To keep Your lovely face ever before my eyes
This is my prayer, make it my strong desire
That in my secret heart no other love competes
No rival throne survives and I serve only You.
The restlessness and inward groaning halted after several tremblors in unrelated areas and the Haiti earthquake ...
but what does this earthquake mean? Hopefully Californians get a wake up call and realize they need to be prepared for such disasters.
A google of "earthquake" and "California" would yield numerous predictions about "the Big One" in San Francisco arising from the San Andreas fault. There are even claims that the big One is God's wrath upon homosexuals in San Francisco.
Hmm. Not sure about the big one.
Just looking at the earthquake videos in Haiti. People ran to the streets at the first tremble. In my dream business was as usual in San Francisco until the tsunami came.
Hmm. Better not overstretch this line of argument.
But what I am sure is this: the picture of a wrathful God wiping out Californians is wrong. The prayer I got was that God LOVED San Francisco, so that He wants to bring about repentance. Yet at the rate the same sex marriage trial is going on in San Francisco now, the only way to bring about repentance is a massive move by the Spirit that brings about drastic change. Until then, those who are blinded by sin believe they are RIGHT to demand the chance to be legally married.
But on another note, isn't the geological events happening quite often these days? The Sumatran earthquake and the American Samoa tsunami only took place a few months ago, then the earthquake in Eureka and now Haiti.
The clock is ticking faster now... no time for dilly dallying about which church to go to.
I prayed for the safety of whoever popped up in my prayers tonight: Charles, Hong, Elsye, Felicia, Lydia. Lord bring them to safety. Amen.
On New Year's Eve I partied late, slept at 4 a.m. New year's Day I flew to Hong Kong and the flu plus (the usual) asthma combo grounded me in Auntie's apartment for 4 days.
I'm flying home later today - but was in Hollywood Road partying late.... the alcohol kept the coughing at bay.
Hmm.
Speaking about leadership and followership. Shared with Jaime about a changed perspective on followership. When I disagreed with the leader, especially when I think that action is against the client's interests, I used to passive aggressively follow the boss' instructions. Think that got me in trouble in more than one place.
But now that I had a taste of leading a group, I learnt that even when my reluctance to follow is well intended, if everyone does the same, any organization will be in chaos. There can only be one quarterback in a football team. It is better to follow the leader's instructions, because if something goes wrong he's/she's accountable for the bad judgment call - and he'll either wisen up quickly or be replaced.
And so I decided to follow Mr. OTT's judgment call - even though it's directly opposite from what I've discerned and confirmed.
Sitting on the taxi cab yesterday afternoon, I wondered how I can possibly entrust such an important thing to a total stranger who has no vested interest in my personal welfare?
That evening Auntie did the first family quiet time with her family, Mum and I. It's going to be one memory to take home this trip.
After that, I did my own QT after skipping it for a week and flipped to this page:
1. Put Trust in God First .... because you can trust in His grace to overcome any man's shortfall. 2. Put God's Will First .... because you should wait upon Him instead of playing Jr. Holy Spirit. 3. Put God's Son First .... and allow Him to slowly transform you into His likeliness.
I spent most of today running the SAS program and keeping an eye on the news. IMPT: I haven't pinned down a date nor the exact event yet - that'll be presumptious. What I do know is that it's something catastrophic which requires me to escape quickly. People were partying on the streets to celebrate a national holiday. I saw military aircraft ready to strike. Then I saw a tsunami. I have been praying to God that if something catastrophic happens to San Francisco, and if He allows me to warn my friends in the line of danger in advance, please alert me like the last time in 911 and the Ocean Tsunami.
Meanwhile, I collected as many phone numbers of my friends in San Francisco as possible under the pretext of keeping in touch and had them stored in one spreadsheet, which is on my email in case I'm traveling.
Checking the earthquake liquefaction factor maps, my former apartment and workplace is on landfill near the water -- both places may be directly hit by a big quake/tsunami. Two of my friends still live in the same area - I have given them the escape plan below. The third friend has my survival backpack.
There was an escape route in my dream, which I can share here for anyone who finds it useful. I always have a backpack of supplies ready for bunnies and I :
1. During the first signs of trouble, I left the apartment within 5 minutes with my backpack, which I have enough cash for a 2 week stay in a hotel. Whilst everyone else is confused, waiting around, and deciding what to do, I grabbed my backpack decisively and checked in a hotel uphill before others arrived. Though tsunami waves were flooding the shores from a distance, it was business was as usual at the hotel.
But those who were in the danger zones, men and women, were mourning.
Escape route #1: Uphill on bedrock....
But why did I see military aircraft flying by the war zone - and enemy warships ready to strike?
2. The other route has to do with an escape from war of some sort. I saw was on a highway. I saw a green signs of a highway sign overhanging. Unfortunately I didn't really see if it was "north" or "south". But I remember seeing some sort of mountain behind those signs. Escape route #2 from war is - the nearest resort in a remote area - because ships tend to bomb populated cities.
That also means having a survival backpacks ready - you need to leave before the crowds get there and the water hits shore.
The gist of both escapes are to be decisive! I saw that those who were dragging their feet perished.
3. The third route was what actually happened. I was laid off, Dad helped me and bunnies pack. We left San Francisco for sunny (insulated by Indonesia, thank God) Singapore in Feb 2009. After I got the offer from the National University of Singapore, I went on a hike uphill to the Victoria Peak on holiday and saw the restaurant in my dreams.
Well, whether the large catastrophic event comes to pass or otherwise, I figured it wouldn't hurt planning for such emergencies when one lives in the earthquake prone Bay Area.
God protects us so we can always rest in Him no matter what. Amen? :o).
When I first began this blogging journey, I used to think that as long as I find the Mr. Right God planned and get together, things would automatically be "happily ever after".
But my experience so far turned out otherwise.
I moved from Singapore to San Francisco knowing for sure that God had called me to work in that job. I went by faith to clinch the offer, battled to the promised land, gave up whatever was needed (including the Ph.D.), and hung onto the job no matter what.
It was blissful for a year. But the initial sugar rush cannot sustain happiness.
What's wrong?
A natural response to not finding happiness in earthly things is religious asceticism. To believe that a higher state of spirituality is achieved by a monastic lifestyle - the poverty gospel so to speak. If so, a financial tsunami / layoff is a blessing in disguise because it reminds us to give up on earthly things and re-focus on more important things life.
That is not the gospel Jesus preaches.
God will without a doubt provide our daily bread: love, companionship, the ability to pay bills, family.
Whilst God is faithful in providing the physical bread (John 6) none of these provide the satisfaction we expected from eating food.
Jesus is the Bread of Life - we'll need to keep drawing on Him as the perfect gift every Christmas because He was born. In Him we'll never be hungry.
The other struggle, which I think is going on in my church now, is what to do with a God given vision? I am dead sure that CEFC is meant for "multitudes" of disciples, and the current "peace missions" project is His idea.
But church attendance was flat in year 2009; and the outreach events are half empty.
It's what I call a "multiple agent God's will problem". If we can't even trust ourselves to fulfill our end of the covenant agreement, can we trust additional person(s) who we have no control over, to fulfill God's plan? When the results we witness fall short of what we know are His desires, there's a constant temptation to oh-so-subtly manipulate circumstances.
But in the New Testament, Jesus has already fulfilled the covenant for us (!).
Those frustrating "no shows" mean that Jesus is waiting for me to trust Him (and only Him) to fulfill the impossible.
It took that long to know Him better to let go.
So after four years of singlehood, I began to trust and rest in His provision of His choice of a life partner. In His timing. With (only) His circumstances. Because Jesus is sovereign and infinitely gracious.
I learnt not to expect bliss from His choice in a life partner.
Last Saturday I attended a breakfast panel discussion which was hosted by the Risk Management Institute at NUS. The panel speakers were from the Monetary Authority of Singapore and Wharton Business School and said that one of the main reasons this crisis was so destructive is that no one managed to connect the dots; and there was not enough research on the interactions between different parts in the financial system. Though experts knew for a long time of the subprime problems in America, no one knew how the system was interlinked -- there was a false sense of security that the damage would be localized. But because the systems are interlinked, what eventually happened was a financial tsunami sweeping across continents.
This talk makes me think of the impending explosion of the volcano in the Philippines. The news depicts this as a localized housing crisis within the area surrounding the volcano - not unlike how the subprime crisis in the United States was expected to affect only a segment of borrowers with low quality housing loans.
Just eyeballing the plate tectonics diagram above and using a very lay-man's understanding of high school geography - the cities along the fault lines of these plates are interlinked in a manner that is similar to the different parts of the financial system. If one piece is displaced, the surrounding plate can also be displaced, causing a chain reaction along the fault lines of surrounding plates of diminishing amplitude.
Here's a nagging thought -- if the Filipino plate (the red one on the left just above the equator) is sufficiently displaced by a volcanic eruption, it is not entirely impossible for the seismic activity on one plate to trigger, say, a devastating earthquake or a tsunami for the cities on the borders of the plate right next to it -- even though these cities are supposed to be very far away(!).
The challenge in modeling such a system and building a risk management tool around it is that the probability of a catastrophic a chain reaction of this magnitude is highly improbable. So perhaps if we can get an early warning system, there will be sufficient lead time to evacuate those from distant shores.
35Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.
----------
I used to think that Jesus would deprive us of the earthly things, so that we are (in a sense) forced to find satisfaction in Him. I used to think that the hunger for love is satisfied once I marry God's perfect plan for a life partner.
But John 6 doesn't say that's how He works.
Jesus still provides for our earthly needs. Jesus can miraculously provide bread to feed the five thousand (John 6: 1 - 15)
We don't earn brownie points.This bread is something we obtain by just believing (John 6:29)
But only Jesus satisfies our real hunger. Whilst God promises to provide our needs and He absolutely will, these things (the earthly bread) He provides will always leave us hungry and going back for more. So we need JESUS - the bread of life - which satisfies our hunger for good.
That same weekend the business school bible study had a "gloves off" discussion with Pastor Melvin and his wife. This blessed couple has ministered to so many married couples. And in those 2 hours, they so easily answered my pressing questions:
(i) though man has free will and can sin, God has a way of working out the best all circumstances for people who have been called according to his purpose. There is no such thing as a hierarchy of choices which we descend due to others' choices.
(ii) the lesson we can draw from the Old Testament is that God will engineer these circumstances to bring people together. We can wait on the Lord and not have to worry.
(iii) our ultimate satisfaction comes from God, who will meet our needs in many ways... whether as a single or as a married person. Even in marriage, God continues to be the source of satisfaction through others, now including the spouse.
(iv) it's OK for women to dress nicely, but God asks us to dress and behave in a way that the guy notices how we are serving others first (Recommended verse: Psalm 45).
(v) God's purpose of marriage is to serve the other person (to be a help meet for Adam).
