discover the within and the beyond…
Off to KL for a staff retreat, then to HK to conquer Wilson trail.
seemingly rest to race.. more to that,
praying that i may rest in vigilance and fight in restedness..
…there you go, paradoxes again..
looking forward to the journey ahead, in the hope that i may find some ‘stimulations’ & ‘inspirations’…..
2 weeks since my last post.
have i neglected the time to reflect?
have i been living a life unchecked?
have i forgotten His words and precepts?
Thru a prayer, He awaits us to connect..
to unravel His plan..perfect.
perhaps’ my turn to act?
Job. A man familiar with suffering and sorrow..
yet, out of his understanding and intimacy with the Lord Almightly, he testified…
“But he knows the way that I take;
when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.”
many first-times and lots of surprises! Watching the show with 6 other sec 3 girls from Project SMILE was an interesting first-time experience for me. My heart goes out for them especially after being told that most of them, at the age of 15, a movie outing to Suntec City was their first-time.
Me, contented with my large sweetened popcorn, felt like a kid with my eyes and mouth wide opened awed by the vividness of the 3D effect of the animation. Yes,my first 3D movie (not counting those pri sch trips to omnitheatre). I was like wow-ing away, till i felt little embarrassed of myself sitting amidst the other children who were pretty well-behaved…
the song “Carmen” to start off the movie was brilliant and rather unforgetable.
Carl’s Fedrickson (aka the old man) faced a lonely future upon the death of his beloved wife, Ellie, who was an aspiring explorer just like himself. At this ripe old age, decided to live his late wife’s dream to put up at an explorers’ haven Paradise Falls at South America…hence the floating house, hence the exciting odyssey..of course with an unexpected company, Russell- a die-hard Wilderness Explorer Scout, whose only wilderness experience was at his own backyard.
brought to memory my fav movie “Patch Adams”, looking beyond the 4 fingers…
sometimes, rather most of the time, most precious lessons on life could be drawn from the least expected ppl around us.. just like Carl who was ‘stucked’ with Russell who taught him new meaning to living.
Ellie, tho her dream to be an explorer was left unrealised, her days in blissful marriage with Carl who loves her, meant everything to her.
if you were to ask someone what’s his dream, the likely answer you might get is “环游世界”.
Aspire to peak the highest mountain or touch the tip of the Southpole?
To sum up, leaving you with a concluding quote by its Director, Pete Doctor:
“We came out with this image of a floating house held aloft by balloons and it just seemed to capture what we were after in terms of escaping the world. We quickly realised that the world is really about relationships, and that’s what Carl comes to discover..”
wanna 环游世界? perhaps, we should start from home.
Saturday morning! and i’m home after a ‘hearty’ meal of mince pork kuay tiao with vinegar.. now sitting in front of my computer, with a full tub of strawberry yoghurt, accompanied by symphony 92.4…(when i’m not pressed with THE contested entity that is omipresent with which i associate myself with a love-hate relationship: TIME) is what i deemed as, contentment. 
tasks for the morning:
read the word,blog, prepare for cluster cell group
going thru a few days of unsettling state of my being pondering about today’s cluster cell, the word ‘unity’ keeps ringing in head.
unity?- a topic too overly mentioned? ..what do you want us to learn about unity today, Lord?
Question: Why do we come together week after week for cell group and fellowship?
Revisit some of these motivations that propel us to do what we do.
Ephesians 3:16-20 tells us,
“16I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. “
20Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.. ”
Not I but we. Not me but Us.
The fullest of God can only be revealed and experienced through the body of Christ.
In order to receive the complete measure of His blessings and His grace bestowed upon us, the only avenue is through the fellowship of His people, His church, His body.
A man in an island is only shortchanging oneself of the abundance of the Lord and depriving oneself of the blessings the Lord has intended for us.
Ps 133, He reminded us again.. precious is unity..
“1 How good and pleasant it is
when brothers live together in unity!
2 It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
down upon the collar of his robes.
3 It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the LORD bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.”
Unity delights the heart of the Lord. Unity draws blessings.
Let nothing but the unfathomable measure of the love of Christ propel us to do what we do and compel us too, to love one another.
Realign your motivations today, and choose to stay connected.
The Disciple- John
(Adapted from commentary of the Life Application Bible)
“Being loved is the most powerful motivation in the world. Our ability to love is often shaped by our experience of love. We usually love others as we have been loved.
Some of the greatest statements about God’s loving nature were written by a man who experienced God’s love in a unique way. John, Jesus’ disciple, expressed his relationship to the Son of God by calling himself “the disciple whom Jesus’ loved” (John 21:20). Although Jesus’ love is clearly communicated in all the Gospels, in John’s Gospel it is a central theme. Because his own experience of Jesus’ love was so strong and personal, John was sensitive to those words and actions of Jesus that illustrated how the One who is love loved others.
Jesus knew John fully and loved him fully. He gave John and his brother James the nickname “Sons of Thunder” (Mark 3:17), perhaps from an occasionwhen the brothers asked Jesus for permission to “call fire down from heaven” (Luke 9:54) on a village that had refused to welcome Jesus and the disciples. In John’s Gospel and letters, we see the great God of love, while the thunder of God’s justice bursts from the pages of Revelation.
Jesus confronts each of us as he confronted John. We cannot know the depth of Jesus’ love unless we are willing to face the fact that he knows us completely. Otherwise we are fooled into believing he must love the people we pretend to be, not the sinners we actually are. John and all the disciples convince us that God is able and willing to accept us as we are. Being aware of God’s love is a great motivator for change. His love is not given in exchange for our efforts; his love frees us to really live. “
Lessons to be learnt from John:
1. Those who realise how much they are loved are able to love much.
2. When God changes a life, he does not take away personality characteristics, but puts them to effective use in his service.
Have you accepted that love?
“Faith, hope and love, and the greatest of all its love..” 1 Cor 13
I blogged about this topic of love once. Today, the Lord gave me a new perspective about this verse. Why in this order, “faith, hope and love” and not “hope, faith and love” etc?
Faith is the entrance, the guiding principle, the cornerstone to how we can pursue hope and love. without faith, how do we know that there is a hope awaiting for us? without faith, how can we love as He has loved? without faith, how could we be certain about the hope and the love we have in Christ?
faith is the basis. without faith, its impossible to please God. it all starts from faith.
do i believe, truly?
“Faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see..” Heb 11:1
its been a week since i last blogged! n i actually missed blogging!
For the past week, so many things happened!
Highlight: Batam over the weekend.
As the title goes, “blessed with a burden”. Perhaps that would be my greatest learning over the weekend.
Paradoxical as it may seemed, it has challenged my paradigm towards the word, “burden”.
This was a quote taken from the movie “Freedom Writers”.
Extracted a good summary and sypnosis of the story as follow:
“Assigned the thankless task of teaching freshman English at a gang-infested Long Beach, CA high school, a 23-year-old teacher resorts to unconventional means of breaking through to her hardened students in director Richard LaGravenese’s adaptation of Erin Gruwell‘s best-seller -The Freedom Writer’s Diaries: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them. Her students had been written off, and her chances of succeeding scoffed at, but Erin Gruwell wasn’t about to go down without a fight.
Long Beach is a place where a new war is waged with each passing day, and when the hardened students who walk those dangerous hallways sense an outsider attempting to understand their plight, their cynical resentment threatens to keep a deadly cycle in motion. Despite the initially hostile reaction she receives in the classroom, Gruwell uses the writings of Anne Frank and -Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevo to teach her students not only the basis of the English language, but compassion and tolerance as well.
Later, when the time comes to tell their own tales in a project specially designed to explore the daily violence that the majority of students have grown numb to, the barriers that had once stood so strong gradually begin to crumble. When the only chance for survival is to befriend the person who was once your mortal enemy, the world is opened to a whole new realm of possibilities.” – Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
“You are blessed with a burden”..those were the words uttered by Gruwell’s (‘Ms G’) father when he was consoling her daughter amidst a time of grief when facing a divorce..his father commended her for being a teacher and how much he envied her for the difference she has made in the lives of her students.
how would you feel if your dad were to speak those words to you?
how can a ‘burden’ be seen as a ‘blessing’?
for her students, the teacher went extra miles, many extra miles..
she truly believes in her students. what is education for? have we been ‘doing’ education for education sake? What good has it done for a person to be ‘educated’?
Ms G saw in the students’ potential for change, to be the ‘change they want to see in the world’, but the change has to start from within themselves first.
…(to be cont’d)
