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I have two eyes, you have two eyes. Barring all those who are disabled either from birth or by unfortunate accident, we all have the same two eyes, no more and no less. Our vision's stereoscopic, by scientific definition. I'm pretty sure that man could not have come this far without our good ol' eyes, and God probably made eyes for us so that we would be able to enjoy the beauty of God's works, but......
Your eyes are the windows to your souls, they say. Cliched, yes....but true. Too true...many times, the things that we see shape our personality, our minds, the way we think, the way we feel..to put it in the simplest terms, it affects our very souls. Hence the phrase "To see is to believe" (I have it on my NS shirt, haha) is often the number one mantra for most people. Just by what we see alone, it's often too easy to pass hasty but hardly accurate judgements.
(It's actually kinda late now but I just thought that I should blog about this at the very least..)
This week has been a wonderful one for me, mostly due to the fact that I've just only turned 18 last Thursday (my friend said that I can now finally visit the 'I need love' shop...shivers). I received really nice SMS-es,with the first one coming in at the wee hours of 12.02AM and I have Justina to thank for that :D It was totally great to celebrate my birthday this year because people actually remembered. I was happy that my friends sent me messages and that my classmates asked me to go to Summit to watch a movie, and like the Sims, my social bar was totally recharged that day. But as I reminisced about it, I suddenly realised something more important. On my birthday my mom fried a delicious piece of fish, made fried chicken drumsticks, prepared red-coloured boiled eggs (it's a Chinese custom if you didn't already know) AND made a nice, cool glass of lemonade (ahhh....) so that I could gulp it down straight after coming back from school. And I was really satiated, having feasted like a king but now that I ponder about it...
Ever since I was small I could see that I have a father and a mother. I could see that my mom works hard doing household chores. I could see that dad works equally as hard to earn money to feed the family. But what I couldn't see for a very long time was WHY they had to trouble themselves so. My dad loves me, and I could feel it when he yanks out ten dollar notes for me to spend even though he hardly has enough money to pump gas (his car runs on gas) these days, while my mom loves me even more as she works her butt off everyday just to make sure that I am well-fed, grow up healthy and always have clean ironed clothes to wear. It's always been like that, but it's just that my eyes failed to 'see' these things before this. How could I have been so blind?
Nowadays, I feel that I often rely too heavily on these two eyes of mine, it's just all too easy to take things as they seem. "Ohhh, he looks mean. Better not mess with him..". "Hey, she looks cute, and kind too...". "It looks like I'm just too busy with Form Six to have time for other things,shucks." And the list just goes on and on and on...
Hahhhh....I guess this explains why it's been hard to connect to God lately. It's easy for me to make connections when I see things, but God being the invisible being that He is, I've always had a lot of trouble trying to fill up my spiritual tank. But that's also one of the reasons why I've always looked forward to TRU: it's the best place that I could think of to power up my spiritual batteries. At TRU, I don't try to think about God. I don't try to talk about God. I just...perceive. I suppose that when it comes to communicating with the great and mighty God who is up there, if my mind fails and my mouth falls behind, then all I have left is just my heart. And that's how it works best.."God works in ways that we cannot see"
I just pray that I would be to have more of that ability to see deeper into things. To perceive with both my eyes AND my heart and soul and conscience. But even if I had eyes a gazillion times more powerful than that of an eagle, I would still never be able to see things the way God does. When I was in my NS camp, there were two occasions when God gave me the opportunity to sort of 'look' into the souls of two individuals and it was indeed a very valuable experience. It showed me just how little that my frail pair of eyes is capable of seeing...
I'd love to write about the two individuals I mentioned but 'll save it cause if I don't sleep now, my eyes would definitely not be able to see anything tomorrow morning. It's already past midnight, my goodness...oh well, hope that wasn't too long a blog for you guys. Good night for now :D Oh, and pardon me if I used the word 'see' too many times. Ooops, I did it again... xD
I have two eyes, you have two eyes. Barring all those who are disabled either from birth or by unfortunate accident, we all have the same two eyes, no more and no less. Our vision's stereoscopic, by scientific definition. I'm pretty sure that man could not have come this far without our good ol' eyes, and God probably made eyes for us so that we would be able to enjoy the beauty of God's works, but......
Your eyes are the windows to your souls, they say. Cliched, yes....but true. Too true...many times, the things that we see shape our personality, our minds, the way we think, the way we feel..to put it in the simplest terms, it affects our very souls. Hence the phrase "To see is to believe" (I have it on my NS shirt, haha) is often the number one mantra for most people. Just by what we see alone, it's often too easy to pass hasty but hardly accurate judgements.
(It's actually kinda late now but I just thought that I should blog about this at the very least..)
This week has been a wonderful one for me, mostly due to the fact that I've just only turned 18 last Thursday (my friend said that I can now finally visit the 'I need love' shop...shivers). I received really nice SMS-es,with the first one coming in at the wee hours of 12.02AM and I have Justina to thank for that :D It was totally great to celebrate my birthday this year because people actually remembered. I was happy that my friends sent me messages and that my classmates asked me to go to Summit to watch a movie, and like the Sims, my social bar was totally recharged that day. But as I reminisced about it, I suddenly realised something more important. On my birthday my mom fried a delicious piece of fish, made fried chicken drumsticks, prepared red-coloured boiled eggs (it's a Chinese custom if you didn't already know) AND made a nice, cool glass of lemonade (ahhh....) so that I could gulp it down straight after coming back from school. And I was really satiated, having feasted like a king but now that I ponder about it...
Ever since I was small I could see that I have a father and a mother. I could see that my mom works hard doing household chores. I could see that dad works equally as hard to earn money to feed the family. But what I couldn't see for a very long time was WHY they had to trouble themselves so. My dad loves me, and I could feel it when he yanks out ten dollar notes for me to spend even though he hardly has enough money to pump gas (his car runs on gas) these days, while my mom loves me even more as she works her butt off everyday just to make sure that I am well-fed, grow up healthy and always have clean ironed clothes to wear. It's always been like that, but it's just that my eyes failed to 'see' these things before this. How could I have been so blind?
Nowadays, I feel that I often rely too heavily on these two eyes of mine, it's just all too easy to take things as they seem. "Ohhh, he looks mean. Better not mess with him..". "Hey, she looks cute, and kind too...". "It looks like I'm just too busy with Form Six to have time for other things,shucks." And the list just goes on and on and on...
Hahhhh....I guess this explains why it's been hard to connect to God lately. It's easy for me to make connections when I see things, but God being the invisible being that He is, I've always had a lot of trouble trying to fill up my spiritual tank. But that's also one of the reasons why I've always looked forward to TRU: it's the best place that I could think of to power up my spiritual batteries. At TRU, I don't try to think about God. I don't try to talk about God. I just...perceive. I suppose that when it comes to communicating with the great and mighty God who is up there, if my mind fails and my mouth falls behind, then all I have left is just my heart. And that's how it works best.."God works in ways that we cannot see"
I just pray that I would be to have more of that ability to see deeper into things. To perceive with both my eyes AND my heart and soul and conscience. But even if I had eyes a gazillion times more powerful than that of an eagle, I would still never be able to see things the way God does. When I was in my NS camp, there were two occasions when God gave me the opportunity to sort of 'look' into the souls of two individuals (I'll blog about this another day) and it was indeed a valuable experience. It showed me just how little that my frail pair of eyes is capable of seeing. I'd love to write about the two individuals I mentioned but 'll save it cause if I don't sleep now, my eyes would definitely not be able to see anything tomorrow morning. It's already past midnight, my goodness...oh well, hope that wasn't too long a blog for you guys. Good night for now :D Oh, and pardon me if I used the word 'see' too many times. Ooops, I did it again... xD
Lest anyone starts to get the impression that the author of this blog is going to abandon the blog soon, I thought that I should pen down (well not literally I guess), or should I say type down...oh forget it. Here's a snapshot of my not-so-ordinary Sunday then........
I woke up at five today. Yup, five. FIVE. Dang, really wished I could've slept a little more..I had to skip church today to attend this St.John's State Review thing, which turned out to be little more than a game of "let's see who can stand longer under the sun without fainting".
So yeah, I stood a good number of hours today, and half my Sunday went to this totally unfruitful activity. At least now I know that next year around this time I'd most probably be 'busy', should I be so lucky to be invited to go again, so to speak :D
In the afternoon I didn't do much, just lazed around and studied a teensy weensy tiny bit. Then came the time to go to this play at Taylor's college called MOUSETRAP. Now having previously been to two drama/plays prior to this, I wouldn't say that I'm the kind of person who likes this sort of stuff very much. 'Julius Caesar' was a terrible experience because I couldn't understand the thick Roman accents while the more recent 'Broken Bridges' was pretty good but not exactly good enough yet to warrant genuine interest. So along came Justin saying "Hey Ken, wanna go or not to this play called MOUSETRAP? Come lah, it's very fun wan!" and being the 'i-can't-say-no...' person that I am, I ended up going also in the end.
To my surprise, it turned to be really entertaining and I was quite thoroughly occupied throughout the whole play, trying my best to figure out who's the real murderer and all. And when it finally ended , they called out all the people involved in the production. Everyone was clapping, cheerful and all. One of the them (she played a role called Molly in the drama) even got a nice bouquet of flowers from her cool, calm and stylish boyfriend. And then the whole scenario just sorta caught me, like here I am, among all these people. Such joy, such luxury that we have such an opportunity to enjoy ourselves like this..while at the very same time, people in different parts of the world go through really different circumstances. Just as we were watching the play, somewhere in Iraq there were also probably hundreds of innocent people getting killed by car-bombs, truck-bombs and what-nots. Just as we all enjoyed ourselves and had a great time there, many kids in rural and backward parts of India have no choice but to fight yet another night of howling coldness and paralyzing hunger. Just as we have the comfort of knowing that we have our nice and comfy beds to look forward to, those who live in the slums in America like the Detroit area know too well that peace and quiet is something that they could only wish for in their wildest dreams. It's just...different. Just so different.................................................................
Lately, I've been getting myself into all sorts of miseries just because I muttered the 'magic word' more often than I should've. The 'magic word' in question is the one word that seals big businesses, the one word that most people, if not everyone like to hear, the one word that most teenagers nowadays probably won't utter to their parents and also the one word that sometimes you wish you had not said when so hastily when trouble finally befalls you. The word being....'yes'. Just in the last week alone, I had somehow managed to put myself into such a tight situation just because of the above-mentioned 'magic word'.
Simon called me up in the middle of the week to ask if I could share something during TRU about the conference that we attended in SIB a few weeks back. So in my "Ah, it's gonna be a piece of cake" mindset, I said yes. No problem. Sure can wan. Then on Thursday, a teacher asked if anyone wanted to be the facilitator for this National Science Championship thing organised by Dumex (yeap, it's for kids). The reward is a national-level certificate (they say lah, I'm not so sure) and a handsome sum of RM25 a day. Wow...do you wanna join, Ken? Yes! Then later I realised that there's a briefing on Saturday afternoon 2-4 pm. Great...clash with TRU. So okay, never mind. I thought that I wouldn't get selected for it anyway. (They told me they'll choose who to go)
Then on Thursday night Aunty Collene called me to ask if I could lead the study on Acts for Saturday's TRU. Thinking that I'll just reject the Dumex job even if I do get selected for it, I said yes again. Yup, can lah Aunty Collene. No problem. No problem my foot it turned out to be the next day...I DID get selected for it because they couldn't find enough people. I had wanted to pull out but then I thought that I should be a man of my words, so I went along with it. By now I had almost wanted to kill myself for having committed myself to a thousand and one things without proper prior considerations. What to do, what to do? Anymore yes-es and I might as well hit my head against the wall...I was either going to miss TRU or the Saturday briefing for the Dumex thing, both of which was not exactly possible at that time...
Thankfully for me, the briefing got pushed to an earlier time so I managed to juggle between both the tasks without ending in disaster. But it did ruin my plan to go look for birthday gifts at Subang Parade, cause September just so happens to be a nice month to give birth I guess, (yes Simon, your theory is quite logical). But it was quite a lesson for me to refrain from making decisions too hastily, cincai-ly the next time. Always think carefully before you decide to commit yourself to something, be it helping a friend or doing a simple chore for your mom. If you are unable to keep your promises, you never know how much trouble you might cause others. Don't wait till it's too late to say no......
Another Sunday, another long week ahead :D I had wanted to post something but looks like i better catch more 40-winks cause last night slept late. Pondering some issues now, i'll post it when it's appropriate and when I have the time. Now to prepare for a battle with yet another dreadful Monday....
