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.

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.

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.

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.