i pray this it would be that all these little facets of my life come together in my perfect little world making it so easy to look around me and find joy from my circumstances. And now i find that some of the strands of my rope are coming undone. And can i be honest, i hate it. So much to the point that i caught myself the other night asking God why, why again do i come so close and yet things still slip through my fingers.

At that point the light went off in my head, about a lot of things. The first thing that came to mind was what God must be thinking when i complain about these things. How can i, who on my own can do nothing, be upset when things that i feel that i deserve dont come about. Everything i have that is of any value i cannot lose and i cannot touch. John Pipper says it well in his book, Brothers we are not Professionals, "Salvation is a gift of God(eph 2:8). Love is a gift of God (1 thess. 3:12). Faith is a gift of god (1 Tim 1:14). Wisdom is a gift of God (Eph. 1:17). Joy is a gift of God (rom. 15:13). All these things are what we all long for, but too many time i look for it from things that aren't eternal, and it brings to the place where i question God, and if he knows whats best for me. But God, (which are possibly the two most beautiful words in the bible Eph 2:1-10) in his mercy, his Spirit in me, reminds me of who he is even while my flesh questions it.

Going back to my prayer about my joy be found in the Lord. If you every read the new testament you'll see that the authors are always talking about keeping your mind on the eternal things of God and get rid of the things which belong to our earthly flesh ( Col 3:1-11). Its no wonder cause if i can get to the point where i can live this out, then Satan can't touch me, cause he can't touch God's truth, see Job.

One other of the big things that popped up was David and his psalms. I think for the first time i began to understand how in the same moment he could cry out to god about how you can feel forsaken yet in the next moment praise his steadfastness and justice and truth and mercy and love etc... David wasn't an idiot, he was human, who knew God and knew his promises were true, but that didn't keep him from crying out in his darker moments. In fact, it is a testimony to who God is, and who David was that in a darker times we still find ourselves turning to God and clinging to his promises. So i guess all this to say I still have to be taught the hard way, but i hope every time that it brings me closer to Him, and i have to say, that right now, even though not everything is perfect i feel so close to my savior.

One last thing, a few weeks ago i had probably the best friend i will ever have call me. They didn't call to just say hi, but they called to call me out. I could tell it wasn't easy for them to say what they needed to say, but they did it so well, and their heart was so in the right place. It was awesome, and so i just want to say thanks, again!