What is QT?

Homework.
Legalistic attitude.
Just do it and get along with your day.

Halfway through Purpose-driven life, yes, again, but.
What’s the point?
How much have I grown?
Have I taken God seriously
Have I taken this venture seriously

Yeah, sure I have.
What sort of serious?

Bible study. Small group. Cell group.
What is the point?
Fellowship, history, context, culture, truths
What is the point?

Why do I do what I do?
Why do these headings become so barren?
What do I truly seek to learn?

Why use the word learn?

Some say life is a learning experience.
I have divorced learning from experience.
Learning about God in theory.

And that.
Is my downfall.

Dear merciful God, forgive me. Remind me, even if it takes that antalgic gait of Jacob’s. Dear loving God, help me to make a conscious effort to be aware of You and to love you always. 

Dear Lord, I won’t say I was well-behaved inside today. I won’t say I haven’t made the same mistake yet again. All over again. Yet Lord, Thank you for forgiving me; for pointing it out to me even more plainly – pointing my pride and impatience out to me. Father, chide me; guide me; show me how to love and learn to be a blessing; how to see the bright side of things. How to see this as a second shot at making things right this time.

It seemed like ACSi all over again. Amateur choir, amateur singers, but an enthusiastic talented leader. A “volunteer” choir, so to say; no auditions, no questions asked. No need for an official sorting of voices – take your pick, “SATB?” “Alto”. So then we start, totally Elaine Wan style, “stretch! loosen up!” “I want you to feel this part vibrating.” “pretend you’re throwing a ball – now throw your voice!” 

A new song for the new term. I catch myself starting to sight-read. I find myself becoming the note-perfectionist all over again. “That’s wrong; you should be going down there”; “she definitely has a really good voice, but she’s wrong and her voice is making me lose my thread too”; these thoughts start to flood my mind. They make me go crazy. I resist the urge to try to keep the notes properly read. I fight the icky dark desire that creeps up and makes me want the conductor to stop us and correct us for every notation error, every off-tune note, every off-beat assumption. “This is frustrating; I wish they could sight-sing too” I begin to think. “This is so ACS, so ACS all over again”.

And then a thought flashed by.

Why do you think you’re here again? Why do you think you have been put into this situation once again?

And it struck me.
I looked up. I see the leader being pleased by every harmonic ending we make. I see her jump with joy and excitement at every new bar. I hear the passion in her voice; I hear the sincerity in her praises of our singing. I could not understand how she could stand it before; but it now dawned upon me. Not how she could be so genuine when she encouraged us and reassured us that we sounded good (when we obviously did errrm not), but why I was here.

What is this Gospel Project about? It is about reaching out to the community. It is about creating a space where people can come and belong. It is about nurturing love and a spirit of generosity and hospitality towards others. It is about fellowship, about commitment, about building each other up – building our self-confidence, building our courage, building our sense of self-worth – and building our expression of our love.

No, this choir is not a choir for the elite. It is not a choir that is exclusive. It is not a choir that says you have to be perfect, you have to know how to sing or even just keep a tune. It is not even really about singing songs. It is about creating music – and music, is the by-product of hearts entwined together working fervently, joyously, dedicatedly towards the same goal.

I looked at the lyrics of the song. “Someone’s crying Lord. Someone’s praying, Lord.” I started to comprehend the fullness and depth of what I was singing. I looked up at the leader, red in the face with energy, belting out the tenor part, snapping her fingers to the beat. Ashamed, I bowed my head.

Oh Lord hear my prayer 
As I lift my voice and say 
I need your love today 
I need you right away 

Here I was, once again. This time, I sang, not caring whether I hit all the semitones, not caring whether anyone else had wrong notes. Threw these perfectionist prideful concerns away! Sang, with all my heart, meaning every word, and for once, I felt the efforts of everyone around me. I felt the fellowship, I felt the honest voices lift up and fill the church. I heard the sounds come together in harmony; I saw the satisfaction painted on everyone’s faces when the leader said, “Did you hear that? It’s all coming together!”

For once, I didn’t hear the mistakes; I didn’t hear the lacking alto notes when we jumped to soprano at the trickier bits; I didn’t hear the bases go flat “boom boom boom”; I didn’t hear myself going “not again!”.

For once, all I heard was, “I know we’ll make a way/ Yes we will make a way/ Oh Lord khumbaya“.

And, Music sure sounds good to me

Laura Story – Blessings

We pray for blessings
We pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom
Your voice to hear
And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough
All the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we’d have faith to believe

Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
And what if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win
We know the pain reminds this heart
That this is not, this is not our home

Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
And what if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy
And what if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise

But here I am again, melancholic and irritatingly dull and boring and down and out.

Oh no, actually I’m not. I shall not live in the past. I will not.
So give me a big smile and grit your teeth girl. Mistakes are the past.

But nothing else need be.

It’s been quite a while, this hobby. I don’t know, it always seemed to be a “joke”, like, something I declare quite frivolously that I’d do “one day”. I never thought I’d do this in any time foreseeable, much less right in the middle of my 5-year killer degree.

But recently I met up with my secondary school mates, and one of them has recently started a blogshop selling soap. I am really inspired by her perseverence! I remember I ventured into setting up my own blogshop about 4 years ago, and got lazy, and lost faith in continuing. Publicizing does take a little bit more skin than I have! Skin, and nerve. (Seems a little ironic that I chose these words eh, medical student that I am). And I guess, in our culture, it’s just difficult to be selling things to an audience made up primarily of your closest friends.

It’s really difficult also because I know where I stand. Really, whatever I make will never be as polished as those pretty cupcakes and beautifully decorated things that shops (and blogshops) sell. I don’t think my brownies ever will. And I’m no professional photographer – neither am I going to photoshop my amateur pictures, heh. Plain, simple, down-to-earth. Let them speak for themselves!

After all, I’m just learning. And having fun. Just lovin’ what I do.

So here it is, my new page for brownies. Actually, it’s my new page to document my little baking experiments, tee hee! It’s definitely not ready yet, not ready to be a cafe. But it’s more than ready for me to use it as another way of updating people on my life – and perhaps at the end of this year, I may proudly pat myself on the back and say, “I had a life in Year 3.” Or at least, I’ve tried.

I plan to fully launch the enterprise at the end of this year, when I come back from Melbourne for my annual summer holidays. It’s going to focus on brownies, and only brownies, although page updates will most probably contain plenty of other adventures. You’re pretty welcome to ask for those too. You know I’ll gladly oblige.

And of course, pre-launch sales are welcome too. :p

Meanwhile, guinea-pig signups, anyone?

Why is the new year ‘new’?
Perhaps you think I might as well have asked why the earth is round (for that matter, it isn’t, it’s oval) or why days are days and nights are nights. I suppose you’re right.

I actually did give this some thought – fleeting whimsical ideas not substantial enough for an insightful debate, but enough to warrant some roundabout musings here. You see, my initial train of thought ran like this: 2011, two thousand and eleven times 3-6-5 times minutes and hours. In what way is the year new? The concept of the Year is as old as time; the Year has survived for as long as man could count. A day is a day because it is easily marked by the cyclical rising and setting of the sun, the month by the eclipsing of the moon, but the year? Seasons, maybe? That might have been what our ancestors defined it by. But look’ere now, the seasons are defined by the year. Heck, everything is defined by the year, by time, by some absurd cycling of familiarity that puts everyone in a frenzy if it suddenly decides to cycle in a different fashion as it pleases to do.

Time, my old wily adversary, has absolutely no intention of being merciful. He rides on clouds, silently, stealthily, and carries a golden staff, ever ready to lay his rod across my weather-beaten back and remind me of my work. Pressing, cumbersome, never finished. How can such an intimate friend of Time as Year is be new? It must be some nasty trick – a ploy that Time employs to make us think we can start afresh, forget about the Past, look towards the future.

It has started. As if I had a sixth sense. This sense of foreboding, of an acute awareness that I am once again being artfully manipulated by the playful prankster, master of his own bitterly-ironic trade. No, the year is definitely not new. It certainly does not have the sparkling white quality of pureness and innocence that is so inherent in all things new and unused. So much for new hopes and opportunities, no they do NOT come with the new year. Not the new year, neither the new day nor a single ‘new’ moment. There is nothing new about Time.

Time, is just another delusional dimension. I’m not a Physicist (though I aspire to become a Physician), but this much I agree about all those lofty theories about dimensions infinite. I shall stop short this dangerous detour here ere I make serious assumptions, and back I find myself to the points I arrived at earlier:
A) the cyclical nature of labeling time lets us indulge in the idea of a complete ‘shut down’, ‘erase memory of deeds or the lack of’, ‘restart’. Even though just as computers keep record of absolutely everything whether erased or no, so do we humans know that a clean slate is impossible on our own hopes efforts and ultimately delusions.
B) to associate a fresh start with the ‘new’ year, or any concept of an allotted time in the future (be it the month, day, hour or even minute) is simply an excuse to procrastinate.

Why wait for the Year to begin what ought to be an immediate effort? No, not the Year, nor the Month, Day or even Hour. Now. And why resolutions for the New Year? They should be Guidelines for Eternity. As Sze’s pastor put it, not resolutions, but decisions. Tough, eh? Indeed, I’ve already broken my first resolution to eat in moderation, about 3 hours after I formed it in an impulsive mood today. Crumbled, trashed and trodden upon the moment I reached home.

I remember Peter telling me he doesn’t make resolutions because they don’t get kept, and me telling him I make mine because though I may fail horribly, at least they last 2 days. Looks like I’ve got to hone my skills of estimation; 2 years of medical skill has done nothing much but dull my mathematical faculties.

But for Tradition’s sake do I call these New Year’s Resolutions; in truth, they are more aptly labelled as Dreams of A Sleepless Night. I scarcely dare call them Decisions, but one is pitiably allowed to hope for Dreams Come True, and only Emphatic sympathy awaits a failed valiant attempt to fulfill one’s dreams.

Ok yes I know, Excuses. Whatever it be, let us have it:

To get a life, to grasp onto Life, and to give my life.

May it be Your pleasure to help me do Your will O Lord.

I’m too lazy to:

• Do some reading, even fiction
• Do my daily devotions :/
• Borrow an oven
• Get out of bed
• Get out of the house
• Be out of the house
• Contact friends (I’m so sorry, I’m really trying to garner energy here)
• Wake up early to exercise
• Wake up
• Move
• Walk (Yeah you saw right, I stroll – nope, I saunter)
• Play a piano piece past the first line

Ok xuanqi. Time to, erm, be less lazy. So here’s a list of To-Do’s.

1. Sew a dress
2. Do Christmas stuff – cards, gifts.. and actually sending them.
3. Borrow the oven and embark on French macarons (Attempted, Failed, Failed, Failed.. Bah.)
4. Read:  Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks; Talley & O’Connor’s; General Psychiatry; Pharmacology; The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
5. Shop for good shoes & office clothes
6. Find my g’soft pens!
7. Go fishing and actually catch a fish

Hm, I think that’s quite a lot for now. Let’s see how far I get along with this. Wish me luck, peeps!

This is the testimony of a man I do not know.

At a pastors’ conference not too long ago, a Chinaman was asked to share his testimony. After giving some thought, he stood up and began.

“I was in China at a time when Christians were under fierce persecution. One day, as we were praising God in our church, our church got raided. All of us were sent to prison.

I was there for 18 long years. It was not a pleasant place. What made matters worse for me, was that the prison guard I was under hated Christians to the core. So when he saw me, he gave me the worst job on hand – emptying the faeces of all the prisoners in the jail. We all know that in the Chinese culture, this is the most despised upon job ever.

Every morning, I had to dig a huge pit in the ground – large enough to contain all the waste of everyone in the jail. Everyone, from every cell, and even the prison guards. I had to go from cell to cell, collecting the dung from every cell, and emptying it into the pit. In those days, there was no proper potty. Everything was done in a primitive hole-in-the-ground style. It was, needless to say, a filthy low-down job.

No no, he was not done with me yet. We are a thrifty people, we Chinese. What do you suppose all that dung could be used for? One man’s waste could be another man’s treasure. That huge pit was dug for a purpose. Yes, fertilizer.

Every morning of those 18 long years, I had to mix the dung with the soil I had dug out from the pit to make fertilizer. Do you suppose it was that easy, standing and mixing it? No, all the dung from the entire prison – I had to go into the pit to mix it! I was waist deep in faecal matter half my life there.

Why did God allow such a thing to happen to me, a man who loved and served Him in face of persecution? I was perplexed, bitter and angry. I could not understand. It was like living hell.

Then one morning, God opened my eyes to see the blessings of the situation I was in.

Because the pit was so huge and smelly, no one dared to go near it, not even the prison guards. I was the only one in it – and that allowed me to be able to sing praises to God loudly, without fear of persecution.

Because I was so filthy and smelly, no one wanted to come anywhere near me, and I was given an entire cell to myself in which I could do whatever I liked – I was free to read God’s word.”

At this point in time, he stopped, overcome by tears. A grown man, standing in front of an audience of plenty, sobbing uncontrollably like a new-born babe. Embarrassed, he turned his back to the audience and tried to compose himself. His massive shoulders shook up and down as he wept.

Finally, when he had regained his composure, he turned back to face the crowd.

“Every morning, for those 18 long years, I lifted my voice and sang as I was mixing the dung in the pit”

At this point, he lifted his shaky voice and sang

“Then sings my soul, my Saviour God to Thee. How great Thou art, How great Thou art.”

The audience stood up. Many were weeping as they joined him in song. They wept, not because they pitied his circumstance, not because he had spent 18 years in agony for Christ. They wept, because God had seen this man through his troubles, and has blessed him – he is now a prominent Christian leader. They wept, because God is truly great and faithful.

This was what the pastor shared with us today. Indeed, how easy it is to praise God amidst blessed peaceful times.

But when times of testing come, I hope to be found tested and true.

(There are loads to update on God’s blessings in my life – perhaps another time. Or when I’m in Singapore. Mustn’t forget!)

Feedback much appreciated.

Thanks!