My back!

Days could be just ordinary with repeating daily routines. This could be very boring but somehow we couldn’t search for fresh and special things all the time in our lives. However, we should enjoy ourselves in the routines and get ourselves to be content.

Yesterday was a special day to me, because I experienced something special. Early in the morning, my mother and I went to Taman Seri Juru at Juru. We were looking for a Manual Therapist Dr. Khaw to fix some of our physical problems. With ease, we were able to find his house without GPS. At the gate of his house, we saw a mother (his wife maybe) was about to bring her children to school. She didn’t ask us to get in her house, but we just walked and entered into his house steadily.

There is a bunting hanging at the front door with a scientific phrase ISAT – Impulse Subluxation Adjusting Technique. There are many diseases written on the bunting, with this technique, those diseases could be cured. There are plentiful actually, it is really impressive to me as in I never thought that our bone condition could be relevant to our health. Before this, my mother told me that this treatment doesn’t hurt people that much. I was curious of how this treatment can cure someone without making someone feeling painful and suffered. It sounds surprising to me, as I have been set in severe physical pain for many times when I was having certain treatments to fix my injuries. To me, healing can never come without pain, and I got used of it.

In the hall of his house, what I saw is a typical mess. (My house was used to be messy like that.) Since there are many children in his house and I don’t think mischievous children would be that disciplined and well-behaved, so it would be just reasonable after all. My mother eased herself into a sofa and started waiting for the doctor while I was looking around the house.

After a while, Dr. Khaw went out from the kitchen and greeted to us politely. He led us to his office and started asking about our problems. His office looks tidy which is totally a different condition compared to the hall. There are many diagrams of bone structures hanging on the hall, and a back bone model placed on his table. First of all, he explained about how bone condition could influence our health condition indirectly but significantly. He made a demonstration of how to test whether if a person has problems on his backbone. This demonstration is easy. He led me to carry out this demonstration.

I was asked to put my fists before my chest and one fist is above another. The position is like holding a long sword before my chest. I was standing with my feet parallel to my shoulders; it’s an upright standing position. I was asked to oppose the force he applies on my fish, without great bone condition, I would be able to oppose the applied force without leaning forward and getting imbalanced. Anyway, I lost my balance when I tried to oppose the force. I felt quite sad and curious why I would lean forward; he just used only one hand while I was using both of my hands to oppose the force.

He said,’ I just used one hand only, but you leaned forward, so it is not about the magnitude of the force.’ After that, he just took out a tool some sort like gun, and stick it to my neck. He triggered the tool and gave several impacts on the bone of my neck. After that, we repeated the test, but the reaction was different. Surprisingly, I was able to oppose his force despite the magnitude of the force he tried his best to apply. He said the impacts that he exerted to my neck actually rectified the position of the bones of my neck. If the positioning of the bones is improper, your body would lose balance easily. After the test, he started the treatment. Not much pain I got from the treatment, the tool gave impacts to my whole back bone. He found that the joints of my backbone aren’t in a proper position as I got banged frequently by the people when playing basketball. My joints of backbone have lost their original positioning due to the body collision with other people.

However, he helped me to make it right. Thank God that now I feel much better with my back. Sometimes I just found my back uncomfortable. Wow~ I just realized that backbone is really significant to a person.

                         

From the gulf

I had been lost in my pride, my self-centeredness, my desire and my sense of inferior for a period. Those things upset me greatly till I found myself getting more smothered and restless. It is really abysmal to stop worshipping my God every Sunday for personally excuses which are unacceptable in the Bible. It was not a punishment at all because God doesn’t need to punish me just because I don’t worship while there is still an immense number of devout believers willing to worship him with enjoyment. I gradually believe that God doesn’t need us for any reasons, but we human beings are the one who needs God desperately. It is true, because I found myself totally lost just because my connection to God got loosed little by little unwittingly and my own self started to be more consequential and dominating to me. Hence, this little sheep was brought into a labyrinth.

Thank God that I started to restore my night-time sleepiness slowly. My mind has been made up properly and I rarely keep thinking of anything at midnight. I cared for the matters I concerned in an inappropriate way that troubled me myself. Instead of being clear-minded and purposeful, I turned to be an ugly worry freak. Anyway, this wasn’t the first time I lost myself but another more abyss in my life. Thank God gratefully for the helping hand that rescued me from the hopeless gulf once again.

Clearing my doubts and getting out of the maze, once again it’s a new me. Wondering how tough my life would be in the future, I am also wondering how high my almighty God would raise me up every time I fall down embarrassedly. Staging in this familiar situation, it recalled me about a wonderful parable Jesus gave in the Bible, Chapter 15 of Luke. Jesus is a shepherd who would leave the nineth-nine sheep in the open country and endeavor to search for the lost sheep alone. Once he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing and asking his friends and neighbor to rejoice with him for he has found his sheep that was lost.

It is really a rare case ever happened in the world nowadays. Bible says there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. What is surprising and special is the emotional expression Jesus found the lost sheep. He lays the sheep on his shoulders and rejoices. It is totally making no sense actually as it must be a troublesome process to search for the lost one. After a troublesome searching, he doesn’t get mad to the sheep but he lays the sheep on his shoulders. Shoulders to mankind are considered as pride and glory. He doesn’t ask the sheep to go back with him by walking, but he lays the sheep on his shoulders despite of his personal pride. He doesn’t get pissed off for the troublesome, but he rejoices for the found.

I feel really grateful of having a merciful and patient God that is always ready to help and willing to search for us. Instead of repenting, he always takes the initiative to appear in our mind and when we are lost, he would take us after he finds us. God doesn’t punish us, but the naughtiness for getting away from my God leads us to dangers and insecurity. It is an undeniable fact that God loves us so much, as he never wants us to harbor the feeling of fear and finds us whenever we lose our way home.              

     

 

          

Love is dynamic~

Early in the morning, I was lying on my bed, without bothering about the time as usual. I’m a like a boss of my life but I believe that I shouldn’t be a lazy boss after all. Anyway, my mum came into my room and woke me up. She likes to wake me up especially when she has something she wants to share. This time is not an exception; she had something to share with me. It is about my troublesome and selfish grandma. Anyway, I hope what I said can really comfort her and cheer her up effectively. 

She is a really funny grandma, in the way she behaves, I would find it interesting. She likes to watch television programs and curses the bad actors or actresses seriously. She likes to talk to herself especially some severe situations happened in the scene. My dad doesn’t like that kind of habit; he always finds it annoying and unpleasant. However, I would like to cooperate with my grandma by expressing my agreement. Maybe that’s the reason she likes me the most.(I think lar~)

However, it is really difficult to make her feel content. She likes to complain and criticize something that personally she feels unhappy with. If she likes you, you would always be right; but if she doesn’t like you, you can never be a little better to her anyway. My mum received some complaints after going back her hometown. That’s why she felt sad. The complaints were not directed to her though, but she just found that she shouldn’t complain that much because my grandma is actually having quite a good and comfortable life now.

It is really true to say that being happy and content requires self-ignorance. If you keep asking and expecting things to work for your will, you would find yourself never contented. Why? This is because things would never work just for our selfish will. Love is something dynamic like a dance, and it brings happiness due to its dynamic nature. If you insist to be the center of the rotation – the point that people dance around, you would end up to be the one who is non-dynamic. You would never enjoy in the dance party, because you didn’t even move yourself around something to dance enjoyably.

I have never seen a dance showcase performed by two dancers but one keeps dancing around a person; and the person stands static throughout the dance performance. That would never be a beautiful dance, because not both of them take part in the dance. A good dance especially international dance, its center of their rotation keeps on changing from time to time; it leads them to be wonderfully dynamic and energetic due to the cheerful non-stop movement and various changes of steps. The dancers would love to enjoy in that kind of dance, audiences would love to watch the dance as well.

It is like a couple who work for something but not for their selfish demands. They work for their future, the goods for both of them, the peace and hope they keep in store, and the love they are trying to realize and express. Sometimes one may mistake and consequently offend another, but another would love to forgive the one who made mistake because of the love they are trying to realize. After all, it is really a loving view for the outsiders to watch a lovely couple loving each other; it is also enjoyable to a couple for loving among themselves selflessly.  

      

   

What the Fxck?

Yesterday, I don’t have the mood to play basketball, as the muscles of my back are somehow stressed and painful. I don’t think it is good for me to have a continuous play for that drastic exercise. Then my mum asked me to go out with my dad for cycling in the jungle. I never tried to cycling on the place that he brought me yesterday, that was my first time I tried to cycling in the jungle.

It took us about 15minutes to reach the place by car with a couple of bicycles attached above it. It is actually at the jungle in the way going to Serdang. We didn’t cycle on the road that cars use; we took the uphill path leading to TELEKOM which is specially established for motorcycle. My dad let me go ahead of him as he needed to make a call to settle some business stuffs. I acted steady and started to get into the path. I was astounded by the slope of the path once I was just about to reach the starting point. Its slope is about 60 degree, the gravity that applies on the whole body in the direction against the uphill movement is GxSIN(data) . The gravitation force never stops to draw me down, when I was trying to get moving. Hence it was terribly suffering to keep on moving with the bicycle by cycling continuously, and keep breathing steadily in order to avoid the lack of oxygen supply.

Every time I tried to play a good game when playing basketball, lastly I would be panting like a tired dog beside the court. I told myself that there should be no other exercise would exhaust me like how basketball ball does to me often. But this time, the uphill cycling within a 50meter managed to exhaust me greatly, I stopped to pretend steady and started to pant without bothering about my look. The muscles of my legs started to feel stressed gradually, because the cycling by legs requires strength to carry on and on. Hence, my legs needed to keep working unless I got on to the peak – the destination. I wonder why I found my muscles of my hands painful. I think I must be grasping the handles firmly, because I needed to keep the bicycle balanced to avoid falling down due to low moving speed. I never moved straight for the whole ride, I moved in zik-zak to balance.

After about 150 meters, I stopped cycling awhile to pant and rest. However, the forest is actually a rubber farm; a gang of mosquitos came to me as if they are my girlfriends!! They gave me some marks of kiss on my body without getting my permission!! They took advantage on me when I was resting to chill out. Sadly in this case, I kept on shaking my whole body so that they wouldn’t be able to kiss me! Immediately, I quickly started to move, and got rid of the lusty mosquito gangster. Thank God that they didn’t manage to haunt me once I kept moving. It gave me a lesson not to stop for rest.

After that, I kept myself moving in a speed of 5-7 km/hr. It is really slow but not really easy at all. The whole body needs to synchronize for balancing. For instance, when going uphill we need to get our body lower than usual, because it helps to get the centroid lower and consequently the stability of the body can be improved. However, I was listening to CNBlue rock songs while cycling, the beats and music kept my spirit high! The suffering of my legs faded gradually, when the music numbs my nerves.

My dad and I managed to get to the peak within 15 minutes. With average speed I assumed - 5.5 km/hr and time taken to finish the journey, the total distance should be about 1km ++. Haha!! Normally, on plain road, normal average speed of me can reach to 26-30km/hr, with 15 minutes I should manage to travel distance of 6-7km. With those mathematically calculation and numerical evaluation, you get no clue about how tough the jungle cycling can be. When at the peak of the mountain, my dad and I enjoyed the view at the peak while we were resting. The haze blurred the view actually; it wasn’t that beautiful due to its blurriness. It made me to doubt about the cleanliness of the air in the jungle.

After a while, my dad briefed me about the things that I should pay attention on in order to get myself safe when we move rapidly downhill. It is very dangerous when going downhill, because the gravity turned to be the crazy friend to pick up your speed when you don’t ask! The high speed isn’t something that I am familiar with, because it is really fast till the speed can reach about 40km/hr. (speed reading is available) It is really scary and uncontrollable. My dad asked me to keep myself backwards from the seat in order to get myself stable. It is true, if the centroid gets a lit bit forwards, it enhances the tendency of the bicycle for making a front flip! I kept braking to control the speed of my bicycle, so that everything is under control. Thank God, I was safe after all.

Immediately, we attached our bicycles upon our car properly, and we left with tired bodies. Nothing much we uttered during the way going home. But my dad shared with me about how he usually cycles. He said,” I usually got to the peak slwoly and got back down to the starting point within a few minutes and got to the peak once again. It would take about almost one hour, otherwise it is too short.” I was talking to myself silently,”What the Fxck?!”                   

               

Not an Escapist

During these long holidays, there are a lot of slots that I need to fill them up with something such as event, activity, or hobbies. Mostly, I would spend time to be a nerd to enjoy reading some nice books that I longed to finish badly. Majority of the books are English books regarding Christianity. I think it shouldn’t be a mistake to spend time reading those books to know more about my faith and understand some doctrines that I need them to get rooted in my mind as the elders in Church advice me to get myself well-equipped spiritually before stepping into the society.

I thank God that so far I have finished a book entitled “Jesus, The King”. There are total 18 chapters in the content of the book, and 261 pages. I think I read it quite consistently; I took at most two day to finish one chapter. I think within one and a half month, I finished reading the book patiently. I have learnt a lot from this book about Jesus and his divine nature. I had been touched and meanwhile astonished by the ways the author interpreted the Gospel of Mark through his humble heart which tries to glorify the name of God in every single things Jesus did and said.

Through the Gospel of Mark, the author, Timothy Keller tried to deliver some messages that normally people find it hard to perceive and understand. Those messages are all unperceivable with prideful nature of man, because they are all against the distinct of man for being self-centered. But with love and the wisdom of God, those seemingly non-logical and foolish doctrines are really glorious, priceless, and beautiful. The more I read the book, the more I believe that I am useless at all myself. Because what it took to save our life is really priceless and overwhelming to the extent that I don’t think I deserve but somehow it just meant to happen. He just loves us that much until he sacrificed his only son to us for the salvation of our doomed souls and the forgiveness of numerous sins. I thank God for everything; I can pay back with nothing.

Bible stories have been regarded as encouraging stories and even fairy tales to some people. Some find it a mere fairy tale which is not real at all and find Christians are all “escapist”. This is because in the whole salvation process conducted by the son of God, Jesus recorded by Mark in the book of gospel ended up with Jesus’s resurrection and he was lifted up to heaven with 500 witnesses, and he promised to the believers of his return for judgement.

The crucifixion of Jesus is for the forgiveness of our sins and the salvation of our fallen soul, the resurrection of Jesus is for our faith to be prosperous, the being lifted up to heaven of Jesus is to give us the Holy Spirit, the counselor of our heart once he left us to our heavenly father, and the promise of his return is to restore our hope well until the day he returns. This is a beautiful plan which is definitely unchangeable and the triumph of God is destined to be granted eventually. It isn’t like a mere happy ending that we could find in many dramas or movies. It is actually a fact that happened to be a history of the world! Our faith isn’t dead because he is alive, even death was overcome by the son of God! That’s why I believe that I am not an “escapist”. Haha!!!   

   

Patiently Wait

I had some restless and sleepless nights recently. I knew the reasons of being in this stage, but it seems like I don’t manage to keep my mind empty when I am supposed to rest properly every night. My life is good so far, but my mind somehow is messed up by many things. I wonder what I could do for bettering it. Haiz.

In my life, I have been taught about how God reacts to our prayer, and how normally mankind reacts to God’s response. I realized that God’s wisdom is far more than we could reach, that’s why man with incomplete wisdom always fails to understand the purpose for something that God allows to happen in a person’s life. I am helpless for being one of the foolish men who is clueless of why things have often happened against my will. I had been in depression for all the dissatisfaction, but thank God it didn’t take too long time for me to be depressed because its feeling was really torturing and unpleasant. Thank God that I got an inspiring message from a scripture after a while.   

Last week, I had a jungle trekking with my parents and our pet, Ricy. The jungle is actually a durian farm.  It is quite dangerous to be within the farm, because you would never know when the durian would get mature enough and fall down to astonish you. However, we were safe throughout the trekking. Trekking in jungle is not something fresh to me, because I went out for trekking with different groups for several times. One of the great things for trekking is the fresh air in the jungle. You feel healthy and good when you inhale the air of good condition. Besides that, the green in the jungle somehow nourishes your eyes.

I am always talkative and informative when I am feeling happy and good. The uphill trekking made my legs feeling a kind of stress, and I recalled me the moment when I was climbing the mount Kota Kinabalu. Hence, I kept talking and sharing with my parents about how suffering I was during the climbing. It was very enjoyable for having review for that interesting experience.  However, it reminded me about mountain that Jesus mentioned to his disciples.

I have searched the detail explanation of moving mountain mentioned in the scripture. In Matthew 21:21 and 22, Jesus answered to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen And whatever you ask in prater, you will receive, if you have faith.”

It is totally impossible for moving a mountain and even ridiculous to be thinking of throwing a mountain into sea! This is what popped out within my mind and made me attracted by the words. I do believe that God is absolutely capable of doing anything because he is a God of almightiness! However, I really apologized for doubting whether God would remove the mountain for me if I pray as it troubles me so much to the extent that I don’t manage to cope with the helplessness.  But God is not a tool for making our life easier. Instead he is a God who promised us an eternal life but not an easy life at all, as he said that if you will to follow me, follow me with a cross. Indeed, bearing a cross is not really easy.

I believe that I am clueless of praying for my needs, because I don’t really know what I need, I just know what I want. But I devoutly believe that God is the only one who knows me inside-out, he would give me what I need for his own planning of my life. For instance, a child longs for a candy badly, but he is fed with tasteless fish by his parents regardless his cries and complains. He doesn't know fish is really good for providing the essential nutrition to him; he just wanted the sweetness of the candy that would upset his teeth gradually.

I try my best to convince myself that perhaps God wants us to get on the mountain instead of removing it with magic, because he wants me to get on the top of the mountain. I still remember the view from the top of the mount KK. The view was damn nice, as I was above the clouds, while the villages below the mountain looked really small and the men were physically negligible. That kind of view was really priceless especially after all the struggles and pain that we had paid for reaching the peak! It is really suffering for the situation that I am staging, but I do think that great things never come to us at ease. I would keep climbing with the longing heart of getting to the peak, one day I might be blessed to enjoy the view after a patient struggling!     

     

My ambition?

Recently, the nights seemed to be too silent but ineffective to let me sleep in peace. As my mind used to be too messy these few days, and I didn't manage to make it up. I wonder if I am really that thoughtful or what, I never got my mind rest properly. I feel frustrated for being such a thoughtful person because it didn't comfort me but trouble me mentally. I think that I am not worrying, perhaps I might be wondering and doubting due to a lot of possibilities and uncertainties.

I was born to be an ordinary boy without much ambition throughout my youth. The thing I wanted the most was to get girls' attention and their fancy when I was naive and young. I believe that it's kind of act to get acknowledgement from opposite sex which is normal and common among youth. I had nothing I want to get but attention, that's why I could do anything just to get the attention I longed for badly. I found myself very naive and patient to learn something or some skills and try to be remarkable and blinky. Occasionally, I am given some talents and have been given chances to learn some skills, I was quite a small star in my school. I trained to be a better basketball player so that I could be one of the persons that girls would admire due to their sportsmanship and coolness. I believe that the attempt to be a cool basketball player was not that important and main motive to make me playing basketball, but the enjoyment and pride I found when playing basketball never failed to attract me.

Occasionally, I was given the chance to learn how to dance in a competition and I realized that I can really dance with enjoyment. The attempt to be a cool dancer was not the main motive for me to learn dancing, but definitely I desired to be under the spotlight and showing off in front of the people. Eventually, I learned how to dance with free style as long as beats and musics are provided. Dancers look really cool and charming when they are on the stage, girls like the most. Occasionally, I was given chance to learn guitar when I was young because my relative needed some people to fill up a group. That's why guitar is not something strange to me after all. I was not a good guitarist, but at least that time not much people could manage to perform singing and playing guitar at the same time. Music man always becomes the fancy of the girls, and that's who I am trying to be. I thank God for all the talents and skills that I am having now. However, he taught me a lesson that a person who loves you would love you just because you are who you are, after I failed to get someone acknowledgement.

I did things that I was motivated to do for some reasons. I have improved myself on many aspects just for somebody else, without bothering about my future and ambition. I realized that those things I have learnt are not the things that I love to do the most as what I see is that I didn't involve myself in show business while I should be qualified and potential to be trained. However, it doesn't mean that I regret to have those skills, because I do enjoy having fun with those skills. I never had things I wanted to realize the most, while I have heard that many friends are striving for their own ambitions and aims lately. I realized that I am striving also, I was striving to love the people around me, to love my life before I know God. I have the instinct to love, as I believe that my mind was filled with love stuff and my youth was filled with childish relationship problems. But that kind of love didn't give me a sense of security. I felt lost for being clueless and disappointed for being given broken promises.

In the process of knowing God, I have come to learn about the purpose of our life. It is a subjective question  which can come out with uncountable and various answers from different people. However, Christians believe that there is a standard answer for that question which is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. This isn't an aim, because aim is reachable and ends once it is achieved. The purpose of life isn't something like aim which is reachable, but it's a way to live. There are many ways to do things, but different ways bring different impacts. I thank God that the purpose of life isn't something reachable and limited. This is because if we could be able to reach it, purpose of life which was achieved is no longer valid and necessary to our life, hence life without purpose would be meaningless totally. We have ways to lead to many places, but bible says this is the way that our life ought to be, the way that we ought to live, it isn't something like a choice or advice, because it is a truth of life. It's the same like human needs the oxygen in the air in order to survive, it is neither a choice nor an advice to breath, but it is a must to breath if you want to survive. Man without oxygen is dead, life without true purpose is dead as well.

Besides that, it is written in the bible saying that :" You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 12:30,31) This was the greatest commandment that Jesus Christ claimed in the New Testament when one of the scribes asked him about the greatest commandment in the commandments. This was written in (Deuteronomy 6: 5-7) [Old Testament]. In short, Jesus asked us to love him - God with all we are, and the people around us as ourselves. I found peace and joy when I love, but still I know I would not be able to love truly if God didn't love me beforehand. Back to the topic, what is my ambition? haha!! I thank God I have none, because I knew my ambition should not be there to replace the highest place of my God in my life.