"Noonchi"

My mom swears she has this thing called noonchi. It's actually kind of cute. At graduation, she said she analyzed the boys who were there, and using her expert noonchi, she said she picked out the most "marry-able" guy (I disagreed with her for obvious reasons... haha. I don't think I could ever see my guy friends that way.)

In Korean culture, there's a concept called noonchi. Loosely, it can be translated as being intuitive, mindful, and quick-witted; or more simply, it's having the ability to understand the things unsaid. The purpose of noonchi is to recognize people and things for what they really are without any direct communication of it.

When it comes to ministry, I really think God can use people with noonchi to reach out. There's a line in "Everything," by Hillsong, that captures the essence of having eyes for His people:

"Open our eyes,
to see the things
that make Your heart cry
to be the Church
that You would desire"

There are so many people to be loved, many hungry souls to be served. One of my ministry struggles has been noticing others' needs before mine, especially in times of my own stress and brokenness. When I'm burning out, I'll turn my noonchi radar off so that I could use my energy to focus on getting back on my own feet.

But I really want to follow Christ's example. Even after accomplishing miracles, after feeding the multitudes, after traveling on foot to different towns, after giving multiple sermons, after answering people's difficult questions, Christ still looked at them with "compassion," and He served them for "they were like sheep without a shepherd."

Philippians 2:3-8 becomes more and more real to me every time I revisit it:

³Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. ⁴Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Lord, let the interests of others be known to me! Open my eyes so that I can see the Church the way you do, and expand my heart so that I may serve people the way Christ did. Help me to understand people and their needs, to initiate intentional relationship, to see the conditions of people's hearts, and most importantly, embrace them in love.

(That's so interesting. I typed in "intuition" for an image search, and half the images were of eyes.)