In case you need a vow

I will love you on your darkest days. I will love you more on days where you’re difficult to love. At the end of a long stressful day at work, I bet you won’t be in the mood to talk. You won’t have the energy to snuggle or share a glass of wine to talk about our day. On those days I’ll hold you closer. I’ll cook you dinner. Give you a massage. I’ll pamper you. I’ll tell you stories while you rest in silence. I will surely fall harder as I watch you slowly fall asleep by my side.

I will love you harder on days where you’re not feeling well. When you’re sneezing and coughing, endlessly tossing and turning to get comfortable on our bed. On nights where my tight hugs aren’t enough to keep you warm, I’ll cook your favorite meal. I’ll buy every food you are craving. I’ll walk to the nearest pharmacy in the middle of the night to get your medicine. Then, we’ll take them together when I get home to persuade you because I know how much you hate taking pills. No matter how stubborn you are, you are still the most beautiful woman in my eyes even when you’re sick.

I will love you even you’re not in the mood. When you’re irritable and grumpy that even the sight of me and the sound of my voice triggers you to go into a rage, I’ll stay. I’ll hug you tighter. Even in deep silence, I want you to know that I am here. I am not going anywhere.

I will love you deeper when you feel lost and uncertain. When you feel like your whole world is falling apart. I’ll remind you of the strong and independent woman that initially caught my eye. I’ll be here to listen. I’ll find my way to be your light, to make your days a bit brighter. No matter how foolish I appear, I’ll do everything to put a smile on your face. I cannot promise to save you from all the chaos around us. But I can assure you, I’ll be by your side, no matter what happens, as we both save ourselves.

I will love you, even more, when our relationship doesn’t feel the same. When the distance and our busy schedule seem to turn our days colder and our nights darker. When everything starts to feel like a routine. On these days, I’ll make you fall for me again. I’ll write you poems; bring you chocolates and flowers. I’ll fly halfway around the globe to win your heart again, and again. I will remind you of our future home, our future kids, our future adventures.

I will remind you of how our love is stronger than anything life throws on us, as long as we face them together.

No matter how life treats us, please be assured that I will tirelessly love you until we grow old.

When God said No

And God Said No
by Claudia Minden Weisz

I asked God to take away my pride. And God said “No”.
He said it was not for Him to take away, but for me to give up.

I asked God to make my handicapped child whole. And God said “No”.
He said her spirit was whole, her body was only temporary.

I asked God to grant me patience. And God said “No”.
He said patience is a by-product of tribulations. It isn’t granted, it is earned.

I asked God to give me happiness. And God said “No”.
He said He gives me blessings, happiness is up to me.

I asked God to spare me pain. And God said “No”.
He said suffering draws me apart from worldly cares and brings me closer to Him.

I asked God to make my spirit grow. And God said “No”.
He said I must grow on my own. But He will prune me to make me fruitful.

I asked for all things that I might enjoy life. And God said “No”.
He said He will give me life, that I may enjoy all things.

I ask God to help me love others, as much as he loves me.
And God said “Ah, finally you have the idea!”

Project Sparkle

So... Project Sparkle is a community project by Hope Community Services to help clean up the Kampong Glam Area where a large number of less fortunate people stay. The area consists mostly of one room flats and most probably housed a low income family that stays there. My lifegroup was tasked to clean out Blk 8 of North Bridge road and I knew it was going to be a tough hill to climb for those people that are not accustomed to stepping into the mud but as we started to clean i realised that once they started, their heart overcame the fears of whatever uncleanliness they had to contend with, which was to me a very commendable effort and in 2 short hrs we cleaned up the 2 floors that we were tasked! WELL DONE J1!

The thing about project sparkle was a chance for us to go out there and be filled with compassion just like Jesus when he saw the multitudes of people. And as usual, church service and everyone else amped it up to be that once you see their squalid conditions that your heart will be filled with compassion to want to help them.

This unfortunately didnt happen to me.... In fact what I saw was another side of life. I saw a family playing with each other, another family playing mahjong and having fun, a man walking over to a neighbours place to chat and a few kids from different racial families playing with each other. Was this a sight that broke my heart? nope. In fact, it opened my eyes to know that

Even without the luxury of money. You can still be contented. 

Yes money might help them in alot of situations in life, but as i see it, being poor doesnt mean life sucks and that life is like walking the plank to an endless eternity of unhappiness but that even in the most trying of times, that money isnt everything. I didn't feel compassion when i cleaned out their corridors, instead my heart was filled with joy to see the human spirit knitting a tapestry of relations together even without the abundance and security of finance. And if the human spirit was that strong in adversity, how much stronger when we have the HOLY SPIRIT in us!

We think that they need our help just because they are less fortunate than us. I think in retrospect, people that have everything but are spiritually bankrupt are the ones that need help more. To end off.. i'll quote a pastor from Cuba telling another American pastor who was on a mission trip about what he thought about money.

In America you have stuff and trust in your money. We trust in God. You think that a man can be elected and save the world. We know better. So do not feel sorry for us. We feel sorry for you.

Who should we have more compassion for now? lolz

Worship sucks when you dunt want to

I used to dread singing praise and worship and couldnt understand for the life of me why people in Church kept on repeating chorus after chorus after chorus in a seemingly infinite loop, as i Catholic at that time, all i wanted to do was sing the song, move on to the next segment so i could get out as fast as i possibly could and then get on with my life (You could say i was a Sunday Christian)

But as i slowly matured in Christ, i actually found out why Christians love singing their songs endlessly.And the answer lies in The Presence of God

Anticlimactic? For some reason it was so simple, so plain yet I of all people had my spiritual eyes blinded.

King David loved to worship and did it in a very foolish yet child like way. He once wrote 'Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked."
I found out that when we sing, its not so much of singing the songs for the sake of singing the songs but to enjoy BEING IN HIS PRESENCE. Im not saying that worship = singing songs but rather when we intentionally set aside time to be in his presence, we arrive at the answer. That all you wanna do is be in his presence... A place where peace comes upon you like you have never known and for just that point in time, no worries and cares in the world can overcome you, a place where we connect with God and he to us.

If you have never enjoyed praise and worship, it could very well be a sign that we probably do not enjoy being in his presence at all... maybe we just think its just a farce and that its silly to do all the things mainstream christians do, but as i see it, its just between you and God, no one else.. Im not impressing the person next to me with how well I sing cos God knows he gave me an average voice that doesnt stand out, I sing cos he deserves it and that there is no other place i'd rather be than in his presence.

I came along a song lately, super short song, yet in that it perfectly described my feelings toward worship.

Hope you enjoy it and if you have never liked to worship like i did last time. I challenge you to delve so much deeper to find this joy when you sing to the Lord of Lords =)

You give them something to eat

A note to myself:

For some reason Matt 14:10-20 jumped right out at me while i was driving back home today. People mostly know this passage to be Jesus feeding the 5 thousand and normally i wouldnt have taken notice of this passage either having read it countless times... till today that is..

I think there are times in our lives we feel that we are never capable enough to do things because of the lack that we have, being ability or talent and thats when we "taichi" the problem to either someone else or propose another solution to the problem that doesnt require u to face the problem itself. The scrptire tells us that the disciples wanted to send the crowd off so as to get their food but Jesus replied and said :

“They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”

Which then the disciples replied "we only have 5 loaves and 2 fishes"

This is what struck me... The poor, the destitute, the murderer, the thrash of society are out there and more often than not, we walk past them as though they were invisible. I know i am lacking in alot of areas... and if given a chance to do something for God, i would rather let someone who is more capable than me do it or try as much as possible not to face this situation but when Jesus said "They do not need to go away. YOU give them something to eat" it hit me...i felt that the words were literally targeting me The little that I have which represents the 5 loaves and 2 fish is enuff in the hands of God! Logically speaking it is impossible to feed 5000 with only that much but Jesus used it nontheless and fed everyone till there was surplus.

I feel so called to help the lost and the hopeless. I just pray that God will use me and what little i have. Dunt you ever forget this Sean ... this is to remind u, should u ever lose your focus.

God bless,
Past Sean

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

2008 NTU Convocation speech by Adrian Tan

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.  

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.
My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.
On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable. Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.
And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.
Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.
The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning. You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.
The good news is that they’re wrong.
The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.
I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.
You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.
Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.
So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.
Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.
I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy. After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.
Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.
That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.
If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.
What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate. Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows. What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.
Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free. The most important is this: do not work. Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable. Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust. There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful. People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense. Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway. Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself. I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.
So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher. Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.
Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence. In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror. I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth.
I now say this to you: be hated. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross. One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.
The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.
I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone. Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable. Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul. Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm. You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart. You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you. Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.
Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone. You’re going to have a busy life. Thank goodness there’s no life expectancy.

You wear his coat well

You Wear His Coat Very Well

Topic:

There is a magnificent story in Marie Chapian’s book Of Whom the World Was Not Worthy. The book told of the sufferings of the true church in Yugoslavia where so much wrong has been perpetrated by the politicized ecclesiastical hierarchy. That which has gone on in the name of Christ for the enriching and empowering of corrupt church officials has been a terrible affront to decency.

One day an evangelist by the name of Jakov arrived in a certain village. He commiserated with an elderly man named Cimmerman on the tragedies he had experienced and talked to him of the love of Christ. Cimmerman abruptly interrupted Jakov and told him that he wished to have nothing to do with Christianity. He reminded Jakov of the dreadful history of the church in his town, a history replete with plundering, exploiting, and indeed with killing innocent people. “My own nephew was killed by them,” he said and angrily rebuffed any effort on Jakov’s part to talk about Christ. “They wear those elaborate coats and caps and crosses,” he said, “signifying a heavenly commission, but their evil designs and lives I cannot ignore.”

Jakov, looking for an occasion to get Cimmerman to change his line of thinking, said, “Cimmerman, can I ask you a question? Suppose I were to steal your coat, put it on, and break into a bank. Suppose further that the police sighted me running in the distance but could not catch up with me. One clue, however, put them onto your track; they recognized your coat. What would you say to them if they came to your house and accused you of breaking into the bank?”

“I would deny it,” said Cimmerman.

“‘Ah, but we saw your coat,’ they would say,” retorted Jakov. This analogy quite annoyed Cimmerman, who ordered Jakov to leave his home.

Jakov continued to return to the village periodically just to befriend Cimmerman, encourage him, and share the love of Christ, with him. Finally one day Cimmerman asked, “How does one become a Christian?” and Jakov taught him the simple steps of repentance for sin and of trust in the work of Jesus Christ and gently pointed him to the Shepherd of his soul. Cimmerman bent his knee on the soil with his head bowed and surrendered his life to Christ. As he rose to his feet, wiping his tears, he embraced Jakov and said, “Thank you for being in my life.” And then he pointed to the heavens and whispered, “You wear His coat very well.”