What You Make It

Another glorious week in Beijing down! The first week was a little brutal trying to learn the school's system of doing things, but this week has been a little better. I'm starting to get used to my schedule more. Yesterday was the first school day that I didn't have volleyball tryouts to be at, and that was Cross Country's cue to begin! So, now that tryouts for all the teams are done, I now know my weekly schedule. Volleyball is Monday, Friday, and Saturday, and Cross Country is Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Then I've also got youth group on Friday nights, various meetings throughout the week with people from church, and going out to see the city with the other two interns. I'm a busy man.

It was a HUGE blessing the last few days to have beautiful weather! Every day, I check the pollution on an app that I have. The average last week was probably like 185 (which is pretty much Los Angeles' worst day), but Friday-Monday was between 40 and 80, which was great! It was clear blue skies, which is pretty rare!

Beijing can be really pretty when it wants to be! But you know what? As beautiful as this is, it's really pretty to have the usual "fog" too. Yes, I know it isn't fog, but my point is that so often, we complain about things that we really can't change at all. I can't change the pollution here in Beijing. I can hope for blue skies every now and then, but if I have a bad attitude about things that just won't change, it's just me ruining the day that the Lord has made, isn't it? The apostle Paul rejoiced at the fact that he was in chains in Philippians 1:12-14! You say, "well of course he was joyful because he was in chains for the sake of the gospel! You can't use that as backing for being joyful with pollution because that isn't suffering for the sake of Christ!" Is that true? I think that life is going to be a wilderness experience, and like pollution, we can't do anything about it. All of life is just working, working, working; thirsting, thirsting, thirsting. Even in the West, nothing comes free. Nothing will ever be so convenient that we can just live completely sedentarily. Once we achieve something big, we wake up the next morning and we can't just relax and do nothing. We have to work for the next thing! It's a sad reality, but too true. Solomon picked up on it in Ecclesiastes: "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity," says the preacher all throughout the book. His point was that even when you reach the zenith of pure joy on this earth, it never makes you happy forever. The thirst comes back. That's why being an experience junkie doesn't work. Life is a wilderness. As Wesley says in The Princess Bride, "LIFE IS PAIN, HIGHNESS!" It's true. It's a series of pain, work, exhaustion. You can't change it. So what do you do with it? It'll be all the more painful and exhausting if you just dwell on how hard life is. If every Beijinger woke up and complained about the pollution, there would be zero joy in this city. But that doesn't happen. Like the blue skies of Beijing, life can be beautiful if you want it to be.

I like these lyrics from one of my favorite bands right now, All Sons and Daughters. In their song, "Brokenness Aside," they say something that really got me. "I am a sinner. If it's not one thing, it's another; caught up in words, tangled in lies. But you are a Savior and you take brokenness aside and make it beautiful." I think there is beauty even in the wilderness of life. One of the greatest ultrarunners in the world, David Goggins, hates running. He does it because he knows that people are attracted to pain. He raised $1,000,000 for the college funds for children of fallen special operators. If he were to sell hot dogs or do car washes, it wouldn't work. But he knows that there is beauty in pain and people will give money to see it. As masochistic as this sounds, isn't it true? Most people don't think that way, but life is what you make it.