The Call (1)

Teman-teman,
Mungkin sebagian besar dari kita sudah mengikuti acara misa & ngobrol bersama Romo Bowo Minggu 29 Agustus di rumah Tante Agnes. Dalam obrolan tsb, yang menjadi topik bahasan hari itu diangkat dari e-mail yang pernah dikirm oleh Sdr Arief berjudul 'The Call'. Nah mungkin banyak yang belum pernah membaca e-mailnya atau udah lupa atau kurang perhatiin pas dulu nerima, maka kali ini kita tampilin lagi e-mail tersebut beserta tanggapan pribadi Arief saat itu. Mengenai tanggapan teman-teman lain sesudah mengikuti acara tsb akan dimunculkan di bulletin bulan depan.

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Dear mudikan brothers and sisters,

The following is an article I received some while ago. I’ve been wanting to share this article with all of you because I really think this is an awesome description on how we should view our jobs .. or to some of us, occupations (students, housewives, looking for jobs, etc) that we are holding.

One thing that I personally found very thought-provoking adalah cerita ttg betapa si Wilberforce, orang yg mengakhiri slave trading di British almost 200 year ago, nearly missed his Calling. Mungkin begitu juga seharusnya kita memandang pekerjaan atau occupation kita masing2 sekarang ini. Bukan sekedar hanya sebagai mata pencaharian penyambung hidup semata, ataupun sebagai sarana/alat untuk memuaskan materialistic greed and/or individualistic ambition semata, tapi sebagai alat untuk memuliakan Allah.

Apapun yg sedang kita lakukan sekarang ini, yg bekerja (engineer, IT, construction, architecture/design, management, admin, etc) maupun yg sedang studi/melanjutkan studinya (degree, master, phd), ataupun yg sedang mencari pekerjaan, mungkin seharusnya kita mulai melihat apapun yg kita sedang lakukan sekarang ini sebagai bagian dari rencana panggilan Allah untuk hidup kita.

Satu hal yg I still wonder, however, adalah bagaimana kita tahu bahwa suatu jalan itu jalan panggilan Tuhan, sementara jalan yg lain bukan. Darimana si Wilberforce itu bisa yakin, waktu dia sebenernya udah berniat untuk meninggalkan politics untuk masuk ke spiritual ministry, bahwa Tuhan memang ternyata memanggil dia di politics?

I will leave the rest of the story for you to enjoy pondering over and to have a good thoughtful reflection over how each of us has been viewing whatever job/occupation that we are currently holding. And how we should have done it. And how we shall do it from now on.

The following is really a general description. The details on how we should go about it in each of our job/occupation will need further thought as well as prayer. I would be more than glad to join, if two or three of you, mudikanss, would like to discuss this topic further, to the application to each of our actual daily lives.

This comes rather, to no one’s planning, timely for especially some of us that had just been through our “spiritual journey” :-) .. in the last weekend mudika retreat. The topic in the retreat was “to realize dan menggali potensi diri.” Jadi kalo dalam retreat yg baru lalu ini, kita melihat “potensi diri” dari sudut pandang gimana kita mengenali dan menggali potensi diri kita, talenta yg Tuhan kasih untuk hidup kita. Maka, this article certainly offers another important angle of looking at “potensi diri.” After all, what would it be for, that potensi diri digali dan disadari, kalo bukan untuk mulai dikembangkan dan ditebar, untuk suatu saat nanti dituai hasilnya,  sesuai dgn panggilan-Nya thd hidup kita masing2 ...

Enjoy!!


BreakPoint Commentary - April 20, 1999
HEARING GOD’S CALL - OS GUINNESS’ “THE CALL”
By Charles W. Colson

The one man more responsible than anyone else for ending the British slave trade 200 years ago was a powerful Christian statesman named William Wilberforce.

But according to a new book by Os Guinness, Wilberforce nearly missed his calling. The Wilberforce story illustrates how crucial it is for every believer to have a biblical understanding of ‘calling’ - what it means to be called by God.

Wilberforce, though a young man, was a member of parliament when he was converted to Christianity. After his conversion, his first reaction was to think about getting out of politics and enter the ministry. Like many Christians, Wilberforce mistakenly believed that ‘spiritual’ affairs are more important than ‘secular’ affairs.

But then John Newton, the converted slave trader and author of the great classic hymn, “Amazing Grace,” persuaded Wilberforce that God wanted him to stay in politics rather than enter the ministry. Newton wrote to Wilberforce, “It is hoped and believed that the Lord has raised you up for the good of the nation.” Wilberforce took Newton’s advice and stayed in politics. The rest, of course, is history, for he produced what his biographer, John Pollock, calls “the greatest moral achievement of the British people” - the abolition of the slave trade.

What do Christians mean by the word ‘calling’? Guinness defines ‘calling’ as the truth that God decisively calls us to himself - so decisively that we are determined to live our lives with “a special devotion and dynamism” as a response to “his summons and service.” As followers of Christ, Guinness writes, we are to “think, speak, live, and act entirely for him,” whether we are missionaries or homemakers, lawyers or artists.

Sadly, the concept of calling has been distorted in both the Catholic and Protestant traditions. The Catholic distortion, Guinness says, has been a “form of dualism that elevate[d] the spiritual at the expense of the secular.” Church fathers like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas taught that priests, monks, and nuns were living “the perfect life” while farmers, soldiers, and tradesmen lived “a kind of secondary grade of piety.” This unbiblical view of work excluded most Christians from any sense of divine calling.

The Protestant tradition, on the other hand, often elevated “the secular at the expense of the spiritual.” The Puritans initially had a proper understanding of calling. But gradually, Guinness writes, “such words as ‘work’, ‘trade’, ‘employment’, and ‘occupation’ came to be used interchangeably with ‘calling’ and ‘vocation’.”

In other words, the Puritans forgot Who had called them and focused simply on doing their jobs well. “The original demand that each Christian should have a calling was boiled down to the demand that each citizen should have a job,” Guinness writes.

A biblical view of calling avoids both of these distortions. As Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper put it, “There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out, ‘This is mine!” So our work is important, not because it is work, but because it is our mission - our ‘call’ to serve God. And it matters greatly to Him - more than it does to our employer - how we do it.

Os Guinness’s book, “The Call,” is a great resource for Christians to understand what ‘calling’ really involves. And as the life of William Wilberforce demonstrates, a proper understanding of God’s call on our lives can have earthshaking consequences.

“In my better moments when the world is asleep and that dormant creature the spirit stirs awake, when the pressure of work retreat and my fingers delude themselves, they are messengers of great thoughts - on such days, I reflect
.. And offer at your feet, dear reader, some morsel of insight, some remnant of thought”

Singapore, end of June 1999
Gregorius Ed. Arief

Doa Yesus oleh Suster Elizabeth

Walau datangnya telat akibat dibawa puter-puter di parkiran bandara ama Tante Heidy, Suster Elizabeth sempat 1/2 jam memberikan sharing ttg cara kita berdoa. Suster yang sekampung ama Joy ini sedianya ditunggu oleh Mudikans dari pk 9.30 hari Minggu 29 Agustus. Apa mau dikata nyampenya pk 10.30.... dan berhubung ada acara lain yang sudah dijadwalkan (misa bersama Romo Bowo pk 11.00)... terpaksa deh Suster ngomongnya ngebut....buutt.....

Sebagai seorang suster yang dekat dengan karya pertapaan, Suster mewariskan satu doa sederhana yang disebut ‘Doa Yesus’. Caranya?

Ambil sikap doa (duduk yang enak, bersila atau berlutut)

Terus atur napas, sebutin nama ‘Yesus’ dalam satu ‘tarikan dan hembusan nafas’.

Demikian berulang-ulang selama 15 menit.

Kalo sendirian, sangat terasa kita melayang dan masuk ke doa itu. Dengan catatan, bahwa kita mengucapkan kata Yesus dengan sadar, bukan reflek nyanyian.

Kaset Doa Rosario 3 Peristiwa

Ingin variasi dalam berdoa rosario?
Selain rosario pribadi yang sering dilakukan di kamar, sering juga kita melakukan doa rosario bersama dengan pengucapan Salam Maria yang digilir. Ini biasanya sering dilakukan di bulan Maria, Mei & Oktober.

Gimana kalo lagi pengen Rosario tapi lagi gak ada acara Rosario bersama? Ini ada solusi baru, Rosario ditemanin ama suara teman2 kita yang direkam di pita rekaman. Lengkap dengan segala lagu, bacaan & variasi lain dalam tiga peristiwa: Gembira, Agung dan Sedih. Pertama kalinya lho rekaman Rosario dalam bahasa Indonesia.

Berminat membeli? Paket 3 kaset plus 1 buku panduan hanya 15 dollar. Uang yang didapat dari penjualan ini akan dipakai untuk ganti ongkos pembuatan kaset, masuk kas mudika dan alokasi dana untuk kegiatan sosial mudika di masa datang. Penjualan kaset ini merupakan hasil kerja sama mudika dengan Sdr Nina Handoko yang pernah menjadi tamu kita bulan lalu. Thanx Nina, wherever you are.

BTW, kasetnya bisa didapat dari: Kurniawan (pg 94941719) atau Eka (pg 92277329)

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Happy Birthday to all of you!!!

Andry Wijaya 25-Sep-82
Astina 28-Sep-76
Bambang Hermanto 24-Sep-77
Christian Erwin Utama 25-Sep-74
Corry Turistiowati 30-Sep-71
Fenny Trisnawati 28-Sep-84
Iwan Yenanto Lo 27-Sep-65
Keith Steven Muljadi 6-Sep-82
Melisa Trisnadi 28-Sep-83
Sally Ng 20-Sep-78
Silvia Adiwinata 1-Sep-81
Vikki 20-Sep-81
Wijaya Kusuma 26-Sep-76
 

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