29th March, Thursday
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxynz. 27 letters in the alphabet. dun believe go and count. ;)

how do you describe feelings? happy, sad, worried, elated, joyful. how to describe combination feelings? like you feel happy bout something but sad about the other. how to describe such feelings? sappy? hapd? haha. ever felt ?????????? haha.

once upon a time i was in church doing up some nice decorations for a wedding service to be held the next day. i went over to help an auntie paste something down using scotch tape. pull, cut...i had both hands on each end of the tape....paste....eh? i said it pretty loud, "why this scotch tape not sticky?!" apparently i attracted germaine's attention and she popped her head over. then she started laughing non stop. hahaha. so duh.

i think i'm born in the year of the goof. always goofing things up. hahaha....

rach tungling graduation today. should be fun. going back to church of singapore, which is the church that i grew up in as a kid. got class till 315, going home first to change and put down stuff. the grad students all wearing nice nice, some guys wearing coat and tie. sheesh. i'm suppose to wear a bit nicer too. haha. cos gonna take photo. ;)

today's io exam was ok. 4 questions, 1 hr. managed to answer all the questions but i realised 1 answer was almost totally out of point. *shrugs* as quoted by elaine, "8 marks is a difference of 3 grades." scary man. went for breakfast with the group after that. the conversation steered towards the differences between guys and gals. some real complicated stuff there. laugh like siao man. weili 1 was telling us about his "story", the girls kept siding with the his gf insisting he was in the wrong. obviously the guys were on his side. haha.

sometimes people just want to be heard and understood. unfortunately its alot easier to give advice or criticize the person in their mind. (random thought, not connected to the above)

another rubbish post...

a light hearted moment

27th March, Tuesday
thurs i've got this exam for a module called intelligent organizations. i spent the whole of my monday, which is a rest day, reading thru the book. told rach in the afternoon that i'd never finish studying plus i read already can't get into my head. the following sms conversation transpired in the evening when i was about to call her.

rach: you finished studying?

me: nope, i'm into this thing called lifelong learning. can never finish studying.

rach: lifelong learning is for "old people". haha.

me: (picks up the phone and calls her)

haha. so cheeky right? lol.

the blogs becoming too serious, must post something diff once in a while. hahaha.

take the gift and give another one

26th March, Monday
ah ha! the message today was really good/relevant/timely whadever you want to call it. the preacher was an elderly man, looks so serious but he can be quite funny, esp the part he shared when someone called him e.t. haha. he's called l.t. can't rem the full name, paisei. anyway, he mentioned the cross in his sermon which was entitled walking by faith and not by sight. along the way he asked this question, "what does the cross symbolize? when someone tells you that christians should 'carry the cross of Jesus', what does he really mean?" that got me thinking for a while, and immediately the words pain, suffering and sacrifice came to mind. then he said that the cross is actually symbolic of self giving. tada! so anti climax right? but i still thought it significant enough to make an effort to run it thru my mind for memory.

so at night i was doing my qt as usual praying and all and almost suddenly, the full weight of the message seemed to dawn upon me. i felt tears welling up in my eyes. din really cry lah. haha. man liu blood don't liu tears. cos i've been wondering alot recently about the future, specifically, about what i'm gonna do when i graduate. the tried and tested path is, of course, finding an accounting/auditing/tax related job, the other option is to go into full time youth ministry. getting a job is pretty straight forward, not much worry there. its the idea of going full time that gets me on the seat of my chair. frankly i'm worried, worried about so many things i couldn't find space enough to list it down. kidding. like would i be a suitable candidate? i'm intensly worried that i'll reach a point and end up stagnating the rest of my life away. i don't wanna be like that, i wanna be sure that i can be effective! then theres the worry about finance. you've got to know my family background to be fully clued in on this but lets just say that a full time ministry position will never be as rewarding monetarily as a job in auditing. and so it was with this backdrop, that the weight of this morning's message came a-crashing upon me.

it struck me hard. like boom. haha. Jesus death on the cross was symbolic of self giving. not only that, in fact it was the ultimate act of self giving. it just dun get any bigger man. the guy laid down His life, not for himself but for someone else. He gave His life man! what more can a man give? is it possible to give more? i seriously doubt it. He gave me the gift of life, in exchange for his death. could i ever give back to Him more than what He gave to me? could i outgive him? well, all these years, i've served in the youth ministry (aga aga 9 yrs), the time i've spent, the sacrifices i've made. even if i added all these together they wouldn't amount to much. even if i let go of a well paying job to serve Him my whole life, even that would not add up. He paid the ultimate price, He gave the ultimate gift. and so the only logical thing for me to do, i think is to give my life to Him. even then, that could never, ever, be too much.

listen!

21st March, Wednesday
was reading the book celebration of discipline by richard foster. how apt, considering discipline is not one of my strong points. got stuck at chapter one for a long time, but now i’m picking it up again. was reading about desiring the voice of the living God. how cool is that to have God speak to you! i can’t think of anyone in this world who wouldn’t want that for themselves. especially if yur having real trouble deciding between the better of two paths when both paths seem equally acceptable. so anyway, here are the israelites, the people God has chosen for himself, the ones whom he first revealed himself personally to, these same people turn around and happily decide that they would rather have a human king than to have God as their king. this is symbolic because its like they relegate themselves 1 level down. so instead of listening from God direct, they wanna put someone inbetween to listen to God for them. they are in effect becoming second hand listeners. pause a mo here, din we just say that we’d love to hear from god direct? it seems the reality is we want to hear from god direct only if its convenient. where it isn’t convenient we’d not mind if we were second hand listeners, like the israelites. to be fair, the israelites weren’t helped by the fact that all the other countries surrounding them had human kings and they seemed to be prospering. but here’s where it gets interesting. i mean, we’ve looked at this whole thing from our point of view, like what do we want, how we feel and how we think…..so what does God think? here’s what i think God thinks, or rather what the bible says God thinks. within the context of that episode i described about the israelites, there we actually detect a note of sadness when God says, “they(israelites) have rejected me from being king over them” 1 samuel 8:7. remember the last time you got rejected? =( sad huh?

i think we can safely draw out a lesson from this, that is that God wants to have a direct hotline to us not a secondhand hotline. or to put it in closer proximity, he wants to be family, not just a distant relative. he is sad when we settle for anything less than a personal relationship with him.

and so ps 40:1 has become my tagline recently. “i waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry.” cos i know i don’t hear from God a lot of the times because i don’t have the patience to wait for him to reply. when i refer to hearing from God, i don’t mean the general impression or feeling kind. cos i was inspired while reading genesis and how God spoke to abraham. it is so different from what we experience today, where we hear a “word” from God. this guy hears sentences and paragraphs, enough to fill a storybook. i’m not saying a “word” is no good, but i am saying we shouldn’t be satisfied with just a “word” when God actually has much more to tell us. so that’s where i’m heading. will let you know if i have any progress. =)

experiences to remember

7th February, Tuesday
they say these things mould us, they shape us, they change the way we percieve people, things and life in general. they come in all shapes and sizes, different forms and full of suprises. some are good some are bad, some are happy others sad. experiences are part and parcel of life. when you go out to look for a job as a fresh grad, they ask you if you have working experience. when you talk to someone and comfort them they ask you how can you understand what i'm going through unless you have experienced it yourself. when you move into a new phase in life you always ask for advice from people who've been there before, they will share with you their experience. but are all experiences good for you? i'm pretty sure you know of people who've gone through bad experiences and come out worse off from them.

is it possible that two different people go through the same experience and yet come out of it differently? sure! take the example of lance armstrong, stricken with cancer yet in the following years after not only did he recover, he went on to become one of the greatest cyclists ever. but for every lance armstrong there are others who are unable to come to terms with their illness and the quality of their lives deteriorates even after they recover.

in the christian circle, we talk about God using our experiences for his glory and that is true. how better to encourage someone who lost a child through miscarriage if you yourself have had the same experience and testify that God has given you strength to see you through? but again, the question arises, can the same situation happen to 2 different people and have a different outcome? sure! one person may come to terms with the tragedy and still be thankful to God, the other person may become bitter and resentful. that is where the bible, the word of God helps us to understand and come to terms with the sometimes cruel experiences that come our way. it is like an electronic scanner, the kind that you see in supermarkets. unless you have a good and proper scanner you can't really decipher the data that the bar code on the item contains. without the scanner, the bar code looks like a mumble jumble of lines. in the same way, without the wisdom and revelation in the bible, we look at life and it just looks like a mumble jumbled mess of random events. the moment we take up the scanner, the bar code begins to have meaning and so when we look at the bible we then begin to realise that life on earth is more than a bunch of random events placed together but rather an intricately woven piece of art and the picture is one of love, God's love for mankind.

John 3:16 "for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son(Jesus), that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

what is really important, really

21st January, Saturday
each of us is made unique. we are unique in our physical attributes, like our voices, our finger prints, our intelligence, our looks, our personalities etc. these are pretty obvious, but what came to my mind was how unique we are when it comes to what we think is important to us. when you are a certain age you think that finding the right secondary school is the most important thing, at another age you think that looking fashionably sharp is the most important, at another age you realise that you aren't complete without a significant other so finding one becomes the most important thing, at another age you think back on your life and wonder what significance it has been and you realise that making the remainder of your life count for something is the most important thing, perhaps at another point you also think that your parents have made huge sacrifices to bring you up and so making it up to them and taking care of them is the most important thing to you. indeed each one holds a thing important to them that is different from any other. but i do sometimes wonder where god fits in to the equation.....

i have to admit the things that surround me in this world take my attention easily, simply because they are tangible and they have an "in yur face" kind of attribute about them. if you had a mosquito bite on yur nose, it'd catch yur full attention because the itch is sooo tangible and you just can't get rid of it. which is why i easily get caught up in living my own life, i sometimes forget about god. ouch. i'll be really honest, there was a time not too long ago when i couldn't even find the time to read my bible, say 2 chapters a day. no time no time, busy busy busy these were some of the choice excuses i would feed my brain to stave of the hunger of guilt. and it just went on and on and on before i snapped out of it. i do look back at that time with disgust. if i was honest, i'd say i was busy busy busy, but not too busy to go catch a 2 hour long movie.....no time no time no time, but got soo much time to play dota (an average game is 1.5hrs)....tired tired tired, but sit infront of the tv/computer for hours on end.

if yur wondering why i'm talking bout this is cos i read a passage in matthew that provoked me deeply. matt 13:45-46 "..the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. when he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it". when i read this passage at first i thought this guy is either a crazy nut, or he's not. in which case he must have stumbled upon something, something precious and so important that he was willing to give up everything he had just to pursue that thing. have you found that thing that is so important that it would change your entire life if you had it? if your answer is yes, then you might wanna ask yourself again, is the pearl that you hold really a fine pearl? or just an imitation? or worst, you find one day that you are clutching on to nothing but thin air....what is your fine pearl? are you looking hard for it? it'll change your life.

i don't know about you, but i've found my fine pearl. jesus, saviour, lord, friend. =)

reflections of the day before

17th January, Tuesday
nothing spectacular in my reading today, but i'm still on schedule. =)

i attended my cousin's memorial service last sunday. it seemed like yesterday, i was driving with all my might to reach the hospital when i got a phone call from my mom telling me my cousin had passed on. i remember slamming my hands on the steering wheel with frustration, i would've kicked myself if i could but i was driving. i wanted to kick myself so hard cos i remember a few days ago we were gonna visit him but becos of some lame reason we didn't, he said it was okay and we thought there would always be another day. that day never had a chance to come, and now it was no more. i wanted to kick myself because it took me so long to make my way down to the hospital, i remembered recieving a call from mom when i was walking to church for musician practice at 2pm, i was leading. mom told me something happened but she didn't know how serious it was and she would update me as soon as she knew. if only i had immediately rushed down i'd at least have seen him a last time before he passed on....

anyway, i was suprised that a year later my cousin's cell group requested their pastor to hold a memorial service for him. suprised that these people who were in no way related to him, remembered him enough to organise the service. i would've thought that by now most people would have moved on with their busy lives and clean forgotten about him but it seems they still remembered. it was a touching service, my uncle spoke about how tough it had been through this past year. i think they were very touched that my cousin's cell group organized the memorial service for them. as i was sitting by the side during the service, it reminded me what church should really be like. people who go out of their way to help another believer in need. a place that extends beyond the four walls of the church where we hold our service and into the walls of every heart.