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RjL
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Name: Richard
Country: United States
State: Massachusetts
Birthday: 6/26/1975
Gender: Male
Interests: Guitar & drums (not at the same time), apple computers, being married, playing with Glavine (my cat), watching movies, NY Mets and NY Giants, skiing, snowboarding...
Expertise: see interests...
Occupation: Pastor
Message: message me
AIM:  j3o3h0n
Member Since:
11/25/2002
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I introduced myself to Kathy. She and her daughter, Melissa, were visiting one of Melissa's friends. They were decidely out of their comfort zone. They were in a room full of Korean kids in a Korean church. I had a 5 minute conversation with her and learned that she attended a church in a nearby town. Also, I learned that she and her daughter had attended this same event the year prior.
After the service was over, I saw Kathy and Melissa again (it wasn't hard to pick them out) and exchanged pleasantries and platitudes. After this very brief encounter, she paused and looked away and had a look on her face as if she was debating whether she should say what she wanted to. She looked at me again and said, "Do you know that you are the only person that has ever come to me and introduced yourself to me? And we came last year, too!" My heart sank. I felt sorry on behalf of Christians and on behalf of Koreans. She commented further that "it was okay, since we're Christian, but you would just think that when some comes into a place like this, they would be welcomed." There might be an explanation, but there is no excuse.
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New Chloe Movie.
Check it out here.
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I think I’ve only been in a cemetery once.
About a month after my friend from college passed away, I went to visit her grave. I remember standing over her plot (she didn’t have the gravestone yet) and having mixed feelings. She was a Christian and I wasn’t sure why I was visiting her grave. I was talking to the ground, but wasn’t she listening from above?
To give the others that were with me a moment to themselves, I took a short walk. I was staring at the various tombstones in just the surrounding area. There were some from that year, there were some from 100 years ago. One lasting thought that I had from that day was: Gosh, there are a lot of dead people.
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I am not a morning person.
I used to be able to sleep in ’til the late morning/early afternoon
consistently. I tried whatever I could to get up and get out to no
avail. I repeatedly made commitments to God to wake up early and get up
and pray.
Once, during seminary, I made that very commitment and even said
that even if I never got up, I wouldn’t change the alarm clock time. I
did get up at that early time… once. But I never changed the alarm.
But, it became for me a very spiritual issue. Instead of waking up
and feeling like I could take on the day for the Lord, I would wake up
and feel defeated and deflated. Once again, I was unable to follow
through. “I am a miserable wretch… Okay, on with your day.” Part of me
resigned to the fact that this was the way it was going to be my whole
life. There were times where my slothfulness (really, what else is it?)
would annoy Theresa, I’m sure. But she stayed with me (thank God).
But now, things have changed. If I wake up at 8am, I feel thankful that I was able to sleep in.
What changed? Two things.
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| This is a repost of my 2004 post about my reflections on 9/11. Read and reflect.
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Like It Was Yesterday
With today being 9.11, I thought it would be an appropriate time to chronicle my experience on that dreadful day. I’ve talked about it before, but I’ve never written it down with words. And, honestly, I don’t want to forget.
The earliest memory I have of that day is fighting with my girlfriend (Theresa). We both don’t remember what we fought about, but we both remember her going to work in Brooklyn in a sour mood. I was set to leave the house in the morning to go meet Carol Chun to go engagement ring shopping. As I was leaving the house (I already had my shoes on), I woke my computer from sleep to see if I had any AIM messages waiting for me. Usually at that time, I don’t. And usually, I don’t check. However, that day, I did have a message. It was from Jonathan McCurley.
“Is it true? What’s happening?”
Of course, I had no idea what he was talking about. After I asked him, he told me that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. I turned the TV on and saw the burning buildings. It was about 9:30am.
I had a few friends that worked on “Wall Street.” I tried to get in touch with them, but couldn’t because “all circuits are busy”. I couldn’t get in touch with Theresa either. With her commute going through Manhattan to Brooklyn, I was concerned about her. Through my AIM, I was able to talk to Jeannie An, whose calls to Theresa were going through. We communicated through Jeannie for most of the day. Eventually, I called Gene at Columbia. This was probably around 2pm. He told me that all Bethany Wall Streeters were accounted for except for Andy.
At this point, death was not an option for Andy. Partly because of naïve faith and partly because I knew that the damage was central to the WTC. Then, the call from Michele came.
I don’t remember what we talked about, but I remember hearing for the first time that Andy worked in the WTC. He had recently taken that job and I hadn’t realized that he was actually working in the WTC. A new sense of dread and panic came over me.
At the time, I wouldn’t say Andy was my best friend, but he was my closest. I spoke with Andy over IM or on the phone almost every day. He was there on my blind date with Theresa. He gave me computer advice, worship advice, relationship advice. And now he was missing. Andy worked in the North tower and didn’t start work until 9am. The plane hit at 8:46am. But, I later found out that Andy had decided to go into work early to work out just the week before.
At 7:00pm, I had an A-team meeting at my apartment to plan for the Intown Open House that Saturday. We spent the next 3-4 hours planning our Open House for the college students. I was fully engaged in our conversations and honestly, quite impressed at my poise and composure when one of my best friends was still missing. At around 10pm, we were discussing trivia questions for the Open House. I was sitting at the computer, looking at the TV and realized that I could not stay in Atlanta. I couldn’t focus on the Open House any longer. I had to go up to NJ.
After the meeting, I was able to reach Theresa. I told her that I wanted to come up to NJ and asked her what she thought. I didn’t trust myself anymore, because I wasn’t thinking straight.
Wednesday, I packed up my car to head up to NJ. It was about 11am. As I turned the key to start my car, it didn’t start. My battery was dead. I had FuhLim drive me to the shop, where I got a new battery. As I was about to leave, FuhLim offered to drive me up to NJ in his car. I guess he saw something about me that he didn’t trust me driving up by myself. We left around 2pm and arrived well into the morning Thrusday morning.
The next couple of days were spent exploring any feasible option that Andy made it out of there alive. It wasn’t until Saturday that I think I turned the corner and came to grips that Andy was dead. The hardest thing about his death was that it wasn’t quick and done. Instead, it was a slowly diminishing hope.
That Sunday at church, I led praise in Andy’s stead for his church. It was the hardest worship service I’ve ever experienced in my life. Earlier that morning, I got up in front of the 250 member youth group and had a chance to try and explain the unexplainable.
This is the gist of what I said:
During this past week, I prayed and prayed that the numerous rescue workers spending countless hours sifting through the rubble would find Andy. I prayed that Andy would be saved and rescued and found alive. And that’s when I realized that Andy was found. He was found underneath a heap of rubble that crushed him to the point of death. But, this rubble was far more widespread than the WTC. You see, Andy was crushed underneath the weight of the heap of his sin. But, God, the tireless rescue worker did not sleep in his pursuit of Andy. And God saved him and rescued him and was made alive. We are under a heap of sin as well. Do you believe that God can rescue you from the weight of your sin?
In times like this we are tempted to find the tallest building and climb to the top and shake our fist at God and curse God. After all, I can’t comprehend how a good God would allow this to happen. How can a just God allow such injustice. In fact, these questions cause many to doubt God’s goodness and justice. What we are essentially saying is that because it doesn’t make sense to me, I can’t believe it. In other words, God must make sense to me. However, the biggest injustice in the history of the world is Christ dying a sinner’s death--my death--when he was himself sinless. If we can readily accept the grace that is so incomprehensible to us, we cannot in the same breath reject the seeming injustice that we don’t understand.
Thank you for allowing me to share my experience on that day. Do you know what the real tragedy is? Not Andy. Not Andy at all. When I was driving to hospitals near Bayonne, I remember saying that I hope that the rescue workers save all the non-Christians first. Pull them out first even if the Christians have to die. The Christians have a hope of glory. The real tragedy is all the people that rejected Christ that died in that building that day.
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