Thursday, October 22, 2009  10:40 AM
Break my heart for what breaks yours
Of late, I feel like the outer part of my life is intangibly disconnected from my inner being, my emotions and who I think I really am.
I attribute it to the busyness of work, of course, and this need to meet up with people and fill my days with a multitude of activities after. I never have time to myself anymore, I can't even hear my own thoughts these days or my heart speaking to me. When I'm thinking, it's always about work or thinking about when Friday will finally come, and mulling over the fact that I want to write for things I'm passionate about.
And so I've become this stranger, even to myself, on weekdays. Suddenly, I feel like whenever I'm having a conversation with anyone, I stray away from talk of emotions or how I'm really feeling because I don't want to break down. Two months ago, my life was all about me and my feelings. Now it's simply built around the hours I surround myself with and that makes me. I don't particularly like it, but it means I've buried you, you and you at the very back of my head and forgotten what it's like to unlock it.
Which is a great thing, for now at least.
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Monday, October 05, 2009 10:13 AM
But the greatest of these is love
Love is a very intricate thing - the world plays it out to be complex, entrenched in a constant equilibrium with happiness and contempt, but I think pure love is really very simple.
I've never read 1 Corinthians 13 so many times over in my life, but over the last week, I keep going back to it, and it has spoken to me in so many ways. The standard that God set out for love is truly great, and all-encompassing. The Bible really does give the purest and highest level of love there is, and every single word it speaks rings true, because if any of those things mentioned were lacking, it wouldn't be love. It's difficult to attain, sometimes given our wilful human nature - highly impossible - but it's worth trying. Because when you try, you realise there's no point dwelling on past hurts, what-if's, people who have let you down, concerns about the future, fears or anything the you, the world or the devil imprints on your heart - cos God's love, and that being the love we strive for, conquers all.
1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
I see a reflection of myself. The years of being there for my friends, the hours of counselling, confiding and celebrations. Community projects, community service for what? The hours that we so needed to complete in secondary school. Tossing a coin into the box of that blind man as I walked past him, feeling more compelled to give only when he started strumming lines from The Old Rugged Cross. Was that gesture more out of guilt? Giving to the tissue paper lady at hawker centres, was it more because I needed the tissue paper or was I doing it out of love? 4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
I felt an inexplicable sense of comfort dawn on me after reading these few lines. It's true isn't it, all these qualities of love that God possesses. And to think that there really is such a love as that which exists in this world, how can I then not love the King of the world who has given up so much to love me in this way - how can I not try to love him back the same way? Loving others is only an outpouring of my love for Him, and I need to be able to love Him first. In another version it says, "It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things". I went through a tumultous period of hurt this weekend. If not for these words, I'd have become entirely bitter and cynical. But "it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs". Maybe one day I'll understand you and why you're made the way you are.
8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
The revelation of love, the day when you can truly see His love for you is the greatest day. Today, I see how all the setbacks in my life, the trials, tears and rejection has only made me the person that I am today. If not for those, I wouldn't be writing this now. This constant spiritual growth and this wonderful plan that He has - I'm in awe.
13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. :) I'm happy.
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