Weird Incidences
Some weird incidences:
I was at the busstop waiting for bus 95 yesterday afternoon when an old Malay couple came up to me. Guess what? THey asked me if i am a Malay. I was like... STUNNED!!! Sorry but i'm not trying to be racist here but i seriously don't think there is anything about me that resembles a Malay. I mean if Khairul (sorry dude... have to use you as an example) was mistaken for a Chinese, that is understandable because his mom is a Chinese, he has some cheena genetics make-up in his blood. But as for me, my lineage is pure Chinese thus it is unthinkable for me to have any resemblance with the Malays. Oh well... probably they need a new pair of glasses.
Just now while i was at the changing room, i was perturbed by this guy who stripped himself bare in the toilet and walking around, parading in front of me. And worse still, he positioned himself right in front of the mirror while using his towel to 'caress' himself in slow-motion. i was petrified and STUNNED for words... and of cos the next thing i did was to scurry out of the changing room. Gosh...
Then it was the gym. Yong Jian and I were working out happily in the gym when this red shirt guy came in. Well, no big deal for a person to enter the gym but there's just something about the red shirt guy which made me uncomfortable. Anyway, as i was observing him, he seemed to loiter around the compound not doing anything at all. At one moment, he was flicking the light switches of the gym and seriously i had no idea what he was doing. Finally, he propped himself on the treadmill and began to jog... while mumbling some gibberish which really gave me creeps. Moments later, a few security guards came into the gym and asked me if i did pressed the red emergency button on the pillar. Then they asked that red shirt guy on the treadmill the same question and that red shirt guy said that he saw someone pressed the button and left the gym in a hurry. This is weird... i mean this red shirt guy came in after me, and i saw the previous guy that left the gym ain't even near the button at all. I suspect it is this red shirt guy who in an attempt to switch on the treadmill, accidentally pressed the emergency button and yet now accusing others of this action. Well... if not, how is he able to justify his actions of flicking the lights on and off... obviously he's trying to find a certain switch right? At that point of time i really wanted to expose him... but after contemplating a long while and realising i did not see him pressing the emergency button with my own two eyes, i let the matter go. i mean my conjecture could be wrong right?
So tired.... zzZZzz
Recess
The recess week is finally here (hmmm... i wonder if i should use the word 'finally' bcos i ain't really lookin forward to it anyway) and it is time to buck up on unread readings as well as piah-ing for unfinished projects and individual assignments. Seriously, i doubt i have enough time to catch up my readings for all my modules. Goodness... i shouldn't have been so gungho to take 3 lvl 3000 geog this semester. =S
Alright, enough of academic stuff... yesterday afternoon was spent at Bukit Timah Hill with Jiahui and aik. Well, we did the daily farm route twice to train for our upcoming hike overseas. Oh gosh, i suspect i do have some psychomotor problem in terms of walking with the hiking sticks. i couldn't seem to be able to put the sticks at the right place when i walk. Hahaha... if not for the sake of my knees, i would've just do away with them. This hike was followed by a 2-hour badminton game at Clementi Sports Hall. To think that i still went for swim twice today, once in the late morn with bin and the other time in the late afternoon with aik. Haha...i must be mad.
time to do some serious work...
The Saint Must Walk Alone
Most of the world’s great souls have been lonely. Loneliness seems to be one price the saint must pay for his saintliness.
In the morning of the world (or should we say, in that strange darkness that came soon after the dawn of man’s creation) that pious soul, Enoch, walked with God and was not, for God took him; and while it is not stated in so many words, a fair inference is that Enoch walked a path quite apart form his contemporaries.
Another lonely man was Noah who, of all the antediluvians*, found grace in the sight of God; and every shred of evidence points to the aloneness of his life even while surrounded by his people.
Again, Abraham had Sarah and Lot, as well as many servants and herdsmen, but who can read his story and the apostolic comment upon it without sensing instantly that he was a man “whose soul was alike a star and dwelt apart”? As far as we know, not one word did God ever speak to him in the company of men. Facedown he communed with his God, and the innate dignity of the man forbade that he assume this posture in the presence of others. How sweet and solemn was the scene that night of the sacrifice when he saw the lamps of fire moving between the pieces of offering. There alone with a horror of great darkness upon him he heard the voice of God and knew that he was a man marked for divine favour.
Moses also was a man apart. While yet attached to the court of Pharaoh he took long walks alone, and during one of these walks while far removed from the crowds he saw an Egyptian and a Hebrew fighting and came to the rescue of his countryman. After the resultant break with Egypt he dwelt in almost complete seclusion in the desert. There while he watched his sheep alone the wonder of the burning bush appeared to him, and later on the peak of Sinai he crouched alone to gaze in fascinated awe at the Presence, partly hidden, partly disclosed, within the cloud and fire.
The prophets of pre-Christian times differed widely from each other, but one mark they bore in common was their enforced loneliness. They loved their people and gloried in the religion of the fathers, but their loyalty to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their zeal for the welfare of the nation of Israel drove them away from the crowd and into long periods of heaviness. “I am a stranger to my brothers,/ an alien to my own mother’s sons” (Psalm 69:8), cried one and unwittingly spoke for all the rest.
Most reveal of all is the sight of that One of whom Moses and all the prophets did write, treading His lonely way to the cross, His deep loneliness unrelieved by the presence of the multitudes.
‘Tis midnight, and on Olive’s brow
The star is dimmed that lately shone.
‘Tis midnight; in the garden now
The suffering Saviour prays alone.
‘Tis midnight, and from all removed,
The Saviour wrestles lone with fears;
E’en that disciple whom He loved
Heeds not his Master’s grief and tears.
n William B. Tappan
He died alone in the darkness, hidden from the sight of mortal man, and no one saw Him when He arose triumphant and walked out of the tomb, though many saw Him afterward and bore witness to what they saw.
There are some things too sacred for any eye but God’s to look upon. The curiosity, the clamour, the well-meant but blundering effort to help can only hinder the waiting soul and make unlikely, if not impossible, the communication of the secret message of God to the worshipping heart.
Sometimes we react by a kind of religious reflex and repeat dutifully the proper words and phrases even though they fail to express our real feelings and lack the authenticity of personal experience. Right now is such a time. A certain conventional loyalty may lead some who hear this unfamiliar truth expressed for the first time to say brightly, “Oh, I am never lonely. God said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you’ (Joshua 1:5), and Christ said, ‘surely I am with you always’ (Matthew 28:20). How can I be lonely when Jesus is with me?”
Now I do not want to reflect on the sincerity of any Christian soul, but this stock testimony is too neat to be real. It is obviously what the speaker thinks should be true rather than what he has proved to be true by the test of experience. This cheerful denial of loneliness proves only that the speaker has never walked with God without the support and encouragement afforded him by society. The sense of companionship which he mistakenly attributes to the presence of Christ may and probably does arise from the presence of friendly people. Always remember: You cannot carry a cross in company. Though a man were surrounded by a vast crowd, his cross is his alone and his carrying of it makes him as a man apart. Society has turned against him; otherwise he would have no cross. No one is a friend to the man with a cross. “Then everyone deserted him and fled” (Mark 14:50).
The pain of loneliness arises from the constitution of our nature. God made us for each other. The desire for human companionship is completely natural and right. The loneliness of the Christian results from his walk with God in an ungodly world, a walk that must often take him away from the fellowship of good Christians as well as from that of the unregenerate world. His God-given instincts cry out for companionship with others of his kind, others who can understand his longings, his aspirations, his absorption in the love of Christ; and because within his circle of friends there are so few who share his inner experiences hi is forced to walk alone. The unsatisfied longings of the prophets for human understanding caused them to cry out in their complaint, and even our Lord Himself suffered in the same way.
The man who has passed on into the divine presence in actual inner experience will not find many who understand him. A certain amount of social fellowship will of course be his as he mingles with religious persons in the regular activities of the church, but true spiritual fellowship will be hard to find. But he should not expect things to be otherwise. After all, he is a stranger and a pilgrim, and the journey he takes is not on his feet but in his heart. He walks with God in the garden of his own soul – and who but God can walk there with him? He is of another spirit from the multitudes that tread the courts of the Lord’s house. He has seen that of which they have only heard, and he walks among them somewhat as Zacharias walked after his return from the altar when the people whispered, “He has seen a vision” (see Luke 1:22).
The truly spiritual man is indeed something of an oddity. He lives not for himself but to promote the interest of Another. He seeks to persuade people to give all to his Lord and asks no portion or share for himself. He delights not to be honoured but to see his Saviour glorified in the eyes of men. His joy is to see his Lord promoted and himself neglected. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and over serious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens. He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces (see Psalm 45:8), and finding few or none he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.
It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. “Though my father and mother forsake me,/ the LORD will receive me” (Psalm 27:10). His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else. He learns in inner solitude what he could not have learned in the crowd – that Christ is All in all, that He is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, that in Him we have and possess life’s summum bonum**.
Two things remain to be said. One, that the lonely man of whom we speak is not a haughty man, nor is he the holier-than-thou, austere saint so bitterly satirized in popular literature. He is likely to feel that he is the least of all men and is sure to blame himself for his very loneliness. He wants to share his feelings with others and to open his heart to some like-minded soul who will understand him, but the spiritual climate around him does not encourage it, so he remains silent and tells his griefs to God alone.
The second thing is that the lonely saint is not the withdrawn man who hardens himself against human suffering and spends his days contemplating the heavens. Just the opposite is true. His loneliness makes him sympathetic to the approach of the broken-hearted and the fallen and the sin-bruised. Because he is detached from the world he is all the more able to help it. Meister Eckehart*** taught his followers that if they should find themselves in prayer, as it were, caught up to the third heavens, and happen to remember that a poor widow needed food, they should break off the prayer instantly and go care for the widow. “God will not suffer you to lose anything by it,” he told them. “You can take up again in prayer where you left off and the Lord will make it up to you.” This is typical of the great mystics and masters of the interior life from Paul to the present day.
The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel too much at home in the world. In their effort to achieve restful “adjustment” to unregenerate society they have lost their pilgrim character and become an essential part of the very moral order against which they are sent to protest. The world recognizes them and accepts them for what they are. And this is the saddest thing that can be said about them. They are not lonely, but neither are they saints.
*antediluvians: individuals who lived in the period before the flood described in the Bible
**summum bonum: a Latin phrase meaning the supreme good from which all others are derived.
***Meister Eckehart (~1260-1327): a German mystic.
Adapted from The Radical Cross – Living the Passion of Christ by A.W. Tozer
Invigorating Thursday
The beginning of this week has been pretty busy. To think that i have to squeeze out time to have lunch was something unheard of. Gone were the days of lazing around, swimming n gymming in between lessons back in year 1. So sad... hahaha. That was why i was so looking forward to Thursday when i could finally have an afternoon nap to replenish all my sleep loss at the beginning of this week.
I actually intended to go to gym, but knowing how fickle my mind can get, i changed my mind on my way to the school gym. I took the bus home and went to swim at BV Swimming complex instead. An afternoon nap followed after and guess what, i went to swim again. Hahaha... gosh...
Alright...time to do more serious work...
Training Motivation
Now is the time to be more disciplined in my physical endurance training for my climb end of this year. It is funny to see how the motivation to change could be transformed over time. I used to train for 'myself', as in to be strong or strong-est, to win for my team, to win for my school etc etc. However, it has come to the stage when training hard has become more a life-and-death issue than just a simple notion of winning and losing.
After my ice-climbing experience in New Zealand, it came to my realisation how every individual in the climbing team played essential parts in the whole expedition. Not only will the fall of one affect the progress of the climb, it also will endanger the lives of the rest of the climbers too. For that, i will not want to jeopardise the lives of my brother and sisters with my sloth and laziness to train.
This kindles to how the church operates. We are all members of the body of Christ and we are bestowed with various spiritual gifts in the measure of faith allotted to us by God. THerefore, every single one of us believers have a place in church in which the 'fall' of one will definitely result in repercussions to the others in the same body. There lies the responsibility of every Christian in 'furiously' pursuing Christ Jesus as our utmost satisfaction, and our desires to be sanctified to walk in the Spirit.
Just a thought...
NOSTALGIA
I kind of realised that i have not posted any photos for a very long time thus i think i ought to do so in this blogpost. Hee. Anyway, last friday night was spent on a nostalgia tour with Cheng Xun [YES PARDNER U"RE BACK!!] to the old campus of RJC, the current Dunman High School. As we strolled round the perimeters of the campus, memories started to flood into my mind. The flag poles we lamppost Brendan with, the vandalised table where we used to study, the fitness corner where we spent most of our time doing pull-up pyramids, the familiar dirty red tracks where we ran like no one's biz, the compound behind the gym where we did abs etc etc etc. Oh... time flies. [quite hard, they are too fast]
It was saddening to see that the campus has become a highly policed area. We spotted many spycams at the fences and the gates as well as a big ugly guardhouse at the entrance of the school. This landscape of exclusion really turned my stomach over. I mean, back in RJC days, there weren't these kind of funny gadgets hanging on the corner of trees spying people. Sigh. However, after much pondering, we came to a conclusion that it might be due to pesky nostalgic ex-RJCians' persistent breaking-in to the campus for 'old-time sake' that has resulted in this exagerrated installation of security gadgets.
Not only so, the campus compound was so prim and proper, a highly sanitised landscape. Goodness... all the pillars were white-washed with NOTHING on them. No posters, no colours... just white and white and white. Yucks!! Gone are the days of 'happenings' at LT 2.5, posters depicting artie-fartie events coming up, splashes of paintcolours on the concrete floor due to painting of OG flags etc.... the fabric of the school culture is just white-washed.... gosh.
And of cos, how can we not go to Ghim Moh Market to savour the delicious food over there. Haha.... That's about it...
I sure do hope the principal don't see this... =P
Strolling on the railway track
YEAH... that's us!!
Eating Jin Hua at Ghim Moh Mkt
Saturday morning was spent in Botanic Garden. Had steamboat with fellowship at night. i think i shall update this on another day cos my friend seemed a bit irritated waiting for me to finish my comp so that we can do our maths tutorials. hahaha. =P
