My Monument Monday is out a bit later today than normal. Mainly because I went to see my cardiologist today for my post echo visit. The doctor said I was continuing to do very well. So well, in fact, that he took me off ALL of my heart medications!!! I was hoping for him to take away the two expensive ones, but he said he thinks I don’t need any of them. I will see him again in a year, barring that nothing else happens. This was such great news. I texted my regular physician, who is also a good friend of mine, and he said this rarely happens like this, and especially this soon after what I went through. God is so good. Thank you all for your fervent prayers for my health and recovery. Rejoice with me now for the answered prayers of our Great God.
Well, I made it to Vietnam and back. It was a great trip, one I would do again. The people there were so nice and accommodating. The tournament was run fairly well, though there were some tings I would have done differently, but overall, it was quite the event. You can check out some of it by going to YouTube and searching ASDC 2026. The Opening Ceremony was like none I have ever seen. There were some sound issues with the first parts, but if you go to the 1 hour 10 minute mark, you will get a good idea of the performance. And the Closing Ceremony had a kid playing the sax that just blew everyone away. Go to just before the 57 minute mark for that.
While our teams didn’t get into the elimination rounds at this event, we did have Sadie Baker get third place in the Public Speaking contest. We didn’t even know that was something they did. She was able to register on site, and then, competing against 70 others, ended up in the finals and getting third place.
If you look at the event name, it is the Vietnam Asian Schools Debating Championship. Only Asian Schools are allowed to compete here. So, you may be asking, how in the world (literally) did American Logos get in? It was a God thing. Our team manager kept asking how we could join, if possible, and finally, the tournament director said that if we joined an Asian school, we could represent them. We only had to enroll in one class, which was on how to compete in the Asian School style. Our students enrolled in the VADP (Vietnam Academy of Debate and Public Speaking) school, and so we competed as representatives of that school.
There seemed to be some animosity toward us at times as we were obviously not Asian. And one team stated to us that they wanted to “hate us” and tried really hard to hate us, but we were so nice, so they found that they had to like us.
Hanoi itself was quite the experience. Most of where we went looked very downtrodden. I walked around the old town area and it looked old. Some of the shops were so narrow, I would not be able to sit in them and stretch out my legs.
Hanoi is also known as the city with 9 million people and 7 million motorbikes/scooters.
They were everywhere, all the time, and never really stopping. It took me a while to learn how to cross the street. I watched the locals, and they just walked across, and everyone seemed to just miss everyone else. I had read that if you get eye contact with the drivers, then you know they see you, and you can then determine, just by looking, who will veer off and who will continue straight. I began on small side streets, then graduated to major intersections in no time. All the drivers honked, but not in a mean way. It was to let you know they were there, and to watch for each other.
There were some motorcycles that carried a massive load of goods.
I have no idea how they were able to accomplish this, but there were quite a few examples of this all over the place. I would have expected to see motorbikes and bodies strewn all over the place, but there were no wrecks that I saw, and no one from our group saw any either. This was just the way it worked. And the people went with it. This was their normal. And after seeing it for days, I grew to appreciate what I saw as more of an elaborate dance than chaos.
The sad part of it all were all the temples to foreign gods, and all of the shrines in the stores. They all had idols and incense, as well as all sorts of offerings, mostly food. There were stacks of fresh produce, as well as packaged items. I saw one young man in a Taoist temple chanting on his knees. There was no emotion, just repetitive words. This is what religion truly is; religion meaning to relink, or to chain oneself to something. In the Shinto religion, you can see adherents sharply clapping their hands toward their idols. It is not an act of applause, but an attempt to get their god’s attention. Again, this is religion. But that is not what we have in Christ.
We have a relationship with a real person who is the God of the Universe. He came to us to seek and save His lost sheep. Have you ever thought of the word “lost?” If something is lost, that means it has inherent value. A ball point pen bought in bulk just goes missing. It is never lost. But your smart phone? That is something that can get lost. Even more so your child. We saw a lot of “lost” people in Hanoi; that young man being one of them. And they are doing everything they can do to get the attention of a god who has no interest in them, and never will.
I just read through Galatians, Ephesians, and Philippians this morning (yes, I am behind on my reading), and one thing is very clear in these, as well as the whole of the Bible; God is interested in us. He is interested in us because He made us. Paul, in Galatians, begins by calling them out for so quickly falling back into religion. They would agree that they were saved by the Spirit, but then somehow needed to complete their salvation by works of the flesh. What they didn’t seem to realize was that it is by faith that one is a child of Abraham and heirs to the promises. It isn’t works at all. The work of salvation was complete when Christ raised from the dead.
Ephesians says that there are good works to do, but they were prepared by God for us to walk in. And this comes AFTER we were made alive by God through grace. In Paul’s prayers for the Ephesians, he was passionately wanting them to know what they already had in Christ. We are not seeking to gain something to complete ourselves, but we need to come to the knowledge of who we are and what we have in Him. And in Philippians we see that even though Paul was in prison and facing death at any moment, he calls us to rejoice with him. He discovered the secret to life, and he reveals it to us. Whether he is hungry or full, rich or poor, no matter what the circumstance, the secret is the same. And that secret is, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
This is the divine mathematic. One plus one equals one. I do it, yet is isn’t me, it is Christ in me. Christ does it, but He does it in and through me as His chosen vessel. And whatever the works are that He prepared for us to do, He gives us the strength and the tools to do those works. The rest of the world’s religions seek to get the attention of their god by their works. Our Lord Jesus DID the work, and now works in and through us to accomplish what He could do on His own, but has chosen to work through us just because He loves us and wants us to experience the joy of His kingdom.
So, no matter what you are going through right now, know that God is with you, and you can do all things through Him. And no matter what, we can rejoice (and this is not the same as being happy). And this is why I take a team around the world so that we can share this light with those who are in darkness.
Amen
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