Ready to GO~

God Cares
God is in Control
God will Provide.

Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous fall. Psalm 55:22

With this post-it note up in front of me, i'm proceeding to leave my mark here before getting ready to sprint full steam ahead with my European Politics paper. I've every earthly reason to panic with 2 major papers (untouched) due on Friday, yet no reason at all to doubt that God will come through for me. It's a strange faith in exercise, because faith requires a certain detachment from the worry, yet a commitment to pull my weight on my side of the bargain. the dilemma bwtween How hard to push myself to finish what i have to, and How rested and RELAC i have to be in Him. The path i choose is to honour Him, just came back from exco prayer from school; i was a little sulky that Z insisted that we come back and pray because i was ready to glue my bottom at home, in a 24 hour frenzy to at least get a good headstart on one paper. But i'm glad i still went; now with refreshed mind and faith that God is able, i'm all ready.

Words and bibliography will not fall down from the sky, but i believe that the Holy Spirit residing in me can bring divine inspiration and unsurpassed efficiency.

Ready, Get Set, GO!!~

i'm feeling the weight upon my shoulders, the amount of work to complete, what with project meetings and papers and time for myself and for God. i'm telling myself that these are not Sisyphean work, but responsibilities that God has given, that i must prove faithful.

birthday celebrations are going to be over soon and looking at the repertoire of well wishes and gifts, i was surprised to find 4 books among them. They're going to be good additions to my library :) I love especially Tzing's gift to me. i've always loved good books, writings that have stood the test of time and/or scrutiny of literary lovers. I fall in love with words, travel, beauty and it seems to me that this book offers a splendid mix of it... or will it turn out to be a figment of the imagination?

The rest of the three books are also very good Christian books, although i don't know if i have the time to read all of them in the near future.

It has always been my random wish to have my own library next time. not a shelf of books, not shelves of books, but a real library of my own. And they'll all be new books with covers neatly wrapped with plastic because i can't stand yellowing pages and dog earred corners :)

Thank you, Navigators :)

Thank you brothers and sisters for being a part of my life this season.
I was just thinking of how i came to join the Navs as a young Christian in my freshmen year, how much God transformed my life in these 3 years and i can't stop giving thanks. How he sent people into my life, then and now, to sow and water and He Himself making me grow. How He showed me the work He's doing in other's lives to encourage and inspire me.

All of you have been such an important part of my walk with the Lord. I'll like to share about Something and Someone that really left a deep impact upon my life because i want to thank him and i believe you will agree he has made a deep impact in your life too: Jeremy Our dear President!! I remember very early on during my time in the Nav in one rally, Jeremy stood up in front of all of us and shared of how he struggled and how he wanted to make a fresh commitment to God. i remembered he shaved his hair to seal that commitment. I didn't know Jeremy very well then but i was just amazed at how honest and open he was in sharing with the Nav family. As i observed God's work in Jeremy's life, the total transformation of my dear brother inside-out, to someone who encourages and affirms, to someone with a heart for the individual, to someone who leads by serving, to a man after God's own heart; it really spurred me on. it's a beautiful testimony of God's grace and love. Thank you brother, that by being a living sacrifice to God (Romans 12:1), you have been a living testimony to us! :)



By our own strength we could never have endeavored to be someone new. God says very clearly that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come! i took a long hard look at myself this 22nd birthday and i truly love myself more than i did when i was 18 before i met the Lord. His work in my life truly made me beautiful, more and more like His Son Jesus. I told God no way am i going to lament, like my peers that i'm one year OLDER, but i'm going to give thanks that I'VE BEEN WITH THE LORD ONE MORE YEAR! What a privilege. And it struck me how GOD never improvises or improves us from where we were, but transforms us COMPLETELY. Right down to our core. His transformational powers are amazing. more amazing than POWER RANGERS (okay i just had to crack a lame joke even in times of thanksgiving and testimony sharing. ahaha forgive me. Nav culture rubbing off me la~)

And i want to testify that GOD IS AMAZING and works in ways we can and cannot see. His open and closed doors are loving signposts that point us to His GOOD, PERFECT and PLEASING WILL for us.

i remember in my freshman year God spoke very clearly to join the Navs even though i was serving in cellgroup and i'd wanted to join Campus Crusade. He knew then how i will grow in the love and grace so bountiful in this Nav community.i remember how He spoke to me not to go on exchange in my 3rd year so that i can serve on the exco though my flesh was unwilling. And yet when i obeyed i've been so blessed by this time of serving and being served. i remember how at overnight prayer in DEC 2006 God told me I was to be His Rae of Light, confirmed it through the mouth of my pre-believing fren Jian and then proceeded to work miracles in my family by changing the spiritual atmosphere and giving us HOPE that can only come from Him. God has been speaking to me about Proverbs 3:5-6 recently (thank you Jonah for praying that for us tonight) and as i count my blessings, i can only praise the wonder of these words:

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and He will make your paths straight."

Our God is real, living, unchangeable and loves us with an everlasting love that can never be lessened regardless of what we do or choose not to do. Nothing that we do can make Him love us more, nothing that we can do can Him love us less. My birthday wish for this year (yes Ivy, kiasu me keeps making the same wish everytime i make one so that it's more effective ahaha) is to be right in the center of God's will always :) That's all i need to live a life that's worth living!

In His Love,
Weiting~
God's Rae of Light

the poet.

"What is a poet? He is a man of religious experience whose creative gift enables him to communicate spiritual truths to men. His poetry can bring deliverance from spiritual death, bringing his hearers to a new knowledge of their divine Creator, who gave him this special power. In this way souls that have been disordered can be healed, and the human relation with God may be restored when it has been impaired...This is the fruit and indeed the purpose of music and poetry, direct gifts from God to mankind."

-- Elizabeth Henry, Orpheus and His Lute

the music of the soul

the soul's longing demands from me a dance, a jubilation of being alive, of being carefree, of being just in the moment. And such moments are private, intense yet light; the joy of a heart immersed in artful solitude. It's February, a time to dream, to time to live and laugh and cry where the "real" world of demands don't matter, and i live within my own head.

Journalism.

I believe in the power of the written word, in improving the human condition. The spread of knowledge and information in the public sphere propels public awareness of societal issues that leads to public action. My decision to study Political Science in National University of Singapore is due to this belief; that to be able to make an impact through journalism or other forms of media, I’d first have to be trained and to have a good grasp of what the world is. A few semesters into my studies, my passion for human interest and politics have been fuelled further.

Politics is more than institutions, laws, structures or a bill of rights. It is very much about people, describing how the elite make decisions that affect a disproportionate number of people, for the better or for the worse. The pronounced social inequality that the world is experiencing today is due to many factors, chief of which stemming from reasons that are political and economical. The disparity between the rich and poor is ever increasing, even as we celebrate the overall increase in standard of living globally.

Through the study of politics and political sociology, I’ve learnt that there is a need to deconstruct the meanings of “buzzwords” that disguises deliberate political action as a natural progression of human history. The spread of democracy, for example had at one time been seen as human progress but in recent years, been heavily criticized by scholars as perpetrating global American hegemony. The tension between political theory and political action is omnipresent across space. It sometimes fascinates and other times confound me. Rhetoric put forth by leaders can sometimes come across as awe-inspiring but subsequent actions taken might turn the logic on its head, most recently exemplified in the war on Iraq. Democracy forcibly imposed upon a people is a paradox by itself; the quest for American national interest in this “War for Democracy” has not escaped the notice of the world.

Moreover, phenomena such as globalization have been marketed as the latest gadget for greater economic prosperity for all, as increased global links will diffuse economic benefits to all. However, this diffusion has not occurred evenly, but developing regions such as the Middle East have continued to lag behind. The myth of a global economy disillusions those who place the most hope on it, and this I believe, is one of the mitigating factors for international terrorism today. Religious fanaticism has been fanned by such economical inequalities and allowed to flourish in impoverished conditions that many are faced with today.

Palagummi Sainath, a award-winning development journalist who has covered the reality of Indian’s most impoverished, is an inspirational figure to me. Sainath believed that news should not be “entertainment” covering the consumerism of the urban elite, but rather, he put focused his reporting on ½ billion rural Indians who live in extreme poverty in the aftermath of globalization. Through his works, he provided an unabashed and accurate political and socio-cultural explanation of the culture of poverty. It was also the first time that I learnt that “muckraking” is not necessarily a derogatory term associated with a scandal-mongering journalist, but can be a means to serve the public interest, by uncovering political fraud, waste, corruption and other actions by those in power that compromises the human condition. My encounter with his works ignited my interest in investigative journalism.

reticence

No matter how many personality tests i go through, i can't escape the quiet loner analysis :)

a day where the inner INFP in me surfaces and prompts me to be reticent. As usual the little proud lion in me tries to fight this urge to shut down and i tried to engage myself in the discussion for Contemporary Political Theory class, albeit half heartedly. Perhaps i should have allowed myself to be silent but i simply cannot condone silence when the floor's open and everyone looks awkwardly down at their notes or feet. Airtime to be is a concept to be filled to the full because learning for me is in the exchange of ideas.

But today, is a day of reticence. A general sense to withdraw from human interactions and hide in the library to get some work done or at least to write, even if it's a frivolous blog. Writing to me is as air is to the lungs. It can only be so long that i refrain from or forget to breathe.

This is a season when i want to find myself and my place in the world. Should i be a diplomat? A researcher? A creative director at an advertising company? A writer? A professor? An events management person? A bureaucrat in the United Nations? in Ortega's words, i'm the modern Mass Man faced with endless possibilities and yet a spirit which simultaneously blocks me from grabbing hold of these possibilities.

This semester, i declined the invitation to apply for an internship with the Public Sector. The non-desire helped to push it out of my mind till the deadline is well over (jan 20, i checked my email account just now) as always. a lingering "What then?" occupies a corner of my mind but i do have an inkling that God will lead me to something of meaning and purpose for me. He has wired me unable to be in a vocation just for the money or security.

I know i need to do something creative, not just in an ARTS sense, but in an IDEAS sense. i need to travel widely. i need to be stimulated. i need to be working for causes i believe in.

What's left, is to connect the dots and figure out which job fits these clauses.

balloooooons.

i absolutely adore balloons. i think i have the Winnie-the-Pooh complex. (Remember how Pooh floats by holding on to a bunch of balloons and descends by holding up an open umbrella?) Whereas my feminine self is rather immune to flowers.

Balloons induce in me inexplicable happiness that makes my heart very light and happy for no reason when i hold them and i gaze childishly at them float. i could do it all day with no sense of shame.

And there's also a person who brings me inexplicable happiness that makes my heart very light and happy for no reason when i gaze at him too. Much like balloons. Which confounds and simultaneously baffles me because i never knew my heart was capable of feeling something this genuine. As he spoke to me about a book he read, what it means to Ask, Seek, Knock, my heart was leaping in quiet joy as i enjoyed his presence.

*

Gracie shared with me an article from Harvest Times which really spoke to me. It had God's checklist for the right mate:

♥ Sexually Pure
♥Spiritually disciplined
♥Character rooted in the fruit of the Spirit
♥Honest and Truthful
♥Generous in giving to God's work and in blessing others
♥Wise steward of time, talent and resources
♥Disciplined spiritually in work, worship, study of the Word, stewardship, prayer, intercession, ♥meditation, simplicity, solitude, witnessing, serving
♥Free from generational curses
♥Takes biblical "covenant" seriously
♥Has healthy, holy relational skills
♥Loves God passionately, loves others sincerely
♥Jesus shines through him/her

I can't help but agree that God's list is so much wiser than what i can ever come up with. And i know that he is able to fulfill this list, even if he is a work-in-progress. More importantly i yearn to fulfill the criteria for this list. There is nothing to substitute for my personal relationship with Christ, not even a strong Christian husband who leads me. I am responsible for my own relationship with my Lord.

gaiety.

another bombshell fell in my heterosexual world today. yes, with no foreshadowing, another friend admitted to me his "gaiety" like he was talking about an ulcer on a typical day. I wasn't shocked, but truly thankful that he had chosen to share with me though we haven't been super duper close. yet i know that it is a privilege that he had trusted me to confide in me, that i might intercede and pray. I remember when Kel told me he was homosexual, it was 3am over MSN when we were slogging out our guts for a project. It came as a huge surprise and through his experience i learnt alot about the homosexual community. God placed a special burden on my heart to pray for him and to let him know that God and i love him regardless. Hate the sin but love the sinner was the message that God taught me. And today's encounter once again reminded me of Kel and i wish to meet up and catch up on how he's doing.

I think being female and more attuned to the emotional realm keeps me from condemning homosexuals, simply because there is a distance (i'm safe from being the target of affections) and there can be room for empathy. I believe that homosexuality, like adultery, starts not from lust, but from an emotional root. Of wanting to be accepted, wanting to be loved, wanting to be understood plus the fear of rejection (either by opposite sex or spouse) which drives people to go down the path of sin. My friend today told me he's acutely aware that his homosexual tendencies has to do with his growing up with a distant father and lack of male company. God's Word keeps him from the physical sin but his heart and mind wanders from time to time.

There was a tone of resignation as he recounted his growing up years. The sort of resignation that must resound in my voice when i talk about MY growing up years, relations with my mum and my resulting fluctuating sense of self worth. But i'm slowly learning to get that resignation out of my mind and unlearn alot of lies that i allowed myself to believe. Same lesson - Romans 12:2, and being worthy of the calling and new life i have received. What a lie that i can never transcend my past and my own thoughts and ways! i truly pray that the hearts of many will be enlightened to see what Christ offers.

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.

Ephesians 1:17-21

ralph lauren in the pink.

For the longest time i've wondered if the Big Pony Ralph Lauren Polo Tees that are all the rage now in Singapore were authentic or Thailand rip offs because it was jarring how everyone's logo's seemed to have expanded to epic proportions. After an angsty surf on the net, i've verified the existence of an ostentiatious-sized logo in an official RP vintage pic (shown above). Still, it doesn't negate the fact that i remain unaccustomed to the enormous logo that looks like it might come alive and charge at me any minute. i reserve further judgment on it, for fear that one day i might change my mind and think it tolerable.

What spurred off this mini investigation was the fact that Justin looked pretty fine in a pink RP (Big Pony, i stress) in class today. But more importantly, this new acquaintance this semester shed some light into my personal journey, despite having met him for a brief 5 weeks. At our first meeting, the prof assigned us to be buddiesand we ended up engaged in a long conversation about his exchange to Europe and all that he had seen in Budapest, film art, his aspirations to be a film maker one day, his critique of Eric Khoo etc. It was a comfortable sort of conversation that was more than superficial with a dose of sincerity and openness. Today he stopped by to chat during the break today; less conversation more small talk but i try not to beat myself up about needing to make meaningful conversation all the time.

It sparked off a dialogue with God a couple of hours ago, which i'll reorganize in part here.

Basically, looking at Justin now, i'm reminded of how different a person i'll be if i met him at 18. i'd have felt inadequate, yet completely wowed away by him as i throw caution to the winds. And i'd let pride and a shaky self-worth dictate the course of my affections. But now, fast forward to 3 years of pain and joy and plain walking forward, i am more secure in who i am, relative to the world, to other people. Having learnt to detach myself from my obstinate point of view that was habitually masochistic, i turned my focus outward to appreciate others without comparing my worth. I ask God to help me build strong platonic friendships with members of the opposite sex, that i might be free to be who i am, with more genuineness and sincerity.

Every improvement, a betterment of the past, but i dare not say that i have transcended all (or even any) of my blind spots or weakness. just bettered. i'm acutely aware of my "work-in-process" status; there is much to reach for, attain, and grasp. This is when i adore the forward-lookingness of the AC moto, "The best is yet to be". I fear that one day i might forget all these growing pains, and revert back to my worldly fears, escapism and self defeatism. God throws the same lessons at us in various guises over and over again till we recall and learn. I ask only, that i be worthy of all that i've attained, this calling that i've received by grace.

February, my love.

It's already February, but it only seems that the year only started off sparkling new now. perhaps because Chinese New Year has always been a more proper reference point for me rather than Jan 1, or perhaps because February is always a special month for me. Not least because it's my birth month.

But more importantly, February, is the month to dream, where anything goes. The epitome of "Dreams are the blueprint of the life".

Associated with Feb is also a sense of romanticism and wistfulness about it, being a month shorter than all the others, being a season that allows one to dream, without all the rush of January, all the laze and excitement of june and july, all that solemn reflective mood of November and December.

I've been dreaming alot, with some of those vague dreams taking place slowly in fast paced January. Surrounded myself with some beautiful things, getting my body in check with exercise, taking care of a shell to house a beautiful soul. There has been too much talk of inner beauty for those who shun the pain of never feeling adequate; it's more accurate to speak of a beautiful house for a beautiful soul, but not before we figure out that beauty on the outside is not a definition monopolized by images of magazine cover models or painted faces on the television.

Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.

1 Peter 3:3-4

Beauty shouldn't be divisible into outer and inner regions, but an inner quality, an inner confidence of one's worth that radiates from the inside out. The origins are deep, but manifestations outward as well. An overflow not unlike the love of God that doesn't cease its flow in the face of tribulations and trials. There is a certain timeless quality about that beauty that captivates and attracts unknowingly. But there is a time and season to be acutely aware of that beauty that radiates outwards, so that one may learn how to graciously be the vessel of beauty to the world.

i constantly fight the battle that makes me feel like Frankenstein. i never know quite what to feel from my own reflection from reflective surfaces in shopping malls. Sometimes exuberant others despondent. But it is an inner fight of definitions and belief systems that have malfunctioned. Time to renew, time to move on, time for some redefinition. and hence, Romans 12:2 rings out.

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

There are many things to dream about. I dream of travel, love, beauty. Honestly, the three areas are not that distinct from one another. I ask myself if I could be ready to be mundane and ordinary at this stage of my life. Of marrying a regular good boy, having a few kids to occupy mt time, getting by with some finance-related job or even to be a tai tai whose occupation is a languid afternoon with tea and tai-tai friends whilst my kids play with my pals' kids... and the answer is no. and i fear that i can't be satisfied with that in foreseeable future. A part of me too intense, too flighty, too ambitious, too romantic and too fluid with that kind of security. i need to gravitate towards excitement and uncertainty. Until that happens, my soul feels a little too empty.