Kraken

The scientific community is buzzing. Finally… after all these years… For decades (maybe even centuries), the search for the elusive ‘Kraken’ has been fruitless. There were the few carcasses washed up onto seashores, some dead ones caught by deep sea fishermen, pieces of leftovers in the stomachs of their only predator, the sperm whale, but no one has ever seen one alive (apart from ancient sailors who claim to have had encounters with these sea monsters). Scientists and researchers have been attempting for years to capture one on film using some of the latest deep sea technology without success. These giants of the deep remain a mystery to science. No one has ever filmed them or photographed them alive in their natural habitat… until now. I read with excitement these articles on CNN and the Discovery Channel website. Everyone is excited about this breakthrough in marine biology. A live giant squid in its natural habitat! Unbelieavable…

I do wonder however, why this news took so long to reach the general public. The film was supposed to have been captured September last year. Oh well, maybe they wanted to confirm it or something…

The Land God Forgot?

I remember picking up this book to read its introduction more than a week ago. I remember being overwhelmed with emotions when I read passages like these:

A young Hutu woman stood there holding a child in her arms. With wooden face she described how a man with a machine gun had ordered her to kill her neighbor because she was a Tutsi. “I refused,” she said, “but without hesitation the man clubbed the baby on my back to death with his gun. Then he pointed it at my other child and ordered me to kill my neighbor – what else could I do?”

“The killers came and ordered me to kill my wife,” he wrote. “I refused, saying that I loved her. They said that if I didn’t kill her they would kill me and my wife and then our little children would be left as orphans to fend for themselves. My wife told me to kill her so I did. I managed to get away with the children – but I can’t live with what I’ve done.”

Meg Guillebaud tells the story of three generations of missionary witness in Rwanda. From the time of her pioneer grandparents, to the work of her parents under Scripture Union, and now her present work under the Anglican Church, the family has been a witness to amazing revival in the land. But they have also witnessed one of the worst atrocities in recent history when clashes between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes resulted in mass genocides leading to the deaths of about 800, 000 people. It does raise a lot of hard questions for the Christians. How can a country swept by Revival and claiming to have 90% Christian population experience genocide? Why did people go around saying, “It doesn’t matter what we do today – we can repent tomorrow and God will forgive us.” How could people pray all night, then take up a machete in the morning to kill? Why did God allow such things to happen? Meg struggles with these questions in her writings. She even raises questions about what Christian mission should be like, as she ponders about the failure of the individualistic Revival and gospel to address certain social issues. She also wonders if things would have been different if the Church in Rwanda had spoken out against injustice instead of keeping silent in the years leading up to the terrible events. She quotes Gary Haugen, the director of genocide investigations in Rwanda:

As Christians we have learned much about sharing the love of Christ with people all over the world who have never heard the gospel. We have learned how to feed the hungry, heal the sick and shelter the homeless. But there is one thing we haven’t learned to do, even though God’s Word repeatedly calls us to the task. We haven’t learned how to rescue the oppressed. We have forgotten how to be such a witness of Christ’s love, power and justice in the world.

She adds: So often we pay lip service to the God of justice, considering that righting injustice is His business, not ours. Yet he has chosen to work through us. In the same way that people hear the good news of the gospel because people preach it, or the hungry are fed or the sick healed because men and women of compassion go in the name of Christ to feed and heal, so victims of injustice are helped through us. As we step out in faith to do the things we believe God is calling us to do, we will find the way God uses us to fight injustice in the world He loves. Not all have the expertise to fight injustice in the streets, but we can all seek to be informed, we can all pray, we can support those involved in the fight, and where injustice comes to our notice we can bring it to the attention of others.

The Stone is Out!

Monday was supposed to be the day. The kidney stone had remained in my ureter during my last checkup about a week ago. My kidney was still inflamed. The doctor had given me a last chance – one more week to see if the stone would come out naturally. Otherwise, I would have to either go for blasting or remove it by inserting some sort of tube into my bladder. Ouch! But it was the cost that was the cause of anxiety for me. I had no medical coverage and such procedures would cost at least RM3k.

I had been having some pain near the groin for the past two days every time I went to the toilet. The pain was quite unbearable on Sunday. I couldn’t walk properly each time I came out of the toilet! But on Monday morning, just as I was about to get ready to go and see the doctor, the stone came out! This little thing has been causing me so much anxiety, pain and trouble recently. I thank God so much for this. Thank You! Thank You! And just in time! No surgery! No expensive procedures! I still went for the checkup and told the doctor what happened. He kept saying how good and excellent it was. Yes… it felt great. Thank God so much! Thank you to all those who kept me in your prayers too!

My First EMO Meeting!

So finally I become a participant… Well, still not really a participant! I was more trying to listen and see what I could learn from it rather than sharing my thoughts and views (not that I had much to say anyway, knowing nothing much about philosophy or postmodernism). I’m a little too shy for that! Plus, having all those pastors and seminary students around were quite intimidating for a first timer layman like me! But it was good to finally meet up with some of those bloggers in person! I also learned a few things about modernity and post-modernity, especially on their respective histories and contexts in which they came about.

One thing that really struck me was how the discussion would always be dragged back into our own context and practice as Christians here in Malaysia. Someone would always remind the group, “How do we apply that here?” or “How will that affect us?” I think this is a good way to go about these discussions, because they are always in danger of becoming detached from Christian praxis, or from our own Malaysian context (both of which I have been guilty of countless times in some of the discussions that I’ve been in!). It’s good to see Pastor Sivin and Emergent Malaysia moving towards that direction. I'm looking forward to the discussion on post-colonialism.

The Challenge of Jesus: A New Paradigm?

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. He created mankind. And He saw that it was good. But something happened. Man chose to disobey God. Instead of becoming good stewards, we turned against God, turned against each other. So God chose Israel so that through it, the world would be redeemed. They would be an example of what it means to be the people of God. But time and again, Israel failed to be the light of the world that was its call. Because of the sins of Israel, God punished them by allowing them to be taken into exile. From then on the Jews have looked forward to the day when they would return from exile. They looked forward to the day when their identity as the people of God would be restored, with their own king, as in the days of old when David ruled over them, not some foreign ruler of a pagan nation; when the glory of God would return to the Temple and Jerusalem to dwell there forever; when God will vindicate Israel and judge the whole earth. They waited and waited, but even after they returned from exile physically, most of the Jews still felt that the exile had not ended. They were still under foreign rule. God’s glory has yet to return to Zion. So they continued to wait, as one ‘messiah’ after another turned up to fight against the Greeks and Romans only to die and be deemed failures.

Jesus then comes into the story, as a prophet proclaiming the Kingdom of God. This is the good news - that the exile is at its end, not just for Israel, but for the whole world, ever since Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden. The Kingdom of God will come, not just in Jerusalem, but on the whole Earth as it is in Heaven, and it is already at hand. God’s justice and sovereignty will rule over the Earth. God will finally put the world to right after all the evil that has occured. Jesus not only announced the Kingdom of God, but accomplished it, not through the Herodian way of compromise; not through the violent way of the Zealots, nor the sectarian way of the Essenes. The way of Jesus was the way of the suffering servant, the way of sacrificial love. Through His death and resurrection, God would make all things new. The resurrection of Jesus marked the beginning of new creation. He is the messiah, the Son of God! His twelve disciples would be the new Israel, the people of God.

The Church is on a mission, not to tell others about how to get to Heaven, but to tell them how Heaven will come to Earth. The Church, is called to proclaim the good news of the Lordship of Jesus Christ and of the Kingdom of God. Not only that, but as the people of God empowered by the Holy Spirit, the Church has been called to be participants together with God in implementing the Kingdom of God right here on Earth by following in the way of Jesus – the way of servanthood, love, sacrifice, not through conquering crusades. We are to be used by God for good works by which His will is done on earth in every area and discipline (social action, arts, politics, engineering, economics, environmental conservation etc) until the day when His Kingdom fully comes in the creation of the new Heaven and Earth, when all creation will be saved, not just individual souls. And one day, we will be raised to life again as Jesus was raised to life, with new bodies, to spend eternity with God and others as well in the new Heaven and Earth.

Could this be a new way of looking at Jesus and the Church?

If you are to shape your world in following Christ it isn’t enough to say that being a professional or an academic is about high moral standards, using every opportunity to talk to people about Jesus, praying for or with your students, being fair in your marking and assessment, and honest in your speaking. You are called, prayerfully, to discern where in your discipline the human project is showing signs of exile, and humbly and boldly to act symbolically in ways which declare that the powers have been defeated, that the Kingdom has come in Jesus, that the new way of being human has been unveiled; and to be prepared to tell the story which explains what these symbols are all about. When Paul spoke of the gospel he wasn’t talking primarily about a system of salvation, but about the announcement, in symbol and word, that Jesus is the true Lord of the world, the true light of the world. ~ N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus

The Challenge of Jesus: The Traditional Evangelical Paradigm

The world is a fallen place. Satan is the ruler of this world. Because of Adam’s sin, all of us are born sinners, destined for a place called Hell in the afterlife – the second death. But the good news is that there is a way out. God has provided that way, by sending His Son to die on our behalf. That was why Jesus came – to die for our sins. He took our place on the cross. Good works cannot save us. We are only saved by God’s amazing grace, through faith. Salvation comes when we personally acknowledge that we are sinners, repent of our sins, and accept Jesus as our Savior and Lord of our lives. It is a personal commitment and decision. Once we’ve done that, we are assured of an eternity with God in Heaven. But that is not all. Once we’ve accepted Christ, we become part of the Church of God. We need the church to encourage one another and build each other up in the faith. But we also have a mission. God wants as many souls to be saved as possible, so we need to share this good news with our friends. We need to make full use of our time here on earth to save as many souls as possible before Jesus comes again. The world will turn to chaos. God will destroy it along with all the evil in it during the end times.

It sounds very much like what most Christians here in Malaysia believe. Is there anything wrong here? There are a few problems with this way of looking at things.

If this is the good news, then Jesus either never or very seldom preached it. The gospels contain accounts of Jesus going around to preach the good news. But nowhere do they record Jesus preaching this version of the gospel. If this is meant to be the message that we are to proclaim as Christians, the crux of our faith, why didn’t the gospel writers give more attention to it?

It gives us the license to become irresponsible stewards. If the world is full of evil, and everything in it is only temporary; if we’re all going to Heaven after we die; then there is no need for us to care about what happens to earth. We can exploit nature and do what we want with it. We can forget about everything on earth except the souls we are supposed to save. It’s all going down the drain anyway, so let’s grab as many souls as we can.

It encourages dichotomies in the Christian life. It’s all about saving souls. The soul and everything ‘spiritual’ matters. The physical and social are not as important. Hence, sharing the gospel with someone to save his soul is more important than helping the sick and poor. Attending to the spiritual needs of another person becomes more important than attending to his physical needs. Engineering, information technology and most other disciplines have no value in themselves. The only reason we get involved in such fields is so that we can be testimonies for God in the workplace. The only reason we get involved in social work is so that the people we help will eventually accept Christ through our actions.

The only reason for good character and good works is so that we can be good testimonies to attract others into the faith. We are placed and called into the marketplaces and workplaces so that we can be a light by holding onto high moral principles, loving others and caring for others. The main reason for this is so that others will be touched and will want to become Christians too. Thus, more people can be saved.

Very often, the good news becomes more like bad news. When people we have come to love and care about do not accept Jesus as their personal Savior, we assume that they have rejected God’s offer of salvation. We then assume that she is not saved and will end up in Hell.

Is this what following Christ is all about?

The Challenge of Jesus: Asking the Questions

More and more in recent months, I’ve been challenged to ask questions about my beliefs and convictions. They are not questions demanding an evidence for our faith as Christians. They are not questions that insist on a rational explanation for what we hold on to so that I can package them up into neat little boxes. They are, however, questions that challenge the core (or at least what I’ve always thought to be the core) of my beliefs. These are simple questions. Many Christians would consider them very basic, answerable by any Sunday school kid. But when given a little more thought, they can turn out to be very difficult to answer. Whatever it is, they are very important questions, because they will affect my worldviews. They will determine how I think, as well as what I say and do.

What was Jesus’ mission? What was this gospel of the Kingdom of God that Jesus went around preaching? What was Jesus aiming to do in His years of ministry? Why did Jesus die? What did Jesus know about His own mission and his relation to God the Father? Did Jesus know or believe that He was God? What does the resurrection of Jesus mean? What is the Church? What was the original purpose and role of the Church? How do we define a Christian? What does it mean to be a Christian? What is our mission as a Christian and as the Church? What is the message of the good news that we have been called to proclaim? How are we to live as Christians?

I think N. T Wright has produced a marvelous book quite accessible to laypersons like me in which he attempts to answer many of these questions, not solely from a traditional evangelical perspective, but from a historical one as well. How would have the first-century Jews understood Jesus’ message and actions? How does Israel in the Old Testament, Jesus and the Church come together to form the big picture of God’s overarching story? How do we interpret Paul’s epistles in light of the gospels instead of interpreting the gospels through the lenses of Paul as we’ve been doing? Many of Wright’s ideas are somewhat unique. They are quite fresh. But one of the dangers is to assume that I can come out with the answers myself, apart from the community of Christians (past, present and future) and the Spirit of God. These are questions that have been raised again and again in the Church as different generations of Christians have been challenged to discover what it means to follow Christ in their particular cultural and historical context. So I guess getting involved in some of the ongoing conversations would be good... I'm planning to go for the upcoming Emergent Malaysia open meeting this weekend to participate in one of such conversations!

Celebrating the Signposts in Our Lives

Looking at the book of Esther and the story of how the Jews were spared from total annihilation, it is not difficult to see God working in and around the circumstances surrounding their great escape, even though ‘God’ is not explicitly mentioned throughout. When we see how the characters were at the right place at the right time (or wrong place at the wrong time for Haman), and how Esther just seemed to always gain favor from the people around her, God’s works just become incredibly obvious. They are the visible works of an invisible God. No doubt when we look back at our own lives, we do notice God in the experiences that we’ve been through, the circumstances and the people we meet. O how wonderful God has been! In His wisdom and sovereignty, He has given meaning to those countless moments in the past. They have shaped me to be who I am today.

But one thing that caught my attention was how the Jews celebrated the occasion of their salvation from the hands of their enemies. They began to set apart that day as a day of feasting, not only once, but each and every year, passing it down from generation to generation. They wanted to remember God for what He had done for them when He turned situations around. Not only that, they wanted their descendents to remember as well. The Jewish calendar is filled with various kinds of feasts and celebrations, all of them in remembrance of the faithfulness of YHWH. We Christians celebrate the birth of Christ as well as His resurrection. Our churches celebrate anniversaries. We all celebrate our birthdays and wedding anniversaries. But I think it will be really interesting to begin celebrating the turning points in my life. I think I would like to set apart a day or days to remember God for some of the significant signposts in my life… if only I could remember when they happened…

Back from the Fields...

I’m back after a 5 day visit to Kuala Selangor… I think apart from the hard manual labor, it’s been a good rest for my mind and spirit. I enjoyed the nights in the chalet with time for myself to watch TV, read some books and listen to some music.

But the recurrence of the pain in my lower back and abdomen did give me a cause for concern. I was undecided about whether I should continue going to the fields or just stay at the hotel. In the end, I decided to go. At this point I really do have to write about all the health hazards that I had to face throughout the trip. I might just die from one of these things one day!

Of course, there is the hot sun, with its scorching heat and UV rays. I just wonder how much the sun-block really helped because I ended up with sunburn anyway. One day I might just get skin cancer… heheh. I was hoping for some fresh country air, but was greeted by hazy air that smelled like burning sulphur every morning. Some local farmers were burning their fields. And I guess some did get blown across the Straits from Sumatera. Then there is the wonderful smell of exhaust that I get to inhale all day while working around the truck. I can even smell it while in it’s air-conditioned cabin! Lung cancer awaits me…

Then there are the creature hazards. We saw a long piece of dried skin left behind by a snake that had shed it not too long ago. The whole thing was still intact and the farmers identified it as belonging to a king cobra. Great. ‘I’ll be walking all around the paddy fields without any shoes on for 5 days’ I thought to myself then. There are the red ants too. They are everywhere. And when they bite, it hurts! The pain and itch lasts for about a week. I also saw 4 or 5 mosquitoes with black and white stripes happily sucking on my blood when I was out taking some pictures. I killed them all. I wondered if I’d get dengue fever in the next few days. And there are the hundreds of bugs, spiders and tiny little critters that stepped on or came into contact with. I might just get bitten by something poisonous one day.

But of course… there will always be the amazing views and wildlife which I managed to capture with my new camera!

Back to the Fields...

Just a few more hours to go... my bags are packed. I’m ready. I’ll be leaving for the paddy fields again. This will be the first of 7 trips there for season-long research. I don’t know what to expect this time, especially with more work to be done. Now I’ll be missing CF this Tuesday (with an interesting topic called ‘Inter-D: Celebration of Diversity) and Bible study on Thursday! I’m gonna miss Agnes too… Sad… I also won’t be able to update the blog as often now.

But I think there is a part of me doesn’t mind going back to the kampung and the countryside. I don’t mind seeing green fields again. I’ll be spending a lot of nights in the hotel with nothing much to do so I hope I can do more reading. Maybe I can even catch up on my research work!

Spurred on...

Bible study was inspiring yesterday. Not for the first time, Grampz reminded us to see if God is calling us to a particular place. Is God calling us to a ministry in our hometowns; in a particular church? Many of us graduates prefer to stay in KL and other big cities where we can find the jobs that we want. We may even choose such places because the churches here are bigger and more elaborate. Maybe they’re more ‘happening’. Maybe we can have all we want over here. Will God want to send us back to our smaller hometowns to serve Him in our home churches? Does God want to send us home with all the things that we’ve learnt and experienced here as students so that we can share them with our family over there? At the moment, I still have no inkling what this message means to me personally. I’ll just keep it in mind while I wait and see…

On another note, Grampz gave a heartfelt sharing yesterday. It inspired me. 17 years already and she’s still going strong! And she still enjoys what she does! No doubt there were times when she felt alone. No doubt there were a lot of sacrifices to be made. But she still carries on. Whenever I get tired or discouraged, I need only to look at her life to spur me on. I see in it a reflection of Nehemiah who kept his focus in the midst of challenges and opposition. Most of all, I see in it a reflection of our Lord who kept His focus in Gethsemane in the midst of loneliness, doubt and struggles. This just spurs me on...

Brother Sun, Sister Moon: A Tribute to St. Francis of Assisi

Watching a child at play is fun. Children live in their own little world and to them it is serious business, and in their minds it all makes sense. We smile at them. We can look at it from a distance, see the joy and adventure that flows with such spontaneity from a child’s imagination, but we can no longer enter into that world. It is lost to us forever. We were once there but somewhere along life’s path have lost the key to the door that unlocks that world for us. We might be tempted to call the child’s world a world of make-believe. But that would be a mistake. It is make-believe to us who have found another world which we never dare to call make-believe. That child’s world is no more fantasy to the child than our unhealthy world is to ourselves. ~ Joseph Girzone, foreward to Saint Francis of Assisi

With this paragraph, we enter into the world of St. Francis. It is as if we have entered a child’s world; a world of make-believe… he saw things that none of us would have seen. He preached to animals as if they could understand every word he said. His thoughts were simple, even child-like – a prime example of the child-like faith that Jesus talked about. Who would use terms like ‘Brother Sun’ and ‘Sister Moon’ to refer to the heavenly bodies? Who, when about to have his eyeballs burnt out with red-hot iron, would say, “Brother Fire, God made you beautiful and strong and useful; I pray you be courteous with me.” Who would attempt to end the Crusades by speaking to the Muslims and trying to convert the Saracen Sultan? Who would sell off his father’s belongings to donate to the rebuilding of a church? Who would intercede with the Emperor on behalf of birds?

His life was a collage of the weird and ridiculous. Many of us will find it difficult to understand such a character. Who in his right mind would dance around half-naked in the snow? Which son of a middle class merchant would give up his riches and clothing to live life as a beggar? Which beggar will only wear the worst clothes that he could find, eat the worst food that people would offer, and stay in the worst place he could get? Which person would teach another to run after a thief who has stolen his shoes so that he could give the thief his socks as well? Who would go around searching for a martyr’s death so that he could fully emulate his Lord Jesus Christ? How can we explain why a man who loved a woman so much would help her to run away from her parents not to become his wife, but so that she could fulfill her dreams of becoming a nun? Most of us would look at him as a crazy lunatic. Only lunatics would do such things… lunatics… or lovers…

We do not see anything wrong with men who would willingly gather flowers in the rain for the woman of their dreams. We are accustomed to seeing knights in their shining armor, prepared to die for the princesses they would rescue. We regard young men who would give up everything for their beautiful maidens as noble. For it is when we start to look at St. Francis in this light, according to G. K. Chesterton in his book Saint Francis of Assisi, that we come to truly understand him. He was a man in love… not with any fair maiden; he was a man in love with God. No doubt he was child-like, maybe even childish, but St. Francis was a Troubadour.

Even in the final moments of his life, he requested that his friends carried him off his already rugged bed so that he could die naked on the bare, hard ground – to prove that he was nothing and had nothing. But G. K. Chesterton wrote beautifully about St. Francis’ death: the stars which passed above that gaunt and wasted corpse stark upon the rocky floor had for once, in all their shining cycles around the world of laboring humanity, looked down upon a happy man…

We think of him as living in his own innocent world of childish make-believe, but indeed –St. Francis died a happy man… and we all long for it…

Goodbye Linda

Shock. Again. Another Message.

Please be informed that the student named below have passed away on 31st August 2005. He accidentally fell down from 5th floor Cyberia apartment.

Linda Samuel Mnotoza (male)

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Oh my goodness… Linda!!! I knew him many years ago, but haven’t seen him around in campus recently. He used to come to CF very often a few years back. I remember seeing him perform some African traditional dances for us during World Students Week together with Season and Ndibu. He even came to visit us and stayed over at our place in SK. He’s gone… just like that. Only in his twenties. Pastor Joanne called one of his South African friends and found out that he tried to climb into his unit through the windows after being locked out of his house. Sad… tragic... for those of us CF graduates who knew him as a friend, it came as no less than a shock...

Sparking Conversations?

It only takes a spark, to get a fire going…

So the song goes… Of course, this song talks about God’s love. But I wonder if the Get Real Session yesterday at CF will spark more similar conversations in the future, whether in mamak stalls, in class or wherever. I was quite happy to hear that some of those who were not Christians were really curious to know more about what we believe. It was really nice to have our Muslim friends join us for the dialogue and even contributing; and I am really happy with how the CFers responded to them as well! We didn’t arrive at any answers, mainly because we had too short a time for too broad a subject. But I think it is also because most of the questions didn’t really have any easy answers! Well… may we have more opportunities to work these things out in the future, in more conversations like these. I've been having a few with some friends lately. Anyone up for it?

Back from Hospital

Finally, I’m back! After a 3 night spell at Sunway Medical Center, I’m back here in SK. I never expected that after visiting Jane’nette, I would end up in hospital. But I did. It’s the kidney stones again. I was under excruciating pain for a few hours and the painkillers didn’t seem to help at all. I’d better start controlling my diet from now on. This whole episode will be forever etched in my memory as full of ‘firsts’. It’s the first time that I’ve been admitted to hospital since primary school. It’s the first time that I’ve been on drips. I had my first ride on a wheelchair. What else? Let me see… Nothing else I guess. I did some X-rays, and I had to decide on whether I wanted the stone to come out naturally or through some medical techniques. I chose the former, after getting some advice from my dad. But I kind of enjoyed the whole episode, minus the pain of course (and the quite terrible hospital food). I enjoyed being able to relax in bed all day long. I enjoyed being able to call nurses to attend to me whenever I want. I enjoyed the air-conditioned room. I even had a friendly roommate who works in Shell IT. I was thankful for that rest. I used it to read more than a third of a wonderful book that I bought on Saturday – N. T. Wright’s ‘The Challenge of Jesus’. After reading the first two chapters, I realized how limited my views about Jesus had been. I was awe-struck by many of N. T. Wright’s views about Jesus. I couldn’t help putting down the book to spend some time worshipping God in prayer, expressing my amazement at Jesus the prophet and Messiah. I’ll write more about this book in detail another time. For now, I just want to get some sleep…

Katrina Strikes Hard...

In New Orleans, caregiver Sarah Johnson yells for help for her elderly patient

This picture says it all...

In the meantime, street gangs go looting and raping... certain groups of Christians go around preaching repentance because this was God punishing the homosexuals...

As of now, I've not heard of any country saying anything about helping the US in relief efforts. So much for gratitude of their assistance in the tsunami relief efforts. No doubt they are a rich nation, but that doesn't mean the rest can't help.

Lord have mercy...

Of Eagles and Songs

Twice last week I heard this illustration of how a long term eagle will grow its beak till it is too long, and ends up hurting itself. And its talons get too blunt for catching its prey. And the feathers get worn out. so the eagle decides to go up this high place, and break its own beak; get rid of all its talons; and pluck out its feathers so that new ones will grow. ~ Grampz

I got this comment from PhD on my recent post. A worn out eagle with a beak too long that it is hurting itself! I think God has already shown me that long beak at church on Sunday. It is something I need to remove. I do not think that the eagle can break the beak on its own… it needs to break it against an object that is much stronger and solid, maybe a rock on a mountain slope. I need God to be that rock…

I can’t help but feel that God is using the circumstances around me to remove pride in me… again. It’s part of discarding the pieces. It’s part of removing the beak so that a new one can grow. It doesn’t feel good, of course. I felt the force of it in little things recently. Again, it was just the little things that I would have shrugged off, but I became overly sensitive to these things. What can I say? Thank You Lord… It feels terrible, but thank You… I know it was out of love… and I love You too!

In the midst of my current reflections, God has been continuously showing me the needs of others. Friends are going through all sorts of problems and discouragements. Some are getting sick. In the meantime, America has been devastated by one of the worst natural disasters to have hit it as hurricane Katrina swept through New Orleans. Does He have something to say to me through all these?

I remembered asking what my focus was recently… and maybe… God seems to be telling me again – people. Have I lost that focus? After this short ‘Sabbath’ week for me, I feel refreshed. I think I’m finally ready to carry on. Gone are the feelings of tiredness and weariness, of discouragement and hurt. I’ve found that rest in God. And it’s beautiful…

He’s not done removing the long beak, and it is going to take awhile. It will take awhile for new feathers to replace old ones. What pieces do I bring with me? A Franciscan monk once said, “A monk should own nothing but his own harp”; G. K. Chesterton adds, “meaning, I suppose, that he should value nothing but his song, the song with which it was his business as a minstrel to serenade every castle and cottage, the song of the joy of the Creator in his creation and the beauty of the brotherhood of men.” What is my song? Yes, I will carry only that song with me, the song that has been given me by God to serenade the hearts of men and God Himself; a song that sings of our wonderful Creator; one that brings glory only to Him. This is the song of my life, in all its beauty and imagination, weakness and shame.