peace . love . joy

Have you ever watched a full programme on Starhub's channel 95: The Biography Channel?

I don't usually. But although I don't religiously stock up knowledge on the life and times of famous people around the world via The Biography Channel, the one time I did, I was mighty encouraged. And whose life story was it, you ask?

The country legend, Dolly Parton.

Now, as many of us know, falling in love isn't too difficult; it's the staying in love that is the hard part. And especially when you're somebody famous, when you've hordes of people clamouring to capture photographs of you, when there are dozens of people attempting to chronicle your life, your life is broadcasted for the world to scrutinize, and that world loves the "juicy bits": the love story. How many celebrities boast a list of ex-lovers, of ex-spouses?

One might subconsciously be moulded to think divorce and breaking off of engagements is normal.

Maybe it is.

But it certainly is not a feature in the life God calls us to live.

See, what made my respect for Dolly Parton increase (and it already was very high) was the fact that she married Carl Dean... And she stayed married to him. They met in the summer of 1964, and were married in May, 1966. And they've been living together as man and wife for 43 years, and are still married! Dolly said, in an interview, that the biggest secret to getting married and staying married were three simple words:

Make it work.

Three simple monosyllabic words that contain more than what any encyclopedia can hold.

It means commitment.
It means perseverence.
It means a heck of a load of effort and resolution.

What God has revealed to me was that this attitude is not only applicable to the institution of marriage between man and wife, but that it is attached to a Christian's relationship to Him. One could even say that it was the intention of God to have human marriage be modelled after, to serve as a practice for, the church's marriage to Him.

When we profess to nurture a relationship with God, to utter our wedding vows to Him, we enter into a sacred relationship with Him. But think not of our wedding day as a "finally!", instead, think of it as an "... and...", an addition, one more "Life Tile" in our "Game of Life"; not the end of the beginning, but the beginning of the end, a glorious end.

Making it work means essentially two very broad things:

To stay together during the bad times...
In Revelation 2: 9-10, the Son of Man had this to say to the church in Smyrna:
"I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich) and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life."

And to stay together during the good times.
When the going is good, forget not the author and perfector of your faith, the creator of all that is good. Give unto Him praise of which He is worthy. "Oh give thanks to the LORD; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples! Sing to him; sing praises to him; tell of all his wondrous works! Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice! Seek the LORD and his strength; seek his presence continually! Remember the wondrous works that he has done, his miracles and the judements he uttered, O offspring of Israel his servant, sons of Jacob, his chosen ones!" (1 Chronicles 16: 8-13)

We've all be taught that we ought to persevere in our faith, to make it work. There exist scores of verses and passages in the Bible, various people's life stories, biographies from which we gain insight and knowledge, lives that tell of perseverence and commitment (and also lives that fail to commit), words of warning and encouragement in the faith. A great deal many.
But when the context shifts, when the kaleidoscope turns and we look upon it as though we were lounging on a bed covered with crisp white linen, gazing into the eyes of our Beloved and Lover, it no longer becomes an "ought to". Rather,
we want to.

We want to keep on keeping on.
We want to make it work.

Even when the going gets tough,
even when the going is good.

Because we are in love
with the greatest Lover the world has ever and will ever know.

Is man's obsession with beauty "innate"?

As far back as I know (which really isn't that far and that detailed), image has been everything. From the latest fashion pieces hot off the runways of Paris and Milan, to seasonal make-up color palates, to edgy hair-dos, it's all hide this, flaunt that, conceal the unflattering, exaggerate the beautiful. Just turn on the television and there are countless programmes on beauty, in particular, physical beauty. There's even a whole channel devoted to it!

Apparently, beauty and youth go hand in hand... at least for majority of us (the Helen Mirrens, Meryl Streeps, George Clooneys Sean Connerys of this world are supposedly few and far between). The pursuit of beauty is underlined by a relentless chase to retain youth. Grey hair is "bad" and "ugly", and one feels practically compelled to yank 'em out or dye the entire crowning glory the moment one is observed. Mothers implore daughters to drink lots of water not to satisfy basic biological requirements in order to survive, but so the skin will be well hydrated and beautiful and won't look older than the being it envelopes. In bids to promote anti-smoking attitudes among school children and teens, slogans claim, among other more serious health threats, that smoking causes premature aging and the ugly-fication of the body. In make-up, concealers are used to hide blemishes while an array of colored powders and shades of tints help sculpt the features and bring a youthful glow. More recently, new technologies and methods hail the "progression" of medical surgery to cosmetic surgery. A little nip here, a little tuck there, a little implant here, a little suction there and voilà, you're good as new!

As many can probably testify, though, such procedures (creams, laser treatments, enhancing cosmetic surgeries, fashion, etc.) are exactly what they are: superficial. As Joe Stowell points out, these efforts are all (not inexpensive!) temporary, require maintenance, and are really in vain. Physiologically, our bodies are aging and uninhibitedly proclaim the process with knee creaks and neck cricks.

It's not because aging is inevitable, and out of a fear of that looming, oncoming defeat that we scramble to find some good in it.
Quite the contrary: that inevitable aging is good... for a disciple of Jesus Christ, that is.

Professor Chuck Dolph in Torch Magazine wrote:

"If we live long enough, we will lose our beauty, our strength, our wealth, our independence, the control of our bodily functions, our pride, and perhaps our very self."

What's so brilliant about that, you ask? Well,

"These are our idols, all the things that we trust in life to make us attractive, valuable, and self-sufficient."

For a vast majority of us mortals, the physical proves to be a real entrapment, a real fascination. There really is nothing wrong with wanting to look one's best, but all too often and all too easily, the focus shifts from thanks to the Creator God for the blessing of sight and beauty and creativity and provision, to a preoccupation, an obsession with the temporary, the fleeting. That which is transient, man has poured uncontainable efforts into transforming it into that which is permanant.

Christians are not blessed with some supernatural powers that spell victory over the juggernaut of physical aging. Christians too fall prey to the material, to the visual.
But here's where the Christian declares triumph:
In aging, the Christian is robbed of his youth (and sometimes beauty, since it really is subjective). And with that, so too is self-reliance and pride (in the tangible) robbed of him. Into their places step a dependence on and trust in God and humility (Stowell).

But a note of caution, Christian, do not wait for aging to become apparent before attaining these nuggets of life. Turn your focus now from the material, the tangible, the corporeal, from the make-up which does not matter to that which does, that of which we are made-up of: the immaterial, the intangible, the spiritual. Even though we are getting older, even though our shells of bodies are dying and wasting away, with our focus on God, we pour our hearts and spend our mights into the pursuit of internal eternal beauty - where it counts!

Age daily into a beautiful person whose eternal character is "wonderfully dependent on the grace and strength of God"(Stowell)!

Here's looking forward to "being more alive inside than ever before in our relationships with God" (Stowell)!

"If our aging is successful, we will end our lives stripped of everything but God...
utterly dependent on Him and the love of others." (Dolph)

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day... So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."
~ 2 Corinthians 4: 16, 18

Hello world!

Tonight, I have accomplished what I've never been able to do before... With a lot of help from God. And because it's so fantastic, I want to share it with you:

Earlier this week, after my bath, I realised that my face was tingling in the most uncomfortable manner, in a manner I've never experienced before in my life: it was cold and hot at the same time, and was as though a gazillion needles were poking into my cheeks at once. Thinking perhaps I didn't wash off all the soap properly, I went to the bathroom and vigorously scrubbed my face again. But the discomfort (to put it extremely mildly) remained. I went to sleep last night, the discomfort slowly ebbing away.

The next morning, I awoke and went to wash my face (as I've always done since I was young when I wake up). The hundreds and thousands of needles attacked again! No words could describe how helpless and distraught I was! It was horrible! But I dried my face and the sensations very slowly died away.

In the evening, after my bath, the pain returned, this time as I stood under the shower.

For the next few days, I survived the tinglings, drying my face as quickly as possible and, thinking that perhaps it's because my skin was very dry, dabbed on moisturiser immediately after.

But last night, the sensations did not go away, even after the drying and the moisturising.

Throughout the night, the heat-blazed needles plagued me. I couldn't sleep and I didn't know what to do.

And today morning, the pain had spread to my entire face.

I guess I'm not the sort who likes to go and consult the doctor each time I sneezed or coughed (I much prefer to recover by myself if I can). But this morning, I honestly couldn't stand it anymore. I approached my mother and said, "I'm really sorry, mummy, but can you take me to see the doctor? My face feels like it's on fire."

We ate breakfast, dropped Ellie off at school, and off we went to see the skin doctor at Tampines. I like him, and most importantly, I trust him. He's been my GP and skin doctor since I was little and he's never been wrong or unsure about something.

But this really stunned him. After asking several questions, he decided that the sensations were most likely due to chemicals sprayed in my house, since they only began around the time when the bedbug control people came to spray our furniture, and prescribed me a whole lotta pills (I hate pills. I'd squeeze them in my hand, stand and look contemplatively at them, as though hoping they'd shrink or something. In other words, it'd take me forever to just get the pill into my mouth, let alone swallow.), a face wash and a cream.

The ride home was torture. My face felt like there were a million fishes with nibbly teeth biting away at my flesh, or like bucket-fulls of needles, having passed through fire, were now jabbing mercilessly at my face. I wanted desperately to sleep, to claw my face off, to just get the pain to stop.

We couldn't have reached home soon enough. The moment the front gate was opened, I ran into the bathroom, washed my face with the new prescribed face wash, quickly dried it and slogged on the cream. The tingling sensation returned, but not as vicious as before. I took the smaller tablets (the kind that I would have squashed, but I was too tired), and tried to avoid the big blue capsule.

Mummy noticed and told me to take them.

Brilliant, innit? The doctor just had to prescribe me them big blue capsules, the kind that can't be cut nor crushed. And they simply had to be antibiotics, ie. I've got to finish the whole course. And they just had to be taken two by two in regular six hour intervals.

I tried. They just got stuck and caused me even more panic. I gave up, twisted them open and downed the contents with gulps of water. It was the most disgusting medicine I had ever tasted! Yech!

This evening, after my bath, the face-washing, the cream-slogging, I realised it was time for the two big blue capsules again.

I stood at the counter, punched out two tablets, poured myself a glass of water... And prayed.

Then, I put one pill into my mouth width-wise so that it'd be "easier" to go down, chugged a mouthful of water (which spun the pill into a longer length-wise position), looked up, and... gulped it down!
It went down!
I prayed again for God's help and assurance, gulped again, and down went the second one, and I barely felt a thing!

For those of you who know me, this is nothing short of a miracle.
Me! Megan! Managed to swallow not one, but two gigantic capsules!
I was always rather fearful, and I guess perhaps that fear kept me from being calm and swallowing them nasty pills, clenching my throat at the very moment the pill was about to slide down, making them stuck, and feeding back into my fear of choking.
I always cut my pills in half, or even better yet, squash them between two metal spoons.
What if there were no metal spoons, you ask? Well, I always brought two metal spoons with me whenever the situation called for me to take pills.

So I sit here, on the cold marble floor, savouring the triumph of downing two capsules, proclaiming to the whole world what a marvelous encourager and soother my God is: no trouble too minute nor too lowly for Him.

Thank you, Father Lord.
Thank you for helping me swallow my pills.
Please heal my body, as You've healed my soul.

Amen.

'But reject profane and old wives' fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness.

For bodily exercise profiteth little, but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.

This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance.

For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe.'

~ 1 Timothy 4: 7-10

Paul wrote this epistle, of a very pastoral nature, to Timothy at the novel beginning of the growth and expansion of the first century churches, and at the waning end of the apostolic period. And though such issues as church order, truthfulness of faith and personal discipline were not new, they were again dealt with here in 1 Timothy.

As a brief introduction to the situation young Timothy faced, here, the church of Ephesus was under siege of the ascetic apostates. Paul therefore urged him not to become too embroiled in addressing and refuting such godless and feeble claims, but instead turn his attention toward a far more pressing and worthwhile matter: training himself up in godliness.

And this is what is interesting.

What the New King James Version calls "exercise", the New American Standard Bible calls "discipline", and the Amplified Bible and English Standard Version calls "train", is actually the Greek γυμνάζω, which has two meanings: one of which is to (figuratively) train or exercise. The other usage of the term occurs during actual games. It means to practise naked.

Perhaps I am going out on a limb here, but I think there is a reason why this particular word was used. On the one hand, could be due to the issues presently being dealt with (ie. bodily issues of asceticism versus spiritual intangibles). But I think there is a possibility that it alludes to something much more profound than simply that.

Dictionaries define "naked" as laid bare; exposed; plainly revealed; being without concealment, adornment nor disguise; to be vulnerable.

So to train "naked" or in fact, to do anything naked, allows us to see ourselves in our entirety: in physical training, as what Greeks were accustomed to doing so nude, it allows for clearer understanding of positions and methods, for revelation of mistakes and errors, for pinpointing areas that beg greater improvement. And if we translate that to a spiritual training, a spiritual discipline, a spiritual exercise in efforts to become increasingly godly (note: not god-like), it means we reveal ourselves, our past and present situations, for God, our master trainer, to see, to chastise, to correct, and to nurture (cf. 2 Timothy 3:16).

Our successes, our glories, our triumphs, our certainties... And also our failures, our hurts, our vices, and our uncertainties. All must be plainly exposed without distraction.

And that is not easy. Not many of us think, let alone actually doing it, of praying for God to reveal to us our weakness, our habits of destruction and discouragement, our misconceptions, etc. Most of us don't even like to think of our shortcomings because we're afraid it will lead to our wallowing and inescapable spiraling into self-pity. We don't like to feel we're worthless, we don't like to look at our feebleness. There's nothing wrong with not liking the feeling of worthlessness, there's nothing wrong with not wanting to be discouraged by anything, even more so by our own lives.

What is the point, you ask? Why should we even entertain that notion of praying that we reveal our Achilles heels?

The answer is there: to exercise thyself unto godliness.
It is our calling (2 Peter 1: 1-11). No doubt not an easy call to answer, a tough duty to perform.
But we know this is important and we obey because it pertains to life. In 1 Timothy 4:8, that life is the Greek ζωή, meaning a higher principle, a perfect antithesis to death. It was ζωή that was used here, as opposed to βίος, the physical aspects of life.
We obey because we cling onto the Hope. The Hope that exists beyond and transcends the grave. The Hope that is the living God, the universal Savior of all mankind.

I like what Dr. Constable has written that "(God's) Salvation is sufficient for all but efficient only for those who believe". Presumably that is why Paul wrote that last bit in verse 10. For us believers, we are able to rise from the dark depths of our humanity, rising to the challenge, because we have and know the Hope which is in Jesus Christ, because the 'Joy of the Lord is our strength'.

Perhaps this training was not meant to discourage. Instead, it was meant to build up and strengthen, that through our lives, our strengths and our weaknesses, God may be glorified. Ever wondered why He said what He said in 2 Corinthians 12:9?

In your obedience, be not discouraged.

Don't look at the problem; look at the solution.
Don't look at the difficulty; look at the One who overcame the difficulty.
(Rick Warren, in a recorded series of Encouragement).

It all depends on where you have your eyes on...

So where and what are you looking at?

It's been a while since the last post, hasn't it?

Having been back in my own church (that which I grew up in since I first attended back when I was 9 years old) for about three months since my return, I've been quite down. I look at the familiar congregation, the dear ministries which I serve in and serve alongside in and I am sad.

What has happened in those six months that I was gone?
The passion and excitement in those young eyes I remember has died down. The lust for a holy life, filled with ever so frequent uncontrollable urges and convulsions to commune with an awesome God, the pining to tear away and sit at the Savior's feet, lapping up every word as though it were a precious and delicious morsel... All that has vanished. And in its place, distracted joking, vacant expressions, sloth, fiddling on iphones (and what not).

Have they forgotten the reason why we gather and read and pray and sing and serve?

Recorded in Philippians 2 is a morning hymn that early Christians sang. Some of us may know it today as the Carmen Christi. Then, it was not a passage around which theological debates now rage angrily around, it was simply given a melody and sung; difficult and complicated Truths about the Incarnation were just accepted as such and celebrated as such. No digging nor clarifying nor qualifying. None. Just belief in the unbelievable, an adoption and a profound understanding.

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
who, being in the very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human lifeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death --even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

~ Philippians 2: 5-11

Just reading these black words on the white pages of my Bible makes me quiver in excitement!

I hear proud and majestic trumpets and horns, coupled with the pristine singing of strings accented by the delicate plucking of harps, crashing cymbols and the bells of the tambourine, all set against, not a formal and structured choir, but a noisy and rowdy crowd jostling and yelling and shouting and praising in what can only be described as a "joyful noise"!

Life is given to two otherwise lifeless concepts of humble servitude to exalted lordship, joined by an interesting word "therefore" that points to a strange and radical reversal of traits and status.

Do you not also hear this intense magnitude of sound waves?

Can you not feel the a strange excitement well up within you, knowing you belong to a God who turns tables in His wake, who began His most glorious miracle in a minor key of a servant bending his knee to a painful death, but then resolves the minor by a clever and rousing sequence of chords to a elated major key, taking His place as God of the cosmos!

We sing because we know the Truth,
because the Truth is alive,
because we live in the Truth.

Don't get caught up in the studying and the rationalising and the theory,
at least not so much that you forget that what you are reading is not words, but Life.

Those early Christians didn't, but then maybe it's also because many were not literate, or that in those days, close studying of the Scriptures wasn't their culture. In any case, their faith was alive. And it gave them such joy and pleasure to be keepers of of the Truth that they could not help but "make a joyful noise" (Psalm 95, 100) to the Lord, the Rock of their salvation.

They made a רוּע, a noise, an ear-splitting, triumphant cry. No coherent words could unify their many loud voices, no one could control their many varied outbursts. But an onlooker could not but describe it as a "joyful" noise.

What does your noise sound like?