Musings

This post isn’t about what one of my friends calls ‘Toronto Bashing’, or quibbling with fellow Christians, but a very personal reflection on something that continues to unsettle me.

A month ago I wrote a friend from Salmon Run many years ago to catch up. She left Wesley several years before the turn of the century and went to New Creation Church, a church that media today calls a megachurch. We remained in semi-contact throughout the subsequent years nonetheless, as for a period of time after I first left Salmon Run 13 years ago, she was one of the few friends I could share with. I think she was pretty impressed with the services and ministries at NCC; enough for her to have sent me some of her new church’s publicity and media materials over the years in what I assumed to see if I was going to be interested in joining her to attend NCC services then.

Anyway; in one of her recent emails last month she said again that she was seeing several friends formerly from Wesley there now at NCC, and ventured to ask if I was still at Wesley. I replied in the affirmative, and also that I had no intention of worshipping at NCC as I had serious reservations about megachurches.

That was the last I heard from her, and it’s been more than a month.

—

Now that I reflect on it… while I like to think that the friendship she and I had is in sufficient standing for me to had been candid, I can’t help to think that the absence of communication now had something to do with what I said. Simply put, I don’t know if she was offended.

If recent interview snippets with current members of megachurches published on media are of any indication, there seems to be great member confidence in their own activities – and that if their membership numbers are skyrocketing and the wealth resources for them to do get things done increasing so fast that it’s now reported in national media, surely they must be doing something right in these churches. Just 2 days ago for instance, The Straits Times reported the following (formatted slightly to save space).

Aug 30, 2010
Church raises $21m in 24 hours
Mammoth collection breaks New Creation’s own previous record
By Yen Feng

MEGACHURCH New Creation has broken its own record by collecting $21 million in donations in just 24 hours, proving again its ability to pull in the big money.  Church founder Joseph Prince announced the news yesterday during services at the church’s Suntec location. The money was collected over one day last week on Sunday.

‘You people, you are amazing,’ he told the packed auditorium. ‘Twenty-one million in 24 hours. Amazing.’  The funds were collected by the independent church to raise money for its new home in Buona Vista.

But the kind of impression that the general public is left with continues to unsettle me. If public discussion rooms are any indication, the impression is increasingly one of distrust. Somehow, the Christian embodiment of humility, servitude and modesty seems to have got lost in the public image and it’s replaced with financial success, big resources and money for us to get into big property investments even.

It’s not my intention to get into a debate about Christian prosperity, that argument on where exactly in the bible does it deny believers personal successes and better living, or that argument that media is only selectively reporting on certain aspects of megachurch success and not on their other ministries and social outreach.

But – and I’m aware I’m threading on thin ice between an honest opinion and causing the inadvertent offence in our public blog – the more I read about big property investments on the part of churches, million dollar collections to build bigger church premises, flash bang services with laser lights… the more I’m convicted that those places are just not for me. Those testimonies of new found personal successes at work and living, charismatic preaching, emotion-driven and powerful healing at these churches might be attracting some worshippers to migrate away from their old churches, but it’s having the opposite effect on me.

Or maybe it’s just me.

—

Sigh. It’s difficult to write posts like these, and it’s only on the rare occasion when I stick my neck out and say something here that isn’t about films, Hannah, photography or traveling.

And I really do hope that the friend of mine stopped writing only because she’s busy.

When I was unpacking at home the 37kg of luggage I had with me from Boston, Ling made a remark that I thought was fun:

“Wow dear; you really bought a lot of stuff there this time.”

And just to put her remark in context; I’d left Singapore with just 23kg of luggage!

She’s right that I did buy a lot more things on this trip than I’ve ever before did. Heck. In all the under a month trips I’ve made in the last decade, the most I’d ever returned with would be one or two shirts, and an equivalent number of fridge magnets.

This time, I returned from Boston with, among other things, a new jacket, two polo-shirts, three T-shirts, an umbrella, three mugs, several toys for Hannah, so many fridge magnets that they weighed about a kilogram in net weight, and ten books –a few of which are really heavy.

One book that I picked up from Borders at the intersection between School and Washington streets was With Wings Like Eagles by Michael Korda, a London-born author who once was the editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster in NYC, and currently today lives in the city.

Accounts of leaders in the face of adversity have always fascinated me. This book looks at the three month-long Battle of Britain in 1940, but from the perspectives of leading politicians and military leaders of countries who were involved in it. I’m aware that for many of us, or at least those of us who might read this blog occasionally, the only persons who might be even familiar would be Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler.

But without getting into too much detail in this post, the individual whose decisions had the most impact on the historical fact that England did not get overrun that year was neither person. Rather, it was a British officer, Hugh Dowding, who was placed in command of the small number of British fighter planes who had the very difficult job of stopping the Germans from attaining air superiority before actually invading the isles.

The book maintains a high level of discourse; exploring the conflicts and circumstances between Churchill and Dowding, of Dowding and his commanders, and their individual personalities. Unfortunately, despite that history would had been very different had Dowding not had the moral courage and foresight and gone against Churchill to make the decisions he did then, he was eventually given the political shaft by his rivals and enemies, an outcome he became extremely bitter about in his remaining years after the war.

It was more than a little sad to read in the last chapters of his fall from grace and from great heights of achievement, the more so that his political assassination seemed more from spite from his detractors and rivals than through any real character failings on his part.

I was reading With Wings Like Eagles initially slowly – several pages at a time – each morning over breakfast at Blue’s, then finished the remaining half of the book on a single shot over the long flight home from Boston to Singapore.

The next historical book I’m reading now I picked up from the Harvard University bookstore, and it’s about four American and Japanese officers and how their lives and careers got intertwined. More on it later.:)

As soon as I left for Boston and started posting all those pictures of places I was visiting, Ling began dropping big hints about our upcoming opportunity at the end of this year for a holiday to makeup for the three overseas trips in the last 15 months I’ve gone on without her. While most of my planning so far has been for a 10 day stay in Japan, I’ve continued to keep an eye on other locations, including New Zealand, Arizona (a third trip to the US in 2 years!), and Central/Eastern Europe.

Japan’s an interesting choice, especially since Ling wants so much to visit the place. I’m alright with it but not as enthused and I’ll explain why later. But December is also when the country is in winter. A very different experience from visiting the Kansai region in August to September for instance.

In any case, I’ve been wanting to write about my somewhat conflicted feelings about Japan since the middle of last year but been putting it off as I try to keep our blog light-hearted.

Basically, as fascinating as Japanese culture and the country might be to many persons and that some of us go all gah-gah over things that are Japanese, my perspective of the island country and its people is greatly influenced by its history and its actions in the last century. The 1.3 billion Chinese up north certainly have not forgotten, and while I feel little kinship to my parents’ relations still living on Hainan island, I share some of the ambivalence the Chinese have about the Japanese. And specifically, it’s their psyche that I’m thinking about here.

—

My earliest recollections of Japanese history in the last century comes from more than 30 years ago. My dad had a number of pictorial books from our old place in Sembawang Hills Estate, several of which I think are at least half a century old now. I remembered curiously taking out those books to look at as a young boy. One of the books had numerous pictures of the Japanese Imperial Army’s activities in China in the last world war.

Those pictures were not censored. And the photographs of rape, execution, disemboweled body parts and heads held up for display left an indelible impression on my young 7 year old mind back then.

In the subsequent decades, my impression of Japanese brutality got more evolved as I became an avid reader of world history. It wasn’t the graphic pictures anymore, but the text in the historical re-accounts – which admittedly might be biased – and the numerical and statistical representations – which is harder to argue against – of various incidents demonstrating that brutality. That impression got permanently burnt into my consciousness when I read Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking years back – and it’s a book that is best digested in short, separate reading sessions given its seriously depressing and haunting account.

And it’s not just the Nanking incident. When James Doolittle led his small force of American B25s and hit Tokyo in a retaliatory strike after the devastation of Pearl Harbor – and Doolittle did very little actual damage – the Japanese took it out on the Chinese villagers by killing another 250,000 of them. Germ warfare was used.

Or of the Hiroshima sympathizers. The nuclear bomb that Enola Gay dropped on the city caused a huge amount of death and destruction. The Japanese there today continue to emphasize to visitors the extent of suffering they endured, but gloss over the fact that Hiroshima was where their regional army headquarters and a huge depot of military supplies were situated. In comparison, the city of Nagasaki, similarly bombed, seemed to have moved on in sentiment.

I’m not a prude, and I think men are capable of great evil whichever race and nationality. However, there is one theme that all the authors I’ve read agreed on, and it was a theme that struck me first as a young adult: that the Japanese have never properly reconciled themselves to their own actions in the last 70 years of our world’s history. History continues to get whitewashed in their textbooks. Figures that show the extent of their violent actions are disputed by their scholars when they are corroborated everywhere else. Lone individuals – some of whom are formerly serving military officers – who possibly in an exercise of epiphany on their deathbeds try to revisit their country’s actions and seek recounting, but are invariably shouted down by their countrymen in nationalistic fervor.

While there’s the argument that the Japanese actions in South-East Asia were primarily driven by the need for precious natural resources, their actions in North Asia were largely territorial. And in both theaters, they saw themselves racially superior. Everybody else was inferior and less deserving.

—

To be honest; it’s the latter that lingered at the back of my mind when I interacted with the Japanese last December, or when someone around me today gushes about how great their culture and people are.

To be fair, I do find the Japanese very polite, their civilian infrastructures of transportation and communication both efficient and effective (I wouldn’t say the same about their national governance though), and many aspects of their living environment admirable, including care for personal hygiene, respect for authority and the elderly, the naturally beautiful country they live in, and the exquisiteness of their cuisine and dress. I certainly enjoyed my teaching trip to Kumamoto last year and the hospitality of their staff.

But my admiration of Japanese hospitality is also simultaneously tempered by an unsureness that whether beneath that façade lies the potential for yet another explosion where underlining traits that they demonstrated 70 years ago will resurface again, and violently. There has never been the same kind of self-reckoning or actualization that the Germans experienced in post-war Europe.

That said, my bet is that come year end, of the several shortlisted vacation spots, it’ll be Japan that we’ll visit. I have to think of the wife!

There’s one thing I continue to marvel about Hannah joining our family of two. Yeah, I’ve posted about it here several times now, but it’s still something I just can’t say enough of: that Hannah is really the best thing that has happened for the both of us.

And that’s coming from a guy who started off…

1. Wanting children (during my dating years a 1.5 decades ago)

2. To being neutral about children (just before marriage)

3. To being hesitant about children (early years of marriage)

4. To putting aside our anxieties about whether we would be good parents and trusting God instead (20 months ago)

5. To finally being firmly convicted that children are real blessings and instrumental to us becoming better persons.

—

Point #5 requires a bit of explanation. Back at the turn of the century while I was still living at Lentor, I really enjoyed my time with my oldest nephew Danyel. But I never really saw myself as a person who was particularly affectionate towards children.

That’s very different from Ling by the way. Right from our early years of dating, I observed that Ling has a natural affinity with children.

Case in point: on one occasion when we were shopping, a playful child almost tripped near an escalator and seemed shaken. Ling instinctively reached out to try to comfort him.

That’s not something I could do on impulse.

But Hannah’s changed that. Whenever I’m alone with her, e.g. when Ling’s preparing her feed and I’m playing with Hannah on our sofa, there’s an incredible sense of fatherly protection and love I feel towards our little girl.

And until Hannah, it was not something I ever thought I was capable of feeling.

And while we have our share of difficulties with her sometimes, e.g. that she has been ill for so long and is still on the mend, or that she sometimes traumatizes Mommy by enacting little tricks that Daddy taught her, or that she sometimes does a major bomb before we head off to infant care/work and messes up the timing, I still remind Ling that we’ve very blessed to have a daughter who on balance has so far given us a far easier time than expected.

i.e. Hannah has all her limbs and fingers intact and has no debilitating illnesses, is often very cheerful, is naturally inquisitive and reacts amazingly well to strangers through her often quizzing looks of interest.

Hannah looks like a tom boy.

—

I often read online in discussion forums or in news articles about women (and men) here in Singapore who don’t want children because of the sacrifices that come involved with it. I remembered one woman who grumbled that it’d mean less time for her hobbies, her friends, and she just could not see herself having to cut back on her spending on holidays, hand bags and shoes.

This post here is already very long so I’ll comment on just the third sentiment since it’s something that strikes home, being the techno-geek I still am.

Having children doesn’t mean you totally stop looking at new handphones, new notebooks, new camcorders etc. I know I haven’t.

It however just means you become more circumspect about spending. You start thinking harder about new capital purchases. You become clearer and better at differentiating between ‘need’ and ‘want’.

And that I think, if nothing else, is positive character growth.

Hannah today is exactly 9 months old! It’s been quite the journey as first time parents. There’s been plenty of lows points for certain. There’s been that dramatic change from being in a two person family and having to worry only about your wife, to having to worry about your baby girl and your wife now, and it pretty much pervades every decision you make – like what time you wake up, what time you leave the house, what time both of you have your meals, and that new toy you always wanted to buy has to be put aside i.e. financial prudence.

And just like this morning, Hannah did something she’d rarely done – wake the both of us up well before her usual wake-up time! She did a huge din at about 6:15 AM – we’d turn in late last night watching Watchmen on blu-ray – that was loud enough to wake even Matt up, two closed doors between her vocal chords and him.

But there’re so many more high-points in comparison: that toothless grin, her giggles and laughs when you rest your head on her tummy, her slow break into an angelic smile and chuckle when you make direct eye-contact with her, and the way her eyes dart noticing things around her and reflecting her alertness of both new and old environments. Each new day brings about new things we’re learning about her.

And there’s also that I think the both of us have become better individuals too: better discipline in spending, more efficient in what we do (at least for me anyway haha!), and better planners! And when Hannah’s carried by either of us, we just can’t resist planting kisses on those chubby cheeks of hers, and there’s that indescribable and absolutely incredible feelings of paternal affection and protection over our baby girl.

Three more months to one.:)

Ling was asking the other night why a series of photos I took over the weekend at home haven’t been put up on our blog here nor the Flickr album we’ve got.

Answer: I’ve been sitting on them! Half of the posts I’m doing these days is on Hannah. The remaining half is split between photography, entertainment, and a fraction of that remainder still on News & Letters. I try to spread out posts across topics, and of late try not to turn our blog here into a dominantly baby one.

The funniest thing though is that the Baby Blues posts are the easiest for me to do. They’re centered on Hannah, and unlikely to offend anyone – and I have a window of at least 10 years before Hannah gains the necessary language skills to comprehend my posts on her LOL. The entertainment posts are critical and by necessity at least semi-analytical. Those require brain power, though they’re enjoyable to write as I like drawing relationships between a film I’ve just watched to films I’ve seen already.

The hardest to do by far are the News & Letters ones, since I’m writing on something that’s current + this blog is Google-able. The days in which I could derive some entertainment value by engaging in online wars are long gone past me. These days, when I post something on current affairs up, I restrain myself not because I’m afraid of engagement when someone disagrees. I’m just tired of it and don’t see the point unless it’s with someone I know in person and whom I can trust to state his or her case politely. I post and write for fun and because writing invigorates me, not to fight with someone I don’t know.

So, with that out of the way, here’s the first selection of pictures taken over the weekend at home:

I took these using the Sigma 24-60mm f2.8 lens, with the late 10:30 AM morning sun shining very partially through the curtains. I didn’t use the flash, and there’s some very mild camera shake. The lens wasn’t stabilized – boo!

One of the weirdest letters to have been published in The Straits Times in recent memory was in last Tuesday’s paper. Here’s what it read (source here):

July 14, 2009
Horrified by many profanities in matinee show on NS life

I ATTENDED the matinee show Own Time Own Target at the Drama Centre in the National Library building over the weekend. One magazine lauded it as a ‘laugh out loud, rediscovery of zany side of national service’. I presumed this meant it was a family-type show and took my two teenage sons, aged 16 and 14, to the show on the premise of a MediaCorp-owned magazine review.

To my horror, I was cringing uncomfortably in my seat the whole show, highly disturbed by the language used. I do not have a problem that the language was coarse and in dialects. But it was offensive when every sentence and curse uttered by the officers (rightly or wrongly, provoked or otherwise) at the NS boys in the drama was a profanity of the female genitals.

The show was a full house, with young and old, males and females equally represented. I am sure I was not the only one who was disturbed by the excessive cursing and swearing by the officers at the recruits. My observation was that people laughed out loud not at the clumsiness of the recruits but mostly because they felt uncomfortable with the profanities.

As a mother, I find it hard to imagine that after years of sheltered school life where students are taught values, to be gentlemanly and polite and respect their elders, these boys have to do NS run by officers who do not blink an eye when they curse their mother, sister, girlfriend and the whole female population by way of conversation.

My boys were shocked to realise that NS is a rite of passage where they will be officially subjected to bullying, shouting and cursing – nothing gentlemanly at all.

If this is a light-hearted look at life of NS boys during basic military training, I fear to know what my boys will face in their real-life situation when they enlist. Please, someone, assure me this is not so.

Wee Hua Boey (Mdm)

So this is going to be a blog post about profanity:)

The online reaction to Mdm. Wee’s letter hasn’t been all that surprising. Very few if any at all persons have been sympathetic. Of everyone else, I’m guessing half are chastising Mdm. Wee for having quite an incorrect expectation of what soldiering involves, and the other half are wondering whether Mdm. Wee’s letter was intended as a joke.

Here’s the thing: soldiers curse. Everywhere, and its not just a Singapore thing. Nor is it a 2009 thing.

I’m guessing there’re a lot of reasons for soldiers cursing and swearing since time in memorial. Occasionally, the curses and swearing come about from your commanders who need to ‘impress’ upon you the urgency or importance of a task at hand (“Wake up your !@#!!! idea!!!”), and other times, it’s an expression you make to your peers as a response to a situation (“This is a !@#!@#!@# mess!”)

Whichever reason it is, soldiering is a serious business, the more so the waging of war if it ever comes to that (touch wood). When bullets are flying above your head (if ever) and there’s a chance that one of those has your name on it, will you be all nice, polite and gentlemanly to make a point?

“My dear squad-mate, could you kindly toss the grenade as far as you can so that the enemy can be hurt, and won’t shoot at us anymore?”

or

“THROW THE ****ing THING and KILL THOSE $$$$!!!!!*****”

And peace time training is supposed to simulate war time operations, with context, the physical and mental environments being among them.

—

When I was doing my NS fulltime so many donkey years ago, there was profanity going around. The profanity level was at its highest as a new recruit. I remember my ‘Encik’ – Senior Non-Commissioned Officer – being especially… colorful, and he had a way of fitting in genitalia terms into every possible sentence, even when he was talking about food.

I never felt that the language was intended to be taken personally, even when he was screaming at my recruit platoon for not jumping / running / walking / marching fast enough. I think the terms used was simply a way of emphasizing a point of activity. So, yes initially some of that swearing did unsettle a couple of us, but we got over it quickly.

And what’s even more interesting is that as I progressed from recruit to vocation training and then finally was posted to my permanent unit, the swearing got far less. Oh, there were still the occasional F*** bombs now and then, but there were very few soldiers around me who were cursing with the same intensity as during that three months of recruit training.

And during my last Reservist training stint, the number of times I heard someone curse was, I don’t know, maybe just twice in the more than 2 weeks I was in-camp. And no bodily terms were used.

So, things aren’t really that bad. And even for the brief period where there is a lot of it going around, it’s just context.

And besides, if going through the army was supposed to imprint permanently swearing and cursing into your daily conversational patterns, I would be hearing a lot of it around me among my friends, colleagues and acquaintances – but I never.:)

I typically steer clear of controversial topics on this blog. Over the 18 years I’ve been online now, making my opinion on a sensitive subject known in the public sphere has never led to anything good.

On this occasion though, I’m facing an increasing disquiet that I thought I’d just make a brief mention of it. One of Monday’s news items read on The Straits Times:

$500,000 pay for New Creation Church leader

THE New Creation Church, which made headlines for raising $19 million on one Sunday last month for its upcoming multi-million dollar building, pays good money to its staff too.

The independent church paid one employee between $500,001 and $550,000 in its last financial year, checks by The Straits Times showed.

The church did not confirm if the amount went to its leader, Senior Pastor Joseph Prince, but told The Straits Times that its policy is to ‘recognise and reward key contributors to the church and Senior Pastor Prince is the main pillar of our church’s growth and revenue’.

The article also notes that the Senior Pastor donated a similar sum of money to its building project.

OK, it’s their money and not really my business. And I’m sure the church is doing great things. But I’m uneasy that the church awards monetarily its leader for the ‘revenue’ (!!) it receives. Also, that church governance saw fit to lavish a servant of God with such large rewards (his alleged return back to the church not withstanding), and for the church not saying who is receiving the princely six digit sum.

In fact, why stop there even? If the church gets even bigger, why not – along the way later – also reward its leaders with bungalows and private jets? That’d be congruent with the church’s policy to “recognise and reward key contributors”.

$500,000 isn’t a small sum of money. Heck; I think Ling and I live about comfortably and spend within our means with an eye on our savings too, but our combined income is just less than a third of that! In my opinion, $500K is well in excess of the needs of modest, middle-class living.

I’m just thinking now also of the early apostles who spread the gospel under a lot more difficult circumstances than today. Did they receive one hundred donkeys every year as a reward for the work they did?

The letters expressing sentiment on the payout has also started appearing in the newspapers. For instance, one writer yesterday wrote:

However, I do not put the blame for such obscene pay cheques on the elite group of church leaders; rather, I would lay it on the congregation.

During the Chinese New Year period, my family and I visited one of the classier church buildings and attended a service. We were taken aback when a special offering, referred to as a hongbao for Jesus, took place. We were surprised to see many in the congregation willingly coming down the aisles to drop their red packets of money in the baskets held by the pastors and leaders. In return for giving, devotees received a spiritual blessing of prayer.

I was amazed at the congregation’s willingness to give without really knowing where all the money was going to. (There was no mention of the purpose of the collection other than giving it to Jesus.)

In the forthcoming days, I’m pretty sure a couple of things will happen. There’ll be more letters to the forum page questioning the payout. There’ll also be letters from the church’s loyal flock defending the payout.

But even in the latter, the damage is done. That a large church which has been in the news recently for being very rich is now showering its leaders with big sums of money in this time of financial prudence is going to just invite more skeptics to point their fingers at how Christianity has become associated with big dollars. And that rising tide of cynicism is the thing that worries me the most.

Taking a break from music posts and returning to an thread where I was writing about lessons in life.:) A groupie in our small group Salmon Run once remarked that the greatest threat to the Holy Spirit is our (human) ability to rationalize everything we do.

It certainly doesn’t take any stretch of the imagination to contextualize the above. Just take a look at any of those controversial issue reported in the papers. E.g. the debate online and in media on homosexuality here in Singapore. Any biblical verse that’s supposed to be straight forward gets debated and argued upon by both sides of the issue.

It’s not my intention in this post to present on what I think about homosexuality, though I think my small groupies have heard what I’ve got to say about that LOL. I’ll say what works for me though; and it stems from another simple truth that I believe in, that…

“There isn’t any temptation that you have experienced which is unusual for humans. God, who faithfully keeps his promises, will not allow you to be tempted beyond your power to resist. But when you are tempted, he will also give you the ability to endure the temptation as your way of escape.” (1 Corinthians 10:13)

This is the second of three ‘anchor’ verses that have helped me simplify many things in life. Like the first one, the full significance of this verse came from QT during my full-time NS days.

The context of the learning was based on a story told in the copy of Our Daily Bread I was using, and the author gave the classic story of if a murderer came to your home wanting to kill one of your family and wants to know if he is home, do you tell the truth or lie?

If we were to take the verse literally, it’d mean that the right thing to do would be to tell the truth. Because God will never want us to break a commandment of his in order to keep another. OK, the verse uses the word ‘temptation’, but if I remember rightly, the author of the entry believed it means ‘in all situations’.

It’s easier said than done. I believe many of us would lie simply because in our minds, to tell the truth would mean the murderer would then step right in to kill our loved one. It’d be utter madness not to do everything to protect our family, including lie. But thinking aloud, doesn’t this stem ultimately from fear of what we can’t control?

Instead, what if we were to take that leap of faith and to trust in God… that if we were to completely trust Him in all things, whatever happens would be His will and it would be the best thing that can happen?

Yeah this all sounds hypothetical, and until someone comes into our home in The Rivervale and threatens to do the same, who knows what we’d really do or say.

But in a simpler context, I think there’s a lot of meaning and application from this verse to everyday life: that we should stop trying to project what we think to be the right and desired outcome, and instead strive to just obey God’s commandments, and trust Him in what happens in our lives.

We usually close of our bible study with prayer requests. And recently Ann jokingly remarked that I don’t seem to have many requests.:)

There’s a long-winded explanation for that. I don’t have many specific requests because putting aside all my posts here about toys I’m interested in LOL, I really don’t have many actual needs and wants.

Why’s that? It comes from a simple truth that I believe in: that everything I have and every difficulty I face is part of God’s plan for me, and while I’ll pray for confidence and courage, I won’t pray for specific outcomes unless it’s absolutely clear in my head what God’s will is.

My belief stems from a promise God made, and it’s in the epistle Paul wrote to the Thessalonians who were under persecution for their beliefs. Worried, Paul said to the Thessalonians:

“In all things give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you all.” (1 Thess 5:18)

I was first struck by this verse when doing my quiet time while in full-time NS 17 years ago, and it’s remained in my head ever since. This is one of my three ‘anchor’ verses that I always remember, and it helps simplify the challenges and situations that come on all too often.

There are three key phrases in this verse:

- “In all things…”, which well means in everything.

- “Give thanks…”

- “The will of God…”, it’s God’s will.

In everything that happens, give thanks because this is part of God’s plan for you. Paul didn’t tell the Thessalonian converts to give thanks only when the going is good, and not to give thanks when their goats were lost somewhere, or when they were faced with some huge calamity on their door step. Rather, things are happening because it’s part of God’s plan, and there will be some lesson, learning value, or opportunity that will come as a result.

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