letting God show u

I was pleasantly surprised yesterday when i just felt the tugging in my heart to go visit my old workplace at Tanjong pagar there. Since i was kinda talking to God (yarping) that time.

(Its just this thing about us lefties we never can focus for more than 2 hours. This is really scientific and due to our right brain which is more activated. something to do with usage of left or right brain.)

Anyway.....i felt led to just visit that old place where i used to hang out. like for lunch or after work. and yup....I bumped into my salsa friend. he happened to have free passes to go Union sq. Things have changed there. Its a lot quieter and no more old crowds. Because....people are unwilling to pay 16 bucks unlike in the past, it used to be only 5 bucks. Of course there were new faces but it wasn't the same...which is bad and good.

Then i realised that A.G.'s (a foreign gal pal working in singapore) advice to me was quite true after all. I was seeing things and thinking so different from the last time when i visited that place. Thanks to also those books i read. good stuff =)

Good site of a friend's testimony!
http://www.godofcreation.com/essays/essay_list.asp?strType=TEST

new labour laws

there are new labour laws for construction which means, no work any more on sundays for workers. however i feel the education sector should also have laws that help teachers have a better work life balance. Come on, teachers used to just have two major roles which are planning lessons, teaching, and ECA. now its 5 roles at least? full time teachers.
It's fast becoming a 10 hour job from 7am to 5pm, with teachers taking on multiple roles in school. To increase the birth rate in Singapore, I believe work-life, or family life time should increase. Not just for the sake of having babies but for the sake of...rest from labour. Every one needs rest. Every one also is more effective at work when they have enough rest. :)

THE dream (strange dream i had this week)

Why was my cell group mate (gal), E in there?? lol!! but there i was , we were both punished for crime. some murder thingy!!! I got framed or i accidentally was involved in it and i was sentenced to 3rd degree murder (the least serious one) lol!!! i know its hard to believe such a weird drama dream but it was sooo exciting!

so i was, along with E (gal from my current cell grp), facing punishment. sigh.

i was given lethal injection!! But thankfully my punishment was only the 1st stage of lethal injection, where the full dose of Lethal injection was a total of 6 parts, full dose. 6 stages. some friends told me i could die after taking the first jab. i was bracing for the worst.

Then i took the jab. wasn't the least bit painful! I waited to "die".
I told God "Why do you want me back so soon?" I felt sooo sooo sad inside me. I was crying so much not cause i was scared or self-pitying or sad for myself but because I had so much time more I could live to the max on earth; so many things undone, not started etc. It was a very horrible waste!

I talked to all my friends, acquaintances, told them i loved them, that I wanted so much to be with them still.

seriously.....i saw people i normally wouldn't talk to and i managed to talk to them for real.

I told them this is it. it was horrendously in my face reality........I was termbling with 1) how it would feel to die, 2) how wasted this was to have done something as stupid as murder accidentally, and get into this mess. 3) i cried all the time but i wasn't sad sad, nor bitter nor mad. i was just like "Not so soon.....God, please.....i have so many things i have to do, and and and....my purpose in life and all that. Everyone is looking at me like i should live many more years....oh nooo...."

Then after the shot, i just walked around, smiled at everyone my last smiles and waited......

people gave me pitying looks.

I didn't care......i wanted to live, not live in what they thought of me.

i waited......time flew......seconds ticked away.

minutes passed. 3-4 horus passed. Nothing happened.

I didn't die yet?

I smiled again once more at people.

I walked around the village, waving at people and praying. It had little huts and houses.

Then i remembered after waiting a bit more.

It was the 6th or 7th lethal jab that would cause death, not the first one.

I didn't die after all!!

I woke up.

tis the season to get fat, and relax?

world cup fever......

processing (our actions)

Sigh...i know it can be super irritating when you want to do something fast and furious especially when its a spurt of inspiration, a sudden lightbulb (idea), sudden good opportunities, but "slow it down" sometimes and we have to process or go through the process....

Meaning, sit down, walk around, kneel or stand and talk to Him. really talk. Then write down or process it on your own to know if it is what you yourself really want, if this is something good, something that is biblical, etc, then also when it is good to actually act on the idea.

The tougher part is listening to advice from mentors and people who have your best interests at heart. arghhh....sometimes they just simply go "Oh, slowly ba" "Think carefully first" and that's it your bubble gets deflated. But that doesn't mean they are saying no or dampening your big plan. It could be His way of telling me...to go through that good (but tiring) process of seeking Him, thinking through first. God could be using them to tell you or I to think it through.

As much as vibes and gushes of inspiration and adrenalin are infatuation-like rushes to our pulses and even, brain, especially great ideas about work and career, I gotta think it through.

(Inspired by the sharing tht day by one of my Channel News Asia Journalist-friends on her journey with her heavenly Dad)

frogs!

those green cartoon figures (in a jigsaw?) among a massive group of people in egypt during the prince of egypt time must have left a huge impression everywhere.

different people want different things

Haha, the previous post was just one of my attempts at trying to do research on a difficult topic. I found it difficult, though others may find it interesting and very relevant. I also realised that I don't mind people reading my posts no matter how lame or controversial they are. But other people mind the public reading their own journals or blogs. For me its more like, whoever bothers to read will read it. Whoever doesn't, doesn't.

I can't do research when i'm sleepy or tired. Research work is not for me and not me. I can do maths, or calculations or mathematical problems though, when i am tired. It's not that i like math, or maybe subconsciously i do like math. Or maybe its the rigorous training of MOE through Secondary school and JC math. That's one thing i'm grateful for about our education here. The Maths or MATH can really stretch you. SO can the Economics Paper, which explains our current landscape in the City area (Most are bank and Financial skyscrapers). So maybe disciplined learning does make a person learn, like in the case of Math here.

Then suddenly i realise upon thinking of different jobs out there, that there is honour in whatever job you do.

Be it Engineering, Human resource, Teaching, Counselling, Cleaning, Community Service, Shopkeeping, Librarian, working for Government, Homemaking, Driving, Receptionist, Resolving disputes, Law, Business, Hospitality, Food, Prisons, Healthcare, Writing, Designing, Movies and the Arts, we are always in some form of contact with people. We are doing a service for people, for society. We are helping people. We are interacting with people. And that makes EVERY SINGLE job worth it!

trying to make sense of the news....sighh...

I am a firm advocate of reading at least 5-7 websites from different sources and perspectives, when trying to extract info. Only found 3.....but it's enough to take a whole day....the whole Gaza thing is mind-boggling...controversial, definitely. hmm....worth finding out more on for sure.

http://gazaflotillasurvivors.posterous.com/
http://caiaweb.org/,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Apartheid

"The Israeli West Bank barrier, a structure that has been called an "apartheid wall" by critics of Israeli policy. Israeli officials describe the partition, constructed in 2002, as a security fence, limiting the ability of Palestinian terrorist organizations to enter Israel....blah blah blah" (source is again, wikipedia)

I've never been sooo sleepy and tired and not there at work before....and that's cos i was trying out the whole "if i can't sleep at night or wake up halfway, it's probably because God wants to speak to me about something"......i've tried it before but yesterday was....more of the dream that spoke rather than my praying. and i had the dream after i prayed or tried to pray a lot. lol. something about going to a strange school but not the one i used to teach at. the feeling was familiar but it was a different school, never been there before.

love is all we need? (Counterfeit gods)

In the early days of my pastoral ministry, I met a woman named sally, who had the misfortune of being born beautiful. Even in childhood she saw the power she could wield with her physical attractiveness. At first she used her beauty to manipulate others, then they used it to manipulate her. She came to feel she was powerless and invisible unless some man was in love with her. She could not bear to be alone. As a result she was willing to remain in relationships with men who were abusive. She had come to look to me for the kind of affirmation that only God could provide. Making an idol out of love may mean allowing the lover to exploit you and abuse you.

Jacob in the bible showed a man overwhelmed with emotional and sexual longing for a woman, Rachel. Why? Jacob's life was empty. He never had his father's love, he had lost his beloved mother's love and certainly had no sense of God's love and care. Then he beheld the most beautiful woman he had ever see. He thought "If I have her something would be right in my miserable life. It would fix things." All the longings in his heart for affirmation and meaning were fixed on Rachel.

The "Romantic solution", the self glorification needed in man's innermost nature, is like what Jacob did, and looked for in the love partner. It is to fix all spiritual and moral needs onn one individual....in other words the love object is God. Man has reached for a "thou" when the world-view of the great religious community overseen by God had died. What is it that we really want when we elevate the love partner to the position of God? We WANT redemption - nothing less.

Popular Music and Art of our society calls us to keep doing it (look for redemption through finding love), to load our deepest needs of our hearts for significance and transcedence into romantic love. "You're nobody until somebody loves you" was a popular song. And we all take it literally. But when our expectations and hopes reach that point, "the love object IS GOD". No other HUMAN being is qualified for that role, No one can live up to that!

think about it.

Adapted from "Counterfeit Gods" by Timothy Keller, educated at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, Westminster Theological Seminary. Author of 'The Prodigal God' and 'Counterfeit gods'

not a God of fear

I love this thing about God: He doesn't like to operate out of fear. He tried it in the past like in the Old testament days, people were scared....some rebelled, some listened, many still walked away, so he thought, "Nahhh......."
So He created a New covenant with man to supercede the Old one.
So creative!!
I've been reading Phillip Yancey's The Jesus i never knew and it's been such a good journey reading it! I see the link now between God's character and how He wants us to see things in life:
Do you think He wants us to live in fear?
Do you think we should do things most of the time because we fear people/a person?
Do you think we should grab a partner because we fear we don't get married?
etc etc etc