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.

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.

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.