By the summer of 2012 I didn't know what I was doing in Shanghai anymore, having gone there on a response to a small ad in the Jobs section of the Straits Times in 2008. Life was comfortable as a high-school teacher on an expatriate package in a low cost city. But (there's always this word with a big fat B) something was eating me inside. I blamed it on everyone else but my own lack of gratitude.
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
Husbands & fathers will agree with me that one of the first signs that something isn't right with a man is when he stops talking to his wife. It's easy to hide behind a veneer of respectability when a man is outside of the home. We were a picturesque family of harmonious smiles, but I had stopped communicating with my wife. That was not the way God intended any marriage to be. That wasn't the truth.
She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.
Just like the Godly wife whom wise King Lemuel wrote about, my wife began to pray for me, that He would give me a glimpse of His vision for China. She sensed my loss of vision, and asked God to show me His. A lesser woman would have prayed for the uncomfortable situation to be taken away. But that's not how things worked with God, and she knew God enough to know that.
Things started to happen in the winter of 2012/13. A series of events showing me that there are no coincidences in life.
Thursday, October 02, 2014
The difficulty of resting
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
These are the words of Jesus, Son of God. Who would've known that it's not easy to obey Him? I've lived a life full of agenda, schedule, time-tables, and expectations. It's not easy to give up all that, especially among a people who equate idle moments with inefficiency.
But am I made for work, or is work made for my benefit? Do I have my identity in doing instead of simply being a child of God? Does God love me because of what I can do? Or does His love remain steadfast through my entire life?
Fathers, do you love your children because of what they can do? Do you love them more for being able to recite multiplication tables? Do you love them less when they spill food on the floor for the n-th time?
...for He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
Rest, my anxious heart, rest. God loves me simply because He is God.
...for God is love.
These are the words of Jesus, Son of God. Who would've known that it's not easy to obey Him? I've lived a life full of agenda, schedule, time-tables, and expectations. It's not easy to give up all that, especially among a people who equate idle moments with inefficiency.
But am I made for work, or is work made for my benefit? Do I have my identity in doing instead of simply being a child of God? Does God love me because of what I can do? Or does His love remain steadfast through my entire life?
Fathers, do you love your children because of what they can do? Do you love them more for being able to recite multiplication tables? Do you love them less when they spill food on the floor for the n-th time?
...for He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
Rest, my anxious heart, rest. God loves me simply because He is God.
...for God is love.
Wednesday, October 01, 2014
Why I left Shanghai
Some have asked me the reason for my departure. I’m also writing this to clarify my thoughts, so many things happened over the past six years that it is difficult for me to remember everything.
The most direct would also be the most appropriate. It starts with what my Lord, Jesus, said to a bunch of people who wanted to follow Him but were hesitant because of other commitments. Jesus’ reply was, “No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
So here was His reply to me, a self-proclaimed Christian, by definition a follower of Christ. Knowing that I had, and am still looking back, didn’t sit well with me. There is a feeling in me that I am living a life less than true. That I am unfit for the kingdom of God.
A conversation with an older and wiser Christian brother one Saturday morning had me questioning my interpretation of the truth, much like Pilate, who asked, what is truth? I came to recognize that I don’t have a firm handle of what truth really is. I had missed the truth even as it was out in plain sight. In reply to Thomas’ question about finding the way to God, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth…” So truth isn’t a concept, idea, or agenda. Truth is a person, and that person is Jesus Christ.
The most direct would also be the most appropriate. It starts with what my Lord, Jesus, said to a bunch of people who wanted to follow Him but were hesitant because of other commitments. Jesus’ reply was, “No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
So here was His reply to me, a self-proclaimed Christian, by definition a follower of Christ. Knowing that I had, and am still looking back, didn’t sit well with me. There is a feeling in me that I am living a life less than true. That I am unfit for the kingdom of God.
A conversation with an older and wiser Christian brother one Saturday morning had me questioning my interpretation of the truth, much like Pilate, who asked, what is truth? I came to recognize that I don’t have a firm handle of what truth really is. I had missed the truth even as it was out in plain sight. In reply to Thomas’ question about finding the way to God, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth…” So truth isn’t a concept, idea, or agenda. Truth is a person, and that person is Jesus Christ.
Travails of the Colony
A friend of mine went to Admiralty last night, and sent me some live photos of the situation. It looked more orderly than the aftermath of a rock concert, with thousands of people dressed in black milling about, clearing rubbish, and displaying banners of support for both protesters and police. This has got to be the most polite act of civil disobedience in recent history, with umbrellas taking on a significance that no one anticipated, thanks to the riot squad’s trigger-happy fingers on the tear gas launchers over the weekend.
What struck me was neither the ideals nor the politics behind it all but that I was there just two months ago, right in the heart of Causeway Bay. The Hong Kong people are so very polite, it is hard to imagine them ever rising up against authority. Even my docile friends and former students there have risen up against what they perceive is one in a long chain of broken promises.
The pre-amble to the Declaration of Independence (yes, THAT one that Nicholas Cage tried to steal in your Hollywood fantasies) sums my thoughts best, “…all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”
Who was it who said that power never concedes without a push?
(photo by YF)
What struck me was neither the ideals nor the politics behind it all but that I was there just two months ago, right in the heart of Causeway Bay. The Hong Kong people are so very polite, it is hard to imagine them ever rising up against authority. Even my docile friends and former students there have risen up against what they perceive is one in a long chain of broken promises.
The pre-amble to the Declaration of Independence (yes, THAT one that Nicholas Cage tried to steal in your Hollywood fantasies) sums my thoughts best, “…all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”
Who was it who said that power never concedes without a push?
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Goodbye MacD's @ECP
Sadness as another landmark disappears. Too bad for me I can't be there for it's final night.
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