How did God see your 2013?

What is the first emotion that comes as you think of 2013?

If you could draw a picture to represent the year, what would you draw?

Some of us hitch onto some happy moment, grin and tumble into the new year. Some of us wince at certain memories and maybe even fight to fend off the sense that we blew it again. Doubtless for most of us in mostly sunny Singapore, our days were a busy mix of getting around, chasing deals and forging goals. It can be hard to tease our jam-packed days apart to see what they were truly about.

- The unexamined life is not worth living - Socrates

But how do we examine our lives? What do we use to map our days against? What grid, or guide do we have? Our ever-present tendency is to compare ourselves with... some ideal, and often feel like we have been given the short end of the stick again.

Recently, i thought that even being on Facebook can do enormous harm: we may be sick, jobless, lost...and it seems the whole world is having a great time without us - all the pictures of balmy scenes, happy faces, wise words, great times... people are going places and doing stuff. Life is happening without us.

Facebook tries to help with a review of your year by stitching together all your posts and updates that received the highest 'likes'. Ah, all is not lost, i was heard; someone laughed at my joke, someone noticed my melancholy, someone liked my pictures.

As I was preparing to lead my church tomorrow for a time of reflection; I think of Jesus' words that sets up that contrast between life and death. He offers us life abundant - and warns us of the living reality that we have an enemy who wants to steal, kill and destroy.

Perhaps if we recognise that this dynamic presents itself to us each day - that within each day, we are posed a question: would you have life or not? I think of how our feelings, thoughts and circumstances may well be God's invitation and offer to live more fully and free.

I imagine looking at my life from the outside - and seeing it through God's eyes. What then of my 2013? How does God feel about my year nearly gone? What picture would he draw?

Selah.

Psalm 139 & more {enjoy}

Why not have some face-time with God and just remember - He is the God who made you, loves you and constantly, and faithfully invites you to go deeper. To live.

CHRISTmas manifesto

manifesto (n) :  a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer

Yesterday in the enlivening cover of the cool morning air, it dawned on me that Christmas, orchestrated before time, wild beyond our imaginations, had come with some 'instructions'. God has not left it all shadowy and open to speculation. There isn't meant to be twenty versions of how, who, what about Christmas. 

God first unveiled the CHRISTmas manifesto some seven hundred years to an statesman-prophet Isaiah:

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light;

on the inhabitants of a country in shadow dark as death

light has blazed forth

For a son has been born for us,

a son has been given to us..

No more stumbling in the dark. No more trying this way and that.

A blazing light is now available. turn your sights and be dazzled and find it's illuminating rays all about you - a warm, strong cloak that says you are known and you are safe.

All of us share this little child, this boy. Ours. Come close and stroke his soft cheeks. This gift of life -yours and mine together! You did not father him, i did not carry him; yet now, he is ours!

Each of us look at a child and marvel, wonder, wish... But with this child, this CHRIST, we are given understanding about how to see him. He's not here to fulfil our wishes. His character, abilities and impact are described for us:

dominion has been laid on his shoulders

and this is the name he has been given,

Wonder-Counsellor

Ask of the CHRIST what you need to have a heart full of wonder and worship. We live too often at the level of mere function. It's a tic-toc world and we are satisfied with clockwork. God did not create us - setting us in a lush garden filled with creation that continues to baffle and dazzle us, just so we can get on with it. No, we're meant to marvel, wonder, gasp in awe and let is all come out in praise and adoration of the Creator. The very lives we have, each sometimes so filled with mundane minutiae are no less works of Grace and tender love. We need this season to see our lives with fresh eyes - to ask the wonder-counsellor for eyes to see, heart to feel and minds to think brave.

Mighty-God

Yes, it's but a helpless babe. But he has come to destroy the works of the devil and rescue the world from darkness' clutches. Might is all His. Might is defined by him. Where do you feel weak, unable and afraid, overwhelmed and intimidated this season? Go to the God of might. Sit with Him for He is a giving presence. Go often and come away stronger.

Eternal-Father

Your father and mine - busy, absent, careless, no longer around... The strength, direction, example we long for is available. Christ shows u God is our eternal father. Our failures, crazed ideas and inconsistency won't turn him away. He will always be.

Prince-of-Peace

O to come to Christ and just feel the peace. No words needed.

I'm guessing one of these means more to you now. Go ahead, write it down, draw it, dream it, memorize it, sing it, dance it! 

The gift has been delivered. Go ahead, unwrap it and enjoy it. You need Him.

{the New Jerusalem Bible NJB is used here}

Let these WOW snowflakes' message melt into you...

God certainly delights in what He does...  {click}

This Christmas season, allow Him to do his wonders in your life.

How?
Stop demanding,
questioning
looking back
whining

but -
pray for eyes to see
heart to feel
mind that will think clear

look again at the snowflakes and let its beauty melt into your being and water the dry, thirsty land within.

Discovering God

Last night as I led a few leaders in a time of sharing about the past year in our lives; a brother talked about how his recent experiences helped him see that there are moments in life when it all boils down to you-and-God. No one else can quite enter your experience, bear the pain or help with understanding. Only One remains present, attending, and able to help. 

Yet, it will take us all a while to learn this deep truth that we indeed have a Heavenly Father, a God who offers help, a God who does carry us, a God who will grant wisdom, provide rest and bring healing.

When King Saul's jealousy and possible psychosis got the better of him, he hunted for David like a crazed predator for four years. Naturally, David feared for his life - and fear can make us do many things.
David went to the high priest for help. Later he went to enemy territory to hide. Everywhere David turned, people became implicated and sometimes suffered from the fallout of the conflict between Saul and David.

It looked like the sheer fear for his life was going to layer on with more: grief for what Saul would do to others who are innocent.

In our desperate moments, we will often turn for help - and sometimes, like a drowning man, we cling so tight to anyone or anything that can help; and drown that too.

There is instruction in this.

Equally, the four years David spent running for his life did something for him as all of these things happened. He crafted the Psalms that today reveal what depths a man and his God can get to.

In God alone there is rest for my soul

nowhere else
nothing else
no one else

In God is my safety

Not here
There
in him/her
in this/that

In God is my refuge

no need to flee
panic
fret
for God, ever-Present is.

David of course, eventually becomes the King God has anointed him to be. The dream God inked on his heart will come to pass even if it has to nearly die first. The king God saw fit to stand through a nation's history as king par excellence and as a pre-figure for Christ - that king who will build God's kingdom ways in a people, must know his God to the depths a mortal may be granted to. Yes, much of it came through a cauldron of human suffering we all seek to avoid: fear, threat of death, loneliness, emptiness, defeat, humiliation... But perhaps as John the Baptist would put it a thousand years later, "He must increase, I must decrease". More of God, less of me.

Christ on the Cross with John the Baptist and King David by
Schaufelein, Hans Leonard c1480-1539

note: These experiences and insights about God are reocrded in Psalm 62 - lyrics and music for a head Levite named Jeduthun* -one of three chief Levites; whom some deduce may be David's music teacher! 

Bereft. The feeling of losing something precious permanently.

Most hearts eventually have to reckon with this overpowering sensation.
This week someone got drunk. Another drags on more cigarettes than she intended to. Another walks, life around but not within her.

It's a dark night where the sun doesn't seem to rise. Negative emotions overrun while positive ones seem to have gone into hiding. Tears make their way to the surface without the least effort. There is little fire left in desires as everything feels blah.


It could be an unexpected, bad shattering news or a slow dawning sense that things are not as they seem; until a point of clarity reveals the truth of the situation.  Either way, nothing will be the same again.

It's hard to know what to say - to self, and others.  After all, it is like being forcibly sucked into a blackhole.

Young shepherd David lived and acted based on his faith in, and fervor for God. He served the King, he defeated the enemy. Despite his noble choices and right moves and the well-known praise and accolades he was receiving; the truth of the situation began to emerge: he had aroused the jealousy of King Saul. The tension turned into threat to his life, and as with all situations, things compound. When we reach Psalm 52, David was reeling from the devastating news that eighty-give priests were killed on account of him. The Psalm is a poetic way to teach truth; in this case, David asserts that through the reversals and losses, he will refuse to play the cynic. Instead, he senses God's hand on him and wrote ~

I, like a flourishing olive tree 
in the house of God,
put my trust in God's faithful love,
for ever and ever

There is much that didn't make sense. God's king has an inverted sense of what is right. David is targetted for treason. Others are implicated and killed. Everything is a mess; God it seems, has left the building. It would be easy to feel sorry, to rile, to strike back, to curl up into a ball and cry softly to death.

Goliath's sword that priest Ahimelech gave to David {1 Sam 21}  

Meanwhile, history tells us that some four hundred ragamuffins - "in distress, in debt, had a grievance" looked to David as their leader. {1 Samuel 22} Most leaders today will run a mile wide from such candidates for discipleship or leadership. But by chapter 23, the number had swollen to six hundred. A leader on the run for his life; battling darkness of guilt for causing the death of others, the pain of false accusation, the demands of broken people. He says he is a flourishing tree!

There is a core to our being that can be unshaken - for it is held, defined and kept by One who alone gives, sustains and protects life:

God did not deliver him into Saul's power {1 Sam 23v14}





Things will happen to us.
But God decides what to deliver us to. With the Cross, there is only one option for God: God will safeguard us for himself. He will deliver us up to Grace, restoration, healing, peace, truth, and power.

We may feel like we are in a blackhole, spinning helplessly. We don't know what to say or how to respond. But like David, we can resist the blackhole's power to snuff us out because Life is in us and nothing can extinguish that.
Indeed, we can afford to lose anything and everything because we will never lose what is essential: our loved selves. We are all olive trees that flourish because in the worst of days and nights, there is still God's faithful love and His goodness toward us. 

God is with us, storm-tossed world - Psalm 46

10,000 is a big number. But it's far more than a number when every single digit represents a life, a dream, a promise - each linked to other hearts and hopes. We are simply not capable of wrapping our minds around what it means. Our own little life can already get too much. This week though, we must all take our eyes and look further - the images and numbers must stop us in our tracks; hopefully long enough to make a difference.*

from Mash

from The Guardian

God's people have never lived in isolation. They lived in relation to others - seeking to bless them. This they do well only if they began in the right place. Today's Psalm provides this right place, a starting point. 

It is a worship song written for the instrument that sets the tone for all the other instruments in our modern symphonies. It is the song, the theology that sets the bar for everything else to align to. 
It is about how God is ~

refuge and strength for his people
a ready help when we are in trouble

so that - like this week, as we witnessed the massive destruction and loss from typhoon Haiyan; when the water roar and seethe and even mountains totter and tumble -

we are not afraid.

this is the emotion the truth of God addresses. Fear.

we ought to feel many things: sadness, grief, empathy, compassion, anger at authorities and corruption, angst over human sloth and on.. but we are not to fear for YHWH Sabaoth, the LORD who has armies at his disposal is with us.

I have a live-in Filipino helper who was back in her homeland as this typhoon blasted across. She comes from the region Iloilo. There was much devastation and many lost homes they took years to build from money they remit home from working far away from home and loved ones. Eva, my helper too had saved and helped her family built a small brick house on their farm. When I shared my concern with my daughter, she immediately said, "if it's destroyed we must give her the money to build a new one! Look at those filmsy houses; she must build one with a good foundation!"

A good foundation is critical. Good sturdy material can make all the difference.


Most of all though, a stout heart is what stands the inevitable storms of life. A heart that has learnt to be still, still enough to know in a deep way that God is God, supreme over the world; that God is God, and with us who are his people; simply because we choose to turn our eyes to him and believe.

Be still and acknowledge that I am God,
supreme over nations, supreme over the world. {v10}

What have I seen in my stillness?
I have seen a God so great I cannot define and describe.
I have seen humanity so wretched I know we need a Saviour.
I have seen my own heart filled with many emotions; including a frustrating tension at what to say to my children who asked, "will it come to Singapore?... Phew!"
I have seen that the losses will truly be in vain if we will not allow them to tutor our hearts toward contentment and compassion.

Why don't you shut off the news and turn inward and be still before God. Being still will lead to a knowing you need for the living you long for.

We come, to let His love rest on us

A vivid sensing came today: it is us in our busy days with our needs churning within us looking hither, thither for answers. We are busy reading off the Net, taking notes, making plans, trying to squeeze any juice of hope from these mostly dry places just to keep going. How nice to be able to just stop, have a totally lazy day and chill! But the wheels crank on and our hearts long for a rest that is deep, satisfying, and renewing.
How nice.

Recently i saw that magnum opus of a movie Gravity. Many minutes into the show, I felt a sensation of weightlesness and a slight sense of anxiety coming over me as i witnessed Sandra Bullock float-leap-crawl from space to space. It felt better whenever she was inside some capsule, but O, the endless expanse of space... and that dread moment when her colleague Clooney cut off the tether... Solid ground, give me solid ground - and soon! It was a palpable relief when she finally landed on earth.

Psalm 33v22 ~
YHWH, let your faithful love rest on us,
as our hope has rested in you.

We look up to people, watch for signs that the circumstances have shifted, yearn to hear a 'well done', 'thank you', 'I love you'.... and we are restless. God is near but so so far. Holiness is a benchmark we strive for rather than the amazing Grace presence that has opened up to us and now touches every little spot of our lives.

But - after the roving and roaming, if we will, our need for hope, our sense of hope can connect with Hope itself, tethered safe.

When we can stop clambering, worried and scared to death that we won't make it; and gather all of what we need and long for into a bundle and sit with God. 
Let our hope -- rest . in . You! 

Then, we shall see that God is waiting for us to be still enough to feel his Love resting upon us.

Yes, things will happen, people will hurt and disappoint, we will make dastardly mistakes...but we are never cut off to float into nothingness. What's more, we can regularly, deliberately, gather our life-bundle and sit with God, learning to be still enough to experience the Holy One loving us. Wow.

{here's one way: A Quiet Morning }

When It's All Too Much & You Nearly Give Up

Psalm 32 begins with a powerful definition: the one who is Blessed is the one who has been made right with God. 

When we are mired in our sins and other's sins, when we are overwhelmed, tired, near-depression... we need to recollect that our most important need has been met. As the Westminster catechism* puts it, our only hope in life and death is that we already have hope because we believe in Jesus Christ and have received his gift of forgiveness and reconciliation. Everything else is add-on; and nothing can take this away if we refuse to let it go.

Out of this place of a living relationship with God restored we negotiate & navigate life - and never ever all by ourselves even if it feels so.

God's active presence in our lives is easy to overlook and can be difficult to spot because our reflex to pain and threat is self-preservation; to use our own understanding and means to protect, shield, and vindicate ourselves.

This self-reflex is named for what it is: sin.
It's been said the word sin has 'I' in the middle of it. The indications are not hard to see:

self-pity ~ I'm so poor thing

blame ~ he/she is hurting, stifling, unfair, insensitive (and it's probably true: of them, but just as true of you and me!)

comparison ~ after more than twenty-five years my pay is less than a fresh grad (this is mine)

envy ~ he's so patient with her, what co-operative children...

pride ~ you don't have any idea

When we are willing to see that wrapped in our very real pain is this persistent thread of self; we can cry out for help and be ready to receive it. this is when our hearts and eyes open to see:

God has not let the waters swept us off

There are songs, hints, intimations of deliverance

God is guiding us with his eye constantly on us!
{this one comes with a vivid picture that has 2 applications:
Firstly, don't be like an animal that must be guided by constraints. We are children of God that are guided by an intimate walk with God; making choices out of our love for our Father, wanting to please and honour Him. But at times we simply don't. When that happens, then don't be like a wild horse that runs from what is needed for guidance. When a horse subjects itself to a loving master, it will be fed, cleaned, cherished and learn to use all its prowess to demonstrate what it's truly capable of. God may have to use a bit and bridle - limits; but when we relax to trust, these limits lead us to focus, to feast, to flourish. As we grow in trust, we walk in freedom more and more as children of God, confident that our motives guide our choices aright}

freedigitalphotos.net

We are enfolded in faithful love

So lift your heart to God today my friend, like, right now.

*the Westminster catechism is a Reformed church document developed using a series of Qs to help new believers become grounded in basic and definitive faith doctrines so that they are guided in their life. Click here for one site on it

Healing for help

Psalms 30:2 ~

O LORD my God, I cried to you for help,

and you have healed me.

 This is a Psalm of a cry for help and an experience of being saved from mortal danger. Perhaps it refers to a sickness, hence the healing. But mortal danger and the threat to life can come in many forms.

 Whatever form it takes though, our one desire is to be rid of it quickly and painlessly.

 I am wrecking my brain for a story in the bible where God airlifts the person out of his troubles. The only ones i know are the ones on their way home namely, Enoch & Elijah.

In fact, this imagery came vividly to me once when I was so sick and tired of some ongoing troubles I had: I saw a huge 'X' over a common rescue scene - a helicopter with a lifeline lowered! The message to me was,"no,not this way". It was reinforced by another impression I had perhaps a year earlier when I felt God say to me, "you need to walk though this"- and immediately I recall the famous line from Psalm  23, 'the valley of the shadow of death..'.

We want help; we get healing.

God takes us through the tunnel, the dark, the death, and makes us more well, more complete, more whole. The help God gives is not a short-term relief but an eternity-set goodness ... We know honestly that we don't have the patience for ourselves; the way we keep making those same silly mistakes and horrendous self-centred ways we inflict others and ourselves with pain. God alone has the distance of patience, goodness, forgiveness, and gentle enabling we need to unlearn, and to relearn about... life and love.

Thing is when we deny or ignore the dark, it doesn't go away. God's way is to vanquish it; to strip it of its power over us. He does this by taking us by the hand and walking with us into those dark places so that His Light may illumine and take away the dread- as we discover that these 'monsters under our bed' are really   not.so.powerful.

Cry to God for help - and get ready to be healed.

No. 19 - aware of, in awe, and a prayer to YHWH

Many years ago, a young Pakistani young who visited our little fellowship sang a song out of the 18th Psalm. If i can figure out how, I may sing it for us here...that simple 3-chord song helped me fall in love with the power of the Psalms.

Several years later, I encountered the next Psalm, no.19. It was a time when i needed a strong anchor for my life - and the resounding confidence of the Psalmist drove those words clear into the marrow of my convictions~

"the Law of the LORD is perfect
reviving the soul"

It riveted my attention and pegged my will to a posture of submission.

So, today i share with us my gleanings as I visit no. 19 and I see in it a Psalm of Awakening. 

It begins with being stirred to see God's hand in creation and His massive rule over it all. 

The heavens declare the glory of God..
from the entire earth the design stands out,
the message reaches the whole world...
and nothing can escape his heat.

Just look ! {click}

The One who speaks the words that bring into being also has words for us which enlivens, guides and brings joy!

the Law of YHWH is perfect,
refreshment to the soul, ...
wisdom for the simple. 
the precepts of YHWH are honest,
joy for the heart; ...
light for the eyes.

YHWH creator God whose Presence looms large over all and who has established moral law is therefore to be acknowledged with fear and His judgement to be sought. 

How often do we pause to think how God judges a situation? I rarely hear of this in God-speak today; mostly I hear us accusing / questioning / God for failing to align with our judgment of the situation and so being blind to our very necessary needs!

This awakening leads into the prayer to be free from all our crazy self-enamoured tendencies-

who can detect his own failings?
wash away my hidden faults.
and from pride, preserve your servant,
never let it be my master...

and finally, this:

May the words of my mouth always find favour,
and the whispering of my heart, {yes, our hearts whisper / murmur / rant!}
in your presence, YHWH,
my rock, my redeemer.