Hello Goodbye

This morning was quite depressing. As we were waiting for the bus after doing some grocery shopping, I dropped my Starbucks travel mug on the sidewalk. It cracked down the side, started to leak everywhere, and is now lost forever. It was a little Christmas gift from my brother and I have been using it pretty much every morning for coffee and sometimes at night to drink my tea as well. I could shake it around, tip it upside-down and it wouldn't leak. I took it everywhere with me and we were inseparable - until now *sniff* You will be sorely missed.

I'm Not Ashamed

So there's a new song off the latest Hillsong album "Saviour King" called I'm Not Ashamed that we sang I think for the first time in church last Sunday. Most of the praise and worship songs written are based on scripture and it's neat to see where exactly the lyrics were inspired from. I just happened to come across a few verses in Paul's letter to the church at Rome today.

"I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes...for in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: 'The righteous will live by faith.' " - Rom 1:16-17 (NIV)

These two verses pretty much summarize the entire book of Romans which serves to present the basic gospel truth of God's plan of salvation and righteousness for all mankind. A must read for everyone!

Remember the Sabbath

So as I was waiting for my dinner to finish in the oven, I was reading Numbers and I came to a part that was titled in my NIV bible as "The Sabbath-Breaker Put to Death". To sum it up, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath and this was deemed to be in violation of fourth commandment of the ten commandments given to Moses: Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. The Lord judged that he should die and the entire assembly took him outside camp and stoned him to death.

It's Sunday evening, I'm making dinner, I plan to get a few solid hours of studying in before I go to bed, and I'm blogging. All of those include doing work on the "sabbath" and it got me thinking. What is the purpose of this commandment? Is what I'm doing wrong?

The sabbath question has come up many times before. I have a few close friends who do not study on Sunday. They purposely leave Sunday free to relax and, most importantly, to spend quality time with God. But I usually don't take the entire Sunday off. During most of my undergrad years, Sunday mornings were reserved for going to church that was followed by a family lunch and then, quite often, a nap in the afternoon. I used to volunteer at the hospital fortnightly at around 1700 and after that was finished, I'd do some studying before going to bed.

The Pharisees were always looking for something wrong with Jesus and His disciples and on one Sabbath day, they observed the disciples picking heads of grain from a field and eating them because they were hungry. When they tried to point this out as violating the law, Jesus responded by saying "For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." To emphasize his point, he goes to a man with a shriveled hand and heals him on the Sabbath saying, "Therefore, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath."

The law was not there so that God's people would be subject to a bunch of legalistic rulings. It was supposed to help the Israelites to spend one day of the week to refresh and spend focused in communion with the Lord. Of course, we can apply this to our lives today as Christians but Jesus has since come and reformed the laws of the Old Testament and basically stated that we aren't supposed to stop doing even good things like eating or helping someone in need on the Sabbath.

I guess when I evaluate how I treat my Sabbath, it would be really awesome to take an entire day off to just spend with God. Close the textbooks and reflect on my week and just spend some extra quiet time to listen for God's voice. Other things that I'll do on Sunday like cooking and getting groceries are definitely okay. But I guess the studying is a bit gray. Part of me feels that I by doing a bit of school work I'm being wise with my time. As long as I do take some time to spend with God, it's fine right? I've never felt convicted by the Holy Spirit about doing school-work on a Sunday. But if I was really wise with my time, could I spend the other six days studying and leave all of Sunday off just for God?

Time Crisis

For any gamers out there, you've probably played or at least seen the game Time Crisis in the arcade. It's one of those shooting games with a pedal that you can step on to hide and reload. My roommates are playing Command & Conquer 3 and I am very tempted to install it on my laptop and play along with them. My hardware is definitely capable of playing most games. The thought of it brings back a lot of memories from the days when I used to play quite a few PC games.

I remember my very first computer. It was a 486 and ran on Windows 3.1. I don't even remember the specs on it but the first multiplayer game I got hooked on was Warcraft II. I used to play dial-up modem games with my good friend back home. We would connect via 28.8 kbps modems. I can just imaging telling my kids about dial-up modems and have them laugh about how "old" that 20th century technology was along with things like cassette players and VHS. I used to get into trouble because we only had one phone line and I'd be playing modem games when my parents were expecting a phone call.

From there I went through a Pentium 166 and a Pentium 450. I can't remember if I had another computer but my current desktop computer at home is over 4 years old and has an AMD Athlon XP 2800 512K Barton chip, 1 GB of of PC2700 DDR RAM, two Maxtor 80GB 7200 hard drives, and a Ti4200 8x AGP 128 MB vid card. It was my first true gaming rig and I remember picking out the parts and putting it together. Some games that I remember playing a lot are C&C Red Alert, Starcraft (especially on Battle.net), Day of Defeat (a WWII half-life mod), Warcraft III, the Unreal Tournament series, and the Rainbow Six series.

I thank the Lord that I never got into the MMORPGs like World of Warcraft because I'm certain it would have utterly ruined my life. I had already once reached a point where I was totally immersed into computer games and consumed so many hours of my life. I don't think there's anything wrong with playing video games (in fact, i think they help to develop manual dexterity and problem solving/multi-tasking skills) but with everything, moderation is the key. For me, I was not able to play in moderation and I would be fixated on trying to become the strongest player or have the best stats on the server. I'm usually not openly super competitive when I play sports or get involved into games but for some reason, computer games bring out the tiger within.

Often, I feel like I go through a bit of a time crisis myself. Time management is something that is always an issue for me and I have yet to completely master. I am so amazed by people I know who are so disciplined and organized that they can juggle full time studies, a part-time job, a girlfriend/boyfriend, a regular workout schedule, church, volunteering, and time to hang out with friends with the 24 hours they have each day. Sometimes I wish I had 30 hours a day to get things done but I know that would just be treating the symptoms and not the underlying disease. Even with 30 hours a day I would still have the same problem of fitting in all the things that I need to do and want to do.

It was both exciting and depressing looking at my calendar to find that I have just over 10 weeks left until I will be finished with classes for the year. Exciting because I get to go back home and depressing because it means that I need to basically start bringing study back right now. I started studying seriously about 5 weeks prior to my mid-year exam so it only makes sense that with double the material to cover, I should start at least 10 weeks ahead of time. This is ignoring the fact that I wasn't even close to being fully prepared for my last exam and it was a miracle that I didn't bomb the test. *sigh* Here we go again!

My favorite book of the bible is Psalms. I always find encouragement from the words of David and the other psalmists.

"In you, O Lord, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame. Rescue me and deliver me in your righteousness; turn your ear to me and save me. Be my rock of refuge, to which I can always go; give the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress."
- Psalm 71:1-3 (NIV)

"My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken."
- Psalm 62:1-2 (NIV)

Under The Sea

So I finally went and developed the pictures I took with my disposable underwater camera during my sailing trip in June. Some of them turned out alright. We didn't have a ton of sunlight during our snorkeling days and some of the spots had poor visibility. I remember one bay we were in there was so much sand and silt in the water you couldn't see more than a few feet in front of you. Combined with the fact that I'm as blind as a bat without my glasses, it made for some pretty difficult underwater viewing. In fact, I'm surprised any of my pictures turned out at all since I had to get pretty close to the corals and fish to actually make out any details. You can check out my pictures here.

I like Homer's solution to everything: move under the sea where there's all you can eat sushi!

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

I had a chance this weekend to go watch the Simpsons movie. It was entertaining and there were a few pretty good parts. I guess after watching the Family Guy, I find that Peter Griffin is so much funnier than Homer Jay Simpson. Granted, the jokes used on the Family Guy are usually more politically incorrect and obscene. I'd probably only give the movie a 6.5/10.

I remember the one scene where Homer tries to use a wrecking ball to rescue his family. He miscalculates the distance and the ball comes back at him. This is followed by a scene with him being smashed back and forth between a rock and a hard place on the wrecking ball.

Last week, the local church I've been attending was continuing it's series through the book of Exodus. We had reached the part where Moses and Aaron confront Pharaoh for the first time, asking for the release of the Israelites. They are rejected by Pharaoh multiple times and God keeps on sending Moses and Aaron back. It was a very serious risk they were taking. In brief, they were challenging Pharaoh's authority and could very well have been killed on the spot. I was just reading through Acts as part of this course I'm taking for fun on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I'm at the part where Paul and Barnabas are in Lystra preaching the gospel. Some Jews from Antioch and Iconium were very hostile towards them and wanted them dead. They succeeded in turning the crowds against Paul. They stoned him within the city and then dragged his body outside of the city walls thinking he was dead. Normally they execute people by stoning outside the city walls but in this case, they didn't even bother to drag him outside first. Miraculously, he got up and went back to the city with the help of the disciples!

Moses, Aaron, Paul, and many others that we read about in the bible have been seemingly between a rock and a hard place (sometimes quite literally as in the case of Paul). On one hand, they are being commanded by God to carry out a task. So if they don't obey, they have to deal with God's judgment. Probably not a good idea to make God mad. On the other hand, if they do what God says, they face almost certain persecution and likely death at the hands of those like Pharaoh, Herod, or angry Jewish mobs. Tough decision right? Well, without God backing us up, this would definitely count as being stuck between a rock and a hard place. However, if you consider God's promises for us, the decision becomes much less difficult.

"50I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 54When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."
55"Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?" 56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

58Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain."
- 1 Corinthians 15:50-58 (NIV)

Quoting the prophet Hosea, Paul knew that through Jesus Christ, there is no fear in our physical death - our Lord Jesus Christ gives us the victory over death. I need to learn to stand firm and let nothing move me - not even the threat of death - concerning God's work. That's the kind of attitude that men of great faith had in the bible. Sometimes I find that I worry about doing what's cool or acceptable in society. Was Noah worried about being popular in society? No! He was probably the laughing stock of the entire town for building this 450 foot long boat in the middle of the desert. They probably thought he was all crazy until it started to rain for 40 days and 40 nights.

Sometimes, I also worry about what my peers will think of me. It's probably good to refrain from acting like a fool but sometimes it's not so easy to speak-up for what I know is right. Were Joshua and Caleb worried about being the odd men out when they reported back to Moses on Canaan? All 10 other explorers came back saying there were giants living there that made them look like grasshoppers. In fact, the entire nation of Israel had a pessimistic attitude and were pretty upset with Moses and Aaron and wanted to stone them. But of course, in the end the walls of Jericho fell and Israel took the promised land.

One of the songs of the moment for me is called The Stand by Joel Houston. It encourages me to make the answers for all of my choices to be a simple YES to God. The chorus says:

"So I'll stand with arms high and heart abandoned
In awe of the One who gave it all
I'll stand my soul Lord to You surrendered
All I am is Yours."