Time is the only thing you give and could never earn back

I thought I should write a posting before the end of the year but didn’t manage to find the time.

I thought I would have a lot of time to reflect and write about it during these 12 days of leave but I didn’t have that much time after all.

I thought I could catch up with lots of people while I was in Malaysia but I didn’t manage to. There are people whom I told I would call to meet up with and didn’t (Ferina, Anthony); there are people I didn’t tell I would call but had intended to and didn’t (Jenn & Sean, Rudi, Jasmine, Choo Ai & Des); and there are people whom I would have liked to meet if I manage to complete the first two.

I have been so reflective and pensive prior to going home for Christmas that when the activities took place I gladly let it sweep me along. Too tired of thinking back and making sense and sensibility of it all.

But I should. An unexamined life is a wasted life. So says Socrates. So quoted by Pastor Wilson in his sermon on Sunday Dec 31, 2006, entitled Closure for New Beginnings.

Fingerprints of God.

I’ve been a real whiner. I keep telling people I feel 2006 had been such a long year and I cannot wait for it to be over.

I keep saying I hope this year, 2007, would be a much better year. Most of my closest friends are excited about this new year and I realise I couldn’t feel the same excitement. For me, it is as if putting 2006 behind carries more weight than looking forward to 2007. But really, you ask, what has been so bad about 2006?

Sunday service--we sang a song with these lyrics:

You have been good
You have been good
I stand in awe and wonder why
You have been good
You've been SO good
Through so many things you’ve been good to me.

I felt like a hypocrite for being a whiner. When the truth is what we sang.

I do realise that there were good times. There may have been more undesirables than desirables but God never promised a bed of roses. The challenge was could I still praise Him through it all, IN it all? I wanted to. It was not easy.

During the sermon these questions that were asked:

1. Am I closer to Christ today than at the beginning of the year?
2. Do I know more about God?
3. Did I recognise His presence?
4. How did God help me through the crises this year?
5. What did I learn from these experiences?

I jotted them down because I thought it would help me reflect on my spiritual journey in the year past. My answers to those questions:

1. I am not sure. This time last year, ye-ye was in a coma in hospital and even before he made a turn for the worse I was anticipating his death. During that time, I was very close to God. I needed His presence and strength to sustain me while caring for ye-ye, while keeping my dad and siblings sane, while speaking into ye-ye’s ears about Jesus and heaven.

2. I am not sure again. I think so. In knowing him, I cannot say I know more traits and characteristics of God. It is not like saying I know a person more this year because this year I found out he likes eating apples and last year I didn’t know that. It is more like having more periods in my life this year when I felt the hands of God and his heartbeat.

3. Yes. I can recognise, or feel, the presence of the Holy Spirit better. Am I am surer of His presence in the various events/ episodes of my life. I know he is ALWAYS with me in a theoretical way. But to know and feel the reality of it; that’s not the same.

4. Carrying me, being the footprints in the sand.Giving me physical and emotional strength. And most of all, leading me with His peace that transcends understanding.

5. That He is good. That I could NEVER live without Christ. To take Christ away would be to take life away. He is the lover of my soul. The lover of ME. Completely and unconditionally. How great is such love? How unfathomable. How undeserving. Yet all mine by grace. Grace that is greater than my faith. That God wants to move me to a higher level of faith. Walk on water. Letting the past go and forgetting what is behind.

See the fingerprints of God in all the events, Pastor Wilson said.

They are fingerprints of love.