Yoshi’s Noteboard 2.0
Write About NowArchive for January, 2009
CNY Apathy
Sometimes in the milieu of meaninglessness, a shrink is called for...
I’ve been having a nice and sombre little Chinese New Year this year. Like Christmas and New Year’s Day, where I spent a large portion of my time indoors (the happies), this CNY was spent with friends and family, traversing stops to collect more ang pows and renewing the bonds of friendship that should never be broken.
Through such a brief excursis, I have learnt that I am still a recluse at heart, an introvert that has learnt how to fit in to a noise-needing crowd, and being able to more adequately decrease my daily output of words to preserve sanity, both internally and externally. It has been quite fruitful so far.
School starts on Thursday, and then I travel down to Kluang again to begin lectures to the YF on Romans, which I am eagerly looking forward to. (how do you explain the concept of justification to 13 year olds?) Will see how they take it all in. I’ve got tonnes of preparation work (not including promises of forthcoming work, and mountains of wonderful books to read) and here I am using the MacBook Pro to lighten up.
Anyway, as an aside, here is a cute little quote I came across that I would like include as a lament to some ‘intellectual’ people I know:
“If the intelligentsia want to make a contribution to society, they must first understand what kind of society they live in. By society, of course, I do not mean the high society of snobs and socialites, but of people at grass-root level: how they live, how they work, what they do in their leisure time, what they think of the world, their hopes, their fears and aspirations… because the intelligentsia are puzzled over the nature of the society they live in, such views as they express from time to time relate to abstract principles in “vacuo”. Goh Keng Swee, 1967.
How the New Year feels like
2009 feels like a new shirt, nicely designed, branded and waiting to be worn. I’ve started doing alot of new stuff beginning this week- reading, got in at least three 3-point shots in a game (I had resolved to extend my range), working with more teams, and learning how to slow down (in terms of activities) but speed up (in terms of prayer).
I’ve also started drafting a (long put-off) series on “What is Christianity?” which is to be done in conjunction with a training course for BB and Eden youth, and I hope to begin a series of lectures in YF based on expository-style preaching on the book of Romans, God willing. Even the blog is spanking new. Yay!
My mind is being renewed by the Lord within the framework of my new responsibilities, and I know I need to keep going. “…a thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you…” Ps 91:7
Stepping into eternity for a second
During our lunch-hour prayer on Thursday, I found myself praying in what seemed an eternity- not out of boredom or resentment, but out of a conscious desire to bring all known petitions before the Lord. As each item was brought to the surface, wrestled with and then released, I found that I could cover alot of ground in intercession.
This is another aspect to prayer that I never understood before. Prayer can tune one’s inner self to, paradoxically, Eternity’s sense of time. This is not the empty mumblings or mutterings of incoherence, nor a specious blanking of the mind for self-serving appeasement, but a deep assurance that He has heard the torrent of requests and has taken the necessary actions for succor.
I felt like a person whose day had just been restarted.
My first failure of 2009
Talk to me
and tell me how much everything will not work out
tell me that you do not know me
or trust me
and think that I’m some presumptuous jerk
of the magnificent fall
I wonder when the next jump would
present itself
and I, like the Quixotic klutz I have always been
will once again take up his trusty lance
and begin prodding again
Rescue me from my foolishness, O Lord
or at least put me out of my misery once and for all
why do I like to run ahead of You so often, in these matters
and let my pristine reputation be reduced to fertilizer
It’s starting to become a pattern
and I’m starting to not trust myself or my uncontrollable urges
And the pain of failure is so great
I could almost castigate myself.
