Winding down...
ahh... finally some time to unwind from a month full of busyness and..strangeness.
The past few weeks have been weird and unsettling, to say the least. The circumstances I found myself in wouldn't have been that strange if they'd occurred separately, but they all happened as a series of things that just came one after another. Put together, they felt quite bizarre and displaced me out of my comfort zone, pushing me to cope while trying to make sense of them. If I could make some sense and have some answers, it'd probably have helped.. but I don't have them. I'm actually feeling tired from all these unusual situations. and not to mention extremely distracted from my school work.
Besides its strangeness, I had a particularly humbling week. I was losing the attitude of learning and daring to fall and try again to an attitude pride and self-glorification. kinda saddened by how I have changed over the recent years. what had happened to the teachable heart that wasn't afraid of making mistakes? Nevertheless, I'm thankful for this wake up call. This is what happens when my face is not kept heavenward.
It hit me in the shower just now that maybe these few weeks have been a season of testing. I feel stretched because in every situation, one after another, I had to make the decision whether I was going to translate my faith into action. Seriously, nothing was easy. Yet, the truth of what was written in James 2 about true faith being demonstrated through our deeds came home to me. Faith isn't true until it has been put under trial and testing and emerges stronger than before. It was so much easier to know it in my heart that I believe in Jesus, and that I have the heart to love His people and to serve them. But these few weeks, I found out for myself just how much of it was true and how much I fell short of God's standard. How much do I really believe in Jesus and how far am I willing to go for His people? The thing that really troubles me is that through all of this, I'm just struggling and struggling. Where is God in this, what is He trying to do, why is He doing all these and where is the heavenly joy and peace I once recognized?
I'd also like to write about something I deeply regret. During the first week of bible study a few weeks back, one of the discussion questions asked: "Do you recall a time when you thought you were glorifying God but in actual fact, you weren't?" During the sharing, a lawyer from my group shared about how she used to argue and engage in debates about God with non-believers, thinking that she was helping to win the case for Jesus. But she later learnt that hey... God isn't interested in winning an argument as much as He loves the person who is arguing against Him.
This stayed with me every single day till tonight. I think about it often and each time I think about it, I regret making that mistake more and more. I used to boil each time someone criticized God and the truth about Jesus, ridiculing Christians. I just had to give a piece of my mind. Some friends weren't that extreme...they were happy to engage in a dialogue. And I remember thinking that I just have to win this by having the last say and by disproving their arguments. When I look back now, it's so foolish. Not that it isn't good to have a stand, but all of those came out of a very wrong spirit. It was a very prideful spirit thinking that I could prove God's case. Who am I to do that? and I didn't even have to...God's case is already proven. I completely forgot how God passionately loved the people whom I argued with. On hindsight, if I'd come from a loving spirit at that time, perhaps some things would've been different today.
Anyway, it was quite an incredible night spent at nol's place with my ex classmates and other friends. I miss this lighthearted fun and banter we used to share everyday. I had quite the encounter tonight spending the last hour of my week with a blind man. At first, I couldn't understand why he went on and on and on and kept repeating the same questions over and over again. Then I thought.. if I couldn't see a thing and I was completely shut off from things that are changing constantly before me, how terribly insecure I'd feel. What amazed me most was how he knew a gazillion bus routes using kinesthetic memory; using his sense of movement to trace each turn and stop and remembering them by heart. I thought to myself, "How heightened and disciplined his senses are!"
God was illustrating something. Just like the blind man, sometimes, I can't see what is before me when everything seems beyond my comprehension. It scares me, and I feel terribly insecure. This is when it is so important to be able to trace God's voice by heart and navigate using that heightened and disciplined sense of where God is moving. Writing this now, I recall the cloudy vision that pastor saw, where I wouldn't be able to see clearly. But my ears were sharp to hear from God. gosh!! perhaps it's really coming to pass... hmm.... but somehow sharpness feels a little blunt these days.
owells... time to shut my tired eyes :) no alarm clock tonight! whoo! love this genting weather today. please stay for sometime and let us Singaporeans enjoy it while it lasts!
speaking of which... the crazy 8.9 earthtquake + tsunami + infernos + potential nuclear disaster in Japan is so traumatizing I don't really know where to begin praying for them. :(
