Happy December

It's December 1st and it's starting to feel a lot like Christmas! I like cold winters, though unfortunately there is no snow in Kathmandu valley.

To get in the mood for Christmas I'm getting an early start on my Christmas shopping. It may not seem like an early start for all those in the US where Christmas starts right after Thanksgiving, but here it's a little different.

Nepal doesn't really celebrate Christmas. The big holidays here are in October/November. Christmas has slowly been picking up popularity, but you still can find people who don't really know what it is other than that it's a western holiday.

This means that I do miss out on some things like the fantastic light displays people in other countries put up in their front yards, hearing Christmas music play in almost every store; but at the same time we also miss all the major commercialism of Christmas, which is actually quite nice.

Starting this weekend we have several programs coming up during the month, so I'll try -- internet and electricity permitting -- to update more frequently. And I hope you are all enjoying a good start to this month and feeling Christmassy. Here's a nice Christmas thought:

A Christmas candle is a lovely thing;

It makes no noise at all,

But softly gives itself away;

While quite unselfish, it grows small.

—Eva K. Logue

reorganizing, etc

To all returning readers, thanks for bearing with me while I’ve been away. For the last couple weeks I’ve been busy with work and with a difficult problem that’s consumed a fair bit of my time and mental energy. But I’m so thankful to have now reached the end of the most pressing part of the problem, and to be able to take some time to relax and reorganize.

I just got the last of my things shipped from South Africa, so with winter coming up, I am sorting all my stuff out, and rearranging everything.

It’s always amazing to me how much stuff we manage to collect and carry around. I think this applies to not only things, but also mental and emotional baggage. Like any baggage, a lot of it is good and useful stuff that we need to have with us, knowledge and experience that we’ve gained over the years, important facts, and truths to rely on.

But I’m sure that if we took the time to take stock of all the thoughts and feelings that we’ve held on to, we would realize that a fair amount of it falls into the category of useless, and sometimes even harmful things. You know, those memories we hold on to of some wrong done, blame we carry with us for our part in a negative experience, thought patterns we’ve developed that aren’t exactly the right way of looking at things.

It’s good to occasionally give our hearts and minds a “spring cleaning” (or in my case right now a winter cleaning) as well. Working through a problematic situation presents a good opportunity to sort some of these things out, clean out the mental closet, and put everything in the proper order.

As stressful as the problem may have been, now I’m coming out of this difficulty feeling more relaxed, refreshed, and with new insight and experience, and for that I’m very thankful.

Thoughts on Change

Today I listened to one of my favourite devotional audios on the topic of change. It brings up lots of examples of how God has changed the rules throughout history. The most notable one being, of course, the coming of Jesus ushering in the era of grace and forgiveness when previously God had required adherence to a rigid set of laws and animal sacrifices for the atonement of sins.

Afterwards, as I thought about this, I realized that when I’m faced with a change in what I’m doing or the way I’ve been operating my first reaction is to think, “Oh no, if I have to change the way I’m doing things now doesn’t that mean that I got it all wrong and wasted a lot of time before?”

Not necessarily. It’s a relief to me to realize that as times change so do our jobs, our methods of operation, and God’s will for our lives. But just because something that was right before needs to be changed or updated it doesn’t negate the value of all the work we put into doing it that way previously. If nothing else, it was a good learning experience.

A project that I worked on for more than a month taught me how to use a new computer program – even though the entire thing ended up getting redone in a different format. A move to another country brought me a new set of friends and pushed me to learn new skills – even though it after a year and a half I realized it wasn’t the right place for me, and moved back here.

I may not be totally certain about what the next few years will bring about. I might decide to try very different things from what I’m currently doing. And they may not work out at all. But I don’t need to be afraid of that, because each new experience takes me another step forward in life, and each old one has taught me something valuable and contributed toward the place I’m at today.