Planet Shakers and Tim Hughes

The Planet Shakers and Tim Hughes concert was really so wonderful. I really didn't know what to expect because this was my first such concert (a christian band with a huge audience), and it was really so, so wonderful and refreshing. it was so spirit-led and i'd never had such an experience before. it was a really wonderful time that i wouldn't want to ever forget. I'd never worshiped in a mega setting before and it's really something to see a sea of people praising and worshiping. like the speaker had said, it was indeed more than just a crowd at a concert enjoying the fantastic music.. there was something more than that. looking back, it was incredible how He could find each individual in the midst of everybody worshiping. i mean, tt's what always happens anw, He finds each of us everyday in the midst of 6 billion people.

The live music was so great. and tim hughes' pieces really touched me a lot. they're intensely beautiful(my favourite's Everything), and hearing them live was a total different encounter from hearing him on my stereo. gosh, i can't imagine the kind of joy it must be to be called to serve and being enabled to serve so passionately and mind-blowingly well.

mercy me!

it's nearing 7am and I've yet to go to rest. I've just finished the first draft of a long paper. I really can't write long papers.. why do people have so much to say anyway? or rather why do we have to say it in such a long winded fashion? the word limit thing is more like a word target.

i've never been this overwhelmed by work before! what a new height. it's insane i can't bear to imagine beyond the next day because I wouldn't be able to breathe. submission datelines, internal datelines, freaking so many of them!! Right now, I'm learning to take every single bit in baby steps and enjoy my work and projects. I'm constantly reminded that God's mercies are new everyday. they're meant to be refreshed each day, which also means they're meant to only last us a day. how am I to survive a whole week on a single day's supply of mercy?

With Him in the reign, we're able to live each moment. fully. isn't that a great blessing

things in hall are really gonna change so much next year. but what's new? things changed so much this year anyway and it was so great. I have no clue what God'll have installed for me in the next academic year.
i must admit though that i'm really sad that many of my close friends aren't staying on any longer.but life goes on and all of us have a purpose wherever we are. more importantly, we're where He wants us to be and nothing can be better than that.

yeap my stomach's growling it's goin to be breakfast time very soon! k i'll nap and wait for food time.

love~

racial minority

I went to litte india today with wanyi and it was kinda weird cos I really felt as though I was a tourist in my own country. some of the advertisements and signboards were only in Tamil. For once, I felt out of place in my own country. haha aptly, i'm doing this in place/out of place social geog reading. I was telling her that we could be doubly marginalized cos we were 1)chinese and 2)female. everybody around us were male and dark-skinned. I can't recall the last time I belonged to the racial minority in a place. I haven't been to Little India in so long it was fun! we had a good time together(: the food we had was disappointing though. I don't know where the good ones are!

I'd just begun exploring the radio function in my mac's itunes. hahah it rocks la. so many different genres of music available streamed from all over the world. really i love it! and they do not have commercials, how nice! I like listening to music I've never heard of ever in my life because it constantly feels as though there's a surprise waiting cos i have absolutely no clue what comes next in the song. ok nvm i dunno how to describe it.

i'm working on my first paper this semester and i feel like a noob all over again haha. God please help me!

and out of the corner of my eyes I spy a little card from Dan and Ani that just flew down from the top of my speakers. it reads:
"So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive His mercy and we will find grace to help us when we need it."
Heb. 4:16

love to all~

:D

greatest fear

...you whom I have upheld since you were conceived,
and have carried since your birth.

Even to your old age and gray hairs
I am he, I am he who will sustain you.
I have made you and I will carry you;
I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

-Isaiah 46

It's hard to imagine it from His perspective exactly what I'd been planned for when He made me. Y'know all the things He always says that we're specially made by him in our mothers' wombs.. I feel very honoured to be, but I sometimes (most of the time) can't see what those special purposes He'd in mind are and I can't see what it is that is so special about me that He'd made and is working on. It's very inward looking, but I'm curious to know. Sometimes it is clear how he is working around me but I usually see a blur. anw I just quoted that verse because it reminds me all over again how much a dear we all are to Him as children of God, for Him to have been always carrying us (like a baby?!) It's insane how confidently He says all of the above in Isaiah.

I was reading Utmost and the author wrote this "Our greatest fear is not that we will be damned, but that somehow Jesus Christ will be defeated. Also, our fear is that the very things our Lord stood for— love, justice, forgiveness, and kindness among men— will not win out in the end..."
I think my biggest fear is that He turns out to be unreal, false, nonexistent, and this whole Christian thing a huge lie.
I find it very strange how I can believe so deeply in Him, have a relationship with Him, know the things that have changed in my life obviously by His divine grace, and feel all these insecurities about Him at the same time. Is it human nature or what?

splendour

I saw all those stars in the night sky while on the NS highway! Everytime I travel to and fro from kedah I'd ask God for just a few moments of those. It's really really so breathtaking! It's nearly pitch dark and the coach is racing along cliffs and in between ridges.. I can see the silhouette of the forests and up there a gazillion stars are twinkling out of the sky. If I pin my gaze on a particular star, it feels as though somebody's thrown out a million diamonds and time's just frozen and so has my heart.

Every few seconds a car would be zooming past on the opposite lane and its blinding lights spoil the perfect picture at my window. Sometimes there would be reflected lights from the car behind my coach and it's so annoying because I can't see anything until the car speeds up and overtakes the coach. Anw it just popped into my mind that it is like an analogy of how my pride hinders my sight of God's magnificent work and spoils the experience of Him. That's how hunger for glory or for man's approval can really ruin it. Despite the lights, I can still make out a little bit of the skyline but it's really nothing compared to it in pitch darkness. If only I could put out all those extra lights that are fighting to shine and let His breathtaking and gentle beauty shimmer for all to see.

I was also wondering AGAIN how HOW in the world anybody could look at that, look at sunrises, sunsets, the sky, the patterns on the zebra, the details on all that marine life when we scubadive, and believe that the whole world was a coincidence? or a few atoms had collided in space and created this.
When I was in Sec 4, I loved LOVED to look at the sky through the crowns of trees. haha it was like my hobby on the bus. it looked so cool and pretty y'know that sort of feeling when you're captivated. I knew that there was a lot of beauty in my world and there was a lot of goodness around me and among people but I really couldn't make any sense of it. I couldn't put my finger on it. I felt like something was stuck. They didn't mean anything else other than what had met my eyes. I'd wished that there was something beyond what I could make of that beauty.

I love His creation so much I can't even begin describing how and how much. Whenever I look at it, I feel so small and loved as a child of God. It is His way of revealing His splendor before me and His way of allowing my heart to worship.
I really, really wish that every single person in the world could share this, if only we'd just allow Him to give it to us.

Chinese New Year

i'm writing in kedah now. it's so relaxed here that it feels good doing readings. I'm so happy to be back here with my paternal family. Everybody here wonders why we're still tight as an extended family even though we see each other only once a year. I think it is because all of us treasure the family a lot. Each uncle and aunt makes the effort as head of their own homes. Last december we were all back here to celebrate my grandpa's 81st birthday. it was a huge birthday bash we planned for him which lasted only 2 hrs. but the preparation was SO much fun n crazy and everyone was involved doing this and that. the singing lessons were good and silly. Distance is really nothing. anw I don't understand why I always feel reluctant to leave spore for kedah every year. But whenever I'm here, I feel reluctant to go home. I'm leaving tomorrow... too fast too soon! it's insane. =(

Happy Chinese New Year!

Obama!

The American presidential race is so exciting! for once I wished I were an american so that I can be a part of all that hubhub. Singapore's ones are really omgosh.. worse than a candle to the sun. I'm for Obama! and when I read this...

"Candidacy taken seriously despite his race or because of it?
The key factor that galvanizes people around the idea of Obama for president is, quite simply, that he is black. Take away Obama's race and he is some relatively anonymous rookie.

What gives people a jolt in their gut about the idea of President Obama is the idea that it would be a ringing symbol that racism no longer rules our land. President Obama might be a substitute for that national apology for slavery that some consider so urgent. Surely a nation with a black president would be one no longer hung up on race.

Or not. Perhaps Obama is being considered as presidential timber not despite his race, but because of it. That is, for all its good intentions, a dehumanization of Obama. What Obama has done is less important than his skin color and what it means. The content of our character is not center stage here. We are a long way from Selma, but not yet where the Rev. King wanted us to be.

Yet, in the grant scheme of things, I will take a little unintended dehumanization over naked bigotry."

haha it's the way I see it too. I'd want him to be President because he's a black (or even better half-black-half-white) and I'm anti-racist and I agree that it is about time for some symbolic action. haha anw I realise anti-racism is ironically an intolerance of the intolerance of others. The more I read about him, the more impressed I'm by his attitude of realism, the way he is practical and sensible about his Christian faith, the way he points out painful and scary truths about their present and past governments. I like the way he values transparency. But I must admit that he hit my soft spot being racially sensitive and with his ability to heighten racial awareness by simply being in the position he is in now. I love racial issues. It is something I feel strongly about and something that interests me deeply.

I find his take on gay-rights issues interesting too! I'd never thought of it in that manner - to disentangle marriage from gay-rights. it's kinda like the perfect balance between his Christian values and his need to remain politically neutral by likening gay-rights to civil rights and to have marriage maintain the sacredness the institution should be rightly accorded with.
He's written a few books and I really, really want to read them.. especially the one about his personal racial and identity struggles. I'd always read those about Asian-americans, but I have yet to pick up one about an African-American or a black-n-white.

Him first?

I'd always understood the importance of placing God first in a relationship, that even though he/she may be the significant other, God is always before anybody else. But I'd never realize that it is important to extend the same understanding to other relationships, such as friendships. As in, yes God is first in everything and everything else, first in my life.. it's just that I'd never been consciously aware of it among my friends.

Time and again, I feel played out and deeply disappointed by friends here and there.. sometimes it's just unbelievable, other times it's just plain hurtful. I can't help feeling the anger and the hurt. and I surprise myself because I'd always thought myself stronger than that. But when reality whacks straight in my face, I begin wondering about the other ones out there whom I care about.. are any of them going to do the same? I wonder if I'm worth that little in the eyes of others.. what happened to their integrity?

But put all that "I'm hurting" and "I'm disappointed" and "my betrayed trust" aside for awhile, search for Him and take God as a point of reference. I saw many things that I'd missed in the past.. like how He'd been trying to tell me things but I'd chosen not to listen. If I'd been more obedient, the friendships could've gone His way instead of the way they're now. It isn't as though I'd never lied in people's faces or been dishonest. His love that is real love is slow to anger and keeps no record of wrongs. That's the kind of love that would be a joy to share. Whatever it may be, I know my worth as a child of God and I know how much my friends are worth to Him, however they've been, that He would die to have them love Him back (He literally did).

I'm not saying that I should deny my anger and self-pity. We have feelings for a good reason and it makes us human and alive to feel all sorts of feelings. The wisdom of the Spirit of love and peace just makes me sit back in wonder.

Love...

I ask you to take every single word and let it linger.. as though it is a wonder to behold. I've come across this passage from Corinthians countless times but every time I read it, my heart can't decide if it wants to melt or soar. I think whether or not we are a believer of God, we just have to agree that there is so much giving in what this love has to offer. There is so much joy in it that it's impossible to contain it all. Really just so much.. when this kind of love goes around.. around friends, families, couples.. you just know it.
This is real love. This is God's love.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

I want to hold these words tightly and seal them upon my heart for as long as I live.

remembering..

I'd just opened today's daily bread and what it offered was very apt in my journey right now and to what I'd written in the previous entry. nice timing (:

Here's a little excerpt:
“David strengthened himself in the Lord his God” (v.6). Other translations use the words encouraged or refreshed.

In what ways can we strengthen, encourage, or refresh ourselves in the Lord when we’re feeling discouraged?
(it was even in italics!)

First, we can remember what God has done. We can list the ways He has cared for us in the past, and how He has provided for us or answered a prayer request.

Second, we can remember what God has promised. “Be strong and of good courage; . . . for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Josh. 1:9).

Like David, let’s learn to strengthen ourselves in the Lord, and then let’s leave the rest with Him. —Anne Cetas

“I will strengthen,” so take courage,
Child of God, so weak and frail.
God has said so, and it must be,
For His promise cannot fail! —Anon.

Our greatest strength is often shown in our ability to stand still and trust God.

A few weeks back while I was in Kedah, I had been thinking about these same stuffs and I was given Psalm 77 during my quiet time. Then, I was really very disheartened and I was badly struggling to stay by Him. And it stunned me because it spoke precisely of what I'd been going through and what I had been thinking. It was as though God had read my mind and knew what my thoughts were. It was like Him saying "Hey, see I'm still here. I know exactly what has been, and is, happening in your heart and mind".

Psalm 77:11-12 reads "I will remember the deeds of the Lord; Yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will meditate on all Your works and consider all your mighty deeds". That was what He'd told me do then. It corresponds with the first tip above in today's daily bread on remembering what He's done and has provided for us in the past.

=)
baby steps...