Just came back from a CU prayer meeting... Wednesdays are dedicated to praying for international events so it was quite refreshing to see different situations around the world. Andy Walkers held the meeting 'cuz he's the pres of the international team in CU; told us about Turkmenistan (did I spell it correctly?) and its crazy leader. If I remember correctly, he was elected to the seat in 1992 but in 1997 declared that his self-appointed members of the Cabinet have elected him as president for life. Then he erects statues that bear his image, renames January after himself, May after his dad or April after his mom or something like that. Propagates a book he's written about spirituality and claims it's in accordance with the Bible and Quran. Satellite TV is censored, internet access monitored, public demonstrations stamped down aggressively, etc. So the next 2 generations will grow up ignorant of the world and modern society. They've been brainwashed successfully into thinking that their leader is a demi-God of some sort. No religious freedom, only Islam and Orthodox Christianity (because it was part of the Soviet Union once)... and the leader has some crazy and dangerous ideas like building a big ice-skating rink (when they're in the middle of a desert) so that approximately 10,000 kids can learn how to ice-skate. It's like "Whaaaat?" Oh, and building a big 'golden lake' in the middle of the desert, draining the rest of the population of their water and potentially causing a severe shortage of water. The best: He sacks 15,000 nurses and healthcare workers nationwide so as to cut down government costs... sigh. It's not fictitious y'know. It's sad to know there're such crazy people leading nations like that. Aren't we glad we grew up in Singapore...!?
Ok basically Andy was getting us to pray for leaders around the world and particularly in US, since it's their elections today. You don't want cranky leaders making pupppets out of the world...
And we prayed for other situations around the world, especially those pertinent to Christian persecution... China, Vietnam, Burma, Iraq...
It felt really really nice. I love these honest sharing sessions and the spirit of praying together.. by God's grace we've been brought together with the common goals to love God and love our neighbour. Everytime I go to these CU meetings I'm encouraged to look beyond myself and pray for other people's needs. Gives me joy because they indirectly remind me to look outward, not inward. I was telling Ailin that day that the cause of misery in a person is often the tendency to look inward. Like Sylvia Plath! "Look at me! Me, Me, Me. I don't have what I want, people don't treat me the way I'd like, it's me, me, me, misery." I admit being like that a lot of the time, and that inevitably causes a lot of pain... but God has taught me to look at Him and at other people -- Voila! Felicity! *grin*
That doesn't mean I'm selfless, of course. I'm far from that. Read the word yesterday and came across Luke 9:23 If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me."
I pray for strength to carry the cross daily.
Ok, back to the prayer meeting just now. Apparently the international team had some "Safari Supper" event last night and they were sharing about the preached message. Andy gave a very brief summary of it, but it ministered to me. And once again, if I remember correctly, this is how it goes:
You look around you, and despite evidence of disorder occasionally, there's always this sense of order. There's a certain order in governance systems, in people... even in the stars! The constellations have a pattern to follow. And if this universe came from nowhere, if atoms just came together and 'bam!' you get a universe (people DO support this hypothesis) where did the order come from? Where did the patterns of music, communication... even love, come from? Since when did people knew how to love? If people just came together and created establishments of societies, why would there be a sense of order in them? Where did this order come from? People are certainly not capable of instituting order of any kind... given their free will they're probably drive one another mad. Where did morals and laws come from? Where did a certain sense of 'righteousness' come from?
Perhaps I didn't put it as right as Andy did... but when he mentioned, "... and love. Where did love come from?" I felt really touched in the heart. Love... people don't know how to love. They let you down, become unfaithful, angry, disappointing... but love is where God is. And that's where perfection in everything can be found. It's not escapism as some may think; not some form of ideology because ideologies are self-fulfilling and self-gratifying theories. And you should know that anything that stems from the SELF is utterly fallible and fragile... so where do you think this conviction stems from? Is it not from the Lord himself who has proven himself faithful time and time again? :) Testimonies... so many testimonies I could share about God's faithfulness time and time again... ohwell, but perhaps not now, not here.
I'm having brunch now... had chicken mayo sandwich which was HEAVENLY. And I'm finishing yesterday's leftovers of mixed-rice porridge and sweet potatoes.
I figured why I'm eating so much. I know the weather's cold and all... but it's because my estimation's really poor and I end up cooking 1.5 - 2 people's share of food. I really don't like leaving leftovers... so I gulp everything down. Goodness. I looked at myself in the mirror yesterday and realised I could be a lilll chubbier. Very lil. But if this goes on... heh heh. Chubby Bunny!
(Chubby Bunny is this silly game we played during one of the choir BBQs where people will stuff as many marshmallows in their mouths without chewing them, and attempt to say "Chubby Bunny". So we get someone who looks like a chubby bunny trying to say the words chubby bunny. Haha. It's quite cute. The winner is the one with a record number of marshmallows.)
Slept at 1 this morning... woke up at 7. Was reading an interesting essay by Sir Phillip Sidney titled "An Apology For Poetry". Only read the first 10 pages, but he was saying something about poets being superior to moral philosophers and historians because of their adeptness in combining both precept and example (theory and evidence) in guiding human behaviour or moral values, into a compact verse of beauty. Interesting thing is, it's centred on the divinity of poetry... Sir Sidney brings in God, Psalms, etc etc. Hehe. I just love it.
Ok! Gonna read some more now...
