Update

Oh my. So last night I went to bed, having written this post, completely saddened by the current state of the world, the dictators, tyranny, oppression, injustice.

I wake up this morning, and my Twitter's going crazy.

Osama Bin Laden had been killed during the (South African) night.

What a terrifying reminder of God's sovereignty and His justice.

[See some comments on Mark Driscoll's FB page here: "The cheering crowds remind us that justice is glorious & comes ultimately through Jesus cross or hell. Justice wins" and here: Romans 13 "there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God...if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer."]

"the whole creation has been groaning"

I was asked to pray a prayer of intercession tonight at church. Below, some of it:

In the global context, Father, it seems as if every day the list grows longer of countries that are rising up against dictators or oppressive governments. We praise You for having created humans in your image, humans who know the difference between justice and evil, freedom and oppression, but Father, this has led to horrific accounts of violence, deaths, oppression in the Middle East and Africa in countries like Syria, Yemen, Tunisia, Uganda, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Zimbabwe. We pray for your people in these countries, that they will hold firm to Your Word and to Your Sovereignty, and we pray for Your Will to be done.

Father God, we also pray that people in these contexts and around us will realize that true freedom is only to be found in you, that no matter what they do to fight evil in this lifetime, evil can only be ultimately defeated by what you have done in Jesus. Romans 8 reminds us that “the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.”

In doing prep work on the various countries, I grew increasingly saddened. So many countries on this Guardian.co.uk map, and so many countries mentioned in this Foreign Policy article on the events in THIS WEEK ALONE. I was going to list more in my prayer, then realized that I'd be listing most of the countries in Africa and in the Middle East.

Oh Lord, your creation is moaning.

As we head into 2010....

I was at my physio earlier today, waiting, as people tend to do in aptly named waiting rooms, for the last checkup of 2009. Emotional state: a little demoralized and frustrated. The foot hadn't improved much since the last time I'd seen her, and it still pained quite a bit. What was I going to do in the new year, I wondered grumpily.

The answer came not in a booming voice, but on the wall that I found myself facing while doing some exercises later in my session. While leaning against the walls with my legs bent at a ninety degree angle, and squeezing the plastic ball between my knees, there was nothing else to do but stare at the wall straight in front of me (especially as my physico makes me do keep that stance for a few minutes.. She's sadistic like that.)(No seriously, you give it a go.)

Then I saw this poster that had undoubtedly been there the whole year, but which hadn't caught my eye previously. It was one of those cheesey cliches, with capital letters in some sort of serif font emblazoned across a poetic scene of water and mountain. But as I read it again and again, I thought, heck, that's a much better way to end off my blog for the year than my previous post:

There is no need to fear an unknown future, when you serve a known God.

2010, bring it on!

Feeling useless?

The next time you feel like GOD can't use you, just remember . . .

Noah was a drunk

Abraham was too old

Isaac was a daydreamer

Jacob was a liar

Leah was ugly

Joseph was abused

Moses had a stuttering problem

Gideon was afraid

Samson was a womanizer

Rahab was a prostitute

Jeremiah and Timothy were too young

David had an affair and was a murderer

Elijah was suicidal

Isaiah preached naked

Jonah ran from God

Naomi was a widow

Job went bankrupt

John the Baptist ate bugs

Peter denied Christ

The Disciples fell asleep while praying

Martha worried about everything

The Samaritan woman was divorced - more than once

Zaccheus was too small

Paul was too religious

Timothy had an ulcer . . . AND

Lazarus was dead!

No more excuses now. God can use you to your full potential.

Besides, you aren't the message -- you are the messenger.

God is bigger than...

I'm not usually the overly emotional or sensitive type. Sure, I'm overdramatic and happychappyluckygodippy but I've never cried in a movie before, and I doubt very few people have seen me burst into tears. Ice Queen. That's me.

But we age, and along with everything else, our tear ducts also wear out and hence we sometimes find that emotionality starts to take over. (This is the Ice Queen trying to defend the alarming position of finding herself a bit more emotional in the previous years.) 

I could, at this point, explain a bit more, but I'd prefer not to. Suffice it to say, that there are good reasons for these tears. Suffice it also to say that this last month has also been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster due to the potential burnout and reconfiguring of system and some other unexpected twists and turns (albeit no tears! AHAH! Ice Queen is back!). And I've been dipping and rolling and swimming in a weighty marsh of emotion. Then I heard the voice of sanity say to me: "God is bigger than your emotions."

Hallelujah! I don't need to feel as if my emotions are in control of me. 'Cause they're not. God is King over me and King over them, and I need not bow no longer to feelings that 'I can't seem to control'. BAH! AHAH!

So predictable..

I've been having a MAJOR existential crisis the last few weeks with regards to my future. So this time, I tried to be more adult about it all: I wrote out my options on a piece of paper, I asked my nearest and dearest to do a SWOT analysis of me, I prayed on my metaphorical knees, I bugged the brains of the older and wiser.. and I still don't know what I'm going to do. No magic appendix appeared in the back of my Bible, no dreams of me owning an island, no big billboard popping up in my garden.. Nada.

Obviously, this meant I've been in a bit of a tizz. And the thing with existential crises is that you tend to think that each one is special, unique, and the craziest one you've ever experienced. Ever. All other previous existential crises SO dim in comparison.

So imagine my surprise, when I went to have the Annual Debriefing with the Guy in Charge of the English Tutors, and he asked me what I was planning to do with my future. And as I listed my options, he listened attentively, then laughed and said: "Wow, that's pretty much word for word what you told me last year. I swear, if I hauled out your response in the file on my cupboard, it'd be exactly the same!"

Sheepish grin.

What an idiot! I'd completely forgotten that I'd pretty much been reacting the same way last year! So predictable. At least I'm consistent, right? But at the same time, it proved to be a great reminder about God's faithfulness: I'd gotten through this year pretty awesomely despite massive pre-freaking out, so I can surely trust God to look after me again! Yeehah!

BLERGH... being sick sucks :(

You might have noticed that this month's posts this far, have been more signposts to other people's words and sites, rather than my own blogposts.

This is because I have only recently returned from the dead. *cough cough*

[Excuse me, evidently melodrama, as well as the odd germ, evidently still courses through my blood.]

Either way, I bet you it wasn't pretty. I'm not quite sure myself, as I was out of it most of the time. I'm not even sure what hit me. Whatever it was, it hit swiftly, and it hit hard. Sunday morning I was feeling a bit yuck. Sunday evening, I went to bed with a slight fever.. and then proceeded to sleep for pretty much 33 hours (with maybe three hours on-off/asleep-awake dozing inbetween). And I've pretty much spent most of that time since in bed, recovering. Slowly. Sigh.

And the irony of it all was that May was/is CRAZY month. Lots of admin, lots of research, lots of marking, lots lots lots lots of things scheduled into my diary. And with one swift invasion of little invisible bacteria, all this was cleared out of my lifeplan and instead rest and sleep became priority. And I think there're two key lessons that can be drawn from this:

1) Perspective. Like I said, I'd thought this would be my crazy month, but as soon as it came to the point of living (by staying at home to rest) or dying (forcing myself to go to all those scheduled things), perspective came into place and all the things that had seemed so important, didn't really seem so important after all. And I suppose that's what the eternal perspective we need to be keeping - not in the sense that we should be lassez faire and unconcerned about everything.

2) Control. God really reminded me again that He is in sovereign control. I'm one of those people who organise and plan like crazy (mostly 'cause I have to - much to the frustration of my inner slob - what with all my interests and hobbies), but sometimes God gently reminds me (or in this case, rather abruptly) that I'm not in control - He is. I had no idea this was coming, and I had no idea how long this would last. Only God does!

So yay. I actually think I had a good week off work - though tomorrow I'm going to have my first full day in four days - and time to think through some stuff. Who thought being sick would be so productive!

A thought I had recently...

God is God over my time too.

--
Grace

GGATHND: Part IV - Letting go and letting God

I just read this most amazing book called "God's Grace and the Homosexual Next Door" by Alan Chambers and the Leadership Team at Exodus International. It's so wonderful I just have to share bits and pieces from it! It's written so graciously and humbly, yet uncompromising on the truth that ALL have sinned and that Jesus has died for ALL :).


In this post, I merely want to share this funny little anecdote I read in the book. The writer, Randy Thomas, talks about wanting to share the gospel with someone he starts developing a friendship with. However, the opportunity never arises. He thus concludes:

I must rest in the fact that my Lord is bigger than I, and He will watch over and guide her in His timing to His truth. I know the Holy Spirit… and His name is not Randy (p.127).

I just love the way his story reminds me not to get frustrated when I think things aren't going the way I want them to, but to rather rest in God's good timing and planning :) I know the Holy Spirit too! And His name is definitely not Grace!!

*All extracts from Chambers, Alan. God's Grace and the Homosexual Next Door. USA: Harvest House Publishers, 2006.

Going to the mall turns out to be an educational experience!

At the mall today, I was intrigued to see these pushmobiles [for lack of a better word] that parents could hire to push their kids around in.

Children would sit inside car-shaped vehicles, which even had steering wheels that many a kid tried turning in an effort to direct themselves. However, the reality was clear: the parents were the ones who were making the cars move AND the ones in control over where they were directed! No matter how much the kids were pretending that they were in control, they weren't!

And I thought, what a cool illustration for life as we know it!

Firstly, God is the only reason we're 'moving' at all. As it says in Colossians 1:17 "In him, all things hold together." If God were to say to the world to stop at this moment, it would! God's power is mindblowing! e.g. Psalm 33:6-7
"By the word of the LORD were the heavens made,
their starry host by the breath of his mouth.
He gathers the waters of the sea into jars;
he puts the deep into storehouses."

Secondly, God is sovereign! Even when everything's going hunky dory and we think we're in control and that we're steering our own lives, it's only cause we might be 'steering' in the same direction as God is for that moment. And how comforting that even when our car seems to be going in the wrong direction, there's still Someone who's in control! And Someone who's got a much better view of what'll be best for us than we could ever imagine for ourselves! Romans 8:28, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose".

As Paul joyfully concludes in Romans 8:31-32 "What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all - how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?"

This world and the next… #3

[For context, check out This world and the next... #2 ]

So after a turmoil-filled and emotional few days, quite possibly weeks, of thinking about all the injustices of this world, and of the things I wanted to help with, I found myself one evening absolutely miserable: to put it simply, I was just sick of and fed-up with being trapped in this academic circus.

[To be honest, I have an inkling that this feeling could have been aided in part by my many swiftly-approaching deadlines.]

Frustrated, I voiced my thoughts to God [okay, maybe I shouted a little bit inside], asking Him why I was here when I'd be of so much more use out there. Wherever out there was. [I never get a clear picture of what "out there" means; probably because a gritty reality might scare off my overromanticised mental images of being a gracious, supercool, much-beloved humanitarian ;)]

Yet, after more thinking and what-I-shall-euphemistically-call-prayer, I came to realize that my frustration was stemming from a belief that I knew better than God..! Maybe I WON'T be of much more use out there. Maybe my calling will be to stay in this academic high tower, and to be a Christian witness to those that are stuck in intellectualism... [Gee whiz, I hope not! They think too much! ;)]

I must trust in God, that He knows what is best for me, and that He has placed me in a situation where I CAN make a difference where I am. Because He has.

Hold on...there's a light at the end of the tunnel

I find it incredibly hard to think of something to say when faced with friends and loved ones who are going through hard times. How can I remind them of God's love and sovereignty without sounding trite and cliched? How can I support them and show that I love them when I don't understand what they're going through? It's hard to think of the right thing to say.

That's why I was so grateful that a friend of mine played me this amazing song by Third Day recently. I love it so much :) because I was also needing it at the time! Hope it helps.

Tunnel - Third Day

Well I won't pretend to know what you're thinking
And I can't begin to know what you're going through
And I won't deny the pain that you're feeling
But I'm gonna try and give a little hope to you
Just remember what I told you
There's so much you're living for

There's a light at the end of this tunnel
There's a light at the end of this tunnel for you
For you
There's a light at the end of this tunnel
Shining bright at the end of this tunnel for you
For you
So keep holding on

You got your disappointments and sorrows
You ought to share the weight of that load with me
Then you will find that the light of tomorrow
Well it brings new life for your eyes to see
So remember what i told you
There's so much your living for

There's a light at the end of this tunnel
There's a light at the end of this tunnel for you
For you
There's a light at the end of this tunnel
Shining bright at the end of this tunnel for you
For you
So keep holding on
Keep holding on

So remember what i told you
There's so much you're living for

There's a light at the end of this tunnel
There's a light at the end of this tunnel for you
For you yeah
There's a light at the end of this tunnel
Shining bright at the end of this tunnel for you
For you yeah
There's a light at the end of this tunnel ooh
For you, for you yeah
Shining bright at the end of this tunnel
For you, for you
So keep holding on
Keep holding on
Keep holding on now

You got your disappointments and sorrows
I'm gonna try and give a little hope to you


Here's a Youtube clip for those who want to listen to it: Tunnel- Third Day.
NOTE: it's not the official music video.

Good, better, BEST!

I've been struggling through something recently [ooh, how cryptic], but have been blessed by the support of my close Christian sisters and brothers. I've also been extremely encouraged and excited by God's constant reminder of how faithful, how good, and how Sovereign He is, even when it seems to me that everything's just going HaYwiRe!!

Like Paul writes in Romans 8:28

And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose

Struck by this consistent reminder, I smsed one of my close friends, Goat, to tell her "God is good! And He is giving me His strength and power to be strong, but I'm still a bit sad.. okay, very very sad."

To which she replied:

"Don't let the good be the enemy of the best!"

The point being not that God isn't the best, but that whatever's happening in my life is not MERELY good, but it's the best!! How humbling to think that our God and King is always concerned about what's BEST for us, even though we might only be allowed to understand it with hindsight.

PS Okay okay, I didn't really remember my sms word-for-word, but that's the basic gist. And Goat's sms was not included in its entirety.
PPS Nice referencing, eh!