“…all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.”
1 Co 3:23
This is a very simple logic, isn’t it? We are of Christ, and Christ is of God, therefore we are of God. In the same way, what God possesses belongs to Christ, and what Christ possesses belongs to us, therefore what God possesses belongs to us as well. Being children of God, we do have free access to all things since they are our Heavenly Father’s possessions.
To many of us, this idea is probably in theory only, not in practice. We may be rich, but don’t really know how to access our wealth, therefore we all lead our lives as paupers.
Whether we are rich or not has a lot to do with our capacity of enjoying the good things in life and has very little to do with the number of our possessions we happen to own. If we lose our appetite for food, all the delicacies from the peak of the mountain or the depth of the sea (山珍海味) will not make our mouth water at all. In this aspect, the rich ones are the poor people with a big appetite for food, not the wealthy who have lost their craving for delicacies. Good food certainly can be purchased with money, but the appreciation and enjoyment of it is a gift from God, which cannot be bought.
We seem to have devoted a lot of our time and energy trying to earn more money so that we can buy whatever can be purchased, neglecting to take time to smell the roses, which is absolutely free, or lose sight of the beauty of nature that changes daily yet remains constant. We may get to the point when we are able to afford buying paintings by famous artists, but have absolutely no appreciation for the art works done by the greatest Artist in the entire universe.
We are what we perceive ourselves to be, and being rich or poor is in fact a matter of perception. We can all become enormously wealthy by cultivating the way of seeing and the ability of appreciation. The simple truth is that we don’t have to possess to enjoy. Of course we do have to possess a fast car in order to taste its speed and excitement, but if I venture to guess, the joy of walking in the woods sure beats speeding down the autobahn any day.
Sweets ruin our appetite for a regular meal, yet we continue to dig into them as if they were the solid food that we need to sustain our lives. Sweets turn into junk if we have too much of them. They don’t make us strong, they make us fat, and we are well aware that the obese are not necessarily rich. In our passionate pursuit of wealth, I am afraid we may have all become obese spiritually and physically and have lost the capacity for true happiness. We devour the dessert as if it were the main course and lose the desire for what’s good and wholesome for our body and soul.
Most people can afford buying a ticket to view the grandeur of the Grand Canyon, but only a few of them can possess it by appreciating the Canyon for what it is. It may take years to hone the skill, but it’s well worth the effort, for they are the wealthy few who can take the Canyon home after they witness the natural wonder. We don’t have to be Bill Gates to own the Grand Canyon.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Boasting
“So then, no more boasting about men!”
1 Co 3:21
I have always thought this popular Chinese saying pretty funny. “It’s a fearful thing for men to be famous and for pigs to be fat (人怕出名豬怕肥.)” Why is this case? We understand that when a pig become fat, it will soon be turned into bacon and pork, but there is no harm for a person to become famous, is there? Do we all harbor a secret desire to become some sort of celebrity?
We want people to boast about us, don’t we? Not many of us can become rich and famous, therefore we attach ourselves to people who have achieved the desirable status and boast about them and worse off, we even bow down to them.
I don’t know which position is more precarious. To worship or to be worshipped. If I venture to make a guess, I think the letter is in a more severe peril than the former. One put himself in danger by practicing idolatry, but a person puts the masses in danger by allowing himself to be worshipped. We ought to do all things possible to keep ourselves from being idolized. We may think otherwise, but deep in our heart, we all have a secret yearning to be adored and admired, and we are constantly do things to make it a reality either consciously or unconsciously. Put us on stage before a group of people, and immediately our instinct kicks in and we start to draw attention to ourselves by performing. That’s why we become self-conscious in such occasion because we want to look good, to be well-thought of, and to be considered as a celebrity.
Those of us who are in “performing” ministry are specially susceptible to this kind of temptation. How many golden-tongue heroes have we created after the Protestant reformation when the pulpit was lifted high in our worship services? Church hopping has become a popular phenomenon because Christians seem to leave no stone unturned searching for a star preacher with oratory skill when they get to a new town, and many of them go to church not to worship and to listen to the voice of God, but to hear the voice of men.
What do we do to avoid this deadly peril?
We need to know there is such danger before we take any measure to avoid it. Unfortunately very few Christian workers are aware of this risk and continue to do things to promote themselves in their ministry. In the name of serving the Lord, they in essence are serving themselves and gratifying their secret desire of which they may or may not be conscious.
We Christian workers need to go through the cross before we step behind the pulpit to speak or to sing for God. We will always be egotistic if our ego isn’t crucified. As laypersons, we must avoid idolizing men and creating heroes to be worshipped by abstaining from boasting about men. Glorification of men is a very dangerous thing.
1 Co 3:21
I have always thought this popular Chinese saying pretty funny. “It’s a fearful thing for men to be famous and for pigs to be fat (人怕出名豬怕肥.)” Why is this case? We understand that when a pig become fat, it will soon be turned into bacon and pork, but there is no harm for a person to become famous, is there? Do we all harbor a secret desire to become some sort of celebrity?
We want people to boast about us, don’t we? Not many of us can become rich and famous, therefore we attach ourselves to people who have achieved the desirable status and boast about them and worse off, we even bow down to them.
I don’t know which position is more precarious. To worship or to be worshipped. If I venture to make a guess, I think the letter is in a more severe peril than the former. One put himself in danger by practicing idolatry, but a person puts the masses in danger by allowing himself to be worshipped. We ought to do all things possible to keep ourselves from being idolized. We may think otherwise, but deep in our heart, we all have a secret yearning to be adored and admired, and we are constantly do things to make it a reality either consciously or unconsciously. Put us on stage before a group of people, and immediately our instinct kicks in and we start to draw attention to ourselves by performing. That’s why we become self-conscious in such occasion because we want to look good, to be well-thought of, and to be considered as a celebrity.
Those of us who are in “performing” ministry are specially susceptible to this kind of temptation. How many golden-tongue heroes have we created after the Protestant reformation when the pulpit was lifted high in our worship services? Church hopping has become a popular phenomenon because Christians seem to leave no stone unturned searching for a star preacher with oratory skill when they get to a new town, and many of them go to church not to worship and to listen to the voice of God, but to hear the voice of men.
What do we do to avoid this deadly peril?
We need to know there is such danger before we take any measure to avoid it. Unfortunately very few Christian workers are aware of this risk and continue to do things to promote themselves in their ministry. In the name of serving the Lord, they in essence are serving themselves and gratifying their secret desire of which they may or may not be conscious.
We Christian workers need to go through the cross before we step behind the pulpit to speak or to sing for God. We will always be egotistic if our ego isn’t crucified. As laypersons, we must avoid idolizing men and creating heroes to be worshipped by abstaining from boasting about men. Glorification of men is a very dangerous thing.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Barely Saved
“…he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through flames.”
1 Co 3:15
Being saved is merely the beginning of our spiritual journey, not the ending, yet many people don’t seem to believe this by the way they act after they become Christians.
“Now what?” Some newly-weds may ask this question after they tie the knot and must from then on face the nitty gritty of living together as a couple, adjusting to each other’s idiosyncrasies, which may be more difficult than they ever imagined.
“There has to be a lot more than just this,” some couples may grumble, feeling a little dismayed about the prospect of spending their entire lives with a person for whom they may have started to develop a sense of contempt.
The passion between lovers may easily turn into a fiery furnace in which they are confined if they fail to convert their erotic love for each other into agape love. Our marriage will definitely thrive if we cultivate and nurture it according to God’s commands.
We can’t help but to fall in love with Jesus if we come to know him as he is. Unfortunately many Christians only know him as a Savior, not as a soul mate with whom we may have intimate friendship and fellowship. What the Lord desires to find in his children the most isn’t necessarily holiness or faithfulness; it is their deep love for him that he truly craves. Of course we will likely have the former if we have the latter. The two are not mutually exclusive. We know the reason why he wasn’t pleased with the church in Ephesus as depicted in the book of Revelation – they had lost their first love.
Love is what sustains all things in life and pure love is the only article that can withstand the test of fire. Apart from their love for God, even martyrs die in vain. What will remain on earth after we pass on and what we will take away with us into eternity are works of charity and nothing else. They are the tasks we perform primarily for the love of God and secondary for the love of our neighbors. Nothing beyond these things will remain after they are put to the fire.
I believe what my father-in-law has done with his life has gone forward before he himself moves on into eternity. He seems to be joyful yet the earthly tent of his has ceased to serve him as it used to and he appears to be more suitable for heaven than this world. He remains on earth merely for his children’s sake, but his life will be much fuller if he moves on, for unlike some of us who are saved by the skin of our teeth because of our lack of love for God and our fellowmen, he will just enter into heaven gracefully when the time comes. I pray that the love of God will sustain me like it has grandpa till the end and I will do all things out of nothing else but my love for God.
What kind of shape will we be in when we finally return home to our Father? Will we be like the prodigal son who ran to his father after he merely escaped from the flames of the sinful world?
1 Co 3:15
Being saved is merely the beginning of our spiritual journey, not the ending, yet many people don’t seem to believe this by the way they act after they become Christians.
“Now what?” Some newly-weds may ask this question after they tie the knot and must from then on face the nitty gritty of living together as a couple, adjusting to each other’s idiosyncrasies, which may be more difficult than they ever imagined.
“There has to be a lot more than just this,” some couples may grumble, feeling a little dismayed about the prospect of spending their entire lives with a person for whom they may have started to develop a sense of contempt.
The passion between lovers may easily turn into a fiery furnace in which they are confined if they fail to convert their erotic love for each other into agape love. Our marriage will definitely thrive if we cultivate and nurture it according to God’s commands.
We can’t help but to fall in love with Jesus if we come to know him as he is. Unfortunately many Christians only know him as a Savior, not as a soul mate with whom we may have intimate friendship and fellowship. What the Lord desires to find in his children the most isn’t necessarily holiness or faithfulness; it is their deep love for him that he truly craves. Of course we will likely have the former if we have the latter. The two are not mutually exclusive. We know the reason why he wasn’t pleased with the church in Ephesus as depicted in the book of Revelation – they had lost their first love.
Love is what sustains all things in life and pure love is the only article that can withstand the test of fire. Apart from their love for God, even martyrs die in vain. What will remain on earth after we pass on and what we will take away with us into eternity are works of charity and nothing else. They are the tasks we perform primarily for the love of God and secondary for the love of our neighbors. Nothing beyond these things will remain after they are put to the fire.
I believe what my father-in-law has done with his life has gone forward before he himself moves on into eternity. He seems to be joyful yet the earthly tent of his has ceased to serve him as it used to and he appears to be more suitable for heaven than this world. He remains on earth merely for his children’s sake, but his life will be much fuller if he moves on, for unlike some of us who are saved by the skin of our teeth because of our lack of love for God and our fellowmen, he will just enter into heaven gracefully when the time comes. I pray that the love of God will sustain me like it has grandpa till the end and I will do all things out of nothing else but my love for God.
What kind of shape will we be in when we finally return home to our Father? Will we be like the prodigal son who ran to his father after he merely escaped from the flames of the sinful world?
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Revealed with Fire
“It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work.” 1 Co 3:13
Adversity does not build character, it reveals it.” This is what I have often read in the sports pages. The way we deal with stress and defeat reflects who we really are. Anybody can handle success with relative ease, but dealing with failure is another story.
What fire does is to reveal and to expose, and to turn all the filth and dross into ashes. No one, except Daniel’s three friends, could walk into the flame and come out unscathed. I am afraid when my work is tested at the end time, it will be reduced to a small pile of ashes.
“Get your works published,” my son urged me a while ago while we were discussing the subject of natural talent.
“No way,” I replied. “They are just not good enough. Besides, it would be better if I light a match to them and turn them into ashes,” I added, with the utmost seriousness. That’s exactly what’s going to take place eventually, so why not save the Lord some trouble by taking the matter into my own hands.
There is just so much narcissism and self-adsorption in my writings anyway, and it may put me to great shame when the truth is revealed by fire. Besides, I don’t want the evidence of my intellectual crime to be displayed on the bookshelf of libraries.
The hardest thing for writers to do is to escape from their personality in the process of their composing. No one likes to listen to a person who is full of himself, spewing out his unbridled emotion everywhere. Being a poet and a fan of T.S. Eliot, I haven’t really adhered to the statement he made in his essay about poetry as “not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.”
What must be done is for our personality to be transformed into God’s personality, therefore “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me,” and whatever we write should be an expression of Christ in us.
We continue to be transformed in the course of our service. The more we put Christ into our spiritual buildings, the greater will be the chances of it withstanding the test of fire. Our works will emerge unscathed if they are all about Christ, and nothing about us, all about bringing glory to God, and nothing about boosting my own ego and enhancing my own image.
Isn’t it that what “living sacrifice” should mean to all of us? We place whatever we have on the altar to be burned, and the fire will consume all the dross and impurity and only the purest will be presented to God. We are being purified daily by adversities and consumed by our inability to be holy and, at the end, there is nothing left but our broken selves with contrite and repentant hearts.
Adversity does not build character, it reveals it.” This is what I have often read in the sports pages. The way we deal with stress and defeat reflects who we really are. Anybody can handle success with relative ease, but dealing with failure is another story.
What fire does is to reveal and to expose, and to turn all the filth and dross into ashes. No one, except Daniel’s three friends, could walk into the flame and come out unscathed. I am afraid when my work is tested at the end time, it will be reduced to a small pile of ashes.
“Get your works published,” my son urged me a while ago while we were discussing the subject of natural talent.
“No way,” I replied. “They are just not good enough. Besides, it would be better if I light a match to them and turn them into ashes,” I added, with the utmost seriousness. That’s exactly what’s going to take place eventually, so why not save the Lord some trouble by taking the matter into my own hands.
There is just so much narcissism and self-adsorption in my writings anyway, and it may put me to great shame when the truth is revealed by fire. Besides, I don’t want the evidence of my intellectual crime to be displayed on the bookshelf of libraries.
The hardest thing for writers to do is to escape from their personality in the process of their composing. No one likes to listen to a person who is full of himself, spewing out his unbridled emotion everywhere. Being a poet and a fan of T.S. Eliot, I haven’t really adhered to the statement he made in his essay about poetry as “not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.”
What must be done is for our personality to be transformed into God’s personality, therefore “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me,” and whatever we write should be an expression of Christ in us.
We continue to be transformed in the course of our service. The more we put Christ into our spiritual buildings, the greater will be the chances of it withstanding the test of fire. Our works will emerge unscathed if they are all about Christ, and nothing about us, all about bringing glory to God, and nothing about boosting my own ego and enhancing my own image.
Isn’t it that what “living sacrifice” should mean to all of us? We place whatever we have on the altar to be burned, and the fire will consume all the dross and impurity and only the purest will be presented to God. We are being purified daily by adversities and consumed by our inability to be holy and, at the end, there is nothing left but our broken selves with contrite and repentant hearts.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Foundation
“For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.” 1 Co 3:11
“If God is the final answer to all things, then we will surely lose our intellectual curiosity about all things,” someone commented to me the other day.
“It’s not that much fun getting lost in a maze,” I replied.
I used to have a similar idea to his and was quite proud of being someone who carved his own direction and found his own answers in life. I was lost and enjoyed being lost, for it was so thrilling searching for an exit in the giant maze of life.
I was a moth that rushed to the fire, mistaking a burning flame for a guiding light and ended up scorched many times.
“The joy lies in the search, not in the approach of our final destination,” he remarked, ignoring what I had to say about the issue.
“Is he a man, is man he?” This is one of the lines of the very first poem that I wrote. I envisioned myself as a superman of sorts.
Those who try to rise above humanity sink below it. I came across this line somewhere in my reading. That’s what I was as a young man for a season. I was drowning literally, until I found a strong hand that pulled me up from a moss-covered rock.
Is God the ultimate obstacle of our self-realization and self-actualization, or is he Jacob’s ladder leading to heaven by which we can climb to highest of high? If the foundation has already been laid, why do we still labor day and night to lay a new one? Is it because we don’t believe the foundation is strong enough to support us?
I didn’t usually venture out too far in my search for truth during my youth, for I was somewhat intellectually-challenged, and I suppose a lot of smart people could go a lot farther that I ever did, but all of them ended up hitting a roadblock just the same on the way and found themselves lost and depressed. The only joy of traveling is returning home, so some people say, but constant sojourning tends to make weary travelers restless and homeless.
“The foundation has been laid!” I cry out day and night like John the Baptist once did in the wilderness, yet my message has fallen on deaf ears and closed hearts. Christ has come and gone; yet we continue to search for him in the form of arts and literature, music and drama, science and philosophy, physics and metaphysics.
Some of the drinking buddies of my youth have become scholars and professors, but I suspect that they are still wrestling with the issues that we used to discuss deep into the night over beer and wine, and the resolutions we came up with after long deliberation were drenched by our drunken stupor and have long been buried under the sands of time.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Hooding
I uttered a quick prayer of thanksgiving as I was walking on stage to hood Michael because, besides the great effort he put into his study thus far in his medical career, the Lord has been with him every step of the way and enabled him to complete what’s commonly considered the most difficult among all professional degrees. Michael has worked very hard and done quite well and for that I thank the Lord.
I am also thankful that Rob and Sahar flew back from NYC to attend Michael’s convocation and commencement. William is also home to be a part of our celebration. It has been quite a happy time for the Sea family and the first reunion of sorts since Christmas. Justin also flew in from Dallas to share with us the joy of Michael becoming a doctor. He is such a joy to us and it is the highlight of the day whenever he comes in.
I seemed to have spent five plus years to earn a doctoral degree for nothing but the privilege of hooding one of my boys, but it was well worth it and I am looking forward to hooding the other two someday. The Lord is good and may his name to be lifted up and praised.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Mind
“…no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.” 1 Co 2:9
What our mind has conceived is from what our mind has gathered from study and observation of the physical world through our senses and, as far as the knowledge of the metaphysical is concerned, we can only speculate and conceptualize. We may get some right, but there is no way of knowing until the truth is revealed.
“When we are dead, we are absolutely dead,” one atheist stated with the uttermost certainty in a debate. Obviously he was looking at reality purely from an empirical point of view and the conclusion he had drawn seemed to be perfectly rational to him. “Believing in atheism is intellectually very satisfying,” he remarked. This scholar was indeed quite brave, for he declared that he wouldn’t mind going there if there was a hell. “I will be perfectly happy there, for there I won’t be bothered by any preachers.”
If only we could truly come to terms with the notion that there is absolutely nothing beyond the physical world! If so, we would never ask the “to be, or not to be” question, and venture into the abysmal unknown without the slightest fear. I wonder whether the aforementioned debater will have any dread before he departs from time and enters into eternity. I would be a little bit concerned if I were him, for no matter how firm our belief in empiricism is, we seem to hear from time to time a faint timeless echo, penetrating the barrier of time and entering into the inner chamber of our hearts.
I don’t know which of the following is easier to achieve: to convince ourselves that there is nothing but pure material in this world or that there is something that exists beyond the physical. Why do we even hasten our steps and whistle ever so loudly when we find ourselves walking alone in the dark, trying so hard to assure ourselves that the story of goblins and ghosts are mere old wives’ tales?
We are most likely wrong when we try to conceive what isn’t really conceivable, but to deny its existence merely because of its inconceivability is arrogance and foolishness. In one sense the agnostics deserve more of our respect than the atheists, because they at least have the intellectual courage to confess their ignorance concerning the supernatural.
The fact that we may get it wrong shouldn’t keep us from speculating about the unknown. We may miss more than we hit, but it produces so much joy when we contemplate about what the Lord has prepared for those of us who put our trust in him. Since there is nothing beyond the horizon of this world for the atheists, their imagination must end at he end of the earth, but that’s exactly the place where our imagination begins, and with the guidance of the Scriptures, our spiritual fantasy may even turn into reality.
What our mind has conceived is from what our mind has gathered from study and observation of the physical world through our senses and, as far as the knowledge of the metaphysical is concerned, we can only speculate and conceptualize. We may get some right, but there is no way of knowing until the truth is revealed.
“When we are dead, we are absolutely dead,” one atheist stated with the uttermost certainty in a debate. Obviously he was looking at reality purely from an empirical point of view and the conclusion he had drawn seemed to be perfectly rational to him. “Believing in atheism is intellectually very satisfying,” he remarked. This scholar was indeed quite brave, for he declared that he wouldn’t mind going there if there was a hell. “I will be perfectly happy there, for there I won’t be bothered by any preachers.”
If only we could truly come to terms with the notion that there is absolutely nothing beyond the physical world! If so, we would never ask the “to be, or not to be” question, and venture into the abysmal unknown without the slightest fear. I wonder whether the aforementioned debater will have any dread before he departs from time and enters into eternity. I would be a little bit concerned if I were him, for no matter how firm our belief in empiricism is, we seem to hear from time to time a faint timeless echo, penetrating the barrier of time and entering into the inner chamber of our hearts.
I don’t know which of the following is easier to achieve: to convince ourselves that there is nothing but pure material in this world or that there is something that exists beyond the physical. Why do we even hasten our steps and whistle ever so loudly when we find ourselves walking alone in the dark, trying so hard to assure ourselves that the story of goblins and ghosts are mere old wives’ tales?
We are most likely wrong when we try to conceive what isn’t really conceivable, but to deny its existence merely because of its inconceivability is arrogance and foolishness. In one sense the agnostics deserve more of our respect than the atheists, because they at least have the intellectual courage to confess their ignorance concerning the supernatural.
The fact that we may get it wrong shouldn’t keep us from speculating about the unknown. We may miss more than we hit, but it produces so much joy when we contemplate about what the Lord has prepared for those of us who put our trust in him. Since there is nothing beyond the horizon of this world for the atheists, their imagination must end at he end of the earth, but that’s exactly the place where our imagination begins, and with the guidance of the Scriptures, our spiritual fantasy may even turn into reality.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Handle with Care
Beautiful things can turn ugly if we don’t handle them properly. Very few things in life are more invigorating and exciting than romantic love, but, ironically, it is more fragile than most things that we treasure and it will easily break to pieces if we fail to handle it with the most care.
When the initial courting is over and the relationship between you and your significant other starts to heat up, somehow you may be caught off guard when you two, for some odd reason, start to argue and quarrel at a very frequent rate. It’s some sort of negotiation process perhaps, for you two are just getting to know each other and conflict is probably inevitable, but I have a slight suspicion that something must have gone wrong, for it shouldn’t have to be that way at all. It is really the first breath of winter, telling you that your relationship is heading in the wrong direction and, if you don’t change its course in time, it will collapse rather quickly and you will be crying in the dark, licking your wounds and mending your shattered heart for yet another time.
The one who is worthy of your love should also be worthy of your protection. If you truly care about a particular relationship you should learn to handle it with the greatest care. You should give your best efforts to keeping your loved one whole physically, emotionally, and spiritually by not violating her in any way, physically or otherwise. Love is such a precious thing that it should never be used as an instrument by which we get what we yearn to possess from our beloved. Selfish and possessive love will always end in a disaster and broken hearts.
I will not get any more blunt than what I have said and I trust most of you know what I am trying to convey in this note. It’s disastrous when two people try to find security in another’s love, yet end up getting hurt by each other’s instinctive desire to possess and both become discontent when they begin to calculate their investment and return. “This isn’t what I bargained for,” you exclaim, and start to figure out a way out. Sad, isn’t?
When the initial courting is over and the relationship between you and your significant other starts to heat up, somehow you may be caught off guard when you two, for some odd reason, start to argue and quarrel at a very frequent rate. It’s some sort of negotiation process perhaps, for you two are just getting to know each other and conflict is probably inevitable, but I have a slight suspicion that something must have gone wrong, for it shouldn’t have to be that way at all. It is really the first breath of winter, telling you that your relationship is heading in the wrong direction and, if you don’t change its course in time, it will collapse rather quickly and you will be crying in the dark, licking your wounds and mending your shattered heart for yet another time.
The one who is worthy of your love should also be worthy of your protection. If you truly care about a particular relationship you should learn to handle it with the greatest care. You should give your best efforts to keeping your loved one whole physically, emotionally, and spiritually by not violating her in any way, physically or otherwise. Love is such a precious thing that it should never be used as an instrument by which we get what we yearn to possess from our beloved. Selfish and possessive love will always end in a disaster and broken hearts.
I will not get any more blunt than what I have said and I trust most of you know what I am trying to convey in this note. It’s disastrous when two people try to find security in another’s love, yet end up getting hurt by each other’s instinctive desire to possess and both become discontent when they begin to calculate their investment and return. “This isn’t what I bargained for,” you exclaim, and start to figure out a way out. Sad, isn’t?
Strength
“…God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”
1 Co 1:27
The strong are in control, but the weak are under other people’s control. The stronger you are, the more options you will have in life, but if you are weak, you will run out of options rather quickly.
Because of a particular mistake that John Donne made in his youth, all his avenues of promotion were blocked except one - by the king’s order, he could only become a minister. He could have become many things had he not eloped with the daughter of a powerful man in court, yet he became immensely weak because of the offence he committed. In fact, he even did jail time for a while.
John Donne was a splendid poet, but I think he was at his best when he was ministering to the people in London as a pastor when the city was under the deadly cloud of the Black Death. Many people had escaped from the city to seek fresh air, but the devote minister of St. Paul stayed. He was the strongest when he cried out in sheer desperation: “John Donne, undone!” He produced his best poetry after he suffered great losses in life and had to depend solely on God for solace. His writings spoke to the most when he was reduced to the least and were most life-affirming when he was teetering before the portals of death. His “Holy Sonnets” are beyond compare as far as Christian verses are concerned. The Lord brought a strong man down through various adverse circumstances and lifted him up at the end. One can never become something in God’s kingdom until he becomes nothing. Of all the self-portraits done by Rembrandt, in which one of them do we see ourselves? Is it the licentious young man with a glass of wine in his hand and a woman in his arms? Probably not. It touches my heart every time I look at the picture of Rembrandt in his old age after he had gone through many sufferings in life.
We cannot be truly strong unless we first become weak; yet we often choose to be strong and tend to do and see things from the angle of strength, not weakness. The majority of Christian churches in America are fairly small, but every single one of them has the aspiration to become bigger and stronger, as if being big physically is the only indication of being strong spiritually.
We are by nature small, so we are into bigness; but God in essence is big beyond compare, therefore being small is more appealing to him. The Lord Jesus sees individuals in a crowd, but our desire is to turn individuals into a great crowd. We draw strength in numbers, but the Lord looks at the collective weakness of the crowd and the greater the number is, the weaker it will be. Didn’t the Lord spot little Zaccheus hiding in a tree because he saw something genuine in the short man’s heart that he did not see in the crowd of people and chose to dine with the men whom many seemed to have disdained?
1 Co 1:27
The strong are in control, but the weak are under other people’s control. The stronger you are, the more options you will have in life, but if you are weak, you will run out of options rather quickly.
Because of a particular mistake that John Donne made in his youth, all his avenues of promotion were blocked except one - by the king’s order, he could only become a minister. He could have become many things had he not eloped with the daughter of a powerful man in court, yet he became immensely weak because of the offence he committed. In fact, he even did jail time for a while.
John Donne was a splendid poet, but I think he was at his best when he was ministering to the people in London as a pastor when the city was under the deadly cloud of the Black Death. Many people had escaped from the city to seek fresh air, but the devote minister of St. Paul stayed. He was the strongest when he cried out in sheer desperation: “John Donne, undone!” He produced his best poetry after he suffered great losses in life and had to depend solely on God for solace. His writings spoke to the most when he was reduced to the least and were most life-affirming when he was teetering before the portals of death. His “Holy Sonnets” are beyond compare as far as Christian verses are concerned. The Lord brought a strong man down through various adverse circumstances and lifted him up at the end. One can never become something in God’s kingdom until he becomes nothing. Of all the self-portraits done by Rembrandt, in which one of them do we see ourselves? Is it the licentious young man with a glass of wine in his hand and a woman in his arms? Probably not. It touches my heart every time I look at the picture of Rembrandt in his old age after he had gone through many sufferings in life.
We cannot be truly strong unless we first become weak; yet we often choose to be strong and tend to do and see things from the angle of strength, not weakness. The majority of Christian churches in America are fairly small, but every single one of them has the aspiration to become bigger and stronger, as if being big physically is the only indication of being strong spiritually.
We are by nature small, so we are into bigness; but God in essence is big beyond compare, therefore being small is more appealing to him. The Lord Jesus sees individuals in a crowd, but our desire is to turn individuals into a great crowd. We draw strength in numbers, but the Lord looks at the collective weakness of the crowd and the greater the number is, the weaker it will be. Didn’t the Lord spot little Zaccheus hiding in a tree because he saw something genuine in the short man’s heart that he did not see in the crowd of people and chose to dine with the men whom many seemed to have disdained?
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Weakness
“…and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.”
1 Co 1:25
Being strong and weak is just self-perception and does not really correspond with reality. If we look at ourselves from a human point of view, we are either stronger or weaker since we always use our neighbors as references with whom we compare ourselves. We are infinitely weak if we compare ourselves with the infinitely strong.
How do you perceive yourself?
I am just a son, yet I often look beyond that and consider myself more than what I am; I am mere mortal but I always see myself as semi-divine. I am not content to be flesh and blood; I want to be more than what I have been created to be. I want to jump higher and run faster than my fellowmen; I desire to achieve more than all the people before me have accomplished and no one after me may duplicate my feat. I want to be the one and only.
We are the weakest when we aspire to be the greatest. A monkey can be the best monkey he can be, but he will be the worst man if his ambition is to become a man. We can be the best we are created to, but we will become the worst if we intend to be something we are not. We can either be the best man or the worst god, and in the process of becoming a god we may become a grotesque creature who is neither man nor god.
I can strive to be the best I can be, but I can never be better than what I am supposed to be or am created to be. To be human is to be limited by our limitations, and some people do have more limitations than others. We have to accept who we are and seek to fulfill what we are destined to be and commissioned to do as a child of God and never compare ourselves with other people and become jealous or pompous. The Lord has given various amounts of talent to his servants and what he requires of them is that they invest what they have inherited.
We are the strongest when we know exactly who we are and faithfully do what the Lord calls us to do; we are the weakest when we try to be what we are not and aspire to do what is beyond our ability to do. The bright angel in heaven who rose up to the highest ended up sinking to the lowest.
I can either be the best preacher I can be or be the worst doctor or lawyer I may want to be. I am not saying that we should not try to better ourselves by climbing higher; what I mean is at some point in life we should learn to accept who we are and be thankful for what we have achieved by the talent with which we have been endowed by the Almighty.
“I hope someday I can finally be a hermit and not feel guilty about being a hermit,” I said to my son jokingly. It was no joke actually, for that was exactly how I felt. A hermit is probably nothing but a sanctified bum in some people’s eyes. Nonetheless, “so was I once myself a swinger of birches and so I dream of going back to be.”
1 Co 1:25
Being strong and weak is just self-perception and does not really correspond with reality. If we look at ourselves from a human point of view, we are either stronger or weaker since we always use our neighbors as references with whom we compare ourselves. We are infinitely weak if we compare ourselves with the infinitely strong.
How do you perceive yourself?
I am just a son, yet I often look beyond that and consider myself more than what I am; I am mere mortal but I always see myself as semi-divine. I am not content to be flesh and blood; I want to be more than what I have been created to be. I want to jump higher and run faster than my fellowmen; I desire to achieve more than all the people before me have accomplished and no one after me may duplicate my feat. I want to be the one and only.
We are the weakest when we aspire to be the greatest. A monkey can be the best monkey he can be, but he will be the worst man if his ambition is to become a man. We can be the best we are created to, but we will become the worst if we intend to be something we are not. We can either be the best man or the worst god, and in the process of becoming a god we may become a grotesque creature who is neither man nor god.
I can strive to be the best I can be, but I can never be better than what I am supposed to be or am created to be. To be human is to be limited by our limitations, and some people do have more limitations than others. We have to accept who we are and seek to fulfill what we are destined to be and commissioned to do as a child of God and never compare ourselves with other people and become jealous or pompous. The Lord has given various amounts of talent to his servants and what he requires of them is that they invest what they have inherited.
We are the strongest when we know exactly who we are and faithfully do what the Lord calls us to do; we are the weakest when we try to be what we are not and aspire to do what is beyond our ability to do. The bright angel in heaven who rose up to the highest ended up sinking to the lowest.
I can either be the best preacher I can be or be the worst doctor or lawyer I may want to be. I am not saying that we should not try to better ourselves by climbing higher; what I mean is at some point in life we should learn to accept who we are and be thankful for what we have achieved by the talent with which we have been endowed by the Almighty.
“I hope someday I can finally be a hermit and not feel guilty about being a hermit,” I said to my son jokingly. It was no joke actually, for that was exactly how I felt. A hermit is probably nothing but a sanctified bum in some people’s eyes. Nonetheless, “so was I once myself a swinger of birches and so I dream of going back to be.”
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
The Inklings
Throughout my life, I have been very much misunderstood and under-appreciated, and have longed to be known by a group of friends and appreciated for who I am, not what I appeared to be. After years of trying, I have given up the idea of having these kind of friends and learned to be content with having one true friend - my wife.
C. S. Lewis didn’t have a spouse until late in his life, and I suppose one of the reasons why he was not anxious to get a wife was that he had a group of kindred-spirited friends. Together they took walks in the woods and had long, spirited conversation in the pubs - far more enjoyable than having a nagging wife who constantly demanded his attention. I often wonder how in the world he managed to find so many like-minded friends in a small circle, yet I have so much trouble even finding one in a big crowd.
That was why I was puzzled by my fellow blog king, who told me that his most recent date’s conversation was way too serious for him to handle. He even blogged on how he disliked serious conversations, and took some measure to avoid having them. It baffles me because I always thought that in order for us to have serious relationships, we must have serious conversations. In fact, if we have any depth in our thinking at all, even our light conversations should have some seriousness to them. I can’t image how much fun the Inklings (C.S. Lewis’ crowd) had when they held their battle of the wits. We can't hardly criticize them for having “serious conversation,” can we?
Monday, March 30, 2009
Soul-mating
Hsu, the pioneer of Chinese free verse and the son of a banker who was Cambridge educated, once wrote: “I am seeking for my one true soul mate in the vast sea of humanity. I will be fortunate if I find her; if not, that will be my fate.” He thought he had found his true love in a young actress, but their relationship soured rather quickly after he divorced his wife and married her. Hsu died in a horrific airplane crash in his mid-thirties, but his story of soul-mating remains. I was once an admirer of the poet and spent a lot of time searching for my one and only in my youth and finally came to realize that one’s so-called soul mate is not discovered through laborious searching; it is made through persistent effort.
With effort, we may make a soul mate out of almost anyone. If soul-mates are found, then millions of people throughout the older generations were deprived of this good fortune, for their mates were chosen for them. But that simply wasn’t the case, for many of them created soul-mates out of spouses whom they hardly knew when they tied the knot, yet their marriages turned out to be quite enjoyable because of the effort they put into the cultivation of their relationship.
Physical attraction between the sexes isn’t self-sustaining and we are doomed to failure if that’s the sole instrument we employ to prop up our relationship with our mates. When we age, it will become secondary and our primary need for love and friendship will emerge; a relationship will inevitably collapse if these elements are absent. Therefore we should consider soul-mating of primary importance in our relationships and spend time and effort cultivating it. There is no need, as a matter of fact, for us to exhaust all our energy searching for a soul-mate that may or may not exist, we just have to determine to make soul-mates out of the ones we now have, or the ones we will meet someday, either by design or by chance.
With effort, we may make a soul mate out of almost anyone. If soul-mates are found, then millions of people throughout the older generations were deprived of this good fortune, for their mates were chosen for them. But that simply wasn’t the case, for many of them created soul-mates out of spouses whom they hardly knew when they tied the knot, yet their marriages turned out to be quite enjoyable because of the effort they put into the cultivation of their relationship.
Physical attraction between the sexes isn’t self-sustaining and we are doomed to failure if that’s the sole instrument we employ to prop up our relationship with our mates. When we age, it will become secondary and our primary need for love and friendship will emerge; a relationship will inevitably collapse if these elements are absent. Therefore we should consider soul-mating of primary importance in our relationships and spend time and effort cultivating it. There is no need, as a matter of fact, for us to exhaust all our energy searching for a soul-mate that may or may not exist, we just have to determine to make soul-mates out of the ones we now have, or the ones we will meet someday, either by design or by chance.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Wisdom
“Jews demand miraculous signs and Greek look for wisdom…”
1 Co 1:22
I am a poet, but I don’t always understand my poetry. I have said a lot, yet I didn’t always know what I was trying to say. In fact, I oftentimes make a simple issue complicated intentionally and confuse my readers with unusual images and metaphors.
That’s not a wise thing to do at all. I raise my poetic tone so high that very few people can harmonize with me (曲高和寡.) Such isn’t the case with the Lord Jesus at all. He lowers himself to the lowest level until we can reach it and bring us up to where he desires us to be.
The Sophists in the city of Athens mocked the apostle Paul when he mentioned the resurrection of the dead. It was such foolishness to them that they didn’t bother to listen. Why was it foolish to the wise and the educated? Because most commoners during that time believed in some sort of resurrection and afterlife.
People with common sense are wiser than the sophists who seek wisdom far and wide.
“I sought for him in the crowd thousands of times, yet he was standing right there in the shade when I happened to turn my head,” wrote an ancient poet. Years may be wasted until we finally come to realize what we have been seeking all over the world has always been in our vicinity, within our grasp. “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart,” says the Scripture. If it is really so, our heart is the right place to where we should turn to find wisdom.
God speaks through our minds and hearts, and it’s crucial that we listen to both. Our minds often complicate and confuse, but our hearts simplify and clarify. On the lengthy journey of our search for wisdom, we may need to make a short cut by traveling from our heads to our hearts.
What did the Stoics and the Epicureans find in their arduous search for wisdom? Didn’t they find out the truth that most people have known by instinct? People can either endure or enjoy in this life and at the end they all die. Life is hard and we just have to learn to cope the best we can. Isn’t this common sense? But things are entirely different if we bring God into the equation. We don’t gain wisdom by way of speculation or meditation; we can only attain it by listening to God’s revelation. We can think so hard, but we can never escape from ourselves. How can we outthink ourselves? No matter how far and wide the Monkey King leaps, he is still within the palm of the Buddha's hand. We ourselves are the boundary by which we have been confined, and only through the leap of faith can we free ourselves from the confinement. The Greeks mocked Paul, and lost a precious opportunity to find the wisdom they had been seeking.
1 Co 1:22
I am a poet, but I don’t always understand my poetry. I have said a lot, yet I didn’t always know what I was trying to say. In fact, I oftentimes make a simple issue complicated intentionally and confuse my readers with unusual images and metaphors.
That’s not a wise thing to do at all. I raise my poetic tone so high that very few people can harmonize with me (曲高和寡.) Such isn’t the case with the Lord Jesus at all. He lowers himself to the lowest level until we can reach it and bring us up to where he desires us to be.
The Sophists in the city of Athens mocked the apostle Paul when he mentioned the resurrection of the dead. It was such foolishness to them that they didn’t bother to listen. Why was it foolish to the wise and the educated? Because most commoners during that time believed in some sort of resurrection and afterlife.
People with common sense are wiser than the sophists who seek wisdom far and wide.
“I sought for him in the crowd thousands of times, yet he was standing right there in the shade when I happened to turn my head,” wrote an ancient poet. Years may be wasted until we finally come to realize what we have been seeking all over the world has always been in our vicinity, within our grasp. “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart,” says the Scripture. If it is really so, our heart is the right place to where we should turn to find wisdom.
God speaks through our minds and hearts, and it’s crucial that we listen to both. Our minds often complicate and confuse, but our hearts simplify and clarify. On the lengthy journey of our search for wisdom, we may need to make a short cut by traveling from our heads to our hearts.
What did the Stoics and the Epicureans find in their arduous search for wisdom? Didn’t they find out the truth that most people have known by instinct? People can either endure or enjoy in this life and at the end they all die. Life is hard and we just have to learn to cope the best we can. Isn’t this common sense? But things are entirely different if we bring God into the equation. We don’t gain wisdom by way of speculation or meditation; we can only attain it by listening to God’s revelation. We can think so hard, but we can never escape from ourselves. How can we outthink ourselves? No matter how far and wide the Monkey King leaps, he is still within the palm of the Buddha's hand. We ourselves are the boundary by which we have been confined, and only through the leap of faith can we free ourselves from the confinement. The Greeks mocked Paul, and lost a precious opportunity to find the wisdom they had been seeking.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Miracles
“Jews demand miraculous signs and Greek look for wisdom…”
1 Co 1:22
If we see things right, everything is miraculous; but if we take all things as random, nothing is out of the ordinary. Miracles are in the eye of the beholder.
My birth was a miracle, and my life has been miraculous and will continue to be until the day I die, and what will transpire after I depart from my body will be the greatest miracle of them all.
They were surrounded by miracles, yet the Jews still demanded more miraculous signs. How many signs from above did they have to witness before they came to the realization that all things are in fact miraculous.
The blind regaining their sight is truly miraculous, but the fact that I am able to see is even more miraculous. The things we do routinely that we have deemed ordinary will never become extraordinary until we are no longer able to do them.
I used to play tennis in the noonday sun and wintry cold, but now I am not motivated to play even in perfect weather. It was nothing short of miracle that I was able to run and jump, and to hit a small yellow ball repeatedly for hours. Youth is indeed quite miraculous, yet we seem to take it for granted until we age.
It’s miraculous that we are alive, isn’t it? Yet we continue to demand the Lord to show us more miracles. To live is supernatural; to die is natural. We live in a supernatural world without knowing it, let alone appreciating it.
I haven’t been sick for years, but I begin to grumble the moment I become slightly ill and pray for a miracle of instant healing. The miracles that we demand from the Lord aren’t the thousands of them that we have clearly seen; they are the very ones that we haven’t seen, the ones that are truly out of the ordinary.
“Lord, I can never thank you enough for what you have done for me and my family thus far and I don’t dare to ask for more. Even if you don’t do anything for me from now on, I will forever be grateful for what you have done on my behalf in the past,” I prayed this prayer in one of the darkest moments of my life when I realized that the evil one was tempting me to become bitter about God’s inaction and casting doubt in my weary heart about God’s grace and mercy.
I have seen enough in my life to never demand for more.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Michael's Match Day
Kathy and I got up real early and drove for two hours to Amarillo to celebrate Michael’s biggest day in his young career in medicine. “Dad, come at about 9:30,” Michael called, sounded pretty serious by his standards. He is usually pretty laid back and doesn’t usually take things that seriously. I knew he was a bit uptight over this whole matching thing. He’s been working too hard over the three plus years not to take it seriously. His future career as a physician would be determined by a computer program designed by NRMP, matching him with the residency programs with which he had interviewed over the last few months. He interviewed with 17 places total and ranked 12 of them.
We knew by Monday that he had matched with an EM residency, but had no idea which one among the twelve. The truth would be revealed at 12 Eastern Time when all the fourth year medical students nationwide would open up their envelopes and find out where they would spend their next three to five years, receiving their specialty training, ranging from family medicine to orthopedic surgery.
We arrived at Michael’s house at about 10 and Michael was about ready to go. He looked pretty calm but I knew he was getting quite anxious inside. He has been working very hard toward his goal of becoming an EM doctor and in an hour or so he would harvest the first fruit of his labor. Kathy and I were feeling nervous for him, because we didn’t want him to be disappointed by not getting his top choices. People were gathering in a classroom when we arrived and, after a brief photo session we moved to a larger room and a big brown envelope was handed to each student. At 11 o’clock everyone opened up their envelopes in unison. I looked away while Michael was opening up his, for I didn’t want to see his expression of disappointment in case the result was less than desirable.
“Wow, double wows,” I said with disbelief when I looked at the paper that spelled out the place where he would receive his medical training for the next three years. I had checked almost all the programs Michael interviewed over the months, but I failed to look at the one with which he matched. It was indeed a big surprise.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Shang Shr Berry
Red berries are native to the South
In the spring a few branches stretch out.
I suggest you pick them more often
With them your deep longing for her to express.
-An old Chinese poem
Next time you write a love letter to your girl friend, enclose a red berry, telling her how much you long for her. You may have to explain to her what the red berry means to Chinese people so that she won’t think it’s some sort of candy and eat it. “Shang Shr” means “missing” or “longing” in Chinese. Just a pointer from the world-renown Dating Guru.
Grace
“I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Co 1:4
“Do I see Christ in them when I see the people sitting next to me in the pews?” This is the question we need to ask ourselves.
Instead of beholding the purity and perfection of Christ Jesus, we may see all the warps and wrinkles in our brothers and sisters and start to wonder perhaps we should be somewhere else on Sunday morning.
“Do I see Christ in me when I look at myself?” This is perhaps a more important question for us to address than the previous one. What we see in a mirror is a man who has been vexed by sin and is struggling to get a hold of himself, a man who needs to muster every ounce of his energy to get up in the morning and has to drag his feet just to move slowly through the day. Is this the man you see when you look at yourself?
Can I thank the Lord for myself? This is a difficult thing to do for some of us, isn’t it?
Some people may have an easier time doing it than others, but there are things in all of us with which we are not pleased, things both within and without ourselves that remind us of Adam’s fall, things that sometimes make us feel that we shouldn’t have been born, things that made old Job curse his birthday and caused his foolish wife to say: “curse God and die.”
I used to try to hide my crooked teeth by keeping my mouth closed when I smiled. It’s indeed a small thing for people who have straight teeth, but it’s a big deal for me. What do I see when I look into a mirror? My flat nose and crooked teeth. I have learned to identify myself by my perceived physical and mental flaws and, no matter how hard I try, I still feel the same way about myself. The fancy name for this type of infirmity is: inferiority complex.
“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” Do I see Christ in me? Maybe I should. Do I see Christ in people who sit next to me in the pew? Maybe I should.
We thank the Lord for who we are and for our fellow Christians for who they are because of God’s grace, not because of our own or their merit. People’s great merit only causes their neighbors to become jealous, but divine grace makes people give thanks and praise to God.
Never a single time have I offered thanks to God for my crooked teeth; never once have I praised the Lord for my less than perfect personality. Maybe I haven’t really seen Christ in me.
“How can Christ make his abode in this pile of dung, this awful filth?” we wonder.
Christ sank to the lowest of the low to bring us up to the highest of the high. Who we were didn’t surprise him a bit, so who we will be should not surprise us. Because of his grace, Christ in us isn’t an illusion at all; it’s reality. Therefore we must make an effort to see Christ in them when we look at our fellow Christians and, more importantly, let us see Christ in us when we look at ourselves and gradually, we may even start to enjoy looking at ourselves.
“Do I see Christ in them when I see the people sitting next to me in the pews?” This is the question we need to ask ourselves.
Instead of beholding the purity and perfection of Christ Jesus, we may see all the warps and wrinkles in our brothers and sisters and start to wonder perhaps we should be somewhere else on Sunday morning.
“Do I see Christ in me when I look at myself?” This is perhaps a more important question for us to address than the previous one. What we see in a mirror is a man who has been vexed by sin and is struggling to get a hold of himself, a man who needs to muster every ounce of his energy to get up in the morning and has to drag his feet just to move slowly through the day. Is this the man you see when you look at yourself?
Can I thank the Lord for myself? This is a difficult thing to do for some of us, isn’t it?
Some people may have an easier time doing it than others, but there are things in all of us with which we are not pleased, things both within and without ourselves that remind us of Adam’s fall, things that sometimes make us feel that we shouldn’t have been born, things that made old Job curse his birthday and caused his foolish wife to say: “curse God and die.”
I used to try to hide my crooked teeth by keeping my mouth closed when I smiled. It’s indeed a small thing for people who have straight teeth, but it’s a big deal for me. What do I see when I look into a mirror? My flat nose and crooked teeth. I have learned to identify myself by my perceived physical and mental flaws and, no matter how hard I try, I still feel the same way about myself. The fancy name for this type of infirmity is: inferiority complex.
“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” Do I see Christ in me? Maybe I should. Do I see Christ in people who sit next to me in the pew? Maybe I should.
We thank the Lord for who we are and for our fellow Christians for who they are because of God’s grace, not because of our own or their merit. People’s great merit only causes their neighbors to become jealous, but divine grace makes people give thanks and praise to God.
Never a single time have I offered thanks to God for my crooked teeth; never once have I praised the Lord for my less than perfect personality. Maybe I haven’t really seen Christ in me.
“How can Christ make his abode in this pile of dung, this awful filth?” we wonder.
Christ sank to the lowest of the low to bring us up to the highest of the high. Who we were didn’t surprise him a bit, so who we will be should not surprise us. Because of his grace, Christ in us isn’t an illusion at all; it’s reality. Therefore we must make an effort to see Christ in them when we look at our fellow Christians and, more importantly, let us see Christ in us when we look at ourselves and gradually, we may even start to enjoy looking at ourselves.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Christ in me
“To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy…” 1Cor. 1:2
I have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, but I continue to strive to become more sanctified. I am a saint, but I will never be saintly enough. In fact, I am quite unhappy with the progress that I have been making as a saint. Unfortunately, sometimes I don’t even look or act like a saint.
I need to behold the face of Jesus more often, for I don’t have any light in and of myself; all I have is a dim reflection of his bright countenance.
I need to practice more diligently the precious reality of “Christ in me.”
I was in Christ when he was hanging on the cross, even though it took place about two thousand years before I was born. Time and space matter very little in this case. I was united with Jesus when he died and was one with him when he rose again. I am one with him in the heavenly realms despite the fact that I am flesh and blood. These are the realities of which we are hardly aware.
Nothing is more real than the reality that Christ is in me and I am in Christ. Unless we abide by this truth, the truth will not set us free. We still live in bondage for lack of knowledge of Christ.
I have been sanctified, and there is nothing I can do to make myself more sanctified or saintly. We are either sanctified or we are not. It’s a matter of us being either guilty or not guilty, and there is not a gray area in between. We walked out from the prison of our psychotic self-consciousness and self-absorption after we were set free. Are we experiencing the freedom of being a free man?
It’s the reality of “Christ in me” that makes this freedom real. This liberty in Jesus is so real and solid that we can actually touch and taste it in our daily lives. Christ is nearer to us than our heartbeat and more intimate to us than each breath we take, yet we often lead our lives in such a way as if he doesn’t even exist.
I don’t have to become more sanctified to see him; all I need is to sharpen my inner vision. I don’t have to become more saintly to hear from him; all I need to do is to tune my ears to match his frequency and to alter the rhythm of my heart to harmonize with his melody. I only cloud my vision when I sin, but Christ is still ever so near.
Let me not search for you up and down the world; let me not look for you in the ever-changing scene of various circumstances; let me not try to find you in life’s joy and sorrow; let me rather enter into my own heart where Christ sits on his throne. What Christ yearns for us to do is to return to where he is, and never depart.
I have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, but I continue to strive to become more sanctified. I am a saint, but I will never be saintly enough. In fact, I am quite unhappy with the progress that I have been making as a saint. Unfortunately, sometimes I don’t even look or act like a saint.
I need to behold the face of Jesus more often, for I don’t have any light in and of myself; all I have is a dim reflection of his bright countenance.
I need to practice more diligently the precious reality of “Christ in me.”
I was in Christ when he was hanging on the cross, even though it took place about two thousand years before I was born. Time and space matter very little in this case. I was united with Jesus when he died and was one with him when he rose again. I am one with him in the heavenly realms despite the fact that I am flesh and blood. These are the realities of which we are hardly aware.
Nothing is more real than the reality that Christ is in me and I am in Christ. Unless we abide by this truth, the truth will not set us free. We still live in bondage for lack of knowledge of Christ.
I have been sanctified, and there is nothing I can do to make myself more sanctified or saintly. We are either sanctified or we are not. It’s a matter of us being either guilty or not guilty, and there is not a gray area in between. We walked out from the prison of our psychotic self-consciousness and self-absorption after we were set free. Are we experiencing the freedom of being a free man?
It’s the reality of “Christ in me” that makes this freedom real. This liberty in Jesus is so real and solid that we can actually touch and taste it in our daily lives. Christ is nearer to us than our heartbeat and more intimate to us than each breath we take, yet we often lead our lives in such a way as if he doesn’t even exist.
I don’t have to become more sanctified to see him; all I need is to sharpen my inner vision. I don’t have to become more saintly to hear from him; all I need to do is to tune my ears to match his frequency and to alter the rhythm of my heart to harmonize with his melody. I only cloud my vision when I sin, but Christ is still ever so near.
Let me not search for you up and down the world; let me not look for you in the ever-changing scene of various circumstances; let me not try to find you in life’s joy and sorrow; let me rather enter into my own heart where Christ sits on his throne. What Christ yearns for us to do is to return to where he is, and never depart.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Random Thoughts on Valentine
Love has become cheap; therefore it has become less valuable than it used to be and it is supposed to be.
Easy come, easy go. Does that ring a bell?
All the yearning for love is gone, and the sleepless nights and restless days pining for love is out of fashion, laughable even. We are into instant everything; romance surely is included.
Diamonds and gold aren’t forever. “I sold my wedding band from my previous marriage and got my money the next day,” a young lady beams in a commercial, with money in hand.
One out of two marriages ends in divorce and the average marriage span is five short years.
Ah, romantic love. The candlelight dinner, the moonlight walk, the longing, the panting, the bachelor parties, the wedding bells, the honeymoon. All those trappings surely don’t make love stay.
What makes love stay isn’t the sweet talk and vows you have given in exchange for something you yearn to possess or the physical pleasure you long to gratify; what causes it to last is your commitment to love and a strong will to keep your promises for better or for worse.
Love has become cheap; let’s make it expensive again by paying a great price, not with money but with something far more valuable than money. To love is to value the object of our love by not degrading her or reducing her into a mere object; to love is to commit to the one whom you love even when the feeling of love is no longer present; to love is to wait and not to rush the fruition of love by coercion and manipulation by words or deeds; to love is to wait and wait some more…
Love has become cheap; let’s make it expensive again. It’s a pearl of great price, so don’t trample on it like swine.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Being an Aggie Fan
Being an Aggie fan prepares you for life, for life has its ups and downs and, as you and I have experienced, mostly downs.
Being a tee-shirt fan, I do have the choice of taking this one off and putting another one on, but, akin to romantic love, this is such an emotional thing that we can hardly help it. I have fallen in love with the wrong person.
My first love was Ole Miss, where I was a legit fan, for I do have a degree to prove my affiliation to her. But being an Ole Miss fan was a piece of cake, because I had such low expectations for all things Ole Miss; therefore an occasional victory brought me unbelievable euphoria. Defeating Tech soundly in the Cotton Bowl was one of those few occasions that didn’t happen very often. When you expect to lose the war, winning a small skirmish can generate great excitement, but when you expect to win big, a small loss can really bring you down.
The Aggies are supposed to be one of the big boys, so I naturally expect them to win consistently, and to win big occasionally; but the sad truth is that we seem to lose most of the time and lose big almost every time when we play for something meaningful. We have a big brother who breathes down our necks, and a pesky little brother we seem to have great trouble handling. Truly we are caught between a rock and hard place.
Why can’t Sloan do what Acie had been doing consistently? Why did we let Jackie go – a coach who actually knew something about motivating a group of men to fight for their lives on the field by castrating a Longhorn bull in front of them before he took them to Austin? Guess what? They won! Why did we bring coach Fran home even though mama wasn’t even calling? Who in the world got the idea that man was a fair exchange for a Bear?
“Come on, just take off your tee-shirt!” I can almost hear you true Aggies yelling at me. No way, Jose. Not going to do it. Being an Aggie fan does prepare me for my life, because it has toughed me up a great deal. It really helps me to deal with all the trials and tribulations of life. Indeed life is a series of disappointments, and being an Aggie fan surely equips you to handle it more gracefully. Therefore Aggie fans, cheer on.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Hypocrisy and Courtesy
I suppressed my true feelings toward a person and made a valiant attempt to show affection to him, even though I had very few feelings of goodwill for the man. Does that make me a hypocrite? That is the question that I have asked myself repeatedly. If that is so, then the random incident that took place was just a reminder that I should have been true to my feelings and avoided the one against whom I still hold a certain amount of animosity.
I was merely trying to do the right thing, yet what I received from it was another insult that left a mark in my heart and an unpleasant taste in my mouth. Doing the right thing may not always be right, for people may not be appreciative when we cast a grain of rice before them.
Had I been placed in his position, I would have acted as if nothing had happened and would have tried not to call attention to the thing that caused both of us embarrassment. It would have been unpleasant to go through something such as that and, at the same time, be greeted so warmly by someone whom I still considered one of my enemies, but that is something we do routinely in order to survive in a society, with its intricate web of human relationships. Being courteous is to deny our ill feeling toward certain people and to treat them according to the standards of social norms. Does it make us hypocrites if our words and actions aren’t consistent with our feelings?
Had I been trying to be true to myself, I would have avoided going to the gathering all together or at least kept myself away from him. The problem was that I am not my own master.
Doing the right thing itself is its own reward, I suppose. Although the outcome of my action appeared to have made me a hypocrite and caused my adversary to become discourteous, I don’t believe the unfortunate incident made our relationship worse. Perhaps he at least came to the realization that I had made an awkward attempt to be friendly and, possibly, it might have even caused him dislike me less.
I was merely trying to do the right thing, yet what I received from it was another insult that left a mark in my heart and an unpleasant taste in my mouth. Doing the right thing may not always be right, for people may not be appreciative when we cast a grain of rice before them.
Had I been placed in his position, I would have acted as if nothing had happened and would have tried not to call attention to the thing that caused both of us embarrassment. It would have been unpleasant to go through something such as that and, at the same time, be greeted so warmly by someone whom I still considered one of my enemies, but that is something we do routinely in order to survive in a society, with its intricate web of human relationships. Being courteous is to deny our ill feeling toward certain people and to treat them according to the standards of social norms. Does it make us hypocrites if our words and actions aren’t consistent with our feelings?
Had I been trying to be true to myself, I would have avoided going to the gathering all together or at least kept myself away from him. The problem was that I am not my own master.
Doing the right thing itself is its own reward, I suppose. Although the outcome of my action appeared to have made me a hypocrite and caused my adversary to become discourteous, I don’t believe the unfortunate incident made our relationship worse. Perhaps he at least came to the realization that I had made an awkward attempt to be friendly and, possibly, it might have even caused him dislike me less.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Embarrassing
Against my every natural inclination, I was determined to reconcile with this Christian brother with whom I hadn’t been on speaking terms for a while. I was really struggling whether to attend a gathering where I knew he would be present, but the better part of me won out and I went, knowing it would be hard to see the guy.
I tried all day to fortify my heart with much prayer and to clean up whatever bitterness I had ever had toward him. When I got to the banquet, I was, in fact, quite anxious to meet him and to express to him my good will toward him.
He was late for the meeting and I was eating by the time he came. I leapt from my table when I saw him and walked across the hall to say hi to him. “It’s so nice to see you,” I said to him with affection. “Good to see you too,” he replied, rather emotionlessly. I was trying to say something else to him but, strangely, he kept looking at his hand, which was still in my grip. “Am I squeezing too hard?” I asked. He didn’t say anything. Then I saw there was half a grain of rice on top of his hand that I must have accidentally deposited there. “O, I am so sorry. Let me wipe it off,” I said, trying to wipe it off with the napkin that I had in my left hand, but he motioned for me not to do it and walked away without saying anything.
Embarrassing, wasn’t it. I laid awake last night for a long time thinking about what had happened. I guess many a time in our lives doing the right thing may not generate the desired result. The guy may be thinking that I did that on purpose and our relationship may have worsened after this unfortunate event.
I tried all day to fortify my heart with much prayer and to clean up whatever bitterness I had ever had toward him. When I got to the banquet, I was, in fact, quite anxious to meet him and to express to him my good will toward him.
He was late for the meeting and I was eating by the time he came. I leapt from my table when I saw him and walked across the hall to say hi to him. “It’s so nice to see you,” I said to him with affection. “Good to see you too,” he replied, rather emotionlessly. I was trying to say something else to him but, strangely, he kept looking at his hand, which was still in my grip. “Am I squeezing too hard?” I asked. He didn’t say anything. Then I saw there was half a grain of rice on top of his hand that I must have accidentally deposited there. “O, I am so sorry. Let me wipe it off,” I said, trying to wipe it off with the napkin that I had in my left hand, but he motioned for me not to do it and walked away without saying anything.
Embarrassing, wasn’t it. I laid awake last night for a long time thinking about what had happened. I guess many a time in our lives doing the right thing may not generate the desired result. The guy may be thinking that I did that on purpose and our relationship may have worsened after this unfortunate event.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Strength
“And his strength left him.”
Judges 16:19
Samson fell asleep on Delilah’s lap, not knowing that his strength would be gone when he woke up. He might have thought Delilah was playing some sort of game with him and wasn’t at all concerned about his safety. He was a man of supreme self-confidence who might have thought that he was invincible. Who could blame such a man who had absolute confidence in his own strength?
Our greatest strength can easily become our biggest weakness.
People who are endowed with intelligence may have an inclination to rely on themselves and believe that nothing is too difficult for them. Such people may accomplish much in their lives, but they will eventually hit a snag one way or another along the way and they won’t know what to do when it occurs. People who are not used to asking for help may become too arrogant to ask when they desperately need other people’s assistance. The ones who have never invoked divine aid their entire life will have difficulty praying when prayer becomes the last resort. Instead of praying for mercy, I believe there are many people who do what Job refused to do - curse God and die.
His supernatural strength was given to Samson, and it could easily be taken away. The man had always been strong his entire life; therefore, he had the wrong perception that it would always remain that way. Samson should have been more thankful for his gift than he was and guarded the secret of his divine power more closely than he did. Unfortunately he appeared to have a cavalier attitude toward his divine calling and the gifts that came along with it.
Beware of putting too much confidence in whatever strength you may have, natural or supernatural, or on God’s continual favor for you. What I am isn’t necessarily going to be what I will be. What we have is only the present and our future lies solely in God’s hand. Samson was the strongest man before he fell asleep in a woman’s lap, but he became the weakest person when he woke up. In a brief moment, Samson lost everything that he used to take for granted - his strength and his freedom.
Had Samson ever looked at himself with amazement and become overwhelmed by what the Lord had done for him? Had he ever thanked the Lord for his amazing power and learned to utilize his ability to bring glory to God? The biggest mistake that he committed was to take his supernatural nature too naturally. This is the mistake that we may be committing routinely.
All our natural abilities are, in fact, supernatural, and the way we perceive and utilize them tells who we really are. An infant who takes his first step is greatly amazed by his ability to walk, but as adults we have been walking for so long that the amazement is long lost and it probably won’t return until we manage to take a baby step after an accident or a stroke.
Judges 16:19
Samson fell asleep on Delilah’s lap, not knowing that his strength would be gone when he woke up. He might have thought Delilah was playing some sort of game with him and wasn’t at all concerned about his safety. He was a man of supreme self-confidence who might have thought that he was invincible. Who could blame such a man who had absolute confidence in his own strength?
Our greatest strength can easily become our biggest weakness.
People who are endowed with intelligence may have an inclination to rely on themselves and believe that nothing is too difficult for them. Such people may accomplish much in their lives, but they will eventually hit a snag one way or another along the way and they won’t know what to do when it occurs. People who are not used to asking for help may become too arrogant to ask when they desperately need other people’s assistance. The ones who have never invoked divine aid their entire life will have difficulty praying when prayer becomes the last resort. Instead of praying for mercy, I believe there are many people who do what Job refused to do - curse God and die.
His supernatural strength was given to Samson, and it could easily be taken away. The man had always been strong his entire life; therefore, he had the wrong perception that it would always remain that way. Samson should have been more thankful for his gift than he was and guarded the secret of his divine power more closely than he did. Unfortunately he appeared to have a cavalier attitude toward his divine calling and the gifts that came along with it.
Beware of putting too much confidence in whatever strength you may have, natural or supernatural, or on God’s continual favor for you. What I am isn’t necessarily going to be what I will be. What we have is only the present and our future lies solely in God’s hand. Samson was the strongest man before he fell asleep in a woman’s lap, but he became the weakest person when he woke up. In a brief moment, Samson lost everything that he used to take for granted - his strength and his freedom.
Had Samson ever looked at himself with amazement and become overwhelmed by what the Lord had done for him? Had he ever thanked the Lord for his amazing power and learned to utilize his ability to bring glory to God? The biggest mistake that he committed was to take his supernatural nature too naturally. This is the mistake that we may be committing routinely.
All our natural abilities are, in fact, supernatural, and the way we perceive and utilize them tells who we really are. An infant who takes his first step is greatly amazed by his ability to walk, but as adults we have been walking for so long that the amazement is long lost and it probably won’t return until we manage to take a baby step after an accident or a stroke.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
2009 Resolution
New Year’s resolutions are made to be broken. We know this to be true by experience, for we all have broken our share of resolutions. If so, why make another one to fool and to disappoint ourselves at the same time. Why is this time going to be different? Surely these resolutions will be different from all the other ones, because hope is what sustains us and we will have nothing to hold onto unless we still have high expectations for ourselves and optimistic views on life in general. All our previous relationships may have ended in tears and heartache, but it does not mean our next one will be a repetition of the last ones. Fitzgerald’s Gatsby was a true romantic because his dreams and aspirations didn’t die at the moment when all things seemed to be falling apart and he was hoping against hope that Daisy would come back to him against all odds.
Rambling aside, here are my resolutions, which can be summed up in two words: reduction and addition.
First, I will make an effort to reduce, not my waistline, but my frequency of doing something that I know, either through my conscience or revelation, is wrong. Putting it more bluntly, I will try to sin less (preferably of course, not to sin at all, which, realistically and experientially, is not possible).
Second, I will make an attempt to increase, not my wealth, but my love for God and for people, which is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. Being a one-talent person, I really don’t have a lot to contribute to the world, but one thing that I can give out freely is love; and the more I give, the more my ability to give will increase. I therefore resolve to do one good deed of love a day for people other than my loved ones.
These are my humble resolutions for the year 2009 and I challenge you to do the same. Please do hold me accountable if I fail to keep my promises in my words or actions. This resolution, mind you, isn’t made to be broken like all my previous ones.
Rambling aside, here are my resolutions, which can be summed up in two words: reduction and addition.
First, I will make an effort to reduce, not my waistline, but my frequency of doing something that I know, either through my conscience or revelation, is wrong. Putting it more bluntly, I will try to sin less (preferably of course, not to sin at all, which, realistically and experientially, is not possible).
Second, I will make an attempt to increase, not my wealth, but my love for God and for people, which is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. Being a one-talent person, I really don’t have a lot to contribute to the world, but one thing that I can give out freely is love; and the more I give, the more my ability to give will increase. I therefore resolve to do one good deed of love a day for people other than my loved ones.
These are my humble resolutions for the year 2009 and I challenge you to do the same. Please do hold me accountable if I fail to keep my promises in my words or actions. This resolution, mind you, isn’t made to be broken like all my previous ones.
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