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. =)