Dear Cell, last Friday we put all cell questions aside and turned the focus on ourselves. We shared about how busy we were in our family and our work. For most of us, our work has kept us busy – for some, we were nearly buried in our work. Next came our family. Almost all of us are married with children and children can be more than a handful. Our children keep us busy round the clock both mentally and physically.
Taking care of our loved ones can consume us in more ways than one. When we are not with them, we worry about their well-being. When we are with them, we spent every conscious moments tending to their need. We worry about their past – thinking how that fall, that discipline, that experience would affect them when they grow up. We also worry about their future – wishing that they would grow up well and healthy, hoping that they can cope with their studies and praying that we do not inadvertently neglect them due to the busyness of our work.
Then, some worries are metaphysical. We worry about their spiritual growth. We are concerned about their identity as a Christian in a world where there are more questions to be asked than answered. We fret over how we can protect and nurture them and ultimately make them feel proud of us as their tireless, devoted and loving parents; who are only human beings making the same mistakes that our parents once made when they were taking care of us. In the end, we want the best for our children but at times, feeling guilty when we cannot consistently be the best for them.
So, as a cell group, we are busy living for others. For our company, we are responsible employees, scuttling around beating that deadline, hanging out late in the office finishing off that pile of work, and hoping that we do not make irredeemable corporate mistakes that can get us fired. And for our children, we are the ever-present help in times of need, more like a 7-11 for them “always close but never closed” and a refuge and a fortress to be the first to bear the series of storms of life that come their way. In fact, we are so busy at times living for others that we forget to live for ourselves. This is the crux of my message. This is the reason for my writing to you. Have you forgotten to live for yourself?
No, I am not talking about giving yourself a break, going for a vacation, rest and relax in some remote resort taking in the sun, sand and sea. This is secondary to my message. Recently I read a book, Success Built to Last by Jerry Porras, Steward Emery and Mark Thompson. The whole book can be summed up as a book about finding personal meaning. The authors define success as a life and work that brings personal fulfillment and last relationships and makes a difference in the world in which we live. Some of the pertinent questions raised by them are: who am I? What do I stand for? What is my purpose? How do I maintain my sense of self in this chaotic, unpredictable world? How do I infuse meaning into my life and work? How do I remain renewed, engaged and stimulated? It is my personal conviction that until we find personal meaning in our lives, and not just adopting meaning from others or paying lip service to it, we will never experience meaningful engagement in the things that we do now and in the future. Even the mundane activities we do for our work and family can be unknowingly subsumed into our meaningful framework if we first have one to start with.
Finding personal meaning in our lives is like riding a bike. Once we are on the bike and cycling, we will never lose our balance and fall. But once we stop cycling, the balance becomes a personal struggle and our fall is inevitable. The act of cycling is the momentum of meaning that keeps all things in our lives moving in a forward direction. Once we lose sight of our personal meaning, or dilute it with distractions and stresses of life, the balancing act of our work, family and personal life become insuperable, insurmountable and very exhausting. The fall is just a matter of time, and for some, the fall is permanent.
So, who are you? And what do you stand for? In the book, the authors encourage us to be clock builders. When I was on London in the mid-1990s, I lost my watch and had to rely on passerby to tell time. But, while most Brits were polite and always greeted you with endearing terms like “hey love” or “darling”, some of them, only the minority, can be quite rude and wholly oblivious to your presence; especially if you were a bespectacled Chinese with messy hair and a tongue that pronounced the number 12 as “chop”. So, I sometimes had to go without knowing the time for a while until one of the nice British ladies pointed me to Big Ben, the humongous tower clock hanging high up there for all to see at the heart of London city. From then on, I knew I would not be chronologically challenged anymore. I can always tell time whenever, wherever I want because I have Big Ben.
Beloved, are you a Big Ben to your children, spouse and friends? Can they rely on you for help and life-direction when they are lost, derailed or depressed? Are you a source of meaning, inspiration and hope for them when they come calling?
God has called us to be the shining light of the world, the preserving salt of lives we meet or married. Our personal meaning as Christian comes from this short scripture, “He that believes on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living waters.” (1 John 5:5) Imagine how refreshing that is! Most of our lives are as dry as a poached desert. Our thirst for satisfaction always remains unsatisfied. We jump from one sensation to another, seeking one material goal after another, and praying for what we want but never really enjoying what we already have.
We have altogether confused what is urgent with what is important, what is momentarily satisfying with what is eternally meaningful, and what is material success with what is personal significance. We do not experience the refreshing, empowering and renewing flow of God’s spirit like living waters in our belly because we have lost, put aside or ignored the true meaning of life and abandoned our calling. Instead of being clock builders, we hide our watches on our wrists, covering it up with our long sleeves, and feeling indispensable and self-important doing so. We have kept our light under our bed and the salt in the altar bottle, capped up tightly and unreachable to many. In other words, we are busy making disciples but have failed to become one in the process. We therefore live our Christian lives playing “Martha” to Jesus in the work that we do and not “Mary” to Jesus in the heart that remains true.
“Martha” Christians can be as toxic as unfeeling atheists. Recently I read about one devoted Christian parents who gave birth to a daughter who suffered from a serious brain condition called anencephaly. This disease prevented the poor baby’s brain from developing. The child literally had no brain. The doctors gave the verdict most succinctly and medically as such, “Her condition is not compatible with life.” Needless to say, the child will never lead a normal life. She will never get to open her eyes. She couldn’t smile like normal children. And part of the deformity was her exposed tissue at the back of her skull that had to be covered and dressed regularly. You’d have thought things couldn’t get any worse than this? Well, you can banish that thought when the parents, who had been attending church faithfully before the birth of their daughter, received a call from the church one Sunday morning telling them that their daughter would no longer be welcome in the nursery. The reason the caller gave was this: the moms in church had met up and have decided that their daughter might die in their care and traumatize some volunteer workers in the nursery!
Brennan Manning once echoed these haunting words about Christians, “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christian who acknowledge Jesus with their lips then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”
Beloved, let’s not forget why we exist in the first place. Our coming into this world has to do with a much higher calling than just growing up, getting married, giving birth (for female only), getting a job, getting promoted, getting adored and admired, growing old, and dying unfulfilled, and for most of us, dying not realizing that one is unfulfilled. Let’s be authentic Christian – living with purpose and serving with gratefulness. If God is not in the center of your life, kick yourself out of the center. A bumper sticker shares the same sentiment, “If God is your co-pilot…switch seats now!” In the end, it doesn’t take much to be an authentic Christian. It starts with your heart. It starts with reminding yourself why you are here, what do you stand for, and what legacy you want to leave behind when you leave. The Bible is replete with answers to all these questions and he or she who takes the time to find them, finds what I call the “Key to a Life flowing with Rivers of Living Waters.”
One sure way of renewing our faith and setting our course to being an authentic Christian is to bear in our heart the 6 empowering reasons why an octogenarian, John Stott, became and remains, till this day, a Christian worth his salt and light.
The first reason is that of God’s love that is spelt out in Luke 19:10, “For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.” It is God’s initiative and not ours. In our loneliness, we can always rest in the safety of this thought: our divine lover never forgot us and never will.
The second reason is: Jesus said; Jesus did. In other words, Jesus talked the talk and walked the walk. He fulfilled the scriptures (Luke 4:18-19). He initiated the intimacy with us by establishing His intimacy with God. He spoke and lived his life with authority and made the way for us to exercise the same authority over life, over death and over all dominion. In our trials and afflictions, we can always be assured that life has already been overcome and victory attained.
The third reason is the cross of Christ. My beloved, this love is surely authentic. To lay down one’s life for another is the pinnacle of unselfish love. Jesus did it. Jesus endured it. Jesus died for us. The amazing thing about this is this: Jesus would gladly give His life to us again if it were ever in God’s plan of redemption. But we all know that one sacrifice is sufficient. One life for all is the ultimate plan. In all our pain, we can always find the strength and courage to endure because we are not alone in our suffering and we know whatever endurance will bear much fruit in this life and the life thereafter.
The fourth reason is how undeserving we are to be called God’s very own. This understanding takes deep contemplation and humility. The proud will never need God because they have nothing in them that requires any pardon. So they think.
Let’s be honest with ourselves. We are far from perfect. And I am not even talking about the silly mistakes we make, our forgetfulness, our inadvertent Freudian slip of the tongue. If we go deeper, look inside our locked mental closet and peer into our soulish desires and designs, we will find an ugliness lurking, and so deeply embedded, that we are totally powerless and helpless to extricate. With humility, we will inevitably come to a point to admit that we indeed need a savior. So, in our failings and disappointments, we can always rely on an ever-present savior who understands how we have failed and how we can be redeemed and reconciled to Him one day.
Let’s stop here for a while and read this quote from Bishop Richard Holloway that put it so eloquently and poetically, “This is my dilemma…I am dust and ashes, frail and wayward, a set of predetermined behavioral responses…riddled with fears, beset with needs…the quintessence of dust and unto dust I shall return…But there is something else in me…Dust I may be, but troubled dust, dust with dreams, dust that has strange premonition of transfiguration, of a glory in store, a destiny prepared, an inheritance that will one day be my own…So my life is stretched out in a painful dialectic between ashes and glory, between weakness and transfiguration. I am a riddle to myself, an exasperation enigma…this strange duality of dust and glory.”
The fifth reason is freedom in Christ. We are free to live our lives victoriously, without shame, without regrets because Jesus has redeemed it all. John Stott says it best, “Firstly, I have been saved (or freed) in the past from the penalty of sin by a crucified Savior. Secondly, I am being saved (or freed) in the present from the power of sin by a living Savior. Thirdly, I shall be saved (or freed) in the future from the presence of sin by a coming Savior.” In our doubts, we can always find in our heart the assurance that our past, present and future have already been secured and we can live our lives facing today with the same confidence and hope we will have when we see Jesus again.
And lastly, Jesus fulfilled all our earthly aspirations. In Christ, all the dots in our lives are connected. Our meaning is made clear. Our lives renewed and refreshed. In the words of Michelangelo, “When I am yours, then at last I am completely myself.” Beloved, to find yourself, you have to be in God. And to be in God is where your life will ultimately flourish with meaning and purpose. In conclusion, let me recite a contemporary spin on Mark 8:35, “If you insist on holding on to yourself and living for yourself and refusing to let yourself go, you will lose yourself. But if you are prepared to lose yourself, to give yourself away in love for God and your fellow human beings, then in that moment of complete abandon, when you think you have lost everything, the miracle takes place and you find yourself.”
Dear cell, the months ahead will be trying for some. Our work, our family are enough to keep us really busy. We might see less of some of you. But let our hearts be joined together. Let’s keep coming together for a good cause. And a good cause is self-sustaining, enduring and always hoping. We will brave through the coming months always remembering what we had shared together as a cell group over the years and grow even stronger in the spirit and in love when we do meet again in the near future. May God show you what is the true meaning of success in your life and lead you out of your wilderness into his marvelous, glorious light!
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