Since the beginning of this year, life has been an upward slope for me. Not in the good sense though. I have been climbing a mountain just to survive. It only struck me last Sunday that I was breaking down. Really breaking down. My husband, seeing that I kept rushing through everything in a very tight schedule, ran even faster, and I ran to keep pace with him. In short, both of us shortchanged ourselves in our race through life and forgot to live our lives. It is indeed a coincidence planned by God to reconfirm this when we both read Michael and Anna’s blog the very next day on their newly-posted article.
Indeed, we must learn to live. For the most part of our lives, we work just to survive. On good times, we have a career and we work as hard as we can to give a good life to those we love. This is totally in line with what the bible teaches as well, but it is more than that. When we do well, we must learn to be generous instead of simply spending lavishly on ourselves and satisfying our pleasures. First of all, we must remember God and show that we truly love him wholeheartedly with our giving of tithes and offerings. Then come providing financially to our immediate family members and their needs. Not to mention, maintaining a house, the car, and what other fixed monthly financial commitments. In addition, as Christians, we are to look beyond that. When we are blessed, we must be a blessing to others as well. We reward our elderly parents too, in addition to a monthly fixed payment, perhaps even some extras so they are happy and share in our joy. In the book of Timothy, we are also to extend our arms to relatives who are in need. And throughout the bible, we are told to always look out and provide for the poor when we encounter one. Our Heavenly Father blesses us to be a blessing to others. We are not the end product – we are to share His love for mankind by extending out to others whatever monetary or time we have. In so doing, we may touch them with the touch from God.
Love for God and our neighbours, the first two commands of the bible, include extending our time to them. Whether it is to reach out to them and preach the gospel to God, or in very practical ways, we are to aim to be like Christ and help those in need. Sometimes, certain small acts may seem irrelevant, but they are not to God. Remember how Christ extended Himself to the children as well when the disciples thought it was a waste of their Master’s time? Therefore, always remember that your smile and your small little concern to even stall owners when you purchase food from them can bring light to this dark world. When we do these, showing our love, we thereby own the first fruit of the Spirit, namely love.
However, life is not easy. It is not a bed of roses. For some, the test comes when they are very blessed and they know they are to share, and be more generous, and they fail. For others, they are even struggling to pay for their monthly bills and keep up with providing for their family members, and perhaps their test is how to manage the little they have and grow on it. For others like myself, our incomes are not fixed and since we like control over life, when times are good we forget to stop and rest. When times are bad, we work even harder to maintain our life of a certain standard we feel we should have.
That is why in the last commandment of the bible, namely covetousness, and the last fruit of the Spirit, self-control, is the part that when put together, prove that all of us fail. Some are very good with work, but fail in the home front (I mean comparatively). Others fail in work and are mediocre workers, but great at home. God bless the ones that are good with none. But what I am trying to point out is that life is a constant struggle to balance out our lives. There are always areas to work on. We are not on a long, straight road. Life is just like driving on the road. You have long roads but they are never straight all the way (life is never smooth sailing), you have short roads with endless traffic lights (problems along the way that prevents or slows us down from fulfilling our dreams) and you encounter all the weird drivers plus your own imperfections on the road that can lead to major or minor accidents (we are not perfect and things will happen). As drivers, and in keeping up with life, at times we must speed a little bit because of deadlines at work and urgent family needs, but we also learn to drive slower in times when we are not in a hurry and enjoy the scenery (eg. Laughter of our loved ones, spending time on a hobby you love but usually do not have the time to spare).
In conclusion, I find one of Michael’s paragraph very thought-provoking and true but extremely hard to apply. Therefore I find it apt to end this letter with it --
“But the beauty of total surrender is not that God requires us to cease all desires for material things and thereby becoming owner of nothing; it merely requires us to stop wanting a stake in the outcome of life’s events. It merely requires us to stop wanting to control how things turn out. It merely requires us to trust and hope that all things, however the outcome, is in good hands and God will one day give an account of them.”
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