Invisible Strings

Kim Edward's debut novel, The Memory Keeper's Daughter, sheds light on her perceptive and deep understanding of the human condition. Reading through it once again brought my heart into the depth of the emotional rages her characters experienced.

Of two ladies, one a Physics professor and the other a nurse, she commented that "the two of them (were) strangers a year ago, women who might have passed each other on the street without a second glance or a glimmer of connection, their lives now woven together by the demands of their days."

Our days are perhaps guided, as Edwards suggest, by "invisible strings" drawing us to our respective destinations and lives. We may have met our friends along the streets at one point in time, but without a glimmer of connection and recognition.

Circumstances have made us fast and sure friends. But will it last? When our ways part and we move on, do we still remain friends? Or do we leave only the echo of footsteps treading out the door of each others lives? Echos that slowly pale into the haze of the past. Is friendship governed by spatial considerations, only to fade when we come to the end of an interwoven section of our lives?

Providence is behind every path that crosses. Life isn't a random permutation of events stringed into a protracted tale with numerous peaks and troughs. Every single event--every individual we meet--was recorded in God's book even before one day of our lives came to be. His invisible hands which sustains the universe guides our path in mysterious ways.

Every friend that comes our way is a gift from God. Beautiful friends reach out with healing when we're downcast, afflicted and depressed. They are the visible manifestation of His ever present love and concern for us. Blessed is one who has friends to count on; no longer a lonely figure floating in a sea of unknown faces and uncertainty, adrift on the raft of stoic resignation.

Can we ever fathom His mysteries? Never! Not in a million years I reckon.

So ephemeral. Temporal. Hollow.

Is this the fate of every friendship? For one who doesn't know what a friend means till recently? Will whatever that goes up in jubilation come crashing down to the threshing ground of cold hard reality? Friendship is as transient as mortal existence.

The Grand Weaver

The Grand Weaver
(to those I treasure from CF)

Three ephemeral flashes--
Concrete instances,
swift memories.
A journey.

Alien in transition,
second home thence.
Sweet and bitter,
the Grand Weaver looms,
the fabric of history:
my history.

Rejoice yet mourn,
my soul within me.
Farewell dear mates,
we part yet are one.
Our ways break square,
for but a season.
We shall yet meet
for the earth is round.

The gift of friendship,
for one so unworthy.
A gray cloak quivers
and falls away.
My heart lets loose,
a fountain of praise;
gratitude to
the great I AM.

Forking roads,
paths disparate.
Oh which to tread,
Father pray tell.
Providence shall lead.

Tremendous Trifles (a synopsis)

Do we talk about the tremendous trifles of life that we fail to notice the important issues plaguing our current society? Our society has succeeded to prevent us from thinking by inundating our minds with far too many distractions—self-image, consumerism and the likes—that it leaves us no time to truly understand what we are doing and where we are going.

How many, when we plan for a trip, do not bother with the destination? Do we just purchase a one-way ticket to, say, Australia and thereafter wonder from the plane to wherever the crowd seems to be heading without due regard to getting somewhere or even back? Do we allow the mass to decide for us?

Many people unconsciously hold on to that mindset in spite of the profession to distinguish themselves in society. They have their idea of success molded by vogue standards and strive blindly towards being formed in the image of society. They have exchanged their own liberty for bondage to the whims of society.

Herein lies a massive paradox: on one hand, we talk about self-fulfillment and the need to think on our feet. Notwithstanding, we still circumvent our own opinions for the vogue. As Chesterton aptly advised, fallacies do not cease being fallacies just because they are fashions. How then do we break free from the subtle fetters of the tyranny of society?

Certainly, the realization of the futility of forcing ourselves into society’s mold and the mindless following is the first and major step towards liberation. It is after all true that the road to reform starts from the identification of the problem.

The next would be to know in which direction to head from the problem. It would be pointless to escape one problem just to land into another; one that may be far worse. Where should one look to for the right direction to head? This question is important as our society presents a myriad of options—some blatantly self-referential and others flying in the face of practical wisdom.

We all want to be remembered for something, and go about founding a heresy to which we might one day be famous for. Any serious and sincere soul would discover in the end that the carefully crafted heresy is actually orthodoxy. He has bravely set out to discover a new land only to find out that he discovered his own country anew.

Our world, in its present state, is like the scene of a shipwreck with fragments of goods from the mother ship washed ashore. These goods are reminiscent of the world now nebulous by a pervading spiritual amnesia. The remnants of a world now far and hazy leave us panting for it though we may not have our fingers on it. Our desires are mysteries that suggest expectations that were hardwired for the lost world.

Researchers in psychology and business define satisfaction as experience aligning expectation; dissatisfaction is hence the antecedent. Man is by far the most dissatisfied creature on this planet and one can conclude of a universal expectation frustrated by the fleeting best earth affords.

Mythology recounts what scientist and philosophers hope to achieve—the state of ideal: our very own utopia. The portrayal of heaven in myths mirrors—in our day—scientific achievements, economic, social, political reforms and more. Man has always been on the search to recover what was lost and vaguely reminded of. The desire is masked in many different forms; ours began with the Industrial and French Revolution.

Our predicament is the result of a most un-liberal denial of the supernatural. Can one be a liberal and condemn the supernatural? Wouldn’t that be akin to striking one’s foot in contradiction? Isn’t a liberal supposed to be open to all views? However, that being said, not choosing a viewpoint is to already have made a choice: one of indifference. It is pretty obvious thus that nobody can say that he does not take sides; if one does not make a choice, he has made a choice not to choose.

When the supernatural is ousted, what remains is less than natural. You cannot remove music and still call a piano, or a violin for the matter, a music instrument since music doesn’t exist. The natural, likewise, has its identity firmly rooted in the supernatural.

We would do well to look to the supernatural—the fuller reality—for our purpose. Before going on, it would do well to mention a few words about the supernatural.

When one thinks of the supernatural, the images of wraiths and incorporeal objects come straight to mind suggesting an inferior existence. This is surely a mark of faulty thinking. From the word supernatural, it suggests something above nature. How can anything above nature be poorer than her? Perhaps a better way of seeing the supernatural is as a realm of greater and more concrete reality than our own even though we may not perceive it. A two dimensional square, if vested with anthropomorphic consciousness, would certainly be bewildered by the notion of a three dimensional cube. Yet the latter has more form the former. The supernatural realm is exactly the same—its existence is far more complete than our own.

Depravity

Depravity is the yoke that inherently burdens every man. It is the outcome of a fantastic mind tainted with sin. Like a disease, sin infiltrates every crevice of humanity warping every good thing and disfiguring it beyond man's own effort to remedy.

From the Colosseum which stands as a monument of staggering inhumanity, to the Holocaust, history has seen how low man would stoop in sheer wanton brutality against his fellow man in a bid to establish the supremacy of self. In a society that places high premiums on status--where there is only success and failure with no in between--it has exacted upon itself a heavy price that was its undoing.

Visionary philosophers of modernism and utopia dreamt of the day a state of social, economic and political ideal could be achieved. They believed in the inherent good of man at birth and that sin was the result of environmental pollution. However, the unfolding of history that brought the death toll ringing at the top of the charts in the wake of two successive world wars shattered the bubble of their delusion and heralded the entrance of postmodernism.

Death, war torn lands, diseases, terrorism and other woes signal a world that has gone dreadfully wrong. As Eddy Murphy rightly puts it, "everything that can go wrong will go(and has gone) wrong".

Why do we react so violently against injustice, suffering and death? The only possible explanation (to me at least) is that we were not originally meant to experience them. We were created and hardwired to enjoy the finest--God. Consequently, when Adam was consigned to a life of hard labor for his transgressions, he was exposed to what God had not intend for humans to know: grief. Sorrow hence became his intimate acquaintance; a touch of heavy irony.

However, before one becomes at danger of degenerating into despondency and despair, the depravity of man, though besetting and entrenched, was not able to fully erode the image of God within. Man is still capable of acts of heroism, courage, love and compassion. Shinning testimonies of the denial of self in service to the destitute and ostracised, acts of philanthropy and other noble acts reveal a silver lining to the grey canopy of perversity.

I need to accept God's sanctification

God provided an avenue for personal sanctification through Christ's redemptive work on the cross. The gift is tremendous, a perennial display of boundless sacrificial love that is not affected by who we are and what we do.

The question indeed, as Oswald Chambers rightly pointed out, is not whether God is willing to sanctify us--He is and has already made the necessary provision--but whether I am willing to accept it.

Why does it circle around my decision? God's gentle-manliness of course! He doesn't bear down upon us and coerce us into conformity. I must take the first willing step to allow His pruning hand to direct and transform my life; transform by what Philip Yancey observed as a two-step-process renewal of the mind that involves "purging out what displeases God and damages me (the same, it turns out) and allowing God to fill my mind with what matters far more." (Prayer, pg 166)

That established, how then should one position oneself to receiving His renewing? Keeping company with God through showing up regularly in prayer. It pays to consistently work at daily prayers in spite of the bouts of doubt, disappointment, anguish and outbursts of joy that intersperse the everyday life. Persist on in the wake of deriving little satisfaction, the dry seasons of half-hearted attempts and fatigue. It protects the "inner space, to prevent the outer world from taking over." (Prayer, pg 166)

Praying before starting the day girds our sanity and infuses God's perspective and wisdom into our encounters with people, events and things; an evening prayer sets us straight with God over any hangup and channels our concerns and worries into divine hands.

"In short, prayer invites God's world into my world and ushers me into God's" (Prayer, pg 167)

Harken--hear and do

It all started with my dad passing me a volume by Gloria Copeland entitled "Are you listening". Succinctly summarized, the punch line is God looks to bless those who would hear and do what He commands. Preceding and following it were two camps with Romans 12:1-2, which exhorts the transformation of every Christian life via the renewing of the mind, as the theme verse. The verse popped up again at Friday's GCF Thanksgiving Dinner where the erudite Professor Thio Li-Ann applied her brilliance on the topic of liberalism. To that, my table partner commented that "2007 is a year of transformation".

Transformation seems to be the buzz word and I sense that God is trying to get my attention on this matter; I must confess that the ring couldn't have be given at a more appropriate time. There are many outstanding issues between God and myself which I have conveniently shelved and am contented to watch them gather dust.

Reflecting on the inertia I experienced with regards to redressing certain areas of my life, I am beginning to grasp the rationale behind Paul's observation that lasting transformation starts with the mind--the source of all action.

Rick Warren's analogy of a plane on auto-pilot crystallized my understanding further. To paraphrase, our lives can be represented as a plane and our mind as the auto-pilot function travelling leftwards. The pilot on duty can force the plane rightwards, but it would veer leftwards again once he slackens. The analogy cuts the same way with our lives; we can will ourselves to behave and think differently from our inclinations, but with invariable resistance that eats away at our resilience.

However, if the auto-pilot is re-configured to guide the plane in the pilot's intended direction, his job becomes a breeze. Likewise, if our minds is renewed in Christ and the old set of propensities shed, our command to lead lives that are holy and pleasing before God becomes simplified.

The crunch that remains then is the how--how to have our minds transformed by God. Paul suggests a solution in Philippians 4:8-9 "... whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things..."

"Rubbish in, rubbish out" is a popular maxim to many and it applies to our minds. Tony Buzan goes a step further to suggest that, in the case of the brain, "rubbish in, rubbish grows"; his reason being that the brain is ingeniously heuristic. If we feed our minds on an unwholesome diet, chances of it churning out unwholesome behavior is extremely high. It thus makes perfect sense that the transformation of our minds hinges a lot on what goes into it.

Having been led so far, the next step is to put all these principles into application lest it remains as head and not heart knowledge--dead and powerless.

Dear Lord, empower me I pray. Amen!

My Driving License

Seldom do I find myself given to excessive emotions. An exception came on the momentous day of May 8, 2007 when I finally passed the traffic police driving test and was issued an interim license. The bouts of ecstasy went way off the charts and if not for being in public, I might have just imitated what cartoon characters do best: jumping and cheering.

Prior to receiving my interim license, I had to watch a safety driving video that was an attempt by the authorities to impress upon young and rash drivers the dangers of reckless driving. Featuring testimonials of car accident victims and their advice to future drivers, all sang the same tune not to throw caution to the wind.

The video was admittedly not something very pleasant to watch--scenes that did not spare the gore of dismembered bodies and pools of blood beside mangled vehicles. I recall walking out of the room lightheaded with the thought of the fragility of human life. Yes, we may have made much advances in science and technology; we may have sophisticated gadgets that brings convenience, but they have the potential to morph into curved blades that harm us.

The essence: we are vulnerable despite our attempts to prove that man is the measure of everything through aggressive secularization. We want to deceive ourselves into believing that we are the ones who call the shots. But a casual look at the turn of world events points otherwise.

Our weather is going beserk, calamities of increasing intensity and frequency have battered our weary planet and left death and sorrow in their wake. Wars and political instability plague our civilization. All that can go wrong has gone wrong indeed when Adam first sinned and posterity pushed God out of their lives.

However, all hope is not lost; not when we catch a glimpse of the cosmic events transpiring beyond human perception--divine providence. Haper's Bible Dictionary defines Providence as such:

"God has a plan and purpose for His world. Providence is not a principle or
orderliness or reason; rather, providence is the will of the creator who is
actively involved in moving His creation to a goal. History is not a cyclical
process of endless repetition; history is being moved towards the predetermined
end."

God is moving history (His story) towards a predetermined end--one where the whole creation is redeemed and translated (Romans 8).