Tuesday, March 24, 2009
I never knew Singapore was so deeply entrenched in my heart until when I did my Singapore Foreign Policy Paper. I have subconciously wrote Singapore as us, we, ours etc instead of the netural her that is appropriate for an academic paper
True blue Singaporean indeed (Or should I say true red and white?)
Innocence
11:21 PM
I was supposed to be doing my DJ. But this scene just stuck inside my head.
-
I was on the bus as it drove in NUS and there I saw, dead leaves just drifting down as though it was fall in summer. The bus moved closer to my destinated bus stop and there I saw, yellow flowers littering the floor.
The image stuck in my head for a long long time. What a beauty.
Innocence
9:06 AM
Sunday, March 22, 2009
It is always apt to reflect on life once in a while right. But since this is a public blog I would keep some of the details away.
I think the year started with me being very very happy to be in FASS. I was literally savouring my readings like holy scriptures. I loved my classes with the exception of 1 which I never understood why I still attended it and another which I have some problems grasping some concepts. But school's all well.
It was against this setting that I slowly evolved. I blame it on the recuepration of a failed relationship but ever since school started, I found myself going home more often and out less often. I reserve my fri-sunday for church related activities but that's about all. I begin to talk to the old friends of mine online, ask them out for lunch, suddenly beginning to understand the true meaning of friendship. But slowly, I beginning asking myself, what's my purpose in life. I mean, I am a Christian alright, but it was beginning to seem like I was a fri-sun Christian rather than a full time Christian. Something was fundementally missing and I begin to embrace the art of being the salt and light of the world. Contrary to what I thought, what I am supposed to do in school is to show that Christ lives and is alive. That doesn't mean that I go around evangelising (though evangelism is a critical component) but rather, I show God's love to them in whatever ways I can. I became more intentional in blessing and talking. I became more conscious of what I say and do, because it begin sinking really deep into me that, people don't care about big theories of Christianity as much as the behaviour of Christians. Even if I don't end up leading a person to Christ, I sure don't want to end up leading a person AWAY from Christ.
And it's not easy. University is probably a place of test for me. I meet all forms of people. I met highly irresponsible people withinm school that I had to consciously stop gossiping about them. There are also people who seems to skip classes like nobody's business and I know I had to honour God. And the list goes on. And I realized the key challenge now is really to maintain God's beacon of light in the midst of all these. And through this I learn to depend on God. I probably made more mistakes than ever, said the wrong things as ever. But I know, it's through these mistakes that I would learn.
I am slowly able to see how God is trying to use me. Allow some boasting here (in any case if I boast,I boast in Him). I have two-three commenst from people asking me things like how come I so different or something to that extent. I know instinctively that people are looking at me and I look to God, and honestly, I am scared. I am a Peter. God places these people in front of me, what if I fail at what I am supposed to do? But I realized, it is also this fear that drew me closer to God.
I also learnt the meaning of it's a honour to serve God and that God qualified those He called. Sometimes subconciously we think we are better than God, that God NEEDS us to serve Him but slowly, upon recongition of my own weaknesses, I realized, I really don't deserve to serve Him at all. But He still uses me. Then instinctively I know, this is the grace of God. Never have I encountered Grace so vividly before.
School aside, there were also a lot of other lessons I learnt. I will start with a short one about prioties. I commented to a friend one day that "No time" is a crappy excuse and I sincerely believe so. It's a matter of what's important to you. Take a very simple example, I have time to go on facebook but I have no time to pray. That's utter nonsense! I rather be honest to say that facebook is more tempting than prayer for various reasons to me than to brush it apart with no time. But yes, the issue at hand is prioties. What is important in my life? And I work from there.
Another lesson would be that of perservence. Well contrary to many people's perceptions, I didn't come to Covenant and immediately became accepted into the community. It takes time, effort and a lot of perservence. For me it took almost a year. It was only at the dawn of this year that slowly I felt completely in the community. And I realized, that a lot of people lack this perservance to push on. CG wasn't the easiest to break through. I mean everyone knew everyone and I am like NEW. Bonds don't take 1 session to make. They take many many sessions. There were times where I felt so ousted when everyone in my CG had things to do and I was completely left alone. So many times I find myself sitting at a corner and wondering why on earth was I here in the first place. But perservance paid off. Slowly bonds begin to build, slowly I begin to interact more, slowly I begin to serve, slowly. And it took a year. A painful year given the fact that a lot of things happened in 2008. But I thank God it's over, that I found friends that I can slowly confide in within church and with IDT it comes another group of friends/sisters that I can open up to too. God is good. God is faithful.
I am beginning to be more rested in God. I used to be someone who likes being busy. It's like what Pastors had said, busy somehow is the new cool. The more busy you are means you have either more friends or more important or something. So I intentionally do 101 things to make myself look more busy. But no, I learnt, it's not the point at all. I need the rest, the time out to slowly remind myself what's important and what's not, i need the break to find the idenity (with God). When work gets over my head all the time, I lose God. And back to the prioties bit, if God is important, if my relationship with God is important, then I will give time to it. And that is one of the key reasons why I am not as active in school. I need the free time to rest.
I remembered back in JC, I was told that Christianity is not all about emotions. Even if God cannot be felt, it doesn't mean that He doesn't exist. Well I understood the point but somehow it went to the back of my head. It is until now, when I look back at my last year and I look at myself now that this point resurfaced. Perhaps it was IDT and CG that is strengthening my faith, perhaps it's the books I read, perhaps it's that I am growing old, but really, God exists period. I don't need the tingly feeling (sociogists call it the collective consciousness) during worship to know that God is the Lord of all and loves me and takes care of me.
I think I will close off this by no means complete reflection on the point of intentionality. Yes I am in intentional discipleship training but that is not the point. A christian life is an intentional life and the reason is simple, we are all fallen creatures, if we allow ourselves to do whatever our hearts want us to do, we will be a proper Christian or human being for that matter. I learnt experientially that, a lot of things need to be intentional. I need to intentionally do my journalling and to analyse the passage to learn more about God and to strengthen my faith, I need to intentionally connect with people so that I can share Christ to them, I need to intentionally build relationships and not expect a r/s to fall from the sky and the list continues. But intentionally doing a lot of things I never would do, I found joys and lessons at the most unexpected places. By intentionally talking to my mum, I found out how alike we really are. By intentionally hooking up with some old friends, I learnt how friendships can be lasting. And I learnt really,that no matter how intentional I get, I am never good enough to fit God's standard. But God says I am good enough because His grace is sufficient for me.
And I praise Him.
Innocence
11:34 PM
Friday, March 20, 2009
I am pretty familiar with the temptations of Jesus. But as they always say, the beauty of the scriptures is that no matter how many times you read it, there is always something new to it. I got to testify to it.
This time I was brought to how Satan asked Jesus “If you are the son of God” which challenges our identity. Sometimes the reason why we are so desperate to prove ourselves is because we don’t know who we are in Christ. What Satan is tempting Jesus really is to prove that He is the son of God. But He didn’t need to. An easy illustration is, if I am smart when people provoke me and insult my intelligence and ask me to prove myself, do I? No I don’t need to. Often, it’s the people who are unsure of their capabilities who are oh-so-desperate to prove themselves. Therefore, I need to remind myself of who I really am in Him to know that I don’t need God’s extraordinary blessings to prove that I am a child of God. I am a child of God, period.
More about Mr Satan. Satan promised Jesus everything under the sun which is pretty self elusive. Everything belongs to God. Satan controlled a lot of things yes, but he didn’t control EVERYTHING which he claims. It reminds me of how we are often tricked by lies by the devil who seem to promise us that if we turn our backs to God, we will get everything. Not true. The devil tries to tempt us by saying our own strength can do everything. Not true. God is the one who created the heavens and the earths and everything. He is THE one who has control over everything. By extension, sometimes, we lose sight of God’s enormous glory while giving in to the devil’s short term gains. We trade God’s grand purpose for us for devil’s temporal joy. Quite stupid on hindsight, but don’t we do it all the time, consciously and subconsciously? When we don’t see the eternal joy, hope and life in God, we accept whatever Satan gives us and miss out the thing of ultimate importance in our lives.
And I thought the study bible puts in the next line in a nice way.
“Jesus refuses to demand God's protection on his own terms. Such a demand is neither faith nor loyalty; it is sin.”
I think it’s a line that is worth thinking over. It talks about the nature of God and our alliegence. God is not a money tree whom we call upon whenever we need help. Sin, simply defined, is walking away from God. The fact that we are demanding Him to protect us shows that we assume that we are Lord which is obviously not true. We can’t demand God to do all these when He is the one who created us right.
Innocence
10:40 PM
Monday, March 16, 2009
I havent't did a proper blog post in a long while, no? Well I do type something everyday because I am forced to do devotional journal but nothing specially for this, no? So let's talk about Sunday today.
Apparently, due to my absolute lack of time management, I have not completed what I needed to do by Sunday and it's due on Monday. *Gasp* So I was struggling very badly on whether to breka my promise to Daddy God to not work on Sabbath or to stick on with the promise - bearing consquences. Well, it's not that bad I tried to reassure myself, the paper is due at 6pm and I can get up in the morning to do it and make it for my project meeting. It's not that bad. Of course my heart is saying, no and trying to explain it doesn't work that way. In any case, so I decided that maybe I really should spend the time in prayer and dug out some of the old Christian songs that touched me along my Christian life and, well I was blessed. I haven't felt so close to God for sometime, I haven't thrashed things out with God properly for a long long while. Unlike the previous times where I get this wow emotion,this time, it's just bland, me and God. I don't know, it's weird. Perhaps this is what they call the next stage of teh Christian walk where it's really not all about the FEELING but the deep seated knowledge that He exist and He is speaking to me. I don't need to feel God to know that He exist because HE exists as a fact.
In any case, after that I went to bed and all only to find myself UNABLE to sleep because I was boggled by certain issues. And behind my head was like, die already la. If I can't sleep means that I can't wake up tomorrow and the whole work issue begin to pile on my head. And I still couldn't sleep till a long while later.
By some miracle I managed to wake up in time (seriously, 7am is a feat for ME). And I thought that maybe I should honour God in spite of all these and do my DJ for the next one hour and utter a short prayer. So I ended up starting work at 8.
And everyone was done.
The project meeting ended.
Nothing big happened.
God brought me through.
I learnt what it means to honour God.
=)
Innocence
4:04 PM
