breathe in to breathe out

There is a book called ‘the trick is to keep breathing’. I have no idea what the book is about, but I think it’s a brilliant title. I think thats what it would look like for a lot of people who have denied God and embraced atheism. It’s rather scary and frigthening, don’t you think? Only having the next breath that you breathe as your saving grace, your reason for living, your eternal dent on the world that ‘is’.
I am breathing and hanging onto God, and I’m going to change the world while I do it. God doesn’t really call us to anything else, does he?

 

mr. clive staples says this

Literature enlarges our being by admitting us to experiences not our own.

They may be beautiful, terrible, awe-inspiring, exhilarating, pathetic, comic, or merely piquant. Literature gives the entrée to them all. Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom realise the enormous extension of our being that we owe to authors. We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. My own eyes are not enough for me. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or bee.

In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in a Greek poem, I see with a thousand eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself: and am never more myself than when I do.

 

i. c. t. o. a. n. – i. a. p. m.

it took me a while to notice it. I was blankly looking at some run down buildings while the escalator slowly took me down to the terminal. The train ride cost me exactly 25 baht, which is now about $1.10c. I went through Siam first, the major shopping district, then i passed Chitlom and Nana to finally get to Ratchatewi, the station where my journey stopped. My station. Well i wouldn’t exactly call it my station considering its still a good 30 minute bus ride from where I live, but I’ll claim it as mine. The area that I live in is a water district, because i live near the river. I don’t know why they decided not to supply sky trains to my district, maybe they didn’t think it was worth it due to all the storms that we get, i don’t know.

 

look up and see reality

God has been pulling down my pride. Tearing it apart. And he has been doing this through various means. Like you know the whole idea that our lives are not our own? That they are Gods and that we should use them for His glory? When I read The Problem of Pain a few weeks ago by C.S Lewis he touched on this area.

 

rice fields and sake

So for the last few days i have spent my fun fun times amongst the throngs of Hong Kong city. Its a wild city, its like Bangkok, just 20 times more compact and about 100 times more organised.
Even though i have only spent a couple of days here, the trip has been lots of fun. Last night i went up to the peak, which is apparently the highest point of Hong Kong. Its the place where all those pictures are taken of the amazing Hong Kong skyline. Anyway there is this tram that can take you there. And its popular, so the lines are usually long.

 

learning to read because you love Jesus (cont.d)

I think our culture today is somewhat anti-reading. Not completely, and not overtly, but there are so many other things vying for our attention. The attention span of the reader version of you is about three minutes, whereas the attention span of the radio you is more like 15 minutes and the television version even longer. A book has to capture you in something like thirty seconds before you look to something else. And I think this is why reading the bible has chiefly become a chore for us Gen Y’ers. We know that reading the bible is important, so we slug and chug our way through it, clinging mainly to the easy stuff, maybe James, Ephesians or one of the gospels. We dare not hit Job or Lamentations, or try and understand the seemingly complex theology in Romans or 1st Corinthians. We have lost the beauty in the written word, or the desire for it, and along with it we lose the opportunity to know and understand God more.

 

learning to read because you love Jesus

Snow Patrol wrote this song called Open Your Eyes. It’s quite a pretty song really, pulls you along with a three something minute build up, then slices and dices you with a marvellous finish. It’s one of those songs that makes you want to sensationalise everything, uno, makes that little crush of yours suddenly become the most important thing in all the world. Drama for the sake of drama. What would we do without it hey?

 

stay small with me

I said I’m sorry for this world, i said I’m sorry for your loneliness, your tears, your brokenness, your pain. I said I’m sorry for injustice, for poverty, for violence, for anger, for abused power. I said I’m sorry for all the rapists, suicidal bombers, pedophiles, wife beaters, alcoholics, arrogant pricks who break your best friends heart, next door neighbors who have music too loud and arguments too often. I said I’m sorry for the distance of your father and the insecurities of your mother, for the vain words of your self professed friend, for the lies that the media gives, spits, yells at you and your body that just-isn’t-good-enough.