Blessed to do Good

I've been blessed beyond measure to be living and working in New York City.

The environment here is so different. A lot of people value their work, their efficiency, their productivity and even strangely enough - how many hours they work. They talk about how many points they have for hotels or miles for flights, what projects they're on, what stocks to trade... and the list goes on. Everything feels like it revolves around money and status.

On one of my projects, our team went around the room introducing ourselves to our client, and it went like this, "A&B from Harvard, B from Yale, C from Cornell, D from UPenn." That's when I first thought to myself, "Wow, I'm somewhere where a lot of people can't be."

I started thinking a little about what that means for me? I try to never take things for granted. I'm not special or anything, but I must be here for a reason. And I played around with the idea.

And then last night, I hung out w/my friends from Vegas who went to Yale. It ended up going from dinner to rooftop to lounge to chicken to karaoke... but throughout the night our group got bigger and bigger and the schools that were represented were Stanford, Yale, MIT, Duke, Berkeley, UNC, and UPenn - and these were all people in great jobs in big firms.

And so thoughts started to come up again. Do any one of them realize how amazingly blessed they are? Do any one of them have a vision to use what they have been given and do great things? What is their definition of great? Of success?

I was the only Christian, and maybe it's because God calls us to use what He has given us to further His Kingdom. But I had all these thoughts last night and even now, I wonder, what am I supposed to do with what God has given me?

In Luke 12:48, it says "To whom much is given, much is expected."

There's no conclusion in this post. But I think that my prayer and my prayer request for both you and I will be to do great things for God, using what He's given us. Although I've mentioned school and "success" in a very Asian perspective here, I think that we're ALL blessed in different ways so why not use what we're blessed with for God?

I don't know what God's plan is for me, but if He's saying anything to me right now, He's telling me to recognize everything He's given me and to use it. Don't let your "success" go to waste - turn it into something better. Because in my opinion, we're not just blessed, we're blessed to do good, to bless others.

God speaks to me in weird ways

So over the course of my last semester in college, I've been praying for a few people I met while flyering for my Christian fellowship at Penn. I met a lot of people who were interested in learning about God or who were curious in some way or another, and I always hoped that God would bring them to church or introduce them to the God that I know, the God that loves abundantly.

There was one girl in particular who I'd pray for alot because I could just see that she was curious about God and that all she needed was an opportunity. I spent the semester randomly shooting emails back and forth getting to know her situation a little and asking her to come out to our events. We'd remember her when we sent out care packages, but for some reason, she'd never be home when we dropped them off, and we'd get an email back saying thanks. And she almost went to our retreat and I thought God would surely help her at least experience God in some way if she came. But nothing ever really worked out, and I always wondered if praying for these people consistently would ever help?

I stopped praying for her and for these people. I remember at the end of the year when I was moving out of my room, instead of keeping all the post-its with the names of people who I'd pray for, I just thought to myself, "Nah...there are too many names, and no answers. I'm moving out, got to throw it out." So I threw them out.

It's been two months since that happened, and I'm quite ashamed that I gave up so easily. I had totally forgotten about those names with no faces, and I just passed along the name of the girl to the new leaders in my fellowship to keep an eye out for.

Today, in New York (out of everywhere, New York!), I ran into her at church. The connections are crazy. But another guy from my fellowship who had just joined my senior year, had invited her to the church that I was going to in NY, and she came. I was so shocked.

God really spoke to me today. He told me to never give up on prayer and on His people. My prayer was answered today, she's experienced God in some way, and now we'll see how God works. But the lesson of the day is, God listens, and He wants me to know that :-D.

I'm ashamed that it took this to awaken me, but I'm grateful for such an awesome, mysterious God.