They led this song At the Foot of the Cross by Kathryn Scott at JYM service (that would be Jesus Youth Ministry, of St James' Church) today. Think I heard it one other time at their service before. Very well-written and beautiful song, methinks.
Kathryn Scott - At the Foot of the Cross
The Derek Trucks Band's 2009 album, Already Free, won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album.
:)
"Jesus is God spelling himself out in language that man can understand."
- S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks About Jesus
Saw some of my brother's photos from his trip to Cambodia and Vietnam. Man, I am envious. If only I have the dough to take on such trips...
It is fast becoming my dream to travel. Maybe it's because I see so many international students who are from different parts of the world in TTC. I want to visit their respective homelands to hopefully experience a little of what their lives are like back at home. And I can take the time to visit my school mates, and they can act as tour guides, so my sense of direction (or the lack therefore) would be a non-issue. Another strong driving force for this inclination is FOOD. Wanna try them all!
I hope this is something that will materialise in the near future. I want to at least visit countries like Vietnam (COFFEE!), Thailand (FOOD!) Cambodia, China, Myanmar, Nepal, Taiwan (FOOD) and Indonesia (FOOD AND COFFEE!). On top of that, I want to have a taste of traveling alone. I reckon Trouble and Danger will be my traveling buddies, given my flair in getting hopelessly lost all the time. Still, think it will be quite an experience, no?
I have a near-future plan that is somewhat lame: to travel to JB alone. Think it will be nice to do that once in a while, escaping Singapore for that one day or so to be in our neighbouring country where food is better and cheaper. Hoping to be able to travel up further into Malaysia to visit one of my seniors in school, who most people call Uncle Tan, during the break or the hols. Another plan to scoot out of my motherland would take place in the form of my internship; I am hoping to do it in Thailand this semester.
I hope that, by God's grace, all these will be made possible...
Many insights gained, many thoughts sprung. Among the many things I've learnt this past week, perhaps the most important was from an after-dinner coffee and chat with a classmate, a senior (MTh student) and a Dr. Telford Work, a professor from Westmont College in California (apparently a very good seminary, which I regret to be rather ill-informed about. a Richard Hays was mentioned. Apparently N. T. Wright was/is there as well, among other great lecturers). Anyways, I had many questions regarding the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the phenomenon that is tongue-speaking. Much of the fog that shrouded my understanding of it, especially since I entered TTC, has been cleared. I now know where to stand. But more on that when I find the time to write on it.
Three things caught me thinking, and left varying impressions in my mind and heart.
Thaipusam
Went to check out Thaipusam on Friday night which dragged on to Saturday morning. There are numerous things to say about the event, but as I stood in the crowd waiting for the procession to go on, I started asking myself, "Why are they doing all this?" It amazes me. They'd go this far, do this much, in order to honour their god(s). 24 hours of fasting and praying in preparation, getting pierced and carrying the urn filled with milk on the head or the kavadi, patiently waiting for the procession, walking 4km to another temple where more rituals are performed, and these plus other tasks overnight. I am not sure if I have ever showed such pietism to my God.
Their devotion shames me.
St James' Church
Since the first week there, I have always been impressed by the youth group. The community life there is very vibrant; their ties with each other strong. The first thing that hits you is, "It will be nice to belong to this people." This is family.
Aside from that, the youth ministry is pretty active in community services. One of them is involved in the redboxproject and have asked the ministry to play a part in it. And they have another charitable activity going on this Saturday as well.
More importantly, I feel their youth leadership is excellent. Don't want to go into that right now, but suffice to say, their chairman (one year younger than me) really takes ownership of the youth ministry. To see him labouring, having a vision for the ministry, leading them to fruition and harvest, and even tearing as he prays for the ministry, is simply moving. I consider two peers in my life so far to be the quintessence of a powerful, inspirational and, most imperatively, Godly leadership, and he is definitely one of them (the other is, of course, Elim). Much to learn from him and much to be done with myself...
Katherine's Comment
Kat's my classmate. Hitched a ride to school tonight. She was recounting something she brought up when she was hanging out with some of her church mates in the afternoon. She asked them, "Aren't you guys bored with life?" The corollary discussion was apparently fruitful, and I will try to extract the gist. Basically, life is dreadfully boring. We seem to be just getting on with life, not really doing much with it, not really doing much for anything or anyone else. Their conversation spurred her friend to want to take that step into doing missionary work in Thailand for 6 months, which is actually Kat's idea. She does not mind taking a break from school, which is one whole sem, to do this gig with her friend. And that is fast becoming a goal for them.
What am I doing or going to do with my life? No matter what lies in the future, I pray that I will truly be of use and instrumental in whatever ministry I choose to set my feet in. I admire Kat's willingness to let down her studies for a while to do this with her friend, both as a form of encouragement to her friend as well as to really get down to business with her life. I don't think I dare to do it myself, stopping my studies for 6months or a year now and all that (though, the way I look at it, I am not financially capable of doing it, and it would do me more good to just finish my course of studies first before venturing into other areas. Different seasons for different things ya?).
So yep. Three imprints on different facets of the same fragment of my life. I want to be a better man. Let spring come.
The bantering of all in nature; their song in the morning sweet.
What God choose to do for, with, and to us need not occur according to our ideals in order for it to be perfect. Heck, we probably know squat about what perfection really means. But we just love to play god.
Some things can only be understood in retrospect, many of which pertains to God's dealings with us. It's a challenge to hand around till then, but the rewards and insights gained are great for sure.
At the urging of my NT lecturer, and perhaps also because of my classmate's influence, I borrowed the book What Saint Paul Really Said by N. T. Wright from my college's library. Very interesting read (it is at times even humorous). I hope to attempt to do a profiling of Paul so I can get a better grasp who he exactly was, what his context was and hopefully have a clearer understanding of why he wrote certain things.
But that aside, I want to talk about an interesting bit from the book.
Before the last quarter of the twentieth century, apparently most scholars (and I suppose most Christians in general) would read Paul's critique of the Jews and come to the conclusion that Judaism was a legalistic religion that gravely emphasized on works in order for Jews to earn their justification and attain righteousness, and hence had got it all wrong. Then, a scholar by the name of E. P. Sanders entered the arena and turned everything around.
Sanders argued that "keeping the law within Judaism always functioned within a covenantal scheme." God was the one who initiated and made a covenant with Israel (i.e. with the Jews), and hence his grace proceeds everything that people (specifically Jews) do in response. Jews keep the law out of gratitude, and this is the proper response to his grace. In other words, they keep the law not to get into the covenant people, but to stay in it. It is the grace and gift of God that the Jews were even in the covenant to begin with.
While I am not sure if everything that is said can stand scrutiny, the basic idea is there and established. For Paul, he was not critical of Judaism because he thought it was entirely wrong, but with the knowledge of Christ he had to conclude that Judaism was not enough. Inadequate as I am to talk about the debate of Paul's central theology, that is, whether it is "justification by faith" or "being in Christ", I think we can safely say that part of his theology includes the latter, and in critiquing Judaism that idea comes into play (i.e. it is the idea of "being in Christ" as crucial that made criticizing Judaism as corollary).
So in case you have been misguided with regards to Judaism, next time when you read about Jews in the Bible, don't be too quick to slam and flak them, as if Judaism got it all wrong. The Jews ought to be treated with more respect. The coming of Christ did not mean the death of Judaism, but is a continuation of it, and of God's divine providence in the history of mankind.
These past few weeks have been somewhat disturbing, bordering depressing even.
Recently I watched two WWII films, The Pianist and The Schlinder's List, and the Nazi's treatment of the Jews is nothing sort of vile and atrocious. Sure, some lives were saved, but so many others were grossly mistreated or killed for no good enough a reason. And this is just one war. How many have there been already? How much suffering were caused, lives lost? How many war crimes were committed, how many innocent people forced to live worse than stray dogs have it?
As I begin this new term and get acquainted with Church History again, I read of the maddening atrocities Christians were committing. Last year I learnt of Christian rulers forcing conversion with arms, the investiture controversy and corruption within papacy (what they call simony, which is basically buying power from laity rulers; simony comes from the incident when Simon the magus tried to buy power from the apostles in Acts 8), the Crusades (perhaps the darkest period of Church history...Jews, Muslims and even Christians themselves were killed, and most of the crusades didn't even have good reasons). This year I read of the people from the Church of Spain, Christopher Columbus being among their number, sailing out, "discovering" new lands and, with their superior weaponry and armed forces, forced the indigenous people into slavery. Later on, before the Reformation, we have the Church corrupted and abusive; a guy by the name of Johann Tetzel was selling "indulgences," which in short means that if you give the Church money, your suffering and time spent in purgatory after you die will be shortened, and you may not even need to spend any time there if you pay enough.
There are other bits of incidents as well. The bombing of the churches over the use of "Allah" is one example. The Straits Times reported that "Allah" is an Arabic word that was used by the Arabic Christians before Islam came about. The Indonesians have no qualms with other religions besides Islam using "Allah." My lecturer was telling me how Christians use the word "Allah" because it simply means "God" with the capital G (a very particular word) to address God the father, and they use "Tuhan" to address Christ. And yet churches are being bombed because the Muslims do not want people of other religions to use "Allah," as if it is strictly only for Islam.
Then there was an article on Immigrant Workers' Day or something like that. It is a known fact that there are many immigrant workers who are suffering right here in Singapore because the agencies back at home made them pay through their noses ten times over just to come here and be screwed over by employers who either pay late or not at all (many of them are contracted to work here without pay for TWO YEARS. That's the price they pay just so they can come here to work). On top of that, their living conditions are horrible. Some get kicked out of the job after as few months and they become broke and stranded in a foreign land with no where to go. The papers reported that some borrowed money from loan sharks back at home and they cannot return until they earn enough to pay back the money loaned. I have a senior who is doing his placement at an organisation (HealthServe I think) which seeks to help these people and fight for their rights, and I have learnt of these people's plight from him during our FG meetings. Anyways, the article was about this other organisation that is doing work related to this, and I remember that the papers quoted a guy saying, "I simply cannot accept that we are so close to being a First World nation...but we have Third World practices," or something to that effect.
History tells us many, many things. Alister McGrath said that, "...the past not only shapes and illuminates the present but anticipates the future" in Christianity's Dangerous Idea (one of my required readings for Church History). In the history of mankind, atrocities occur time after time after time. Same things happen for same reasons, what has happened in the past seem to repeat in the present and will quite possibly happen in the future as well. Social ills and injustice, violence and wars, crimes against humanity; all these seem to be becoming a norm. Where is the world going to?
This is not a lamentation, asking where God is. This is a lamentation, asking why men do all these over and over again, and why there always seem to be more evil doers than good people. I doubt not God, but mankind.
My friend was talking to me about the earthquake in Haiti a few days ago. He commented something as a joke, and it was so loaded I didn't really know how to respond. He said, "But it doesn't matter to us, because we are not affected and life still goes on, right?" This cynical remark caught me totally dumbfounded. Yes, in a way it is true; life still goes on for most of us. We are not affected physically by that earthquake, or by any other known quakes, or storms/typhoons/hurricanes, or any other form of natural disasters. We live so comfortably here in Singapore, and whatever has happened outside, life goes on for us. It was really uncomfortable hearing this little joke that has so much dark overtones.
As a side note, I have also heard from some of my schoolmates that we should pray for a proper and honest management of the funds collected for Haiti, because no one can really know where the money will go to exactly. Such corruption is actually, as they put it, normal.
Recently, I have started reading the book Issues Facing Christianity Today, and the first topic was the social responsibilities of a Christian and of the Church, which means that Christians and the Church should be involved with societal issues and problems and helping the helpless and troubled. We should not be so concerned with theologising, forming doctrines or running churches without realising that the Church is called to make a difference in the world as well, not simply within the Christian community. I also remember my lecturer emphasizing time and again that a church that is not missionary ceases to be a church.
With all of the above as the backdrop of where I am standing currently, I cannot help but ask just what I am doing as a Christian, and where exactly is humankind heading towards. The history of mankind is severely tainted, and it ought to teach us some lessons by now, but have we learnt anything? Is my life an example of Christian living? Am I pursuing things that will only add to my life and maybe some Christians, and not to the many others whom I would have to go out of my comfort zone in order to reach to? How do I get myself involved with the public? How do I get out of the building we call church and bring the Church to people? How are we as a church involved in the lives of non-believers, community and society? Or are we just running churches simply for Christians? With all the ugly, abhorrent madness out there today, how are we trying to make things better, and where do we start?
What is more frightening is that while I may be concerned today, I may not in a few weeks' time. Because life does go on... and all these may simply be but a memory archived in my mind and never to be reviewed again. It scares me that I may end up being contented with living a life doing nothing that truly counts. I am in doubt of the future me.
What do I do with my life?
Whether direct or oblique, the society, community and culture we live in affect and influence us. How we behave, communicate, relate and think, our worldviews and perceptions, our likes and dislikes are very much dependent on where we come from and the people we choose to share our lives with.
I am mighty glad to be a part of the community in TTC where most people are much more genuine and true to themselves and to others. The various people I relate to in school are feeding into my life a lot, and there are a lot of admirable characters whom I look up to. The young and old alike in college have great values that I want to learn from, and these people are really fun to hang out with as well. There aren't many I know without school who are truly hilarious and yet intellectual as my college mates are. I kind of wish my stay here will not be a mere three years. Technically speaking, I have seven years to complete my bachelor degree, but I don't think I will be given that sort of luxury... Which means I really need to learn to make the most out of my college life.
Anyways, just a personal thought, which may be entirely false. Many attempt to claim individuality in their lifestyle; they try to set themselves on a higher pedestal, crowning themselves as unique and vastly different from the rest of the people who are living the norm. They employ certain words (whether existing or made up; or they use big words that fit awkwardly into their sentences), use a certain lingo, hang out with certain people and try to create their own label. They seek a following from other people who will, inevitably, be second-class citizens in their micro-society should they decide to pick it up.
Trouble is, there are many of exactly such people, trying to be different, to be the alternative to the otherwise "mainstream" chaps. In the end, they are just another group of people following a certain trend, doing something or being a particular type for the sake of being 'cool,' and not because it's really who they are. They seem to attempt to put on the cloak of others whom they perceive as one-of-a-kind, cool and out-standing from the crowd, and then pass it of as theirs. They are following an example set by someone else or by the world; simply a case of social plagiarism, if you will. And many do not succeed in pulling off such a persona. So all in all, they still belong to a sub-set of society, which is what they are trying to avoid in the first place.
But that's just a thought that isn't exactly an important matter of life, of course...
I tried to pull this little sucker from the wall socket today.
It did not occur to me that it was lodged so tightly into the wall socket. It also did not occur to me that the wall socket could be easily pulled off the wall. And then this occurred.
Yep. The socket's off.
Hope it wouldn't cost my livelihood to get it fixed...
I met up with the youth pastor of the church I am doing my placement in for this semester (and maybe for this year). Talked a little, and he mentioned a list of qualities a youth pastor ought to possess. Among the items are being full of energy, spontaneous, people-oriented, quick-thinking, and et cetera. I know, and God knows, that there are some things mentioned that I do not have, and perhaps I do not fit the conventionally-thought bill to be a youth pastor.
So how?
Suck it up and make adjustments, I suppose. I only hope I will not be the awkward, seemingly anti-social guy that I am for the, what, 22 years?
Starting next Sunday, baby. :)
very forcefully slapped across my cheeks; left, right, left. everything's sort of a twirl now, like i am in a limbo, not knowing what's going on and not caring, knowing i should care. torn out of the surreal, involuntarily shoved into the actual. wonderfully tight, i say. coming to my senses soon, and not liking it. the fashion of stress i wore in few months past is back, perhaps more cumbersome than before. let me continue my sleep, let me stay on living the lies in dreams, please.
three days into new school term, three lectures so far, and i am already feeling the grindstone of academia sliding across my mind, wearing it thin yet not actually sharpening it. maybe i have yet to shake off the fatigue brought on by last sem's load. the rigors of education..can i really take it?
hello, sem the second.
anyhow, one phrase that struck me and perhaps caught me in shame during Dr. Andrew Peh's sermon today goes something like, "we love God as much as we love the person whom we love the least." an awfully powerful statement. a truth that is quite lost to many of us, even though we sub-consciously know it.
love for God never translates to mere lip service to the Almighty; it is your love for the least, the lowliest, the despised, the hated and the unlovable that demonstrates your love for God. a lesson i must learn and put into practice..
