————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Working for 4 days later, I feel a little bit relief on Friday because I know weekend is coming. Two of my colleagues happened to stop by my office. One of them said, “Hey, it is Friday…Relax…. It is getting better every minute.”  “Well, not so quick, it is closer to Monday every minute, actually.” The other colleague responded immediately.

This simple conversation gives me some insights of a person’s view. In fact, we can use a simple illustration like this: when there is a half-filled cup, do you consider it as “half full” or as “half empty”? How you consider the cup would reveal your personality in some sort. You will find that it is very common to meet persons with these two types of personality from wherever you go. As we know, a person with half-empty view tends to worry more but more careful than the half-full one. Under all circumstances, this may not be bad actually, since you need to have both kinds of person in order to have a balance view.

Recent resource actions at workplace affected some of the families in the area. How you view this kind of activity, however, also reveals your personality – from a “half-full” or from a “half-empty” view. I think, with our flesh eye, we would have “half-empty” view more than “half-full” view since we tend to see limitation and difficulties ahead of us. In fact, as one of my job assignments at work is doing risk and exposure assessment, my personality tends toward half-empty one too 🙂

In the Gospels, we could see a few examples from the disciples of Jesus. One of them is the response from Philip to Jesus in the miracle of “Jesus feeds the five thousand”. He said, “It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite! 腓 力 回 答 說 ： 就 是 二 十 兩 銀 子 的 餅 ， 叫 他 們 各 人 吃 一 點 也 是 不 夠 的(John 6:7b)”. The other one is in the miracle of “Jesus calms the storm”. You could see the panic mode from the disciples on the boat. The disciples woke Jesus and said to Him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?(Mark 4:38b)”  Then our Lord’s response to them was:

“Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith? 耶 穌 對 他 們 說 ： 為 甚 麼 膽 怯 ？ 你 們 還 沒 有 信 心 麼 ？(Mark 4:40)”

My dear brothers and sisters, do we have faith in our Lord that we could see things with our spiritual eye instead of our flesh eye? The spiritual view would let us see “He is omnipotent” and any difficulties may be just opportunities for us to learn and to be trained. I understand that  this is not easy initially. However, if we take heart and have faith in Him, then we will see things differently, I believe.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————-

A mother has a son called Kevin. During Kevin’s college years, he met a girl called Susie and started to move in with her. As a Christian, the mother does not in favor of her son’s behavior. Her son, however, does not feel there is anything wrong – he explains to his mother, “I didn’t sleep with Susie. We are sleeping on different beds while sharing the same apartment”

On one of the college trips, the mother went to visit her son. In order to show her hospitality, Susie invited Kevin’s mother for a dinner. Susie prepared the dinner using her family silverware on the night of gathering. Kevin then showed his mother around the apartment afterwards. Later in the night, after Kevin’s mother left, Susie found that one of her favorite silver forks was missing. She was upset and complained to Kevin about the situation. Kevin agreed to write an email to his mom asking if she took the fork inadvertently.

 In the email, Kevin wrote, “Mom, I may be right or I may be wrong to ask you this. The fact is that Susie couldn’t find her silver fork after you left – the fork was there at the dinner time but vanished afterwards.” A week later, Kevin received a mail response from his mother saying, “I may be right or I may be wrong to say that you are sleeping with Susie. The fact is that I put her fork in her bed before I left and she has never found it since.”

This was an illustration story from a radio broadcast that I remembered, partially, according to my aged memory. It is very enlightening and I think it is worthwhile to share with you. Especially for those of us who are having kids in college, we may be able to share the same worry and concern as the mother did under today’s crooked environment.

One thing for sure, the mother’s wisdom is certainly deserved to be applauded. She has the wisdom to enlighten her son without telling him directly. We should ask our Lord for this kind of wisdom. Another thing is it serves as a very good reminder to me – there is nothing can be hidden without being known. My every little secret will be made known by God later. In fact, from our Lord’s teaching to His disciples about Pharisees’ yeast, which is hypocrisy, He said, “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. 掩蓋的事、沒有不露出來的．隱藏的事、沒有不被人知道的。(Luke 12:2)” And the author of the book of Ecclesiastes also indicated to us:

“For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil. 因為人所作的事、連一切隱藏的事、無論是善是惡、　神都必審問。Ecclesiastes 12:14”

My dear brothers and sisters, I think you would agree with me that no one is infallible except God. In addition, He knows our every deed – there is nothing can be concealed from Him. Can we follow the guidance and control of His Holy Spirit in our daily life? Let us be reminded that we are His children and He knows what is the best for us.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Nowadays, everything has to be fast. Faster computers, internet, shopping, service, etc. No wonder my kids always ask, “Are we there yet?” whenever we are going out. To achieve not only the “fast speed” data processing but also high availability and high security, high-end servers have its advantages over other computers. One of its advantages is to employ multi-core chips with redundancy to spare dynamically.

The other day in the hallway at my work place, my colleague mentioned his recent experience in one of the customer briefings to prospect customers – he heard an Executive used a very interesting analogy to explain this concept of spare processors feature. The Executive told the prospect customer: “It is a big preparation for a person who is undergoing a “heart transplant”.  Firstly, he will need to find a person who is willing to donate is having a good, free from defects, and right blood type of heart. Then, he needs to find skillful physicians, nurses, facilities, etc. to perform the transplant.  The process of the transplant is laborious and there is NO guarantee of success in the end. However, it is a different story from our computer server. As you know, the server would stop functioning if the CPU (central processing unit) fails. Therefore, the CPU of the server is like “the heart” of a human. With the capability of dynamic sparing in CPU, we have the ability to do “heart transplant on the fly” and it is clean, safe, transparent and always successful.”

When we look back to the time we believe, there is a similarity that we can find. Apostle Paul indicated to the Ephesians that we were “….gratifying the cravings of our fleshand following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 放縱肉體的私慾 ， 隨著肉體和心中所喜好的去行，本為可怒之子，和別人一樣 (Ephesians 2:3).” Our “heart of flesh” has become “heart of stone” and couldn’t receive God’s calling due to our indulgence in worldly pleasures.  The only way to recover it is to use a drastic measure – a heart transplant. The process of transplant is like apostle Paul taught us, “For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. 因為人心裡相信 ，就可以稱義 ；口裡承認 ，就可以得救 。(Romans 10:10)”

The process of our “spiritual heart transplant” is an easy, instant on the fly and never failing. It is FREE too. As in the Old Testament, God promised Israelites through the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 36:26) to give them a new heart and a new spirit. This same promise is through our Lord Jesus Christ to us in New Testament time. By receiving Him as our personal savior, we will get a “heart transplant on the fly” which is a new, an eternal and most precious gift that we can get in the world. My dear brothers and sisters, because of Him, we can have a heart to listen to His calling, to know Him and to follow Him. May we remember the precious gift from our Lord.

Last Wednesday, I started to feel my nose was blowing out “hot” air when I was at work. My immediate reaction was “uh oh” – hope this is just a sign of tiredness and nothing more. Subsequent days, however, my physical condition continued to deteriorate and finally at last weekend, sinus congestion and coughing symptoms all came up. I knew it is definitely a “cold” that I contracted it during the week.

Every weekday morning, I have to drop off my kids to their school. Early in the morning when we got up, I always have a habit to remind them to put on more clothes because there is a big difference between their beds and living room, in terms of temperature. However, their response always likes that “yah, yah, yah….” attitude. Therefore, I have to raise my voice one more time in front of them and then they may yield to my demanded tone. I told them that it is for your own good (ha, ha, ha. See, I am like a nagging parent). Sometimes I even added one caution to them after my demand, “You will learn it when you become a parent!” Isn’t this ironic? We used to be in their shoes with the “stiff neck” attitude toward our parents too. Do we follow our parents? Probably not every time, right?

When we studied the book of Exodus in the Old Testament, we were constantly reminded by Moses that Israelites are stiff neck people and God wanted them to learn lessons in order to recognize that “He is the LORD”. In the New Testament, the author of the book of James reminded us that we should not merely listen to the word, and so deceive ourselves. He used a vivid picture to describe this behavior:

Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.  因為聽道而不行道的，就像人對著鏡子看自己本來的面目‧看見，走後，隨即忘了他的相貌如何‧(James 1:23-24)

Spiritual coldness is far more severe than physical coldness, my dear brothers and sisters.  “Are you cold?” which may mean a common greeting of your physical condition from someone who you are familiar with; it could also mean a serious question asked by our Lord.  We can’t let our spiritual altar grow cold because it is exactly the evil one wants – he uses every possible means to discourage us and to tempt us in order to put out our spiritual fire. Let’s watch over one another just like apostle Paul reminded us:

Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. 各 人 不 要 單 顧 自 己 的 事 ， 也 要 顧 別 人 的 事 。(Philippians 2:4)