Post-Thesis Life

Readings

"The parable of the talents [in Matthew 25] says that we are accountable-- not to mention much happier-- when we are exercising our gifts and being productive. It takes work, practice, learning, prayer, resources, and grace to overcome the fear of failure that the 'wicked and lazy' servant gave in to. He was not chastised for being afraid; we are all afraid when trying something new and difficult. He was chastised for not confronting his fear and trying the best he could. Not confronting our fear denies the grace of God and insults both his giving of the gift and his grace to sustain us as we are learning."



Cloud, H. and J. Townsend. 1992. Boundaries: when to say yes, how to say no to take control of your life. Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Retrospect

While looking at old files from my time at Tarleton, I found a testimony I wrote to share at a Bible study during my first semester. I needed this backwards glance into the Lord's work in my life. The struggle of anxiety mentioned in this speech has been excruciatingly real this past week. As I work to complete a thesis, deadlines and the pressure of what I don't yet know has been ominously intruding on almost every thought that tries to cross my mind. Isn't it amazing how persistently a certain struggle or hang-up can follow us? If you can relate, spend some time reflecting on where you've been and what God's brought you to and through. Here's my edition:

What has God done in my life this semester?

October 23, 2012- Tarleton BSM- I Am Second Bible Study

            I’m Elizabeth Casey, and I am a first semester graduate student here at Tarleton. I am going for a Masters in Agriculture. To lay out some background on who I am, part of the I Am Second Bible study material asked me to write out the story of how I changed by becoming a Christian. Well, I trusted Jesus as my Savior when I was six years old, and I know that that was when God led me to become a Christ-follower.  So instead of a before Jesus and after Jesus story, I decided to write out the story of something that has been a struggle for me throughout my life with Jesus. I have regularly struggled with anxiety about my future. Since I was little, I wanted to have a plan of action for my life. I was deciding on where to go to college when I was in the fifth grade. I’ve always been driven in school, and I put a lot of pride into where my good grades would get me one day.

            Then in highschool, I had a youth pastor and a group of Christian friends who told me to look to the Bible for guidance in my future. They said to pray and wait for God’s direction. So I started doing that. Since then, God has refocused my perspective on the future. He brought me from chasing what I can gain out of life through my planning and my performance—to how I can give up everything and serve peoples of other nations. It doesn’t make sense. God sent me overseas on mission trips, lead me to attend Bible college, and then here to study agriculture so I can help people with their crops and livestock while telling them about Jesus.  That was the story I wrote out for I Am Second.

During this semester:

            God has been constant throughout all of the change that goes into moving to a new city and starting a new program at a new school. I got my undergraduate degree in a mixture of Biblical Studies and Anthropology. I was neither a member of FFA, nor did I grow up on a farm. So needless to say, this has been a semester of many academic firsts for me to say the least.

But He is so good. I was expecting to be looked down upon in my classes since I don’t have an Ag background, but that didn’t happen. God actually connected me with a couple of Christian professors who believe in what I want to do with my degree overseas. They are now guiding me in my classes and even enjoy introducing me to things like driving a tractor and setting up crop research. Being tested over ruminants, insects, soil chemistry, and agricultural statistics for the first time in my life has been overwhelming at times. But God has refreshed and affirmed my decision to study here.

 People look at my life and think that I’m good. A girl I worked with this past year would call me Mother Theresa. And some days, I’d believe her. I start thinking about what I want to do with my life, and think that I really am a pretty good person.

But this semester, God has humbled me! He has shown me that I have very little to do with my life. I love, because He loved me first. He saved me. He matures me in His word. He has sent me overseas. He broke my heart for people of other nations. He planted a passion for science in me and has provided the means for me to study here at Tarleton. He connects me with people who love Jesus and encourage me in the faith. I can’t take credit for anything. All I really do is try to cling to Christ and daily prove that I need a Savior to guide me. So this semester, God continues to show me that the goals I have for my own future are not meant to be a reflection of me, but of Him and His work.

Jestem podekscytowany, aby odwiedzić Polskę!

The title means, "I'm excited to visit Poland!" I get to attend and present research on herbaceous legumes at an agricultural science symposium in Bydgoszcz, Poland! You can see a window into Bydgoszcz through this youtube video! I leave tomorrow with a group of professors and fellow graduate students from Tarleton. I am very excited to have been given this opportunity!

I can't wait to meet professors and agricultural students from Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Italy, and a couple more countries. We will be the only group from an American university in attendance. I hope we're not too loud and obnoxious compared to the other groups! The city of Bydgoszcz is in northern Poland with the Brda and Vistula Rivers going through it. The main events I know about other than the symposium include a castle tour and a 24 hr. layover in London, England on the way back to America.

Those are the facts. Other than that, I'm along for the ride! I'll try to blog while I'm there. You know I'll be posting pictures!

23 wks ago

Kim,

23 weeks ago (according to the ever-reliable Instagram), I came to the library while you were studying to give you a giraffe mug. I saw it in World Market and thought of you immediately. I'm studying at a table right in front of the study room you were in that day. 239- the one with the window! It was nice and sunny when I came in the room, and I remember you had some cheesy worship music playing on Pandora. Haha, I decided it was best just to go with it and jam. You were working on a project about the second Titanic being built. We laughed because we weren't sure if we'd want to actually ride on it...

I would so be texting you right now to laugh about the Titanic (take 2). But since I can't, I'll write it here instead. Love and miss you so much. I'm so thankful that I know- past religious sentiment and warm-fuzzies- that you are with Jesus himself. Goodness girl, I'm jealous. Have fun adoring him for eternity. I heard there's a huge tree with 8 different types of fruit on it in Heaven (it's in Revelation). As an Ag major... I don't see that happening this side of eternity. Go eat some of it for me.

Catch you on the flip side, hermanita. <3

Genocide and Grace

I'm blogging from my apartment's living room, and I just finished watching Hotel Rwanda the movie (and every special feature offered)for the first time. I was shocked by the film and deeply moved by Paul Rusesabagina's story. He saved 1,268 Rwandans during horrible genocide in 1994 using his status of assistant manager of the Hotel des Mille Collines in Rwanda. The film was released in 2004, so I'm sure many of y'all have seen it. If you haven't, like I hadn't before tonight, please watch it.

While watching the real Paul Rusesabagina tell parts of his story on a special feature, my mind flashed back to the day I stood in the Choeng Ek Killing Fields Museum in Cambodia, listening to my friend Kyle tell his personal account of surviving the Khmer Rouge. Then, I thought of the trip I will soon take to Poland for a study abroad. The group I am with may get the opportunity to visit the Auschwitz-Berkinau State Museum in modern south Poland. This is the site of one of the most well-known Nazi concentration and extermination camps from WWII. I also remembered some of the ghastly sites I saw during my visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.

It is so difficult to believe that:

1) These three genocides happened.
2) Many more genocides have occurrd around the world.
3) If people, for whatever reason, were unaware of and/or uninterested in these three genocides in the past, there may be some happening today.


Those are three very sobering thoughts.

I'm going to transition from the hatred of genocide to the topic of my own heart. How many times do I get angry with someone and don't forgive them? Track with me. A pastor said this morning that sometimes, even after the God of the Bible says to forgive- that he is the Judge- it is easy to say, "No, thanks. I am not going to do that. I want to let this offense steep for a while." I agree that this is easy to say. I am often tempted by the wound-licking act of refusing to extend mercy. But when I give into unforgiveness, I forget the rich mercy shown to me by Jesus and many other people in my life.

When I see evil in this world, I will react in one way or another. My reaction to Hotel Rwanda was a blend of anger, shocked fear towards the depth of man's sinful condition, and the hope of what a righteous man can be used to do. When I was at the Choeng Ek Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, I had a bit of a momentary crisis of faith that I think relates to the anger I felt during Hotel Rwanda. Suprisingly, this moment didn't happen while I walked on a path surrounded by divots in the ground that had once served as mass graves for thousands of innocent people. It didn't come when I saw victims' old clothes, shoes, and strips of cloth that had been used as blindfolds. The crisis came when I read a display describing the top men in the hierarchy of the deadly Khmer Rouge.

One man, Kang Kek Iew, was photographed with his communist title, Comrade Duch, typed below his picture. This man oversaw the systematic torture and murder of some 17,000 Cambodians in the S-21 prison in the mid 1970's. Near the end of his short biography, I read that after dropping off the authorities' radar when his work with the Khmer Rouge was complete, he became a born-again Christian. Wait. If this is true, and only God knows this man's heart, then according to what I believe, this man will be in Heaven with me one day. This man. This man who helped fill the mass graves I just stared into. Forgiven? Aquitted by God?

I remember becoming confused and angry with God. I stepped outside the museum for a moment and wrestled with the questions, "How could he let this man just be washed of all the penalty of his sins? How is his soul's 'crimson stain' of murdering masses of innocent people 'washed white as snow'?"

Then it hit me like a painful migrane. Grace.

My brain was racked trying to wrap my mind around the weight of this new realization of Jesus. His grace and mercy is given to absolutely ANY person who repents and trusts in him for salvation from the wrath of God. His death on the cross paid the debt of ANY and all sin. In that moment, I realized my dwarfed theology. Before that moment, I would never have said consciously that I think some people are forgivable while others are unforgivable. However, that is exactly where my anger at God sprang from after reading about Kang Kek Iew's conversion. Grace is much weightier than I thought.

Not that Iew's conversion brought his 17,000 victims back to life. Not that it righted the traumatizing effect of the man's crimes in the least. But, as I reflect on the movie I just watched and the evil I have seen in the world, I am also reminded of the only source of grace that can cover the penalty of sin in a person's life.

"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." -1 John 1:8-9

Japan meets Texas meets Cusco

It has shaped up to be a very international summer! After returning to Texas from Guatemala, a good Japanese friend of mine visited for about a week. He was studying abroad at the University of Oregon, and my friend and I met him on a college ministry trip we took back in January with our school's BSM. Before returnig to Japan, he wanted to see the rustic west, and we were thrilled to show him! Some close Tarleton friends and I had a fantastic time showing him around Dallas, Ft. Worth, and Stephenville. It was unforgettable to reconnect with our friend! As sad as it was to see him go, I am glad he is back home safely in Japan.

I am now blogging from Cusco, Peru! After a cancelled flight in Lima and lots of sleeping in terminals, my team and I were welcomed with a giant banner, balloons, and new smiling Peruvian friends! They work with a ministry called Zona Segura (check them out on facebook). The ministry reaches out to 18-25(ish) yr olds in Cusco. They provide a "safe zone," as the name describes, by building relationships with people, telling them of salvation in Christ, and teaching them everything Jesus taught! My team will be working alongside them this week in different schools and universities. There will also be an opportuntiy to go into the mountain villages in Cusco. We will also get to visit Macchu Pichu on our last day! I am very excited to see what God doe this week. The team consists of teo amazing families, 2 beautiful girls from my church, my parents, and four of my closest friends!

I love y'all! Thank you for your thoughts and prayer!