| Do you know where you are going to?
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| There is something hugely enjoyable about having the opportunity to challenge ourselves. What great fun it is to chisel around after something interesting. Sometime afterwards after great exertion out pops something original! Every so often we all need to talk to our torso, to feel original and be primed for an outburst of mirth. Every citizen of cyberspace should keep a diary of his dilemmas; for this would help us potentially to become more disciplined and focused. Let us endeavour to give birth during the course of our lives to a baby called "holy laughter". |
I was first challenged at home as a young girl to follow my parents instructions. This we thrive on. Then we experience great physical, mental and emotional challlenges at sport. Whilst at school the challenges pile up, as we are asked to prepare for and sit exams. All through our lives there is the common denominator of endeavouring to improve the quality of our relationships be they at home, school, or at work. The list goes on.
We are all born to accept challenges. We are born to hunger and thirst spiritually, inorder for God to reveal to us that we are original and unique. God is original and unique! He is Our sole Creator and Sustainer, who loves to challenge us to higher and higher standards of speech and behaviour. When I was a young woman full of zest the sun shone brilliantly upon the plans I was making, or so I thought. I knew where I was going! Then I heard this melancholic song "Do you know where you are going to" on the radio.
Just before I was due to go fly off on my big OE. With luggage swinging in hand this song kept coming into my mind. Before long I became less sure where I was going! After falling in love with this song, I only knew I was going, going, gone. I was going, going, gone from the comfort of home. I was going, going, gone from the city of Auckland that I so longingly would miss. I was on my own!
I would have to do my own cooking unless I befriended a chef! The thought originally whetted my appetite. Then as I delved the ramifications I became semi-ill as only the young can do. Rashly I shelved the idea. Not totally myself I could nonetheless see that it was pointless to pout for too long. I stopped pouting on account of there being too many people around to enjoy my misfortune. In a twinkling of an eye I was in the city of light, La cite lumiere.
Paris- I found extraordinary challenging! Chiefly on account of the fact that Parisians like to test your patience threshold. Like speaking to each other in their incomprehensible French, so that you can not get out of the luggage area. Seeing themselves as prima donnas they prattle on to each other. My feeling at the time was that they were loving to see how much ridiculing I could absorb.
Inexperienced in facing challenges of this linguistic and psychological type I shut myself up in a place of utter solitude, thinking: "Surely here inspiration will come visit me." No visitors knocked on my mind's door. I left Paris none the wiser and somewhat poorer for my first experience of life overseas.
With my confidence only marginaly intact, I left this English- unfriendly land. My luggage tightly in my right hand Ileft Paris. As lustily as I could I kept swinging my luggage to and fro. This was my great act of pretence, solely for my benefit, so that I could pretend that I had conquered my first real challenge overseas on my own. I had not. I was in denial!!
A number of soggy handkerchiefs, in left hand, and rings under my eyes convinced everyone around me, except myself, that I would never be offered a job again as a female model. Fizzing to speak English I arrived in downtown London. This is where I would have arrived first, if it had not been for a song with the catchy title "do you know where you are going to"?
Slow to realize what had happened it was clear from my problems in Paris that I was not a French woman and that I did not like French men who had any connection with "baggage". From now onward even the thought of befriending English chef would send saliva into overdrive. I was definitely maturing; for pragmatism has a role in life to play. Identity and destiny I learnt very quickly are interlinked!
Fast-forwarding 23 years. Nobody not even a 21st century mouse-clicker is safe from the scrutiny of caricaturists. More importantly and significantly nobody is safe from the ongoing scrutiny of Almighty God.
Frail or fit, respected or non-respected, temporal-minded or eternity-minded. We are all known by our handsome-in-beauty Father. Deep in our hearts we all comprehend that the destiny of the visible is never to become totally invisible. Deep in our hearts we all comprehend that our destiny is not to have Mr.Ed, the talking horse, as our beyond-death diction coach!
Deep in our hearts we all comprehend that there is a time coming when both humourists and non-humourists alike will become aware that God's vision is, and has always been, as keen as mustard. What is it that makes human beings so prone to deny the obvious like I did?
We have all observed how slates, mysteriously, fly off the roof, during the dark hours, in some households. The owners justify it more or less by attributing it to an act of nature. This is a tragedy they utter, if pressed, to commit themselves to some response. Owls no longer fly in through their open windows at night. Thieves once a problem, now no longer make unexpected nocturnal calls. Clocks lose their time-keeping qualities and caregivers care to stay no more and wives run for the woman's refuge withot being missed or arousing suspicion.
Who wants to admit that he or she is prone to snore? Who wants to admit that he or she is prone to snore more than occasionaly? The mute point is not whether women are better at denying or snoring than men or vice versa. Do not shine your light on my sinful ways, we protest with sleepy eyes. Quite understandably we do not enjoy being fingered for having trouble processing air past our uvula. Quite understandably in our ignorance we are reluctant to allow God to bring us to a living faith. Our role as human beings in this life is to confess! That we are innocent on account of being unable to snore should and is a cause for celebration. But let us not celebrate prematurely; for we are guilty of being sinners before Our holy God. What counts is allowing Our Creator to bring calm to our conscience.
What counts is confession. Not so much of snoring prowess or non-prowess, but of sin before Our Creator. And what is our normal response? "Do not shine your light on my sinful ways," we protest with irregular breathe and sleepy eyes. Do you know where you are going to and what you are going to do when there irregular liver? Please just do not rush off to Paris of your dreams, unprepared like I did. Do not turn up in a "foreign country" unable, and unwilling to speak words of calm and comfort as I did. Do not volunteer to stray deeper and and deeper in a "foreign land". Not a single prodigal is offered anything there except to perish through wasteful living; for anywhere distant from God only hastens our decline.
Study, instead, God's Word, methodically and with great discipline, cyberspace comrades, and God will gradually reveal where you are going; for He loves you incredibly powerfully!
| A clash of views!
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| As everyone knows there are an increasing number of Afghani people living together with us. Recently I got into a rather animated discussion, with a young man from Egypt, about spiritual matters. This was my first deep encounter, for almost two decades, with a follower of the koranic teachings. He told me that, Jesus never claimed to be God.
My first thought was to mention John 1;1 where Our glorious Lord is introduced as the eternal Word of God. Unimpressed, he went on to tell me a false claim about Jesus which I have known about for longer than he has been alive. Namely that Jesus is regarded as a highly regarded prophet in the Koran. |