the tall order

i just got back my first batch of test and assignment scores. i scored a B+ for my paper on the ck eternity advertisement, but i royally screwed up my linguistics mid-term test. my tutor hauled me up for failing the test by 2 marks.

i mean i am upset, but my tutor did a quick post-mortem with me and i realised i was more careless more than clueless. besides, it's only 10% of my grade. i thought about how God called me to trust -- is this what He's giving me for trusting? but then i remembered how at the youth leaders meeting yesterday abigail was sharing with us a check list of spiritual leadership that we should all aspire to and one of the rhetoric posed was that there was going to be a lot of setbacks -- are we going to let small hiccups along the way derail our faith?

i am just learning how not to try to draw too many links between separate events in my life right now. i was at a literature class on tuesday and the lecturer was just saying how as the media tempers and mediates with materials to make them platable to the public, the manner in which the media makes sense of events in reel life over-simplifies the randomness of events in real life into an unconditional cause-effect pattern.

and then it hit me that the root of so much of the pain in my life is how i have been influenced by the media in trying too hard to make sense of every single thing in my life. i have been studying about how media shapes our values and culture, but at that point in time, it became so personal when i realised i have been conditioned unconsiously.

the last week has all about learning what it entails to be broken before God. in the article for march 8th in "my utmost for His highness," oswald chambers says that "when a man really sees himself as the Lord sees him, it is not the abominable sins of the flesh that shock him, but the awful nature of the pride of his own heart against Jesus Christ. when he sees himself in the light of the Lord, the shame and the horror and the desperate conviction come home." a sense of my own brokenness can only be realised if i look at myself through God's eyes. to be humble is to be acknowledge my brokenness.

i feel almost reluctant to tell my friends when they ask about me online. my answer to them now is usually that i am tired and busy. that i hardly have time to study. but there's really more to the fatigue. the thing is while i am tired, i have this sense of purpose and somehow the peace that i am protected and being carried through.

doing this musical has been a massive personal journey for me so far and will continue to be so. the show is on wednesday 23 march 2005 at nus lt13. there are 2 show times, 12 noon and 7.30pm. which means it's less than 2 weeks to show time. but it is not like any other secular show. this is a show about God's goodness and how the truth exists whether we care to accept it or not. the reason why i am doing this show is because i want my friends in school to know about the one i call my saviour, friend and father.

"if you are up against the question of relinquishing, go through the crisis, relinquish all, and God will make you fit for all that He requires of you."

this was oswald chambers concluding statement for the march 8th article. i pray and hope it would be something i continue to do everyday.