All Work and No Play makes Jack

Today I had lunch with a couple of coworkers who I don't usually get a chance to hang out with. In passing they mentioned that they appreciated how my American colleague and I make it a point to find each other at the end of the work day to leave together on time. We've made it a goal to go home when home calls- which I guess is largely arbitrary to a personal degree. As best as we can, we try to finish the pressing work we have and the lessons we teach for next day. Whatever can wait will wait because there are more pressing things like being home with family.

I've noticed that upon coming here to HK that the culture isn't just to stay because there's a lot of work but also because someone somewhere is watching and evaluating your performance, loyalty, and duty simply based on how long you've clocked in. Then longer you stay, the more you're noticed by those above you. I guess it's pretty important if you want to get ahead in a competitive city like Hong Kong.

Here in Hong Kong I've also noticed the lines between family and work have been blurred and crossed. So many workers have to toil long hours. It is not uncommon to see 12 - 13 hour work days. Even though our school doesn't demand what the business world would, I still find struggle difficult. It is especially in the arena of the Christian school this balance is often skewed for those who have been "called" to serve these kids. More time spent in the office grading papers or coaching extra-curricular actives is synonymous to being more faithful, more obedient, more godly. Teachers work to the degree of wrecking their bodies physically and spiritually because they want to serve the Lord.

I find myself wondering where that line is drawn. What about our families? Are we not called them as well? Do we not have a duty to faithfully serve our kids, to encourage our wives and to support our husbands? We give our best time to our work and leave the remaining tatters to the people closest to us.

My two colleagues mentioned to me that they often have to remind themselves to rest in the face of never-ceasing work. In a culture that has programmed them to go, they need to be prompted to stop. One colleague so poignantly explained that when you've been taught since childhood to use every waking moment to complete the next day's homework and study for the next quiz or examination just so you can catch up with a system that will always outrun you, you won't understand the value of sabbath. No minute is left unturned and every break is monetized. You cannot beat the system when you have been born in it.

I want to be more hopeful and believe that there is a choice. All this is a stark reminder to me to not sell out to a system that wants to rob me of my soul and enslave me to the guilt of work and duty. God created us for more than to be yoked to our work and bound by joyless obligation or the pursuit of earthly acclaim. We are called to fulfill our God-given passions and work for His glory and not just our boss or company. We find our dignity when we are seen as His people, His instruments and vessels instead of just components of a mechanized body to be replaced when we falter. Perhaps as much as our schedules and deadlines are beyond our control, we can redeem the attitude and motive in which we do our work. If we fill our work with joy and meaning as we do it "unto the Lord" then we have render busyness powerless to dictate our lives with guilt and bitterness.

In the face of a culture that resounds the message that we are machines, we must proclaim the opposite truth even louder in the way we live. Let us do the work called out for us heartily and also love God called us to just as heartily.

3rd year in Hong Kong!

This week marks the start of another school year, the 3rd in fact! I can't believe I've taught for 4 years now. Seems like yesterday when I was still doing my practicum at UBC and when Michelle went on hers in Dalian. I joked a couple days ago that no matter how hard I try I'll always only have one more year of teaching experience than Michelle. That is unless she gets pregnant. Then I win.

So this year I've been given an English Literature course to teach and I'm really excited about it. I've been reading through lots of short stories and remembering the texts that I was taught back in the day. The challenge of teaching here in HK is that students are not exposed to reading (especially English books) at an early age. Students have no habit of reading for enjoyment. The only things they read are textbooks they are memorizing for the exam.

This year my teaching schedule looks like this. It's a really nice balance. Instead of teaching one more English Language class with all the grammar and compositions to mark, I'll get Form 3 Literature instead. I get to see the students I taught in Form 1 my first year again which will be nice.

Oh! I've been rearranging (don't want to use "redecorating" since it's a little feminine) my table. I've been getting rid of the clutter. Notice the theme going on?? Yeah, I'm pretty proud of the tape dispenser I made.

Hope all is well with whomever reads this.

Blessings

Awesome friends

Our summer vacation here in Vancouver has flown by so quickly. We have one week left before we have to leave. Last year, leaving our friends was tough enough. But I think this year will be even harder.

When we arrived to Vancouver this time around, I remember telling Michelle one night after we had hung out with our friends (I think Allen and Hannah) that if our friends were crappier, it would be so much easier to leave at the end of summer. The reality is just the opposite: our friends are awesome and hanging out with them this time around has made us realize how much we miss them.

I don't think I fully realized this until yesterday when we partook of communion together at church. After an intense sermon on how we are called to grow with our family at church through both the good and trying times, we were invited up to take the communion elements at the front. It was so cool to share communion in the church I've grown up in, but what was especially impacting was to see all the familiar faces mixed with all the new faces I had never seen before. As the course of people lined up for the bread and the wine, I couldn't help but feel an overwhelming emotion of joy, love and affinity. There was joy and love for these people were my brothers and sisters. These are the people I've grown with, laughed with, cried with and, most of all, followed Christ with. There was a love for the new members and young teens I didn't even know the names to- a reverant disregard for unfamiliarity. As long as we shared the same elements and share the same cross from which grace flows, we share an affinity because we have pledged fellowship and commitment to walk together as a family.

That moment was surreal. My heart wanted to explode. It went by too quickly.

For the joy I felt was all-too-soon replaced with the realization of how much I missed home. My heart had ached for this in Hong Kong and I hadn't even known. And there in that familiar seat in our sterile, off-white walled box where my heart belongs, my soul languished for what I would miss when we leave again.

My mother-in-law recently mentioned that it gets harder as you get older to make good friends who will speak into your life. And though I'm not old enough to fully live out the truth of this adage, this I do know: that I've been blessed to have these relationships in my life thus far. And these good friends have not only spoken into my life, they've filled it with unspeakable joy and given me the courage to strike out and take a step in life. They have challenged me to grow, to be a better person, and to follow Christ more heartily than I ever knew I could.

I wish my friends were crappier, so leaving Vancouver would be so much easier. But they're not. They're awesome. And for that, I'm thankful.

Our Hedgehogs

We recently adopted hedgehogs whose owner could not keep them any longer ad he was moving to the States to study. We've been trying to socialize them since they came to us in a small cramped hamster cage and didn't seem to have been handled. They were skittish, timid, and spiked up at pretty much everything.

The progress the first week or so had been slow. We managed to pick up the girl (Uni) but she wouldn't sit on our laps for very long, always trying to squirm away. The boy (Uno) was even worse. He wouldn't let anyone touch him. Maybe it had to do with giving him a bath the second day because he had poo all over him or that dad tried to "desensitize" him by prodding him with a leather belt. Uno hissed at everything.

Yesterday we had a breakthrough day with our hedgehogs. We were able to pick both of them up and put them into a play pen. They stayed there for a good 30 minutes before we picked up Uni who fell asleep on our tummies. It was a moment of bliss where we finally just rested with our pets. There was no more contention or fighting. It was such a great feeling to finally get a response from our pets whom we care for so dearly.

While Mich and I were chatting on the MTR we realized that this might be similar to how God relates to us. God desires so greatly to just be with us in eternal rest. He tries to get our attention with blessings of food and shelter and then lavishes upon us things we don't even need for our enjoyment. And like our hedgehogs we become enamored with those things instead of the one who gave them to us. We are distracted with sleep and sated with our food that we don't have time for our master. And when God comes and tries to spend time with us, we hiss and curl into our defenses hoping he'll leave us alone to our own devices.

I can't imagine what it'll be like when I have kids and experience "fatherhood" to a new depth. The pain of rejection from your own kids must be so much more vivid and the joys of returned affection so much more exuberant. Until then, I have just a glimpse of how deep God's love is for us, and how much I ought to return his affections.

Does God Really Care About My Work?

My friend and colleague Ricky sent me this post that wrestles with whether God cares for all those prayer requests we make about our work. Every Wednesday we have a mandatory prayer meeting (10 mins of prayer and 1 hour of meetings) to "pray" for issues in our lives. Most of our requests revolve around work and how stressed we are. Ricky and I always look at each other and wonder whether something is amiss in our lives when we seem so run down over the stuff we have to do.

http://www.thehighcalling.org/work/does-god-really-care-about-important-meeting

The post makes me think about our theology of work. We know that work is good and edifying. It is God-ordained and specific to who we are and who we were created to be. Yet we have come to idolize it and prize it so beyond what it ought to be, often sacrificing our family, our health, and our sanity to please our boss. And sometimes, our boss isn't the man who sits in the big office downstairs, it's an invisible one inside of us who insists that we toil for futile things like fame, prestige, and success. We give ourselves over to task-masters and willingly enslave ourselves to our work because it gives to us our sense of meaning and identity. In a way, as the article mentions, it has become our idol.

Today is Wednesday and we will have our prayer meeting again. I wonder how to balance this idea of work (in the holy and godly sense) and this god it has become.

A Different Tradition of Worship

On Sunday I had the opportunity to attend an Anglican service. It's been the 4th time in the last few months I've been to an Anglican service which is 4 more times than I ever thought I'd be at an Anglican church. But I came to realize that there are some things which I've really come to enjoy about their tradition of worship.

Acknowledging that I don't know enough about Anglican roots and history, here is what I appreciate about the service I attended:

1. Communion:

I am probably not using the word in the sense that most Anglicans use it in but rather the "community" I felt drawn to as I worshiped at St. Andrew's. It was really neat to see a myriad of people from different social classes and cultural backgrounds singing together. It's definitely one of the most multicultural churches I've attended. I recall John Piper once explaining in his book, "Let the Nations be Glad" that God is ultimately more glorified when a diverse group of people all congregate and unite in worshiping Him than if only one group of people did. It was a really neat feeling to see a brother from a totally different walk of life and know that somehow God had drawn him, as well as yourself, to the same place and to the same community.

2. Revererance:

Maybe it has to do with the architecture of the church, but I love how the high ceilings and the stain-glass windows just draw you to another time and imagination. It makes me think of all the people who may have passed through Hong Kong and worshiped at this place. The grandness of the building reflects the posture and attitude I ought to bring in my worship as well. It reminds me that there is nothing flippant when I approach God and that the place I meet him is sacred. A funny thing is that even in the poor architectural conditions of modern day overflow and poor visuals and acoustics it reminds me that the worship service is not about what I can see or hear but rather that this place was built for God and not me. The service is for God's pleasure and not mine.

3. Liturgy:

I used to hate liturgy and think it was boring. I thought that we should be about spontaneity and breaking tradition. How wrong I was. I've recently learned the value of tradition. You join with history and the cloud of witnesses before you in remembering the creeds and prayers that your predecessors have recited. You are joining with a tried and meaningful legacy that's been passed on. I appreciate that the liturgy always focuses me on the character of God and pushes me to look outward beyond myself.  

4. God-centered preaching:

I think I've come to also appreciate boring preaching because there is nothing wrong with boring preaching when it's based in the Word. It doesn't need to be flashy or thrilling. It just needs to be faithful. Often in our self-centered society, we hear messages that encourage our personal growth or assuage our emotional well-being. We prize our egos and fulfillment. It's refreshing to hear a sermon that focuses on what God is saying and how we need to obey rather than how God can meet our needs.

I'm excited and looking forward to seeing and learning more in a different season of worship in my life. Hopefully this leads to a deeper understanding of who God is and brings me to a deeper love of Him.

"Hong Kong People Are Dogs"

Hard to believe that this is only our first post of 2012. It's been a while. Happy New Year and Happy Chinese New Year all together. It's been a good time of rest for us during the CNY break and it's been nice to get back to the swing of things at school. We've been tired (tough time adjusting back to normal sleep times) but things have been good.


Recently, there's been lots of news talking about the building tension between China and Hong Kong. First there was a protest at the D&G in Tsim Sha Tsui here in HK because they drafted a new store policy to ban bystanders from taking photos of their storefront. Basically the security guards would chase bystanders off if they pulled out a camera. People started complaining because they felt the company was adopting a racially-motivated policy to appease Mainland Chinese patrons who wanted a peaceful shopping experience. So Hong Kongers got all up-in-arms about this as they usually do and went to protest.


Last week someone filmed a confrontation last week between a Mainlander and a Hong Konger who told them to stop eating on the subway (Subway Argument.) This spawned a professor in Beijing to call people from Hong Kong "dogs. (Hong Konger's are Dogs) The whole news storm was a good discussion point with my students at class as we talked about whether Hong Kongers were indeed better than the Mainlanders as many protesters had asserted. It challenged me to think about how I saw these people from China.

In my limited knowledge, (a mere visit to the Hong Kong Museum of History and reading a book on Mao Ze Dong) I've come to realize that there are so many intricacies and layers to this place called Hong Kong. This is why I'm perpetually more and more fascinated with this place I call home for the time being. We have here a simple fishing village that has turned into a world-class cosmopolitan city largely due to colonialism. The citizens have been afforded an education and world-view like no other. Many immigrant children stand with feet in two boats and are offered opportunities like no other with the most mobility and ability to bring about God's Kingdom in any part of the world. 

That being said though, I've come to agree with a couple things that Professor Kong said. He said that without China, Hong Kong could not survive. With that, I would agree. If China were to simply cut off it's economic resources from Hong Kong, the city would flounder. We're not talking about the basic necessities of water, food, and power, but just the economic resources. China is the next rising power and the biggest market in the world. What could this port city (in the physical and symbolic sense) do without its country. 


I also agree with what Kong said about how Hong Konger's treat Mainlanders. It's a very true and twisted mindset. To most foreigners, we go out of our way to make give face and respect. I've seen plenty of times where white people have gotten preferential customer service. Look at the Mid-Levels and just the total opulence and other-worldly lifestyles that they have that are not reflective of real Hong Kong. To the British or the American we bow lowly. To the Japanese we bow (with tinges of bitterness of course). But to the Mainlander, we raise our nose and cause a fuss because we finally have someone we feel superior to. 


I liken it to when a little brother finally gets old enough to lead his own life and find his own way. China, in many ways, has grown up and been able to make a life for itself. Sure he has lots of learning to do about cleanliness, culture, and etiquette, but we act as an older brother jealous of what the younger one now has. We still see ourselves as better and the favored one, and we don't want to let our privileges go. 


After discussing with my students how they saw this whole news debacle, I tried to reexamine my own thoughts and perceptions of China. I realize that I see Mainlanders in one of two ways. First, I see them as the annoyingly loud, brash, and rich tourist who rushes in to take my seat on the MTR. They are the queue-jumpers and the ones who tote their luggages full of expensive watches they've pillaged on Nathan Rd. Secondly, I see Mainlanders as the decrepit and pitiful village people on those World Vision brochures that need my donations, my compassion, and my help to minister to their needs. Both views are broken. Both views stem from my own self-righteousness and pride. I think both are equally repulsive to God. 


I think unlike Kong, I need to start seeing everyone not as dogs but as humans. As my pastor at home counseled for our marriage: "we step into dangerous territory when we stop seeing each other as image-bearers of God." While this was spoken to us in our marriage, I think it rings true here. We spawn hatred, racism, and all sorts of malice and strife when we stop seeing others as people that God has hand-crafted in his image. Each has a story to tell, each has been molded by a system of cultural values, and each has a dignity and worth we ought to see - beyond the dirty, crusty, and rough exterior. 


Peace.