“…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.
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