The Light of Jesus & the Darkness of the World

This week is quite a tough week for us at work because our manager (cum trainer) went back to his hometown for 2 weeks for health reason. It means more workload for each of us. The past few days I saw "new" things happen. The usually-patient colleague was getting more impatient.

But today was 'amazing' at work. During lunch time, one of my colleague, out of the blue, shouted angrily to another colleague. Then she threw every thing she could reach at him. Sanitizer... water bottle... pensil case... you name it. She was histerically crying, shouting, and throwing things. In front of people! (about 20 of them?)

I did not understand a thing, because they spoke in Mandarin, so I'd rather not speculate.

Somehow I still could not believe that it happened. Never ever once imagine that she could do such thing. She seemed like a nice, naive, and weak girl.
What happened to people?
Is it stress? Is it fear? Is it insecurity? Or overload?
Human... so fragile... so weak... so... dunno what to say anymore...


I was shocked. After work I just went home. Guess what I did?
I took shower... and slept for two hours. Need to recover my physical and mental state.
Woke up fresher :) Then come the time to recover the spiritual state.

There are still so many questions in mind. But there is a song that I was kept reminded to. A song that we sang in the Prayer Meeting the day before:




"Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus"

O soul are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There's light for a look at the Saviour,
And life more abundant and free

[Chorus:]
Turn you eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face;
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace.

Through death into life everlasting
He passed, and we follow Him there;
Over us sin no more hath dominion
For more than conqu'rors we are!

[Chorus]

His word shall not fail you He promised;
Believe Him and all will be well.
Then go to a world that is dying,
His perfect salvation to tell!

[Chorus]

And... a small scoop of sharing from my quiet time this morning (studying Genesis now): "The missionary mandate of the church does not begin with John 3:16 or Matthew 28:18-20. It begins with God's covenant with Abraham. We are blessed that we might be a blessing." (WWW)

Blessed to be a blessing. A motto of my church. And I adopted it to be my life motto.

Blessed to be a blessing...

Can I?

Inheritance

On Thursday, 07.01.10, I received a call from one of my aunt informing me that grandma had passed away. I then asked a friend to book a flight for me, went back to Bandung the next day, and coming back to Sg again on Monday. Learned a couple of things from the sermons and from interactions with others, one of them is about inheritance...

Grandma left us only her clothes and other belongings. No big amount of money. No huge house. In fact, in the past years my Dad & Uncle has spent so much for her medication.
But from one testimony delivered by a preacher from her church, I knew about her faithfulness.
"Setia sampai akhir", the preacher mentioned. "To be faithful till the end".
That sentence made me think.... and I realized... grandma had inherited something that is far more precious than money... It is the true faith...

Like Timothy that had Lois (his grandma) and Eunice (mother) that inherited their faith through their teaching, I have my late grandpa & grandma that inherited their faith to my Dad, and I have Dad & Mom that inherited their faith by always encouraging me know Jesus since I was born, to participate more in serving God, and showing me real-life example of faithfulness to God till He called them back (in this case, my grandpa & grandma).

I am grateful. For me, it's a privilege. Not everyone could have his/her family members as their role models of faith. God knows I'm weak. I need to SEE examples *visual learner* from people that is close to me, people that I grew with *stronger emotional attachment*.
Those examples has encouraged me a lot in times of doubt.

Then come the time to ponder about my life.
"What did, do, and will you inherit to others, Ita?"
Well, maybe now I don't have my own children, but I have "spiritual children". I have friends. I have brothers. I have families.
What have I inherited? What have I teached them? Does it have eternal values? Or it just helped them to solve temporary issues?
Then I said to myself, "Must leave them eternal inheritance, Ita. Like what your grandparents have done in their lives, show others a life full of love, faith, hope, obedience, and perseverance. Help them to start knowing the true and living God, and to build stronger relationship with God."

Help me, LORD.