God is beautiful!
you all are beautiful.
Things still screw up,
but God You're beautiful!
It's probably gonna be a long and incoherent post with random snapshots of the past 2 weeks or so. Pardon my verbal diarrhoea, I'll try to keep it brief. (Ha!)
Random exclamations from reading Straits Times Interactive:
- pay rise for civil servants YESSS!!
- and a 2.2 month bonus now
- superduper HUGE (larger than the existing one) Ikea opening in TAMPINES!! Don't need to travel for an hour to get to Ikea lo!!! and free parking with 1,400 lots!
- a big lighting project under way for SG's cityscape. part of the ooh-let's-be-a-global-and-pretty city thing? I s'pose Singapore'll be prettier... esp at night. (sighs, I do miss Singapore's nights.)
- Sexpo is back. -raises eyebrows- Pathetic drive to get more babies produced?
- I'm proud of the way education's reforming in SG; even if it's slow, at least they know the problems and are doing something about it! Was watching the STI video on PSLE results and glad to find out that they moderated this guy's marks upwards for quite a substantial bit because he was in hospital and was delirious most of the time.
- Listened to half of PM Lee's parliament speech and realised that we have one Toa-Payoh-ful of elderly people.
Other brief updates:
- So glad to find out that tuition kid my brother and I tutored got a C for PSLE English! Because he had failed his tests and exams repeatedly, or barely passed. My bro did the painstaking ground work and foundation while I taught him some tricks with language and compositions - he got a C! yay! :)
- The other girl I somewhat tutored (had to focus on the PSLE kid) got into EM3 probably because of her English tho. :(
- Going to London in Week 10 to see Ting Jun and the other MOE people whee! And watch Wicked and Avenue Q!!
- Bought my ticket to Tanzania as I've last written (or typed). Hefty 548 pounds and I'm left with less than 100 in my current account now, but that's not a problem I guess. Pray for safety when I travel there and stopover at Amsterdam and Nairobi yeah? Quite a long journey.
- God is so so so so so so good as ever. So real. And so loving. He's working deep in my heart and peeling the onion layers again, and as He does that I feel all the insecurities fall away. I'm returning back to the point of living each day, the point of everything I do, the point of loving and the point of the cross. I've realised even more over the past week that there're so many things we think we might know but there're tonnes of things outside our immediate 'reality', or rather the experiences that constitute our personal reality, that we don't know. And so many things can be occurring under your nose or above your head and you wouldn't have vaguely noticed until something hits you. Thank God for constantly doing that...
(And because I'm getting more wordy I might as well drift away from bullet form to proper paragraphs)
CU selection meetings have been held twice over the past 2 weeks. Really rigorous meetings from 7.30 pm to about 2ish am where we hold up lists of nominated names, provide constructive suggestions and feedback on people and positions, go through the biblical position on leaders and leadership qualities (not necessarily outspoken, or charming, or however you'd normally define it), and have countless prayers over each position. President titles themselves took about 2ish hours to really go through, and we don't move on until everyone's got the peace about a particular person for a particular position, even if not everyone agrees. Really tiring and rigorous... but absolutely awesome! If you're still kinda blur about how it works, basically we don't hold elections and campaigning because that's not the point - it's not just about capability and talents, and even worse, popularity or politics. It's about God, and Him alone, and it's just incredibly heartening to see that there's no power-grabbing and backstabbing or judgment involved, even during feedback, because we all know in our hearts that a position's nothing on its own, really. It's just a vessel, an empty space, a capacity - through which God works, and He works through you even if you don't have a position anyway. The integrity, love, and wisdom of everyone really encouraged me. It's difficult to provide constructive criticism about someone without a hint of judgment, and I was awed by how precisely that was done, and how everyone was sincerely respectful and loving towards each name on the list.
Taking care of my health and studies proper! Yes! Met Yaozu in the library the other day and when I told him I was starting to let go of things and take things slowly he went, "wa, you've finally learnt it huh?" in Chinese. Guess my mom will be happy to hear that too! Meals-wise, well, I'm putting more effort into preparing meals I suppose, even though sometimes I still skip meals, or have breakfast at 2pm, lunch at 5pm and dinner at 9pm. But I'm generally getting into the healthier swing of things, trying to sleep before 1am and starting some exercise after my few weeks of ill-health, eating semi-well and resting in God spiritually too. Rest is such an amazing thing! I remember reading a book 2 terms ago about how sometimes we unknowingly compel ourselves to be busy busy busy just to dash up our experiences and records and just so we'll just be occupied, so we'll just have things to bother about and to be secure around. But, left alone, with nothing to do - that's when the insecurities return, and at the end of the day when we retreat into quietness we find out that we return to an empty space, and that we've accomplished everything and nothing at the same time...
I've gotten a lot better this term especially after growing closer to God and letting him heal and deliver me from various insecurities - I'm actually learning how to do nothing, and appreciate the nothingness! The empty space I return to at this time isn't desolately empty anymore; it's just beautiful. Setting aside the whole of Saturdays for quietness and space, and for some God-chillout, was a painful decision and it seemed like such a waste of a complete day, but I've been doing it 2 weeks now and it's been awesome. Rest.
Encounter Weekend. Is one of the most amazing experiences of my life. First half of the term I felt my relationship with God was in more of a fuzz than previous terms, cuz I think I did backslide over the summer quite abit, and the term didn't get onto a great start because we all had essays to rush, i.e. expectations to meet, in a less-than-literal sense. EW just brought me face to face with Him again; it was just a weekend, but it just completely pushed me forward to confront Him and my weaknesses again. It's so easy to flow along with the days in the term, slip up sometimes and pick up from there, move on or not move on even as we try to... and after sometime just feel so tired of everything, of ourselves, of the little struggles here and there - precisely because we slip up and move on without even dealing with the proper root. EW just stunned me. The first two talks dealt precisely with the problem at the root of my undesirable reactions, attitudes, words, thoughts, etc.
"True repentance doesn't lie in the rehearsed speeches, the right prayers, the trodden track back... True repentance lies in the arms of a loving Father who accepts you for everything you've done, including your failures."
Wee Leon spoke on many things, but that which greatly touched me was the common parable of the Lost Son. He shed such a different light on it! Touched on why the older son reacted this way and why the younger one reacted that way, and it boiled down to a kind of legalism that's been inculcated in us from a young age - that we've got to work for something, we've got to prove ourselves to be accepted, we've got to be good at something to be liked
Do we? Why don't we just let ourselves be Loved just as we are?
And there and then, I realised it had streamed down to my relationship with the Father too, that I carried a certain pride in what I did and carried before God, and everytime I failed I'd beat and trip myself up for that failure, subconsciously thinking that God loved me a little less even though I knew in my head He didn't. And all this when He just kept saying, It's not about what you do at all. I love you the way you are.
I'm thankful it isn't just delusion and copout comfort; I'm thankful that time and again He manifests Himself in superbly evident ways when I sacrifice my pride and learn to trust, and I'm thankful that even though I'm only a dust mite He chooses to work transformations and healing in very meticulous ways...
Ah, it's 1am. Yes, need to sleep. I'm excited about living again, about lovin, and I'm excited about singing :) There's OMNI this coming Thurs, 8-11pm in Derwent bar (not the JCR!). Yes it's a shameless plug! lol, but do come along and chillout.
Nothing else compares to You, my Love.
Monday:
Reorganised and printed my essays out for tutors to write their references; contacted tutors; purchased a flight ticket to Tanzania and back (31 Dec to 16 Jan) after much researching; contacted Faith to make sure there's someone to pick me up at Dar Es Salaam; called NHS to schedule appointment with travel nurse; booked QP for tomorrow and sent out Halifax email; now it's time to do some crazy mugging for my seminar tomorrow. . . . . .
sorry guys, I haven't been blogging proper for ages - loads are happening so I foresee a super long post next, but I'll update soon I hope! God's great (as always)!
Thanks to Cui for my lovely lovely early birthday Edward Monkton pressie (first one)
:)
i'm just gonna let it go.
i don't understand why you misjudge and hurt me so, but i'm just gonna let it go.
He accepts you as you are.
all your failures, your nothings, your everything, your anything
God is so sweet. So, so, beautiful. And His loving arms are always open --
will you turn to Him?
-more about Encounter Weekend after my essay!!-
Labels: Love
咳咳咳，咳得好累啊。
how do I put this less bluntly? but the very echoes of it keep returning and compel me to spit it out, somewhere, somehow -
you become what you worship.
such an overlooked, taken-for-granted aphorism, as in you are what you eat, but it speaks dangerous volumes about the very core of your being - your behaviour, your wills, your attitudes, your uncontrollable vices sometimes; your virtue.
you become what you worship;
The one who worships food spends many waking (even sleeping) minutes dreaming about food, thinking about food, drawing near to food, living with food;
as the one who worships wealth spends many waking seconds doing the same about wealth, obsessed about acquiring it, thinking incessantly about profit, gain, loss, stocks, units, chance, Fortune, fates, self-dependence, and even relationships become a shadow of wealth, as he becomes a shadow of Mammon;
and the one who worships academia spends himself on account of words, ideas, pen, paper, grade, performance, making something brilliant; the one who worships materialism becomes the very shopping bags, belts, cloth, cotton and silk and thread fibres he consumes; the one who worships people becomes the people he worships; the one who worships the self 'it's all about me, my life, my image, my rights, me' a Narcissus, wasting away to death as he pines self-absorbedly before his reflection, because his reflection is what he becomes;
fleeting, insensible, irrational;
you become what you worship.
Just 3 days and my bottle of pi pa gao is out.
-whines-
wittle kitty
hee hee heeeeee... -peng-
it's been quite a meaningful and beautiful weekend: the late-night singing at shiao en's house was so peaceful and edifying, the mahjong with singsoc, the warm and cosy szechuan steamboat dinner and endless talking and laughing, the cutting of hair, the running up to clifford's tower and gazing at beautiful fireworks, slightly crazy ventures over barricaded fences and up green slopes in the dark, Firefox Day and a chicken through to London, an oversized coat for warmth on a cold cold night, a great morning once again in the fellowship of Elim and listening to the words of Graham and God............ if only I weren't this tired, ill and fatigued, I would be looking back at every small detail of the past few days with even more relish and sweetness. anyhows. God is so sweet. :)
thanks bro for everything; yes, and for being so lovely. :) see you next weekend!
Being John Malkovich was utterly... creepy. Oh my goodness. I thought I liked weirdness. But this weirdness is just incredibly unsettling. -shudders- Hairs on end.
On another incredibly uncanny note, I can't believe I sang with Jake together in a 35-strong choir before! 0_0 "No wonder you look so familiar." It's just weird, so weird. The world is PUNY. We were J1 and we sang in this combined choir thing for SYF; just felt weird recollecting the songs we rehearsed together again and again..... without knowing that a few years down the road we'll be doing the same course in the same uni living in the same college and watching Being John Malkovich in the same room. wah. scary.
loads happened last week; it seemed to be the week of catching up and socials. Cui's birthday was heartwarming and delicious; Weds night was good Halifax CU stuff and chilling out at JJ's afterwards; Thurs night was a sleepover at Tasha's and Lauren's. And so, here're some pics of the sleepover:
"And what does he ask of us? To not question, to not worry, to not even feel like we're 'burdening' Him. But to have faith in Him and delight in what he is doing for us daily. How Wonderful is that?"
(Ripoff from friend's blog)