New Address

Hi guys.

I have moved into a new address here. I have kept some of the posts I've written under Firebrands and will continue posting along with my "Notes" in Facebook.

See you there.

~James

Weep

I wept.

Watching the three short clips on "The Forgotten People" by CNN so gripped me, knocked me helpless that I am left with nothing to do but weep.

Here I was worrying when the next big sale in the mall will be, and there they were beaten by Thai military, disowned by their own government and unaccepted by their neighbors.

You know why it hurted so much? Because from each of their eyes I could see Jesus - who was left to die a criminal's death, beaten over and over, rejected by His own people. But this isn't some 2,000 years ago.

This is 2009.

But what are we doing? What is the church doing?

Here we are so busy with keeping up with the world, debating who's got the purest doctrine, competing who's got the best worship team, subtly battling who's got the biggest Sunday attendance.

Here we are busy beating up people with laws and more laws ignoring the fact that we if we got saved by grace, we continue to live by grace.

Here we are occupied with popularity and addicted with people's praise.

Here we are caught up with church splits and quarrels forgetting that out there, maybe not even too far away, people are dying. Literally.

And so they die into an eternity darker than the ones they experienced here because we've become too concerned with lesser things than the One Thing.

Oh may God comfort the troubled and trouble the comfortable!

http://edition.cnn.com/CNNI/Programs/untoldstories/blog/

Back

I am back.

Since I am closing my facebook account soon, I will be posting some stuff I wrote as notes there in the next few days.

I hope to continue doing my passion here without much of the distraction.

Bear with me,

James

Perspective

Call it whatever you want, but it simply comes down to perspective.

What the religious call faith, what the motivational speaker call positive thinking and what an awful lot call fate, are all merely different perspectives.

The end of the world for an ant colony who minds their own business in an anthill could simply mean a construction project where mounds were needed to be levelled off. Meanwhile, the project could very well be just one small part of the whole development plan the government has for a city, but to someone in a plane watching from above, well, it's just progress.

Most of the time, I'm being an ant. When my initial EKG results came in and according to our company physician - it showed an MI, I thought that was it for me. Doubts poisoned my mind and fear slowly kicked in. Before I knew it, I was experiencing chest pains I didn't even have before.

But my Bible says, "by His wounds, I am healed."

That He received curse upon curse so that I can have blessing upon blessing. That He received my worst, so that I can have His best. That as He is, so am I in this world.

It's not that my perceived reality is a hoax, it's just that from my perspective, I am not seeing the whole picture. So technically, I have a choice: Do I stick to my own, or adopt Someone else's?

I made a choice. I chose to live in the reality of the One who sees my past, present and future all at once. I chose his perspective of things not because mine was incorrect but was downright incomplete.

So when the final results of tests from a real cardio came in saying that everything is within normal range, I wasn't surprised.

It just made me wonder why doctors call what they do a practice.

Two Trees

I know, I know. I'm a hypochondriac.

Reading books on diseases had been my favorite past time as a kid that I have nightmares in my sleep of dying from plagues I've read when awake. I used to resolve not to read any of those kind of books anymore, but at the advent of the Internet, I find it hard to resist the temptation to read, and read even more.

Meanwhile, at the slightest pain here, a rash there and a fever, my mind would wander. Though what I'm feeling is far from serious, I'd most likely fulfill my own prophecies of doom by succeeding at one thing - scaring myself to death.

Since I can't stop the urge to keep myself informed, I resolved to focus more on prevention rather than on the ugly part. So, I would inundate myself with health tips and find myself desperately trying to follow every single one of them.

Problem is, I can only follow up to a point. And if ever I could obey everything, most likely, I still won't get the results I really wanted. Hence, the frustration.

Thousands of years have come and gone when the first humans have eaten of the fruit from the forbidden tree, and today, I still find myself doing exactly just the same thing- taking a heavy dose of the pills of knowledge thinking that it would somehow lead me to one thing I so earnestly seek -life.

In this age of information, may we all realize that knowledge of even the good is not enough to give us the lives we so desperately seek. Those 5-step-plan-to-a-better-ma

rriage, or that 3-easy-tips-to-a-younger-you or this book on achieving success or that article on ending an affair won't cut it through when one is face to face with real adversity.

So I say enough eating from that tree. Both it's good and bad fruits all lead to one thing anyways - death.

Now, what about that Other Tree?