a heart of wisdom, a head of white- living well and strong.

The 11 year-old was sitting right by me quietly for a while, then suddenly: Mom! You have so much white hair! You are getting so old...

Slightly startled at his newfound knowledge, I soon compose myself, laughed and reminded him to take good care of his old ma.

He leans over and gives me a hug, as if getting old was such a disaster!

Live long enough and age seems such a bad thing. Women in particular have been known to be skittish about age. So we invent what I call common-wisdom:

Age is only a number
Mind over matter: if you don't mind it, it don't matter.
You don't look your age

Age is a number - that represents something.
So it does matter.
Looking our age isn't the issue, acting our age is!

In contrast to common wisdom, God calls us to be aware of our days, to mark the seasons and to number our days!

We are to live with an awareness of our mortality.

Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes ~ James 4v14

Ouch.

We have an expiry date, and we do not get to set it. This is what I call hard truth.

Pair this with:

Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. ~ Psalm 90v12

This remembrance of our mortality is not morbid. Rather it is purposeful.
With the reality of our mortality, this Psalm tells us that we not to simply pass our days, but to observe if our hearts are enlarging and deepening with a distinct quality called wisdom.

So I ask myself:

Does my wisdom match my graying hairs?

Do I know, feel, act like a 50 year-old who has gone through what I have gone through?

Knowing that tomorrow may never come, do I live in hostage to my past, or trapped in anxiety about the future? Should I not be fully present in the current moment and realities?

What have I made of the experiences of pleasure, satisfaction, and fullness?
What has become of me through the losses, pains, betrayals and sacrifices?


To know our mortality is to appreciate the present.
To gain a heart of wisdom is to have something from our past to offer the present.

Zipping through our days won't give us either.

What experience has made you feel alive?

What experiences have made you feel deadened?

These two questions that are derived from an old practice of self-examination* takes both our mortality and our potential seriously. What makes us alive is indication of our true self and the gift we are to the world. What deadens us suggest to us that we are not strong enough or not meant to walk that way.

You may live to a hundred, but would you want to be a stranger to yourself at the end?
You may live less than the average life span, but your spark has left light, love and truth behind!

When God calls us to gain a heart of wisdom, it means that it matters how we pass our days. It also means that we can allow our days to shape and polish us so we can grow age with grace and confidence.

It's time to stop fussing over time management. The sands of time will flow on. The tick-tock will continue.

Manage instead our motives, our moods, and meanings. Assign the most time to the things that matter the most. Allocate times of freshness and energy to what you truly value. Design appointed times for reflection and deep thought.


Pray with me:

“Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is. ~ Psalm 39v4

And remember, we can count on this:

My times are in Your hands ~ Psalm 31v15

ThMom! You have so much white hair! Getting SO old...

Hermit me?

The local trains have been breaking down - something highly unacceptable in first world, super efficient Singapore where waiting is nearly anathema. But as I read the news and sense the frustration; something struck me -- I am not affected by it. Of course there is relief. Being one of a sightly different skein anyway, life by commute and cubicle is not my cup of tea.

But it also got me thinking if I am a bit too removed from what my fellow residents of this busy city go through...

The definition of a hermit is "any person living in solitude" (Oxford). Hmm.
The more popular notion is of someone distant, out of touch and a bit off-key with average humanity. Not exactly a term of endearment!

I suspect many stay-home-moms (or other kinds of caregivers and those with a vocation that isnt the typical 9-5 arrangement) can at times feel rather cut off. I have commiserated with other moms about how lost we feel in the shopping district Orchard Road.

If being a hermit is to prefer solitude, then in many ways I am. The extrovert no less. Solitude is a habit that becomes a posture that becomes a shape. It is the habit of perferring and so making time to turn inward toward self in examination and upward in adoration. Good hermits do not encrust with hard unfeeling shells. Instead, the journey into the deep parts of life; my life, reveals the dark and light shades that would otherwise be neatly cubby-holed as right/wrong/trendy/etc.

Upon further reflection too, i realise that I observe, understand and have the boldness to speak about life and into lives precisely because i am not too enmeshed and needy of it.

My heart goes out to those whose schedules, plans and people to attend to get disrupted. It is truly a test of our resolve and intentions. How much will we pursue our plans when the trains don't bring us there with ease and on time?

2012?

2012.
I am sure when I was twelve, I could not fathom this in any calendar.
But here I am, at the threshold of it.
it is a big deal - this passing of time. For it's a ticking of our heart and an inching towards the inevitable: our very own passing.

Today, i saw an advert for snail cream. You heard me.... to SLOW down (get it?) the signs of aging from acne to wrinkles.

Go ahead, look good, eat rich, travel wide, so much! But the inexorable force called Life and Death tugs at each of us daily and really, the direction is clearly marked. How can such a simple truism escape us? How can it fail to wake us to 'number our days' and pursue wisdom?

Because the Invitation to really live is daily drowned out by a well-thought and worked through scheme which surrounds, invades, cajoles, convinces us by the moment: this is all there is. So,

 Take it all. If you don't, someone else will. Nothing is safe, no one is secure...take it now.


This mantra is there in pictures, words, sounds, voices. We seem unable to escape. It feels easier to succumb (nicely worded as 'go with the flow').

But then comes a precise point in time. When LIFE rent asunder this madness and denied its power and grip. When LIFE chose the lowly, unlikely, weak and un-esteemed...and whispers through the cold wind, the desperate cries of broken-hearted mothers and the fantastical proclamations of angels to those who could hear.....

Goodwill to men
Peace on earth
Joy!

Since that point in time, we have moved on - many moons, generations, wars and gods later..
and LIFE's invitation continues to ring out in the smile of a infant, the chuckle of a child, the mad dash of a boy let free, the embrace of lovers who know love, the hands that touch kindly, the old woman who prays daily...
each one a tear in the fabric of this tightly woven, suffocating, cloak of inhuman-ness.

and one day, it will be torn asunder and the Glory of LIFE will shine through full.