A branch and its leaf

For once the curtain falls, the pale dim aura of brightness that pressed at the rims of the cloth collapses into a golden blaze of revelation. Daylight shielded by a little rag and the blazing sun halted at the window by spurned wool. For once there was a man in the winters of England, hidden smug within a duvet, staring out into the windows. There he saw, rattling and obsuring, the branch and its sole leaf. Reluctant but curious, he opened the window and pushed the wooden spike to the side. His eyes caught sight of the mysteries previously hidden by a mere branch and its leaf - he saw the cosmos and its splendour.

Hurried I soon yet fail to cleave
The span of the cosmos blinded by a branch
and the spread of eternity hidden by its leaf

There twice, I reasoned, can mere specks hide the great things and stop one seeing? What rests outside my window and holds all beauty and wonder behind its form? What dares block the sight of the giants of ancient renown and its Creator? Seeing they will not see, Hearing they will not hear and all because of the branch outside the window.

How? just cut it lah :P

Breaking

These past few days, if not weeks, I'm beginning to rediscover what it means to be broken. Its not easy writing about it, not easy talking about it, yet its pretty real and equally excruciating. Its darn humbling and its awfully intense. I'm learning again - why Christianity is not all about the promise land on earth, its 40 years of wandering the wilderness, crushed by the realness of Love's demands and pruned in the sands of holiness. Authentc, Agape Love, my dear friends, breaks your heart.

If we wish to live in it fully, we must first perish. I'm realising that God is leading me to the cross, not to marvel at it and nod my head in appreciation. He's inviting me to go up and crucify the old man! and how the old man struggles and tussles. For quite so long, I've told people how good christianity is packed with tenderness, love and joy. I'm realising that excellent christianity is a more nuanced picture, with the breaking, tears and heartfelt prayers. There is a Gethsamane for every real praying christian when he chooses between his comfort and God's path to the cross.

I used to think, I knew this breaking process well, but the truth is everyday in this past few weeks, I've learnt that I know sheer peanuts about its intensity. Thats right, sheer peanuts. Christians like to talk about passion, unity, love, hope, faith and ponder why these are lacking. I'm not surprised, I'm quite like that. We can have none of this, if we're not broken by the hand of God Himself. He will utterly tear into a man's life when the man cries out " Oh Lord break me", and not very courteously too! He will wrench every bit of comfort, all the emotional clutches whether they be friends, our past, the ambitions, family and so crush a man's soul that the only residue is the gift of a new heart- a changed life.

All this I knew theoretically, rather well I thought. And thats a big mistake. Because when He pulled no stops, I cringed in agony. Certainly I was almost unwilling to suffer this. All my life, many pastors and church leaders preached a God who respected my private space, a God who was fuddy duddy, the friendly old man who was approachable and who worked his magic for me. This god demanded nothing from me, except the simple things, like giving him 30 minutes a day. This god could be conveniently ignored and when approached after a long spell of absence, would still give me that warm fuzzy feeling. This god is not the God who came in my travails, and wrestled my heart away. This God drove me to tears and when He poured out His Spirit, struck up a ferocious intensity for a love that was mightily tender and equalling in awe. This God respects no man, dwells in glory, hates sin, is so immensely holy that all creation is but a pittance even if it were all to praise Him. Yes, and only this God is love.

When He began to strike into my heart, I'll be absolutely honest, I was asking myself, "Is this the God I knew". A part of me, I call him the old man, was begging me, yes begging me, to take it easy. The old lie - just relax lah. How the Almighty God would response if I told Him to "just relax lah"! That old charles wanted me to give up by finding the comfortable way out. But there is none - no easy way out. I'm still learning more and more about Jesus, and how He draws me into His love through breaking and refining. The cost is total, and yet the pleasures are much much more.

Christian, listen to me! the devil loves comfortable christians. The demons, above all else, loves the notion of the fuddy duddy, nampy pampy powerless saviour, tender and weak hearted, a god who is constantly hurt by our apathy but is easy on sin and given to our comfort. This god is spurned remorselessly, is spoken easy on the lips, is the pretext for all things human, can do nothing but bless the human race. This god has no power to save, to break a man's pride and thus can rescue no man from hell. This god is the golden calf, the devils' favourite idol because it gives the old man everything he wants.

That he Knows Me(Jesus)

This verse has been on my mind for days:

Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,
Let not the mighty glory in his might,
Nor let the rich man glory in his riches;
but let him who glories glory in this,
that he understands and knows Me,
That I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgement
and righteousness in this earth.
For in these I delight. says the Lord.
Jer 9:23-24

I'm humbled. What more should I say....

Myopia

Its not good to have exams in such an eventful week - The heart wrenching cyclone that swept like Hyrcanian tigers into the bay of Rangoon to local and mayoral elections in Cosmopolitan London and wider Britain which were complemented by the gladiatorial contests in Indiana and North Carolina and not forgetting, the tense football matches over the weekend where Man U tore West Ham to bits while the stately Oxford United continued its valiant march into obscurity in the conference cup. While I fumbled through Financial management for Policy Planners, Israel celebrated its 50th year anniversary, a stark triumph of sheer gumption and fortitude against a sea of oil gargling adversaries who threw their kitchen sink at her to little avail. In 1948, survivors of the Holocaust were sucked into another cauldron of war as 6 Arabic nations cornered its borders, only to be beaten by bespectacled Jewish warriors trained in the baleful gallows of Teutonic Germany.

As I tussled through my notes on Central Bank policy, Zimbabwe announced its election results, a stalking one month late and carried numbers that bore the hand prints of the Mugabe apparatus. Right north of this hammer shaped and badly governed continent, Russia, a country of similar size, moved into a dual kingship, with Medvedev crowned in a gaudy ceremony fit for the Tsars of yore, as the gutsy Putin moved a building away, wearing the real pants of government. And who could forget the P shaped continent, potato munching South America, with smoke bellowing forth from its alpine volcanoes that have remained domain for 9000 years in the Chilean Andes, now puffing its pipe in relish as it breaks its millennium long sobriety and succumbs to addiction again.

Nearer to home, whilst much of the world is heaving along, with global warming and perpetual famine, startling news of the paucity of seats belts in school buses dominate our headlines. Frantic and wild opinions are traded on the forum pages as "Punch and Judy" from the Commons 7000 miles away are brought to bare in our city centric papers. Wild passions reign supreme as traffic accidents become the sumo ring where weighty citizens share their heartfelt views. The stunning escape of a terrorist with his pants down, the clamour for resignation and the careful and slick refocusing of the public's goldfish mind on to bread and butter issues, have spawned theories in the blogging sphere.

Is it no wonder that as one spans the eye across the midnight sky, peeking at the vast array of cosmic prowess that one is led to think, how the inhabitants of this island planet, haplessly disjointed and disengaged at its wilful choice, is more than ever the epitome of rebellious myopia.

God has a gold medal

These days, all i hear is how much a person earns, how good his/her career is and where the person stays and after having aggregated all these, the worth of a person is determined. It does not help that when i return to BB, all i hear is the jazz on how important reputation is or winning the next JM Fraiser and how to ensure that we get NYAA through interesting means. Then we realise that it began with the school, yes my dear ACS, who desires to win at all costs - could i stress again, at all costs. Later on, i hear that some churches are desperately trying to fulfill their targets of reaching a church size of 30,000 and hopefully qualify for an ISO along the way. Never mind if people really responded to knowing Jesus or not, as long as they ticked the card, they're christian and we're meeting our targets. Then i begin to ask myself the redundant question of why young Christians aren't really impacting their workplaces , schools and families anymore.

The problem, and I'm not absolved myself, is that we keep chasing the gold medal that is determined by the world. The benchmark, the standards, the measurements are all worldly and the rat race in the sewers of pride, insecurity and abject stupidity. Run Run Run and like a hamster in the circle of caged life, its one full circle without having covered any real distance. Its back to the same hogey pogey dirty stinky enclosure with little tubes that release little drops of water to sustain life. And add the peanuts nicely de-shelled. Yet all along, the rats are still not free, still in abject slavery.

So get out for once. Chase the right gold medal. In fact there is one shining medal that reaches from beyond the heavens. Let the rats turn from the sinking titanic of a world lost in stupendous incendiary stupidity to one where they can run and be transformed in the process. Its not a race where we forsake the world totally but one where we can do all things without that most unhappy reason of personal gain. Selfishness is the art of unhappiness. We must run the right race. A race where all can be winners, where the process is as beautiful as all we can ever hope it to be until we see the shining end. Yes God has a gold medal and His name is Jesus.