Lessons from Touhoku
My co-worker Kami Alexander writes:

As I shoveled my way through the debris and bagged away the washed out remains of broken homes, broken dreams, and broken families, I found a treasure hidden in the piles of junk. The treasure was the realization of just how very little and just how very much we need. We need very little of the "precious" things most of us covet, horde, and slave away to buy. Those precious things have all become rubbish, shoveled into bags and piled into mountains and heaps. In contrast, we need so very much of God.

I was so "blessed" to find the contents of a fish shop that had washed into a ditch. As I uncovered the pile of six-and-a-half week old stinking rotten fish teeming with maggots, my stomach and I vowed to stay clear of sushi for a very long time. My gag reflex has still not recovered from the trip even now- the slightest whiff of fish makes me nauseous. That's alright, though. I could go the rest of my life without sushi. I could not go a day without Jesus.

What strikes me to the core is how this community has suffered the loss of everything they built their lives upon- success, homes, family, work, cars, material things. If you've built your life on those things, and they wash away, you need to find a better foundation! That is what I want most desperately to offer them. A foundation built on a relationship with God. God's love will never change, shake, or wash away. It is the only thing which we can have both here and hereafter.

Should all else wash away in my life, I would still be able to praise God for his mercy and love. Should even my life be required of me, I would go into the presence of God knowing I will meet his love and mercy. Nothing else, NoONE else, can promise that to me.

Like Paul says in Philippians 3:8: "What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ."

Christ Jesus. Only Christ Jesus. May this be the foundation of my life.

These and the maggoty fish are the reason I am staying away from sushi for awhile.