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The other day, I ran into a colleague, who is an ABC (American Born Chinese), in the hallway of my working place. He was very excited to tell me how great the “Jeremy Lin” is in recent NBA games. Initially, I was not paying much attention to his excitement because I am neither a NBA fan nor I had much knowledge about him. Then, the 2^nd day, he stopped by my office again to urge me to watch Jeremy’s game that night because Jeremy had amazed most of the participated teams by consistently scoring high points. I hate to discourage him because I have no TV subscription at my home… 🙂

After I checked around, I learned a lot about Jeremy’s background. Most of you probably have already known more than I did and I am not going to repeat here. The interesting phenomenon is there are many creative phrases such as “Lin + something” are floating around the internet, media and news. One of them called “Linsanity” caught my eye. It is a very creative way to describe how people were crazy about Jeremy Lin.

Jeremy’s story is somewhat alike the mobile phone salesperson, Paul Potts, who became an overnight celebrity after attended the Britain’s TV show “Got Talent”.  The flooding spotlights and media coverage on both of them, to a degree, is somewhat insane. To Jeremy, it is the phenomenon of “insanity” from other people that created the word of “L + insanity (Large Insanity)”.  This also gives us a picture of what this world’s view is. The overwhelmed spotlights and media, however, did not tempt Jeremy’s faith away from our Lord, as I have learned. This attracts a lot of interest to people and the media. This is the sanity aspect of the “Lin + Sanity”.

I also learned that Jeremy is from a good Christian family. His parents led him to the Lord in his young age and continue to accompany with him throughout his growing years. This reminds me of young Timothy who was brought up by his mother and grandmother into a person of fearing God in his youth (2 Timothy 1:5). Later he became a dear brother, an assistant, a co-worker and a successor to the apostle Paul. It tells me how important the role of parents is.

Most of us have a name that was given by our parents. It represents parents’ anticipation or expectation. Jeremy, for example, is a short name for Jeremiah who was a major prophet in Old Testament time. In the Bible, the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations give us a picture how he undertook God’s assignment and how he had followed His expectations closely. My dear brothers and sisters, for us, we have a common name too. It is called “Christian”. In the same token, we were expected by our Heavenly Father to follow our Lord Jesus Christ closely too. How about God’s name? Bible told us that His name is above all names and there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:12b).

My dear brothers and sisters, are you insane? If yes, it should be for our Lord. And, “Lord + insanity” should represent how crazy we are about our Lord. May His name always mentioned by us to others when we have opportunities.

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Last Monday, I went to a local towing company to collect my personal belongs from my wrecked car.  After negotiated with the woman in the front desk, I wasn’t happy about their “profit from my misfortune (趁火打劫)” practice on the towing expense of my car. Especially when I looked at the tragic sight of my car – engine hood was crooked up, radiator was crushed to meet the engine block, headlights were gone, front bumper and battery were punched – I felt heavy in my heart.

I still remember when my old station wagon threw in the towel under a cold winter, I knew it is time for me to look for a “new” car. Weeks later, we purchased our family’s very first brand new car. Since then, this new car has served my family well. For years, she just like an old solider went through numerous battles and endured many wounds. In the end, however, she still has to succumb to her unavoidable fate – going to the junk yard.

Most of us may consider our first love, which could be a boyfriend or a girlfriend, a new car or a new house, etc., memorable. Because, it was the first time that our raw, pure and deep affection onto our first love. Seldom would we forget our affection even after years, I think.

In our spiritual journey, there is a similar thing too. We have our “first love” who is our Lord Jesus. His unfathomable love attracts us deeply when we first met Him. That love draws us close to Him and motivates us to serve Him afterwards. However, as time goes on, our love to Him may fade gradually; especially under the heavy influence of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, as apostle John indicated (1 John 2:16). This brings my mind to the book of Revelation. In there we learned that our Lord warned the Church in Ephesus that they have forsaken their first love (Revelation 2:4). Therefore, the Lord wanted them to remember from where they have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else He will come to them quickly and remove their lampstand from its place—unless they repent.

By experience, we know how limited is our love to others, not even mention our love to the Lord. The warning posted by the book of Revelation reminds us that we could forsake our first love if we are not pay attention to it. We have to keep pace with our Lord consistently and ask our Lord to protect us from the lust of this world.

My dear brothers and sisters, “Walk by Faith” instead of “Walk by Sight” is the only way that we can keep pace with our Lord and have our deep affection to Him continuously. We saw the consequence of Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness for 40 years without entering the land of rest (Canaan) because of their “Walk by Sight” instead of walking by faith in the LORD. Let’s once again be reminded by the Holy Spirit:

“We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.「我們若將起初確實的信心，堅持到底，就在基督裡有分了」(Hebrews 3:14)”

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Last Friday, my old car was wrecked by a rear-ended accident at local area. Even I was not the driver involved, I still could identify with that kind of uncontrollable and traumatic experience. It was a few years ago during a morning rush hour, I was stopping at a traffic light and a car rear-ended me. As soon as my car was hit, my daughter who was in the backseat said, “Oh, oh”. The uncontrollable feel came when I saw my car was pushed and skidded ahead. Fortunately, I didn’t hit another car in my front. The traumatic feel arrived when I saw the appalling scenes of devastation after got out of my car – bumper was damaged, tail lights were broken and trunk lid was crooked. I thank God for His protection because we were not injured personally during the accident.

The accident from last Friday, I saw God’s protection once again upon my family. I don’t want to say that I am happy with the situation but I am very grateful to see that nobody got hurt in the accident.  Besides, the accident helps us to get rid of the old car, which my wife has complained it for a while 🙂

In this kind of situation, I was always reminded by apostle Paul’s experience that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28). In fact, I tend to think our heavenly Father is watching over us all the times. His fatherly love is beyond our imagination. Through many incidents or events occurred in our life, He wants us to learn from mistakes and grow like His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Even as painful as it is in the process, we have to recognize that His will dictates our life. In the Gospel of John, chapter 15, Jesus told us that He is the grape vine and we are branches. Only remains in Him then we can bear fruits. It is the action of remaining “in Him” that gives us source, nourishment and courage to live our daily life.  Recently, I came across a good illustration of what we can have to remain in Him. It is said that in Christ we will have:

A life that can never die,

A love that can never be fathomed,

A peace that can never be understood,

A joy that can never be diminished,

A rest that can never be disturbed,

A hope that can never be disappointed,

A light that can never be darkened,

A glory that can never be clouded,

A spiritual resource that can never be exhausted.

Since it is in Christ that we will have a peace that can never be understood by other people, I could now better understand why I was at peace with the situation of last Friday’s accident without as grouchy as before. 🙂

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In the past few days, I have to make many international calls due to a family matter. Because I just switched from landline to IP phone system, in order to avoid the horrendous charge from Verizon, I was worried about sound quality of the IP phone connection. After several calls later, the quality seem to hold up and I am satisfied – clear and no echo, at least.

Today’s technology is amazingly convenient. It can connect you to your friends and families through phones, internet emails, facebook, etc. No wonder, it is a worldwide “Web”. Frigyes Karinthy was a Hungarian author, playwright, poet, journalist, and translator. He was the first proponent of the “Six Degrees of Separation” concept, in his 1929 short story “Chains”, according to Wiki. His proposed idea is that two individuals in the world are connected through, at most, five acquaintances. Therefore, if you have five acquaintances then you are connected with others 🙂

Talking to my colleagues in the hallway at my working place the other day, we were surprised to see someone we knew moves to a high-level management position, so fast. The conclusion we have is that he is well connected. I still remember when I came to my job; my manager taught me one thing. He said, “You should not be working all day long at your office without coming out to interact with other people. You have to make connections!”  I think he is right in a sense that we all need to be connected.

I think we all need to have a connection with others. However, we have to be careful on what kind of connection we are trying to build or cultivate. Motivation is the key to our connection with others because our motivation drives our time and effort. We can spend a lot of time to build up a connection with others because we want to be his / her friend or we want to be visible to him or her. In the end, our motivation defines our behavior and satisfaction or dissatisfaction. When we are focusing on personal gain in building up connections, we may find ourselves in a burdened situation. However, the burden feeling would be light and easy if we are focusing on God’s kingdom (Matthew 11:30). This is because we have a connection to our Lord. Through this connection, we have infinite resource and energy to lift up our burden and energize the connection that we are trying to build with others. Without the source of our Lord, our connection cannot hold up and would be interrupted frequently.

My dear brothers and sisters, do you have a connection with our Lord? Is this connection always “on” without noises or echo?  It is my prayer that we will maintain a consistent connection with Him daily and receive His manna from heaven to power up our connection with others without interruption. Because “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights” (James 1:17a)