Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Holiness

One of the differences between faiths is the idea of personal holiness. This is God’s plan for us – that we be holy just as He is holy.

But the concept of what sin is differs, so there are different ideas of what holiness means. The bible teaches that sin is bound in the heart. We are not adulterers because of what our bodies touch, but rather because of what our hearts desire. We are not murderers because we kill, but rather because, in our hearts, we would like to kill. And this problem of sin in our hearts is uncontrollable – no amount of devout rules keeping can enable us to control the sin that reveals itself in our heart, often in the most embarrassing moments. And our holy God will not put up with it ... forever.

Our destiny, God’s desire for us, is that we be holy - free from sin. Not that we arrive at the point where we meticulously keep a set of spiritual rules and customs, but rather that we arrive at the point where our heart felt desires are in accordance with His will.

Pre-Fun Fun

There was a certain comfort to the screech as our taxi successfully faced down an oncoming car at slightly more than full speed. It was good to be heading back home from the airport.

My mind drifted back to a few hours before, in the Dubai airport, where Hamroz and I were separated for long hours. Because she was refused a visa on her Tajik passport, she had been forced to transfer to “terminal two” without so much as a chance to get at the luggage - unloaded on the other side of customs. I journeyed, after collecting our luggage at the real terminal, to the “Dubai” side of terminal two; she was sequestered on the “airport” side. After managing to pass half our luggage (Hamroz made a quick friend of a policewoman to pull that off) my third cultural construction gave me another idea.

The terminal two companies that venture planes into Kabul don’t place the typical western cultural value on tickets; they never make you feel like having one gives you a right to travel. So, I waited in line to fly, even though my ticket was for three days in the future. Though they pulled me aside, in the end the wrong-date ticket didn’t matter and I flew. The terminal two disorder worked in my favor, (making me a certifiable third-culture veteran). After seven hours of solitude, in line to board the plane, Hamroz was shocked to see me amble into the back of the same line.

Now, we were together again, routinely risking our lives in the taxi home (far more foreign aid workers have died in Kabul in traffic accidents than have died by intentional violence – it sounds like a pleasant fact until you are traveling). We were soon to be enjoying the smell of our garden, soon to be reassembling furniture taken apart for the move, soon to be receiving guests and coming up to date on the real news of what had been happening in Kabul during the time we were away.

Previous Blogs

This blog is one in a series of blogs that chronicle pictures and first hand accounts of all the fun we've had in Central Asia over the last several years:

year2inktown.blogspot.com
year3inktown.blogspot.com
iskafghan.blogspot.com