“Love is patient, love is kind…”
1 Co 13:4
Love is to be enjoyed, not to be endured; yet it’s hard for us to appreciate the pleasure of love if we have to suffer through it all. Patience and kindness don’t usually go hand in hand. Love suffers long, but not usually with kindness.
Out of our commitment to God and faithfulness to our marriage vows, we may remain in the marriage with our countenance downcast and temper short. We may suffer long within the relationship, but our kindness toward our partner may be in short supply.
Love is patient, love is kind…”
Kindness is what makes love sufferable; and love is what makes kindness possible. These two must complement each other to make a love relationship enjoyable. When the feeling of love is absent, kindness must be present to make the love relationship long lasting. When youthful passion is strong, lovers can treat each other passionately; when it is not, at least they can deal with each other kindly and thoughtfully. Powerful emotion isn’t self-sustaining and it must come down from the peak; kindness is something that keeps the flame of love burning in the valley.
Lovers should be friends also, and friends tend to treat one another with kindness.
“Husband and wife in youth, companions in old age (少年夫妻老來伴,)” goes a Chinese saying. When the flame of passionate love dies down, friendship between husband and wife is the oil that keeps the fire of love smoldering. By this time love is less of the body and more of the soul, less of the physical and more of the spiritual.
A little bit of kindness goes a long way in a love relationship.
We may think courtesy and respect are no longer needed within a marriage relationship, since physical and emotional barriers between the two have been swept away by romantic love and the couple are encircled or entrapped by a ring. The key to a happy marriage, which I have heard often among Chinese people, is for couples to respect each other as if they were guests (相敬如賓.) Don’t we Chinese people always shower our guests with great kindness and esteem no matter who they are? I believe our marriages will become much more tolerable and enjoyable if couples learn to treat each other that way. It seems reasonable that we should treat our lovers with even greater respect than we show toward our guests, doesn’t it?
I believe Paul placed the attribute of kindness behind patience strategically in his discourse on the essence of love, for one can hardly love rightly apart from both of them. May we never forget to always show kindness to our loved ones to make them feel comfortable and secure within a loving relationship.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Patience
“Love is patient…”
1 Co 13:4
Love is the point where eternity and time make a connection; it is the precious thing that gives meaning to time and makes it stretch into timelessness. All things instant are confined in time and will vanish with time. Love is patient because it is eternal, which is the only thing on earth worth keeping. The thing that is worth keeping does take great patience to keep. If we consider love valuable, we will devote time and energy to its upkeep.
“Love is patient…”
We seem to spend a lot of time and energy earning what we can’t keep and taking the things that we can’t lose for granted. “I need to work hard to advance my career and make a good living and, as far as my wife and children are concerned, well, they will always be there.” This is true to many people.
We seem to have a great deal of patience working on a project or pursuing a deal, but we appear to have a short fuse in dealing with our loved ones. We always treat our guests with courtesy and are quite impolite to the ones in our own household. We may build a great career in the end, but end up losing the ones we love.
What’s truly worthwhile is worth cultivating. We will leave all things behind except love and we will take nothing with us but love at our death. How much time and energy do we spend daily in building up love with our loved ones? Very little indeed.
“What is there to cultivate?” you ask.
“We see, but we don’t perceive.” I heard this from a radio program. Love seems to be so abundant; therefore it becomes less valuable. Is this so? Can we deem oxygen and water less valuable because they are so abundant? Love is vital to our existence and a total necessity to our well-being. Shouldn’t we invest our intelligence, time, and energy cultivating and developing it?
“We are just an old married couple,” somebody said to me when I encouraged him to put more time into nurturing his love for his wife. Love waxes cold within a marriage not by nature, but by negligence. Gold shines just as bright even if it ages, but it may rust for lack of polishing. People are bored by love for lack of true understanding and appreciation of love. God is love. Will we ever be bored by God? If so, heaven will be a very boring place and eternity will indeed be giant slum of boredom and disappointment.
Love is patient because it is timeless. I may not be able to bring it to complete fruition, but I can always wait; I may never be able to make it perfect, but I can continue to work on it even when I am no more. May we all be patient in cultivating love, for the best is yet to come.
1 Co 13:4
Love is the point where eternity and time make a connection; it is the precious thing that gives meaning to time and makes it stretch into timelessness. All things instant are confined in time and will vanish with time. Love is patient because it is eternal, which is the only thing on earth worth keeping. The thing that is worth keeping does take great patience to keep. If we consider love valuable, we will devote time and energy to its upkeep.
“Love is patient…”
We seem to spend a lot of time and energy earning what we can’t keep and taking the things that we can’t lose for granted. “I need to work hard to advance my career and make a good living and, as far as my wife and children are concerned, well, they will always be there.” This is true to many people.
We seem to have a great deal of patience working on a project or pursuing a deal, but we appear to have a short fuse in dealing with our loved ones. We always treat our guests with courtesy and are quite impolite to the ones in our own household. We may build a great career in the end, but end up losing the ones we love.
What’s truly worthwhile is worth cultivating. We will leave all things behind except love and we will take nothing with us but love at our death. How much time and energy do we spend daily in building up love with our loved ones? Very little indeed.
“What is there to cultivate?” you ask.
“We see, but we don’t perceive.” I heard this from a radio program. Love seems to be so abundant; therefore it becomes less valuable. Is this so? Can we deem oxygen and water less valuable because they are so abundant? Love is vital to our existence and a total necessity to our well-being. Shouldn’t we invest our intelligence, time, and energy cultivating and developing it?
“We are just an old married couple,” somebody said to me when I encouraged him to put more time into nurturing his love for his wife. Love waxes cold within a marriage not by nature, but by negligence. Gold shines just as bright even if it ages, but it may rust for lack of polishing. People are bored by love for lack of true understanding and appreciation of love. God is love. Will we ever be bored by God? If so, heaven will be a very boring place and eternity will indeed be giant slum of boredom and disappointment.
Love is patient because it is timeless. I may not be able to bring it to complete fruition, but I can always wait; I may never be able to make it perfect, but I can continue to work on it even when I am no more. May we all be patient in cultivating love, for the best is yet to come.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Long time no see
What makes people insane is reason, and what keep us sane is art and poetry. I stole this idea from G.K. Chesterton, who I consider one of the most intelligent people of the previous century. Even the great C.S. Lewis borrowed some ideas from this man who was built like an “upside down P.” This genus will continue to speak to us for years to come. Make sure you read his “Orthodoxy.”
Well, I just want to keep in touch and let you guys know I am still here, trying hard not to grow old and not to grow up. I have been attempting to stalk my sons as usual, but things have been pretty quiet and there is nothing exciting to be discovered. Guess it’s about time to find a new hobby.
I just published a book of poem entitled “ Living Sacrifice - Voices from the Ashes.” I will give a copy to those who are interested and, more importantly, are able to read Chinese.
Anyway, just to say hi and come back to the blog to meet this old and unwise guru. You may learn a thing or two.
Well, I just want to keep in touch and let you guys know I am still here, trying hard not to grow old and not to grow up. I have been attempting to stalk my sons as usual, but things have been pretty quiet and there is nothing exciting to be discovered. Guess it’s about time to find a new hobby.
I just published a book of poem entitled “ Living Sacrifice - Voices from the Ashes.” I will give a copy to those who are interested and, more importantly, are able to read Chinese.
Anyway, just to say hi and come back to the blog to meet this old and unwise guru. You may learn a thing or two.
Friday, June 12, 2009
All Are Yours
“…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.
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.
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.
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