New Life

So we thought we'd be starting on campus this week, but sadly we've have some set-backs that have put us back a week. At one of the campuses (Nagoya University of Foreign Studies - Gaidai for short) the admin are making us go through a whole lot of administrative mumbo jumbo before we're allowed on campus. We have to sign in with a student and a professor/staff every day we want to come on campus, as well as give them a week's notice before we do so. So we're still trying to figure out the logistics of that, and want to ensure we've got that figured out soon, before we head on campus.

Had a meeting this morning with my supervisor and one of the key student leaders at Gaidai though. The student's name is Kaji and he is such an encouragement! His passion is contagious and I love how willing he is to serve. And he always seems so happy and relaxed. I'm sure he has his share of problems and stresses, but he seems to deal with them pretty well which is encouraging. I really enjoy our times together.

On Monday, we each took the day off to do things on our own - to reflect on our time so far, to pray, read and just spend time with God. It was a very refreshing day for me. I went down to a local park and just took in the beauty of God's creation.


God really spoke to me on a few things while I was there, mostly about the Resurrection due to it being the day after Easter. The central message of the Gospel is that God came to us in human form, in Jesus, was crucified for our sins and was raised back to life again on the third day. It sounds so simple in my mind and is something I've heard time and time again, but the more I thought about it the more absurd it seemed. That God Himself could become a man is offensive to many faiths, because God is too holy to possibly interact with such a fallen earth in their mindset. Then to think that God could be killed - that is ridiculous. How could God die? That goes against everything that our mind conceives of in the concept of God. Then to top it all off, this Jesus who was killed, came back to life days after he was killed? People don't just come back to life. The claims of the Gospel are insane at best - "a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles" (1 Cor. 1:23). Yet in this we see the beauty of the Gospel - that it is not something that will make perfect sense in our human minds, and so we know that when we receive Christ as our Lord and Saviour it is truly the work of God, not something that is done by human persuasion. So in terms of application for ministry here in Japan, it means I have to be praying that God would work, because without that, we won't make the slightest impact - it will be like drilling through concrete.