I think you would be impressed with our lovely Hanoi apartment building. It has a very nice reception area with a young security guard/doorman and a helpful young woman at the desk. Small coloured tiles and small lights are imbedded in the lobby floor to mimic a stream running through the lobby.
There are three elevators available to take us up to our 19th floor apartment. I hold my card in front of the door handle and we enter as the apartment door unlocks without a key. Very modern!
The stark contrast? Yesterday as I waited to take an elevator downstairs, the elevator used for moving furniture and for moving construction materials (many apartments are not yet finished or occupied) was stopped on our floor. In front of it was a large two handled wooden cart that could be pulled by one person. It was exactly like what may have been used 100 years ago. One of the two construction workers was a woman wearing a traditional "pyjama type" suit with traditional conical hat. (Sorry, I didn't have my camera with me.) The wooden cart was being loaded with heavy bags of sand to be used in the finishing of the tile floor in one of our neighbouring apartments.
21st century keyless entry and a woman construction worker with tools that could have stepped out of a photo from 100 years ago. Stark contrasts abound here.
At Hanoi International Fellowship we are preaching on the theme "Light Has Come" at both of our congregations. Isaiah in the OT and John especially in the NT often reference the stark contrast between light and darkness. If we look at our culture and the people around us only in physical terms, we can think they are just like us - and we like them. But John and Isaiah - and in other ways the rest of Scripture - keep reminding us to look at our world with spiritual eyes. If we do, we will daily live with the awareness that we are light in a dark world because we live in Christ, the Light of the world.
This stark contrast is even greater than the one I observed yesterday on the 19th floor of an apartment in Hanoi.
There are three elevators available to take us up to our 19th floor apartment. I hold my card in front of the door handle and we enter as the apartment door unlocks without a key. Very modern!
The stark contrast? Yesterday as I waited to take an elevator downstairs, the elevator used for moving furniture and for moving construction materials (many apartments are not yet finished or occupied) was stopped on our floor. In front of it was a large two handled wooden cart that could be pulled by one person. It was exactly like what may have been used 100 years ago. One of the two construction workers was a woman wearing a traditional "pyjama type" suit with traditional conical hat. (Sorry, I didn't have my camera with me.) The wooden cart was being loaded with heavy bags of sand to be used in the finishing of the tile floor in one of our neighbouring apartments.
21st century keyless entry and a woman construction worker with tools that could have stepped out of a photo from 100 years ago. Stark contrasts abound here.
At Hanoi International Fellowship we are preaching on the theme "Light Has Come" at both of our congregations. Isaiah in the OT and John especially in the NT often reference the stark contrast between light and darkness. If we look at our culture and the people around us only in physical terms, we can think they are just like us - and we like them. But John and Isaiah - and in other ways the rest of Scripture - keep reminding us to look at our world with spiritual eyes. If we do, we will daily live with the awareness that we are light in a dark world because we live in Christ, the Light of the world.
This stark contrast is even greater than the one I observed yesterday on the 19th floor of an apartment in Hanoi.
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