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The question lingers...

There were so many things I wanted to write about for the past few weeks. but I was lazy, and didn't want to seem inconsistent, so I avoided posting up a 'reply post' regarding my last post... I gave myself a hard homework, and ended it with this major, oftentimes unfathomable question: ''Why did God create people whom he knew were 'destined to perish'?


A particular key event led me to seriously consider this question. Though it had passed my mind before, but there's a distinctive different in 'just thinking about it' and actually sitting down and looking for a satisfactory answer. 
I don't think the answer I got is quite satisfactory yet, but I believe it has bulldozed a huge chunk of doubt in me, and has affirmed my faith in the most part.


1) When I became more interested and concerned in humanitarian affairs, I also started to face a lot of hard questions. Reason being that humanitarian affairs had to do with humanity, and humanity-whether we like to admit it or not- is constantly facing a harsh and cruel reality. Take poverty for example, half of the world's population live in poverty - and that is less than $2.50 per day. Though some people, through unwise decisions and holes they dig themselves into, become poor and are unable to relief themselves out of a vicious financial downfall. But most of the those who fall under the poverty line are not poor by choice, but poor by default. In sub-Saharan Africa, Middle-East, parts of Asia and even Europe - people find themselves in financial ruins because of debt handed over to them by their parents, grandparents, community, or their government. As global citizens, teachers, students, economists, leaders, the appropriate questions would seemingly be: ''What can we do to resolve world poverty?'' or ''What are the steps we can take in order to eliminate extreme poverty from the face of this world?'' The Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations, while hopeful, still has a long way to go before we can witness the extinction of extreme poverty in this generation. And as Christ followers, the appropriate question we can raise before the God of all creation would then be: ''Why, being as Sovereign as You are, can you allow this to happen?'' 


The easy way out would be to throw our hands up in the air and say, 'Well, sometimes God just does inexplicable things.'' or ''He has His will with the way things are.'' or  ''If we have an answer for everything God does, then what makes him God?'' But up until recently, I think I was lazy and maybe afraid to challenge God, to ask Him hard question, and to dig fervently for a solid answer. Sometimes I feel like I'm just scratching the surface with my faith, and when nothing resounds from the other side I simply shrug my shoulder and move on to easier questions. 


These past few months, I've been attending a Bible Study with my Pastor, and whether he did this intentionally or not, he shook us with such intensity, that we could not help but awake from our 'lazy faith', and looked intently for answers to questions on suffering, evil, and God's sovereignty amidst all of this. 


And what I have learned is this:


A. We have to first grasp who God is, and what His Purpose is for creation. God reigns over all, and He is complete and perfect in Himself. He does not lack in anything, and did not require anything more. He chose to create the world and us in it, in order to demonstrate His Glory, and for us to worship Him. 


B. We have to recognize who we are, in comparison to the God of the universe. He did not create us because He needed us, or because he was lonely. But oftentimes, as it is with human nature, we tend to regard ourselves higher than we should. We deserve to live, we deserve to have this car, this house, this degree, this family, this health... the list goes on. And when things go wrong, when we lack in the things we think we deserve to obtain, we immediately turn to either the person next to us or society as a whole or God of the universe and demand to know why.. God has a purpose for us, and maybe he took things from us in order for us to play an unique role in his plan. We look at humanity sometimes as if it's invincible, and something great - but by doing so we fail to recognize that God is greater than us. When we use our perspective and shake our fists at God demanding to know why He allows bad things to happen to good people, it's a perfect depiction of Roman 9: 19-23:


19 You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” 20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? 22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— 


It's so humbling and so hard to accept at first, but that's why whenever I have trouble swallowing this fact, I need to return to point A and reflect on who God is.


C. We must have faith and know that God has his perfect plan for us, as it says in Romans 8:28:
28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, [1] for those who are called according to his purpose.


I don't think I am through with asking God 'why?', but I'm pretty sure that I'm at peace with God being sovereign over all..


This has been a long post and it is in dire need of thorough editing. but I'll leave it raw and maybe come back to it with PART II.


God is good! 

sky is clearing up....!

For the past few months I have been struggling with a lot of questions I thought to be hard, and valid ones to ask. Pre-destination... God's elect... What is Free Will.. or if God was all loving, why does he allow people to be born into war, drought, hunger, disease-stricken land, or what I thought to be hardest one of them all - why did God create people whom he knew were 'destined to perish'?

Just now, I came back from a Bible Study with my senior Pastor, and the sky seems to be finally clearing..

Next post will be a detailed reflection!

Good night, and I will sleep peacefully tonight :)

Psalm 28

''The Lord is my strength and my shield;

my heart trusts in him, and I am helped.

My heart trusts in him, and I am

helped.

My heart leaps for joy

and I will give thanks to him in song.

THe Lord is the strength of his people,

a fortress of salvation for his anointed one.

Save your people and bless our inheritance;

be their shepherd and carry them forever.

This last verse of Psalm 28 has always been one of my favorites, and just so comforting.

thoughts on re-reading book

''Another committee, led by Adan Hussein, set up an orphanage in a bombed-out library in the centre of town. Adan's committee went around to the feeding centres in the city gathering up orphaned children who had little chance of survival without adult help. I asked Adan to go to Hawina to get Ali and other orphans. Unlike us, Adan had no guards. Many committee members were shot, beaten or robbed by gangs and militias. Still, Adan's group collected as many orphans as it could. By the end of October, his group was caring for over 350 children. I asked Adan why he did what he did. After a long pause, he answered, ''They are the seeds for tomorrow's Somalia. Tomorrow's Somalia will be better - it must be. We want them to care for each other, so we must care for them today.''

(p. 83)

An Imperfect Offering is one of the best books I've read so far, and I'm now currently re-reading this humanitarian masterpiece, and still the stories recorded in this book amazes me. So much can be said about the war devastation that is happening all over the world, the suffering of the people who are trapped in continuous hunger, unceasing warfare and the lack of respect for human life through horrendous acts like rape, and genocide -- but amidst places and situations like these, goodness, courage and hope still somehow prevails.

The excerpt above is one of my favorite and what I find to be one of the most heartbreaking passages. There are those whose life objective is to destroy and eliminate the lives of others, so that they themselves can have a better life. A better government, higher profit, bigger land, wider borders. But then there are those whose goal is to save the lives of others so that they can have the same things. Why is it that some have the hearts to save and repair and others are focused on the inhumane immediacy of killing - when both parties have seemingly the same future in mind? A better country cannot be based on bloodshed; unfortunately, those in power and with authority seems to believe that the only way to assert their authority and secure their profitable income is to push others down. A scary but true evidence of this is recorded in the same book, when the author is describing the food distribution in war-torn Somalia in 1992:

''The Red Cross and CARE were paying $10,000 a day to warlords for airport landing rights in Baidoa. Some food was being diverted to clans as a protection payment, and about another 20 percent was being stolen from warehouses or looted on the roads to the feeding centres.'' (p. 83)

This happened more than ten years ago, and is still happening now.

Why and how are good questions to ask, but importantly, WHAT is being done to change, and to raise awareness about people who are trapped in these unjustly governed nations?

Aid that saves

Gift that saves

The Peace Unknown

There is chaos in the mall

People shoving past each other

Sales, line-ups, and busy mothers

There is chaos on the street

Time is rushing footsteps

Morning, afternoon coffee and deadlines to be met

There is chaos in the room

Photographs, painting, calendar on the wall

People smiling, music blasting, the voice of Diana Krall

There is chaos in the frontline

Bullets colliding, hearts are failing and

You’re thinking—what a God-forsaken land

There is chaos on the street

Fathers sobbing, their children bleeding

For what, for whom are we bleeding?

There is no chaos in this room

A child is struggling, or is he breathing?

A heartbeat, then silence, and leaves us to ponder:

Living, what a chaotic sight; and death, a wonder.

sleep deprivation

again - my goal to sleep before 11pm has failed again!

couple of things keeping me up a.k.a habits i may need to cut back 1 hr prior to sleeping:

1) abs workout - energizing myself before sleeping is obviously a dumb idea..

2) scrabble game i got on my phone - mental workout before sleeping is obviously an even dumber idea..

3) listing things to do in my head for tomorrow - pls refer back to dumb thing #2

4) trying to blog this is only delaying my precious sleeping time

and it's thursday tomorrow?

is somebody speeding up the time? cause i sure can't keep track!

good night fellow bloggers.