End of Year Reflection

I think the highlight of my year is you, C. How you saw me through the busy first half with open house and all the level 3000 craziness. How you inspired me to search the scriptures so I would have something with which to encourage you when you are down. Again, the thought of which makes me wonder if I like you any less or worse, if my relationship with God has somehow imploded on itself.

And my friends would attribute the change to you. They would say that I’ve kicked back and become more friendly and cheerful. My church friends would claim that I’ve grown to be more gentle and caring, slower to anger and aggression.

But strangely, our decision on 24^th to be friends… added a new facet to this change. Now I feel my heart is broader, I feel myself quicker to offer help to others. I feel free, liberated to be the best that I can be.

Sometimes I look back and frown. You seem to have grown so dependent on me. But can things turn out any differently between couples? I frown again, I seem to be missing something.

Right now I’m loving being single and free, but I won’t be forever. I thank you for everything you brought with your presence and also the parting gift. I’m thinking hard to make sense of it all and how they came to be.

I begin 2014 fearful, helpless. I pray that God finds me in this helplessness and woos me with his love and gentleness. May I be won as the year begins and won forever.

10,000 small things

There's this thing about camps,

It's how things charge at you like a pair of crazy charging elephants,
assaulted by lack of sleep, aggression of games, immaturity of some and of course the occassional spikes of displeasure which rises out of your very own heart.

So I thank God for one thing, for the energy to battle each of these charging elephants, one after another, tirelessly, what more, joyfully.
It's worth it when they told me that I feel like a changed person.
It's worth it when I hear that my group members have quoted me in the days following the camp.

I thank you Lord for inspiring a rare dedication to build a robust testimony, through which my sharings were made palatable to the people who regarded me as genuine as they listened.

I pray now dear Lord that when they think of me their minds travel a little further, a little further to think of the great God who is behind.

Let me continue to be disciplined in these uncountable small things.

Amen.

why the grass is greener on the other side

you have a tendency to make the grass around you less green.

Next time you like a girl who you kinda know is not good for you

try this, unsubscribe her from Facebook.
A big favour you can do for yourself is to remove the avenue for accidental glances of her beautiful smiles, better still, you miss out on all the times she is sad (which are really opportunities for you to make your way into her life).

Trust me, I did this before, and still do it.

It's crazy right? People out there will tell you to follow your heart.
If you do such unsubscribing nonsense you're tinkering with your heart and denying true love.

For me, I've come to distrust my heart.
I've come to see it as an enemy, an agent of sabotage
 and by no means a compass.

The Dreams Betray

The dream remains fresh in my mind.

I'm bewildered, I cannot shake the parallel between what HM told me the other day.
Of how she reacted when her good friend got into a relationship with this other girl.
That she cried even though she thought she was long over him.

And in my dream as they told me that you got attached to that burly guy with a heart of gold...
I didn't miss how my anger fired up. How I protested
"If you could settle for that, then why not me!"

I didn't know this desire laid so dormant. But now I know.

Now I know that I must watch myself so much closer.
Now I know that I must keep you that much further.

on service next year

Talking with dad is just an amazing thing. It's like he doesn't really give any advices but the careless, assumption loaded things he says and they kind of reaction it draws from me tells me a lot about myself.

We were talking about service next year, and work in the holidays. He thinks that youths are so free that if they have any financial woes, it's because they're not getting a job and working for the cash.

So that was the first break point. I pointed out that I'd gladly work if he finds someone to cover my duties in church. After all, I'm nothing like those youths who are so free.

Then he actually had the cheek to tell me to not blow my commitments off proportion. To which I steadily disagreed and challenged him to think if he ever, in any point in his life took on as many responsibilities as I did.

And then he said oh well, it's only natural since the youths are going to inherit the church, they're the future leaders and the should rise now, he says.

I snapped. I reminded him that the adults should attempt to fix their mess before passing it down to us. I reminded him that the aged who are retiring are exaggerating the take-over: they are looking too far down the generation, there are good 30-40 year olds sandwiched between what they perceive as generations.

Inescapable, I also voiced my heart felt sentiment about teaching in adult Sunday school. Of how I should not have taken the bait of "oh you have the gift of teaching" because heck, I'm already using it in youth and the adults should have felt the pain of an empty slot, a message that says "you've been resting on your laurels far too long".

I must say that, sadly, at the end of the year, I'm neither fully happy to head the youth ministry nor be a Sunday school teacher.
But I can't escape it either, I can't escape the fact that a layman life is not for me.
There are those who on a natural day, unprovoked, think of the church and the needs of people.

I'm the inert sort who doesn't know anything until he is thrust into a position where he must see it or die.
I'm that sort of useless guy.

just don't care

I was having a chat with a few friends. Well, perhaps a chat none of us should be having amidst revision, but nonetheless enriching.

I recounted a conversation that I had with my mum.

My mum has always found my dad looking disapprovingly when she did her sales talk to people about her health food.
She told me that dad gave her a black face again last Saturday when she was speaking to a church auntie about health products.

I asked her if she has ever considered that maybe dad doesn't believe that she's selling the health food to help people, but instead, thinking that she's really just after the money.
Who wouldn't be unhappy with that?
The expression on her face tells me it's the first time she considered such an idea.

My point was, I can't believe that after 20odd years of selling health food and receiving black faces, never did she sit herself down to think through the possible reasons.
I'm offended, I'm afraid because this only means she doesn't care nearly enough to think it over.

Then we think about how... little people think things through. And.. how little they care.

give thanks

Just went to collect the scripts for 3211.
I'm.. well... shocked for the results I don't deserve.
I doubt the module will amount to anything more than a B+ but still, what mercy.

I also think about the days when I sit down and study for my exams with great discipline.
For all the things I'm not, but you make me to be, I thank you, God.