Recently in God Category

The whole family is down with the flu, and the ubiquity of the H1N1 news in the media does add that tinge of fear, I must admit. We’ve seen the family doctor but no tests were taken to determine if it is flying pig syndrome we’re suffering from.

Faith somehow managed to will herself out of falling sick. I’ve always known her to be a superwoman and all that, but this really takes the cake. Caleb and I have the perpetual runny nose and Anne has a cough that would rival the Marlboro Man’s. None of us has really come down with a fever, so that is something to thank God for.

Probably the result of the flu medicine, but the possibility of losing one of the kiddos to the bug isn’t lost on me. I just spent the last half hour applying vapor-rub to Anne’s chest as she repeated attempted to cough her lungs out. I lay there in the dark, soothing the girl to sleep as my brain recalibrated its place in the universe. Life and death — the very basics of existence we’ve struggled with through all of humankind — is something we still have no control over. For all the intellectual debate, all the scientific rants, all the technological achievements we’ve made, we are (in biblical terms) unable to make a single hair on our head black or white.

There comes a time to surrender the intellect, and it isn’t borne out of a defeatist attitude. It feels right to cede that the really important things in life are in the hands of God. You could say that it is the feeling that comes with using a crutch; but honestly, it feels more like the realisation that it is the air currents that bears the wings to soar, and endless flapping is a poor substitute.

It seems the fashionable answer, when someone asks you when you’ll start having children, to casually comment on the sorry state of the world and how you can’t imagine bringing a child into this mess. But a world without children is far worse off. A world without the sound of children’s laughter or innocent questions only leads to a downward spiral.

Anne has been trying hard to clarify the definition of the word “neighbour”. She often asks, “is he my neighbour?” or “are we neighbours?” without realising that her very question is the linchpin of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10). It is such an apt question as we step into what looks to be a serious recession ahead. It is also apt as the uncle who stays alone next door to us seems to have taken a turn for the worse healthwise.

I ought, like Anne, to constantly ask who my neighbour is, and how I can help him or her.

One of the most difficult things to explain about the Christian faith has to do with Jesus being the Son of God, while at the same time God Himself. To be quite honest, I don’t get the whole mechanics of it. Had a small revelation tonight as I was washing poop out of Anne’s PJs.

Anne has had a problem with constipation, and it’s gotten worse since our return from New Zealand. The last time she pooped she cried, and we found a bit of blood. She had probably gone too long without pooping.

Tonight she kept telling us that she was scared. We initially thought it was the television show she was referring to, though both of us weren’t sure American Inventor fell under horror, unless Anne meant the terrible “suspense” music. We then realised she was terrified that she had to poop.

It totally wracks your heart to see the little two year old girl walk around listlessly, rubbing her tummy, constantly coming to you for a hug and telling you she’s scared. She didn’t want to sit on the potty, so we let her stay in our bedroom. She told us to wait outside. When we turned American Inventor down we could hear her whimpering in the bedroom, but everytime we popped our head in, she told us to wait a while more.

“I love you,” I told her.

She tilted her head to the side, holding back tears, and said “I love you” back.

My baby. My daughter. My love.

She’s now sleeping. The poop did eventually make it way out, down her left pant leg and unto the floor, but we’re thankful that there was no blood. She returned to her normal self soon after. Faith read her her bedtime story while I did the necessary laundry.

The revelation? I never understood why Jesus had to be “God’s Son”, but I’ve always known that Jesus came to earth to show us the extremes God would go to bring us back to Him. It would have been one thing for God to suffer on the cross; it would have been infinitely more painful for Him to helplessly watch His Son suffer and die.

Just so we’d know how much.

It’s the time of the year when everything you do feels like a slow trudge uphill. Significant inroads have been made on the upcoming redesign of the Ministry of Education’s website. It’s due for launch 1Q 2008, but has to undergo some IE-proofing. Thank you, Microsoft, for making web design a lot more tedious than it has to be.

Anne has been acting up lately, waking up in the middle of the night and taking a really long time getting back to sleep. She’d demand that we scratch her “itchiness” (she made that word up for wherever itched), or pat her back ad perpetua.

My prayers have become so mundane, and I’m learning what it means to pray for one’s daily bread. It always seems more “right” to pray for things like knowing God better, or growing in His likeness or submitting to His will - the higher, nobler things, but I find myself praying for bread and butter issues like “please help Anne sleep through this night, Faith really needs the sleep”. It seems so primitive and base of me, and I wonder if it’s a sign my faith has waned, or if God’s breaking me down to the bare essentials.

It’s been a crazy past 2 months. The kinda crazy that has you lying awake on your bed, thoroughly exhausted yet mortally afraid that you can’t continue like this but you must kinda crazy, know what I’m talking about?

Faith’s nausea has her in a constant tug-of-war with the retching gods, and it pains me to see her continually in that state. I’m doing whatever I can around the house - making sure everyone’s fed, the housework’s done, the laundry washed and the kiddo out of mommy’s hands every now and then so that Faith can get some much needed shuteye. Faith sleeps quite a bit these few days. I can only imagine how tiring it is to control the urge to purge every single moment of every day.

But God has been amazingly gracious, and I am so very thankful for even the smallest things. Faith manages a smile every now and then when the nausea subsides, and I fall madly in love with her again. I realise how frail and weak my love for her is - that it is dependent on her being what I know of her. Were she to suffer some personality-changing trauma from a mental or physical illness, I really wouldn’t know what to do.

His faithfulness is greater than ours, and His love hopes forever.

We got married 4 years ago to the day. Some of you were there - even some whom I’ve never met but read this blog and managed to find someone who knew where the wedding was.

It seemed like the perfect ending to a beautiful story; childhood sweethearts who got together, weathered extended periods of being apart and finally getting married. I must admit that the desire to marry Faith was a large part of my life, and when we crossed that juncture there was this amazing feeling, that everything felt right. What has transpired then? What happens after happily ever after?

The last four years of being married has been a whirlwind of activity and we’ve been swept up in it. We got our own place, and the never-ending housework that entails. I’ve changed jobs and battled hyper-thyroidism. And we’ve been blessed to have had Anne in our lives the last 2 years.

What is probably regrettable is that we lost sight of the game plan.

Carol said,

make a difference…. God’s idea, or yours? if God’s, you get whatever you need to make it happen. if yours, you know what will result…

I grew up with Carol, and it is so apt that so many years later she’d tell me to grow up.

I’ve been a Christian for some time, and my worldview reflects it. I’m not apologetic that the way I see the world is shaped by my beliefs. But the problem with me is that at some point my relationship with a living God has been substituted with a set of beliefs. It’s like the husband who stops paying attention to his wife because he knows what she’s going to say. It reeks of death.

This is what the LORD says:
“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who depends on flesh for his strength
and whose heart turns away from the LORD.

He will be like a bush in the wastelands;
he will not see prosperity when it comes.
He will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.

“But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in him.

He will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.”

Jeremiah 17:5-8

• 2007 looks set to be the hottest year on record
• Artic ice shelves break off
• Bird flu warning issued
• Indonesian ferry capsizes
• Indonesian plane still lost
• Bomb blasts in Thailand

Lord, You ask us to look up. It is so hard; so heavy.

Maranatha.

Like a foolish dreamer
trying to build a highway to the sky
all my hopes would come tumbling down
and I never knew just why
until today, when you pulled away the clouds
that hung like curtains on my eyes
Well, I’ve been blind all these wasted years
and I thought I was so wise
but then You took me by surprise

Like waking up from the longest dream
how real it seemed
until Your love broke through
I’ve been lost in a fantasy
that blinded me
until Your love broke through

All my life I’ve been searching for that missing part
and with one touch you just rolled away
the stone that held my heart.
Now I see that the answer was as easy
as just asking You in
and I am so sure I could never doubt
Your gentle touch again
It’s like the power of the wind.

It’s been a while, God.

Thanks for always taking me in.

The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’

‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’ (Matthew 25:8-9)

You cannot distil reality from historical fact alone. Reality is to be lived in the present. No amount of fact, however irrefutable, can ever bridge the gap of having known and knowing, of having tasted and tasting.

Basing your entire faith because a man once crucified, died and rose again is to hang the very basis of your existence on a fine thread that upon close inspection isn’t actually there. The resurrection has to be here and now, mostly because of how quickly we forget.

I need a new life bad.