hi

Two beautiful renditions of a vivid illustration of the fall of Christ's bride found in Ezekiel 16.

Gungor's "Ezekiel"

I found you naked
I found you lying there in blood
Your mother left you
Your father threw you out unloved

I clothed your body
I washed the blood and earth from your hair
I gave you jewelry
I gave you everything I had

I gave my heart
My heart, my love
I gave my heart
My heart, my love

You became mine
You were a stunning bride
The world they saw you and how you loved their eyes my bride

You broke my heart
My heart, my love
You broke my heart
My heart, my love

You sold your body exposed yourself to all my love
You slept with strangers; you gave them everything we had

Come back my love
My love come back
Come back my love
My love come back

---

Derek Webb's "Wedding Dress"

If you could love me as a wife
And for my wedding gift, your life
Should that be all I’d ever need?
Or is there more I’m looking for

And should I read between the lines
And look for blessings in disguise
To make me handsome, rich, and wise
Is that really what you want?

‘Cause I am a whore I do confess
But I put you on just like a wedding dress
And I run down the aisle, I run down the aisle
I’m a prodigal with no way home
But I put you on just like a ring of gold
And I run down the aisle
I run down the aisle to you

So could you love this bastard child?
Though I don’t trust you to provide
With one hand in a pot of gold
And with the other in your side
‘Cause I am so easily satisfied
By the call of lovers so less wild
That I would take a little cash
Over your very flesh and blood

Because money cannot buy
A husband’s jealous eye
When you have knowingly deceived his wife

Those Wizard of Oz writers knew human frailty. There are days when I most certainly feel like the heartless Tin Man. Or the brainless Scarecrow. Or the cowardly Lion. There are days when I feel like two at once. There are days when I must choose "all of the above."

Trying to figure out this Undefeated thing...

Remember inflatable planetariums like this one??

It was literally every year that this got set up in my elementary school's library, and literally every year I was so excited to go in. Didn't matter that it was the EXACT same thing as the last year. Didn't matter that it was our head librarian, Mr. Weber's monotone, droning voice that pointed out the same constellations. There was just something all too special and exhilarating about crawling on all fours through the little tunnel into a cavernous black space that allowed us to escape from reality for a few minutes.

Well, multiply the volume of that little guy that offered so much joy to a little one, and you get this:

Came across this blog post: http://www.archdaily.com/175083/the-arch-nova-project-isozaki-kapoor/

This image is right at the top of the post, and it immediately caught my eye. There are the typical sleek, straight-lined, edgy, sophisticated buildings in beautiful, scenic locations that plaster 80% of the other posts in architecture publications. But this bulbuous thing allowing a huge intrusion of light and an indication of something pretty crazy and cool going on definitely got my attention. It looks like a pretty souped up version of a project I worked on in school.

Then as I kept reading, I found that this indeed is a pretty crazy and cool thing going on in the still-healing country of Japan. Created with a purpose of being a source of "uplifiting" inspiration, it's essentially a traveling music hall. Sweet.

The way the inflatable planetarium allowed us little grade school kids to escape from reality for a bit and star gaze is a similar notion I imagine the designers were going for. A special occasion. Not a solution to an immense, complex problem. But just a chance to step out of the physical and emotional devastation the earthquake marred the people of Japan with, and step into a chamber of music, inspiration and visual intrigue.

This idea is inspiring, and I hope the momentary joy this project brings to people is helpful to some, but my true hope is for a more permanent (aka eternal) solution. Ideas like this, derived even from secular minds, are just tiny tiny hints that there actually is eternal light, eternal joy, and eternal solution to even the most devastating of problems.

September is zipping by...

Spent a lot of time in that backyard in the fall growing up. Many trees = many leaves. Loved waiting for my dad to rake up a huge pile so I could go jump in puaha.

It's just the perfect app for someone who'd rather waste time taking pics and making them pretty than flinging birds at pigs.

If I were to pause for just a moment and look back on some highlights from my past, there's not much else to say except for how ridiculously gracious my God is. Sure he's sovereign, he's in control, he's capable of anything, he's faithful, he knows what's up, he's timeless and all powerful. And I praise him everyday for these things. But the biggest BAM in the face factor for me is his grace. My prayer for myself is that I will always from now til forever be able to say that his grace still amazes me. Everyday. Still.

What's interesting is those other characteristics of God (his sovereignty, control, etc) actually don't really require a personal relationship in order to be convincing. Apart from knowing God more intimately, I became quite convinced of his power and orchestration of people's lives merely by listening and watching sometimes. But this grace factor. Man, when you so personally receive it, and really understand how completely undeserving of it you are, you really see how personal a God he is, and just how ridiculous (fine, I'll use a more sophisticated word: incredulous) a God he is. What almighty God gives that much grace? All the time? Like, seriously.

What I mean by "how personal a God he is" is not just that he gets me. I've been quite entertained and have felt quite taken care of when I witness God working in my life according to the tiniest of quirks and strangest of details of my personality and likes and dislikes. It's those moments when I fully understand that he's my creator and he knows me way better than I know myself. Yes, he gets me, but I think there's a little more to my relationship with him than sheer understanding of one another. Not only has he created me, but he is the one who gave me faith. He is the one who breathed new life into me. He is the one who is cleaning me out and filling me with giftings and passions. He is the one who is making me usable for kingdom work. Therefore past, present, future are all his. This is "how personal a God he is." He carefully crafted my past, and he's carefully laying out my future according to the fine tune detail of how he's chosen to create me and breathe this new life into me. I don't know why I am the way I am, but he knows exactly why. And the more deeply I commit myself to him, the more in step with exactly what he created me to do I will be.

The scary part is, as you take off on this journey with him, your humanity and sin still scream in your face along the way. Yet he keeps working at my heart and opening these amazing doors and entrusting me with amazing opportunities in being a part of his ministry. I don't know what I'm doing half the time, but I guess that's yet again his grace.

Heh..anyway, that all stemmed from a simple memory and thought that popped into my head as I skimmed a posting in an architecture blog. The memory: Visiting the Ronchamp Chapel by Le Corbusier in France the summer after my freshman year of college. (For you non-Frenchies, the only audible letters in that name are R, O, C, H, and A. Yeah..give it a try.) The thought: OMG I was this naive little pre-arch gal traipsing around Europe with a sketchbook in hand and no idea of what architecture was or could be. I don't even know exactly what compelled me to sign up for that studio abroad class...someone popped into my freehand drawing class one day to present the trip, I signed up, and next thing I knew I was on a plane headed to Zurich. From this "happenstance" experience of my stint with Europe and some fellow archies, God then took me on quite an adventure that has in some form another led me to exactly where I am right now: a head full of design interests and questions, a job allowing me to live out some parts of my passions, and a whole lotta hopeful prospect that God still knows what he's doing with my life because I sure don't.

That is one amongst many stories of KT having no clue and God very faithfully gluing himself to the driver's seat. Thanks for always having my back!

{A shot of the interior of the Ronchamp. Little pockets of light - like the gradual unveiling and piecing together of God's full story for his people.}

LA x2 in one year. Nice.

This time around, brought some companions.

{the getty center}

beautiful blue skies + beautiful white building = great photo opp

 

{santa monica, san diego, hollywood, malibu}

Praise God. At last night's churchwide prayer gathering, God giving me a new understanding of freedom. I found myself praying for it during opening worship, over and over again for everyone in the room. Freedom in the sense of releasing us to be free to worship fully. Like 100%-type fully. Nothing holding us back, and no junk taking up space that's rightfully God's.

First we were led to reflect on our sin and repent. It wasn't even necessarily sin that I first started praying about. I somehow got to a point of God renewing and reinstating my ministry to a particular student that I met and befriended three years ago. This is honestly something I feel guilty about because my availability and prayer life for her is not consistent, not passionate, not faithful. But the certainty that God placed in my heart as he called me back to her didn't even allow for that guilt to sink in (as it usually does). No guilt. This was my first indicator of freedom.

Then when I was done rejoicing that God was speaking so strongly and reinstating me in this area of ministry, because I'm a structured kind of gal, I started wondering why I would be praying about something like this at a time when we were supposed to be reflecting on sin. That's when everything starting rushing through my head like water. All these sins, insecurities, doubts, fears, and failures that in both direct and farfetched ways somehow relate to this pre-christian friend were streaming through. Then when the faucet was just getting to its last drop, another rush of past sins, insecurities, doubts, fears, and failures that God has been helping me overcome came on a second wave. And these particular past sins were ones that really relate to my friend. They are ones that I can see so clearly in her life, and I have genuine compassion on her for because I know that these are things that God has already saved - and is still saving - me from. And she so desperately needs saving from them as well.

At this point, I'm just shaking my head in disbelief because there are some mighty mighty strongholds on this person's life that the toothpick strength of my faith and evangelistic giftings would do absolutely nothing to. Literally, I picture a toothpick getting thrown at a 20-ton anvil. But as I was praying and getting so humbled by God, this ridiculous paradox did not seem to matter.

Here's where the new sense of freedom really kicked in: God was showing me that in the midst of and even because of my sin and the ways God has been releasing me from it, I would have power in my ministry to someone. Prior to last night, the extent of my understanding of "freedom" (in terms of freedom from sin and freedom to minister) was that it meant fully overcoming and being fully released from past sin, and coming completely clean with God so that he could send me off to minister in this bright, pure state. Sure that would be great, and I guess this false understanding is pretty easy to believe in because of how logical it is. An older sister recently told me that I'm pretty OCD about my faith, and this is probably one of the ways it plays out. But the new notion God was giving me last night was that my sin is still gonna keep coming up, and that's not something to run away from as I "minister" and "reach out." The point of those holy, God-ordained goals is not to try to present myself as some perfect, already-fully-washed, already-taken-care-of, sinless person. But God gave me a new understanding of relating to people through sin (sin!), and then walking together in God's redemption. That pulls me and my strength and wisdom out of the equation. That pulls an expectation of perfection out of the equation. Thank God that he's taught me this to some extent already, but he kicked it up a notch. Paul always wrote about this kind of stuff (God's strength in our weakness, etc), and I thought I got it sometimes but in the end I was somewhat stumped because sometimes words can't capture it all and I just hadn't fully experienced it myself yet.

At the end of the prayer gathering, I didn't feel perfect and awesome. I just felt drenched. My sin is so constant and gets me everyday, but that's why God hoses me down everyday too. The sin will keep coming even as I try to do "holy" things, but that's why the hose will continue to dump on me. I think that's the freedom I felt - that I don't need to freeze up and get so hindered by my sin, but instead I can continue to be so free in doing God's work because his cleansing flow will follow wherever my contrite heart is. That water is God's grace and forgiveness. I experienced so much of it. Let's go swimming.

lol group dive

{For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. ~Habakkuk 2:14}

What I learned and experienced at the !gnite Conference. Very first one. Thursday, June 30^th – Saturday, July 2^nd, 2011. Participants: HMCC of Ann Arbor, HMCC of Chicago, HMCC of Austin, HMCC of Jakarta, HMCC of Singapore, and a small group in Hong Kong. We opened registration at 5pm on Thursday, and closed out our final session on Saturday night at around midnight. From start to finish, through all the specific lessons learned and experiences had, I would say an ongoing theme that I was constantly thankful for was: The joy of the Lord is my strength.

SUSTENANCE | Holy moles, God is good. I had every right and reason (in human understanding) to be exhausted and at least sleepy during this conference. However, I was not only fully alert through every session (except for the beginning of our very first seminar..) but I was constantly anticipatory of what was to come next. From the start of the week during the last days of preparation, there was this very steady, very strong feeling of expectation. It literally pulled me through the remainder of the preparation period, and led me to a point of standing right on the tipping edge of beginning the conference where I had no idea what was to come but SOMETHING was up. And even after the conference began, there was a constant drone of God promising that he was doing something, that he had something in store. And he kept my heart eager and expectant so that there was never a moment of laziness, doubt, waiting for everything to be over. HOW REFRESHING, to feel so expectant for two and half days straight? I don’t know if I can ever say that I’ve experienced that long a period of constant floods of pure joy in the Lord. If that’s not grace I don’t know what is. God took over in the driver’s seat, and for that I am so so thankful.

FAMILY | The moment I stepped into the sanctuary on Thursday night as people were milling around waiting for 8pm to hit, it was nostalgia central. All the pastors (minus P.Andrew.. =/) and some previous members of HMCC of AA who are now at other sites all in one room? Dang. Didn’t realize how awesome it would be to see and feel that. It’s a great joy to know that they have been sent and are impacting lives elsewhere now, but what a great experience to have had us all in one place once again. Some of them I know better than others, but just the familiar faces made me truly feel like this was a huge family reunion. Who would have thought I would have a group of people to surround myself with that I can genuinely call my church family? The Katie in high school would be baffled.

OTHER SITES | The first year I truly felt the joy of being a sending church was the year HMCC of Jakarta was launched. However, as with many things, that heart of joy faded over time, and I started to feel behind in being able to keep up with updates and everything from the other sites. A great turning point was Jackson and Rachel’s visit from HMCC of Singapore. I was so encouraged by what they had to share, and their visit made it so much easier to conceptualize and visualize what their church is like and how now to pray for it. HMCC of Chicago was the greatest encouragement for me through this conference. I had three Chicagoans in my small group, one of which is a new believer. He was able to share a part of his story the first night we met (along with a couple other new believers from AA), and he continued to share very openly throughout the conference. He has quite a powerful testimony at work in his life, and God is definitely not finished with him yet. The night that P.Jimmy preached, a video of their most recent baptism was shown, including the full testimony of the new believer. Sure, two testimonies of transformation from a church is “nothing new” per say, but God was speaking powerfully to me through the overall testimony of this church. As they hit their 5^th anniversary this year, I’m blown away that he’s used this very first church plant of HMCC’s to do AMAZING things in people’s lives. It all started with just a few people who were sent or called upon in that town of Evanston to start something up and see if this church plant thing was really it, and it’s now a place of transformation and growth. Amazing.

FAMILY, cont | Something we prayed for was for connections to be made and opportunities for people to encourage one another across sites. I didn’t know exactly what this would look like. But wow, it was great seeing how God was using the simple fact of being in the same space to influence us. Ann Arborites were able to be humbled by how much work and load of responsbility there is for the smaller sites. The church plant sites were able to experience the environment of an older, “more established” church, and see the roots of everything. And for all, I really believe we saw how BIG this vision is. No, it’s not just a handful of people from Austin or Chicago or AA or JKT or SGP that are doing their own little projects. It’s a worldwide vision, so much bigger than even all our churches and people combined, and it’s real. This is a God thing. Only he was capable of coming up with such a crazy idea as starting these churches, and only he is the one who’s making it happen, growing it, thriving it, multiplying it into what it’s becoming. And the best part of it all is that we’re just a small family working together, keeping in touch with one another in such a genuine grassroots way, all the while trying to follow after our Father, and feeling so privileged to be involved in the hugeness of it all. COOL BEANS.

LOVE&FREEDOM | My personal prayer request for !gnite was to first off get refreshed and really encounter God. And specifically what I realized I needed in my relationship with God was to experience his love again. I was at a point of desperation…so I had full faith that God would answer these prayers. I didn’t really have anything else to rely on. He actually did something pretty cool. He spoke in a way where he intertwined my story with the powerful story of HMCC of Chicago that I just wrote about. It’s pretty much that year (my sophomore year) when we planted that church that my own story sorta picked up and began getting fleshed out. So during this conference he actually assured me of the power of his love in my life by taking me step by step through my own testimony alongside the testimony of the Chicago site. It was nothing short of breath-taking, and I couldn’t deny any longer that I belong to him and he probably deserves my all.. (something else I was struggling with). He also spoke to me about the Father’s love very personally in a new way that has given me a new sense of freedom. Dang, he is too good. I just hope I can now respond in a way that will honor him.

Haha, that’s already so much and there’s more…but enough for now. What now? Well, honestly I got the sense from God that the aftermath of !gnite will contain a lot of purifying and coming to terms with more sins or hidden issues. Like even starting this week. If for his glory, here we go.

Excited to hear about some other people's experiences and/or see the fruits of this God-given conference bust out of their seeds somewhere down the line :)  Praise. the. Lord.