i will be still and know that You are God

to sum up this week:

in every season, You’re still God.

i hope that statement encouraged you as much as it had encouraged me. (:

elections

clearly not prepared, stutters, disorganised points.

but its not a language oral test, who am i to judge?

content…not appropriate, touched really little on what should be touched not…not convincing.

but service still matters, doesn’t it? its the attitude that is important, not the empty talks.

right. i have nothing else more to comment. 

well, we’re just about to find out what’s the outcome. 

before my shower.

had fun today (: thanks to all those who ran with and spoke to me hahaha (:

//

many people have been questioning me about my faith, my religion, God et cetera, and most of the time i don’t exactly know how to describe all these explicitly to them, or you. that’s why i really appreciate the work of the pastors, reverends, priests even. but what about the religion in general, the Bible, the Hymns, the Catholics, Protestants, Methodists…

to me all these are just labels. of course they are significant, but those are not the core of the religion, i suppose. to me these ‘names’ do not offer as much and do not weigh as much as God Himself. i hope this doesn’t offend anybody too much, but doing integrated humanities (or IH for short), it really forces you to think about certain sticky issues that people tend to avoid, religion is one. 

i think in the case of the Catholics and the Protestants (let’s just arrange them in alphabetical order – this shows i’m not inclined to any side), religion or faith has become a label, it has become something more people who call as nationality, based on my analysis. there are emotions and feelings underlying all these people who are branded Catholics and Protestants. to me this is not a faith but more of a branded religion. we were given a lot of readings and extra materials to help us understand the Troubles and the tension between these two different groups of people living in Northern Ireland. a recurring factor of their separation is something that has got to do generations, like after many generations of Catholics and Protestants, the lines drawing their differences became clearer because of the government, inequality and stuff like that. but i’d like to clarify a common misconception of if my mother was a christian, then i’m also a christian. but that simple statement is something like my mother got married and had 5 children, therefore i have to get married and have 5 children also. to me, its as ridicules as that.

i’m not trying to be a heroine or a huge figure, trying to explain the tension that the Catholics and the Protestants are still facing today, but something that i really don’t understand is that the most basic principle, you can call it that way, is love. there can be a variety like how we have different denominations, but are they so important? being a christian is a choice that that person has to be responsible of making. nobody else, not your parents, grandparents or friends can make for you. they can advise you, they can recommend it to you, they can force you to come to church, you can appear as though you accept this faith also, but the choice you make is from the bottom of your heart. if you’re not ready, you’re not ready. you can fool everybody else on earth, but you can’t fool Him.

its a huge topic. so i can only understand the whole issue between the Catholics and the Protestants up to a certain point, like the unequal treatments and things like that, but i don’t really accept and swallow the cause of this whole conflict. 

IH aside, sometimes this thing bothers me so much that i think it’s important to pray for the nation. it makes me wonder whether there are people in Northern Ireland who really understands what lies beneath the denominations. i’m not saying that there aren’t people in NI who really understand unity in the body of Christ. the shocking thing is, from what i know and have read, priests and christian ministers play a part in creating more tension between the two groups of people.

okay, i think this’ really going to cause a lot of controversy. i’m really bothered by the whole which-denomination-are-you-in, and oh-i’m_____-and-you-are-not-so-we-cannot-hang-out-or-pray-together. but then again, as humans, what can we do? haha wrong species…

a very previous reminder, that we are nothing but men.

Strike them with terror, O LORD; 
       let the nations know they are but men. (Psalm 9:20)

speak of the devil.

i don’t like it when my work goes unrecognized, i don’t like it too when people don’t reply my messages, especially when its urgent. well, maybe there was a problem with the phone, so the message didn’t get delivered after all. i don’t like it when these things happen.

really tired although i didn’t do much today. so many things coming up (: exciting at the same time daunting because it means more work.

i need to stop expecting things to happen out of my service.

i need to stop thinking that things will improve because of what i do.

oh no, i’m going crazy.

a timely verse

“…I will never leave you nor forsake you.. Be strong and courageous.” Joshua 14:5, 6