Last Wednesday morning, I rushed to a local hospital to see a brother in the Lord who is in a critical condition. At the lobby, I ran into his son and chat with him a little bit. His son told me that he just talked to his father and his father is very peaceful. As I was not sure whether his father is still ok or not, I went up to see his father. Entered the patient room, there was no one around, I called the brother’s name several times and he didn’t respond. So, I went out to check around.  An attending nurse in the next door confirmed that my friend passed away about 3 hours ago. I realize that I was too late!

A few weeks ago, my daughter was in her Fall break and she went down to NYC with her friends. At the end of day, she was trying to get back from NYC by train and she wanted me to pick her up at the local train station. No sooner had her scheduled time passed, she called me and said that she just missed the train, even though she ran all the way to the platform. It was too late! She ended up has to wait for another hour in the Grand Central station in order to catch the next train. And, I have to wait another hour too 🙂

In our life journey, situation like this – It was too late – may not be foreign to many of us. However, there is always a consequence accompanied with it when we are late for something. In the case of my visitation to the brother in the hospital, my lateness makes me miss the opportunity to see him the very last time. In my daughter’s case, her lateness makes her and I wasted another hour of waiting. This lets me think of a story that I read long time ago. The story is like this:

Some time ago, there is a couple. Both of the husband and wife are scientists. The wife, however, has a habit of lateness.

They are developing a medicine that could revive a person from coma ‘within an hour’. As the medicine is near the stage of testing, they realize that they need to have a guinea pig to test it out. The wife agrees to become the one. Thus, the husband gave his wife a drug that would put her into coma. After his wife went into coma, the husband immediately injects the new medicine into his wife and waits. As an hour has passed, his wife is still sleeping. Two hours later, his wife is still not waking up. He starts to panic and thinks that their medicine is NOT effective and his wife would never be able to come back. At this time, he is completely disheartened.  He took a large amount of sleeping pills and committed suicide himself.  Another hour later, his wife finally woke up and saw her husband lie down there without any breath.

The story illustrates the consequence of “lateness” could mean a “life and death” situation.  In this world, God gave each one of us an opportunity to live and we are responsible for our acts. Therefore, an important question that we have to ask ourselves is “Am I late for the kingdom of God?” This is critical because it is about whether we can receive God’s promise or not. In the case of my visitation to the hospital, I was disappointed for my lateness; however, I am confident that I can see the brother again in the future because he is in Christ and is NOT late for the kingdom of God.

My dear friends, the time has come, as the Lord Jesus indicated. He said, “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news! 日期滿了 ，神的國近 了 。你們當悔改 ，信福音 ！(Mark 1:15)” Apostle Paul in Athens also said, “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent世人蒙昧無 知的時候 ，神並不監察 ，如今卻吩咐各處的人都要悔改 。(Acts 17:30)” Therefore, let us be aware of the time has come and we don’t want to be late for the kingdom of God since the timing is a matter of “life and death”.

Last week, I had an opportunity to stop over a local Department of Motor Vehicle (DMV) to renew my old driver license. Based on my previous experience, I would anticipate a crowd of people waiting for service. In fact, this was the case in that day. For the sake of alleviating the problem of waiting, the DMV provides a somewhat effective solution. You need to find a ticket machine first and then get a ticket number, based on the category of service that you need – they could be in the category of either getting a new driver license, or applying learning permits, or returning automobile license plates, etc. After that, you sit down and wait for your number to be called.

I found it is quite interesting to observe this rather noisy environment. Even though it is based on the “first come first serve” principle and there are various service windows, the “line of waiting” is still long. Everyone watched eagerly and closely for his / her ticket number to be called in order to stop by the correct service window. After waiting for a while, suddenly, a person who sat next to me stood up and protested to one of the service windows that his number was skipped. The lady from the service window responded, “It is not possible for the calling system to miss a ticket number”. After digging, they find out that the calling system was manually overwritten by one of the service windows incidentally – a lady who drew up two tickets at the same time but used one ticket number, which is later than the protested person, to be served.

For the person who was skipped unintentionally by the service window, I could see his puzzled face. As I may not be able to read his mind but I was sure: he might have to wait there and never been called if he did not pay attention to his ticket. This interesting experience of “getting a ticket and waiting in line” let me think of two possible scenarios in our journey of faith.

The first one is “Have we told our God to take a ticket and “get in line” waiting for our call?” This may seem to be wild initially and you may say, “What are you talking about, how can God take a ticket from me?” Let me give you my personal experience. I asked my self a question: “Have I ever forgotten my quiet time with God or missed my daily Bible reading because of my busy schedule and then ‘skipped it’ conveniently?” The answer is “yes”.  In these cases, it is like that I told God to wait for me but forgot to keep my promise.  As a result, God could wait there indefinitely because I skipped Him.

Corrie Ten Boom once said, “Don’t pray when you feel like it. Have an appointment with the Lord and keep it. A man is powerful on his knees.” The attitude of keeping an appointment with God faithfully applies not only to prayers but also to every aspect of cultivating our relationship with Him. We need to set our priority right and we CANNOT treat God like the genie in the Aladdin lamp – to show up whenever I want him to and to disappear whenever I don’t need him. In this world, there are always so many things set to occupy our focus and consume our time. Obliviously, we are falling into the evil one’s scheme. The result is he pulls us away from God. Someone used to say, “BUSY is Being Under Satan’s Yoke”. It seems to bear some truth in it. 🙂

In the first scenario, we are assuming that God is the person who is asking for service and we are the service window. Now let’s switch the roles – we are the person who is asking for service from God (i.e. as the service window).  This becomes our second scenario. The situation is like this: “When you are asking help from God or interceding for others through your prayers, God told you to “get a ticket and wait”; worse yet, He forgot your prayer and let you hang there indefinitely, what is your reaction?” I bet you will start to grumble that He is not a loving god and He is not listening to your prayers.

The two scenarios I just illustrated give us two perspectives in our journey of faith. The truth is our God listens to and answer our prayers, according to His love and sovereignty of course. He is NEVER like the Baal god that prophet Elijah was taunting – who is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling, or sleeping and must be awakened (1 Kings 18:27). As the psalmist said, He will not let your foot slip — He who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. 他 必 不 叫 你 的 腳 搖 動 ； 保 護 你 的 必 不 打 盹 ！保 護 以 色 列 的 ， 也 不 打 盹 也 不 睡 覺 。 (Psalm 121:3-4)” Therefore, we don’t need to worry about the second scenario because He does care about us and love us dearly. All I ask is let us be sincere and examine ourselves daily, “Do I want God to get in line and wait, or I want to keep my appointment with Him?”

After a series of rainy and cloudy days, finally, there was a break yesterday – it was a beautiful and sunny day.  Accompanied by several families, we took the opportunity to visit the Minnewaska State Park in order to see the famous Fall foliage. Apparently, this is on everyone’s mind too. We ran into a huge traffic jam trying to pass through the town of New Paltz area. Subsequently, we couldn’t even enter the park as all the parking lots were full when we arrived. We had to wait outside and circle around to search for any available parking spots. Finally, our friend called and informed us to enter a packed parking lot with few spots just became available. It was a grand occasion that we have ever had.

The view of the foliage and scenery in the park is spectacular. We enjoyed a lot while kids were busying in chasing and jumping. Even with the temperature was a little bit on the chilly side, everyone’s spirit was high. Seeing many people in the park hiking, BBQ-ing, and sightseeing, I was thankful that I could enjoy the beautiful scenery with them.

Some of you may have the experience in visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. It is a long graphite wall engraved with names who had scarified their lives for this country during Vietnam War period. The simplicity and elegance of the wall touched many people’s heart. As a result, it raised interest from the public to find out who is the designer of this memorial. The designer, Maya Lin, soon became a famous person all over the country. You may ask, “Why to learn who is the designer of this memorial has anything to do with the foliage in the park?”  Let me give you two personal viewpoints.

The first viewpoint is we should be grateful that we were created with an inquisitive mind – we like to search for answer when a question comes to our mind. The second point is more intriguing to me if not to you, “Why we are so eager to learn the designer of something is famous in this world but are reluctant to learn who is the designer and creator of this universe?” My possible answer is the god of this age has blinded the minds of people (2 Corinthians 4:4) – a scheme that the evil one has exercised successfully in the past to block our inquisitive mind. This may explain why we are more eager to learn famous person in this world than to learn the designer of this universe.

When we recognize that the beautiful scenery is a God’s handiwork and He gave us the opportunity to get pleasure from it, we then could learn how important He is in our life and His great love to us. This is an important first step for us to know our designer and creator. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, let’s be thankful for everything that God has provided for us. The more we know Him the better we can follow His will truthfully. May you have a great fellowship with Him!

A few years ago, my family had a chance to visit the Grand Canyon in Arizona. It was in wintertime and was snowing. As a result, several flights were cancelled and we were trapped in the airport for several hours due to the snowstorm. Finally, we were able to fly-out after the delay. It was not until early morning 3 AM, the next day, we arrived at our hotel around the Canyon area. With a clear weather that morning, we were hoping to see great scenery of the Canyon.

When we went up there, we were surprised to see the whole Grand Canyon area was covered with snow. The snow adds difficulties to our travel and hinders our sightseeing – some of the Canyon areas were closed and we had to return early because of the weather. We decided to try our luck the next day. This time, it was not snowing and we had a better chance to see the Canyon. Looking at the continuous mountains and rocks carved by the Colorado river, my wife and I said, “Wow!” at the same time — we finally saw the astounding layer upon layer landscape of the Grand Canyon. I can only say it is an amazing and incredible handwork from God. Facing the steep-sided canyon, it lets me think of the hymnal “Rock of ages” – “萬古磐石為我開， 容我藏身在主懷… Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee…”

My dear friends, in your journey of life, what mountains do you face? Sometimes, it could be your health, or your work, or your family or your pursuits. What can you do when you face with these difficulties? A brother in the Lord whom I have known was diagnosed to have a cancer disease recently. His family suddenly fell into a turmoil state – family income severely reduced and normal life was interrupted. It is like a mountain of difficulty suddenly added on top of them. In facing with this life storm, the brother was not discouraged. He continues to entrust himself and his family to the Lord – witnessing his belief on internet social media and to his church families constantly.

As apostle Peter indicated, we should not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on us to test us (1 Peter 4:12). What we can do is to depend upon God’s grace, since we believe that He is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble (Psalm 46:1). Let’s imagine that even the rock of ages in the Grand Canyon can be spliced by God, how can we not trust Him to protect us and to lead our life? Therefore, my friends, I encourage you to put your hope and the mountains that you are facing now to this “True” Rock of Ages – Jesus Christ, He will give you a different viewpoint of your life that you have never dreamed of.