As covid continues to stalk our streets and ravages our wellbeing, where do we find relief?
How can we lighten up as we are saddled with the daily chores of WFH and the anxieties of a medical treatment? When our spirits run dry, our nerves ragged, our mind numb?
Entertainment is good. But after that TV show, then what?
Shall we flitter away irredeemable time with social media? (I’m raising my hand right now: guilty!)
David was in a valley he wrote Psalm 16. He could have tried to forget his woes thru wine, warfare or women. But he did not. He chose to seek refuge in God (v 1), and made God his only good (v 2). He reminds us that in God’s presence, there is fullness of joy (v 11).
David did not seek God for what He can do for him, but for Himself! He wanted God to be his inheritance (v 5-6). Imagine an infinite, holy God offering Himself as the prized treasure of a finite, sinful man. What an outpouring of divine love!
Could it be that we forget to enjoy God, simply because we forget who God is? We can be swept by our busy routines or pressing worries that we neglect to carve out time with God. To be unhurried in His presence. To relish His goodness. To fall in love with God… all over again.
Many of us have tasted sleepless nights during times of trouble. Our minds would torment us — recycling fears, hatching schemes — as we toss and turn in bed.
But as we make God our counselor, He will guide even our thoughts at night (v 7). What’s more, He’ll also go before us. Even before the next problem-laden day arrives at dawn, He is already there and thus we will not be shaken (v 8).
David exclaimed, “Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices, my flesh also will dwell securely” (v 9). He was so secure in God’s goodness that even as we walk through a seemingly lonely and scary future, yes, even while the pandemic blankets us, He shepherds us until we finally meet Him face to face.
David’s circumstances did not change. The problems were still there. But God made the difference. He did not merely pump David up with joy. God is David’s joy.
I have a confession to make. I’m not yet where David was. But the journey is there. It starts with our hearts. And it starts today.
Take time out and go back to the presence of God. As we rediscover Him, joy will spring anew in our hearts. We will find rest for our soul. “In Thy presence there is fullness of joy, in Thy right hand there are pleasures forever.”
God waits for you patiently, whispering, “I’m all yours. Be all Mine.”
Be His. Be all His.
In a previous job, I hated to be in the same room with Jeff (not his real name). He was boorish, hot-headed, unreasonable… well, he just rubbed everyone the wrong way.
It didn’t help that, in occasional Bible studies and Sunday sermons, I am told to love my neighbor. What, me? I’d rather migrate to another country.
Perhaps you have a Jeff in your office, family, church, wherever you are. You have three basic responses: avoid him like the proverbial plague, put up with him when you can’t, or butt heads with him. The first is the classic flight syndrome, the second will stress you out, and the third can get pretty ugly.
I have come to learn that loving the unlovable is not easy, but doable. It is more than gritting your teeth and say “God tells me to love Jeff, so I just gotta.” It comes after some self-reflection. It is a mistake to live the Christian life without some understanding of human psychology.
So how can you love the unlovable? Here are four principles that I have learned.
Scrap the labels. Have you tried putting out a fire by dousing gasoline on it? Similarly, when you label someone as a buffoon or an idiot, it only rankles you more. It is worse when you see only a part of that person and generalize the fault. You see a worker turning in his report late and you immediately conclude him to be lazy. Beware of that behavior.
Perhaps when we refuse to love someone, it reveals some idol in our hearts. If I were to snap at that worker, it shows that I worship efficiency. There are times I show that I am good in strategy but not in empathy. I realize I can be so task-oriented that I need to balance it with being people-oriented.
Identify the unlovable traits. It is part of reality to be turned off by certain people, but usually we have a vague notion why. It helps to name the traits that turn you off. A subtle effect is that you will be separating the person whom you are to love from the behavior that you hate. In Jeff’s case, one of his upsetting habits was to interrupt people while they were talking. Imagine the chaos if you were to involve Jeff in a brainstorming session.
Question your standards. No, I don’t mean you condone abusive behavior. I mean that when you find it hard to love someone, usually it’s because he or she violates your standards somehow. The question is: is it fair to impose those standards on them?
I was complaining about Jeff to my wife, Lucy. “Why can’t he just shut up and listen?” I ranted, “I do that to my teammates, why can’t he?” To which Lucy wisely replied, “He’s not you.”
A little self-reflection showed her point. Unwittingly, I was saying “You would think that with Jeff’s educational attainment / age / position (take your pick), he should have known better.” But that is the point. He doesn’t.
Worse, I have to test myself with my own standards, too. How many times I have been impatient with Lucy and I cut her off, too? There is a little-known but sobering piece of wisdom in Ecclesiastes 7:21-22:
Do not pay attention to every word people say,
or you may hear your servant cursing you—
for you know in your heart
that many times you yourself have cursed others.
Sometimes a reality check helps me be more patient of other people’s shortcomings. Since it is meaningless and even counterproductive to hold someone against your own standards, you may want to lower your expectations. In my case, I stopped expecting Jeff to act professionally, but accepted reality as it is. It is easier to craft responsive strategies based on what is than what should be.
See through eyes of compassion. The Gospels record of Jesus reaching out to the masses. If you were to understand the crowd, you may find them unlovable: clingy, me-centered, fickle. It may have been the same crowd who would shout “crucify him!”.
But Jesus reached out anyway. Why? I am touched by this detail: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36, italics added). The secret to loving the unlovable is to see them through eyes of compassion, not compliance.
In one sense, Jeff was to be pitied. He was sabotaging his career and his relationships. Perhaps his behavior was to mask some deep-seated pain. Perhaps that was how he was raised by his parents or mentored by a former boss. Perhaps he was really insecure with himself and needed to show his worth in the only way he knew how.
This technique is called reframing, where we see people from a brand new set of assumptions that calms, not agitates, our emotions.
When you think about it, how would God see us? Based on our merits alone, we would be unlovable by His perfect standards. We have our share of filth. We have our monsters deep inside us. But this is the astounding news: “We love because He first loved us” (I John 4:19).
If this fills us with guilt, we are missing the point. The wonder is that He sees the worst in us and loves us anyway. He has proven this love by having His Son die on the cross for precisely that filth, that monster. What would spring within our hearts is gratitude, from which we can relate with others through grace. After all, have your noticed how gratitude and grace seem to have the same root word?
Sadly, Jeff was let go. As you would imagine, his performance appraisal did not speak well of him. I lost touch of him since then. But while I wonder where he is right now, I wonder more if I can embrace him as a brother should I see him again.
But I can start with someone else today. The choice to love the unlovable is ours.
“Happiness happens when you get a promotion, your team wins the Super Bowl. It’s the expansion of self. Joy happens when the barrier between you and something you really care about disappears. So there’s joy when you’re with your kids and you’re just playing. Sometimes there’s joy in work, where you totally lose yourself in your work and you experience flow.”
This insight came from social commentator David Brooks. Perhaps we should stop asking “How can I be happy at my job?” but rather “How can I find joy in whatever I do at work?” Following Brooks, the first question focuses on what I will be getting, such as a promotion or a bonus, whereas the second connects us to something beyond ourselves.
We are wired to be delighted in different ways. Grandparents dote on their grandkids. Nature lovers revel in the sight of the mountains. Bookworms like me lose ourselves in a well-written novel.
That delight can come from our innate altruism. Social workers endure a thankless job as long as they impart wholeness to people and families. Medical representatives do their never-ending rounds as long as they see how their products will save lives. L&D spend twenty hours preparing for a two-hour talk as long as they see people grow into better versions of themselves.
And in each case, I bet they find joy.
So what about you? What turns you on? What makes you angry? What is the one thing that you will sacrifice everything on? If you have the power, like a reverse-Thanos, to change society for the better, what would that new state look like? Is it to see people in vibrant health? Financial security? Deep relationships? Toxic-free environment?
After identifying your innate altruism, see how your career can help you carry it out. Look beyond your job description and realize what you are really contributing. Your impact doesn’t have to be direct. An accountant in a hospital may not be in the front line of saving lives. Her happiness can come from an error-free spreadsheet, but joy arise as she tells the hospital that it can save even more lives because its mission remains financially sustainable.
But wait, here’s even better. If joy is living a purpose beyond yourself, what can be more “beyond” than God Himself? Why not center your whole life not on your career, but on Him? Your work becomes a service and offering to our Lord. Brother Lawrence in the famous book The Practice of the Presence of God was a monk, but he found joy in the monastery kitchen cleaning pots and pans. He saw no barrier between the Divine Presence and his washing duties, which filled him with exquisite delight.
So don’t just be happy at work. Be joyful by merging your profession, passion and purpose. When that happens, you won’t be wishing that you would rather be somewhere else or doing something else. Make your career the vehicle to a higher calling for God. Each day will become incredibly delicious.
“I almost died several days ago from covid. I could have died so many times before. But each time, God spared my life. God is so, so good!”
This, in a nutshell, was a Facebook post I’ve just read. My left brain immediately kicked in. “So when someone died of covid, God is so, so… bad?”
It reminds me of 9/11, when some people escaped the collapse of the Twin Towers and attributed it to God’s mercy. But what about the 2,996 who were crushed in the rubble?
Yes, I presume the reader believes in the existence of a personal, omnipotent God. But even if you are a skeptic, you may ask,
“Assuming there’s a God, why is He arbitrary? For some people He gives the proverbial nine lives, whereas for others, He gives the lifespan of a gnat. Does He play favorites or something?”
My first response may be shocking, but here goes: God is not obligated to save anyone.
Imagine you created a business and hired employees. Yes, you are obligated to give your people the mandated salaries and benefits. That includes the 13th month pay. Assuming the company is doing well, are you obligated to give everyone a 14th month bonus? No. It’s your company, it’s your money, you call the shots.
You may have an employee who, because of exceptional performance, really deserves that extra money, but strictly speaking, you don’t have to give it. You may be accused of being a Scrooge, but, in the absence of a legal contract, no one can successfully sue you for it. The fancy term is management prerogative.
Now, translate that to a higher plane. God created the universe and populated the earth with people. Life is the currency of that universe. Is God obligated to give long life to everyone, whether through fantastic health or rescue from calamities? No, it’s God’s universe, God’s “money”, God calls the shots.
There may be someone who leads an exceptionally moral life and deserves to live long and prosper. But God is still not obligated to reward him thusly. Proof? How many good people die young, even tragically?
Conversely (and yes, galling) how many evil folks live to a ripe, old, scandalous, unrepentant age? You may accuse God of being unfair, but on what basis? The fancy term is divine prerogative.
If we go with the premise that God is not obligated to save us from calamities, natural or otherwise, the wonder is that He does, like how that covid survivor declared in her FB.
When your body cannot heal on its own, when you can’t escape from a raging typhoon, when you can hardly shield your skull from crashing rubble – and you still came out alive – there is a sense that you just won the cosmic lottery. This time, the fancy term is grace. By definition, you don’t deserve the reprieve (He calls the shots, remember?), but He gave it anyway.
It is no accident that grace and gratitude are related. Psychologically, one becomes grateful when he ponders on the alternative. One cannot “become alive” on his own. Does the phrase “I didn’t ask to be born?” make sense? Neither can one hold on to his last breath and become immortal.
The experience that you should be dead, but you are not, through no effort of your own, leads to gratitude to a Higher Power. Some call it Fate, others, luck. But consider the Christian perspective: God exists, God knows, God cares, and God rescues.
But what about the people He seemingly allowed to die, like, say, people trapped in a burning building? To be honest, I do not have the answer for that one. What I can say, though, is that I cannot speak for those who perished. I can only speak for my own life. So did that covid survivor.
We each have our own share of crises, but we can jointly declare about God in personal terms: He is not obligated to heed our prayers, provide for our every need, comfort us in our sorrows, surround us with loving people, heal us from covid. But He does.
He is not even obligated to save us from our sins… But He does. Proof? Gaze at the Cross and marvel. Our response is to be stunned by such divine grace and put our faith in the One Who hung there and rose from the dead: Jesus Christ.
And that is how we can say, even when there seems to be contrary evidence, “God is so, so good!”
You really want God to give you something, but He not only turned you down, He told you flat-out “Enough! Speak no more about this!”
Sounds harsh?
Tell that to Moses. Recall that God had used him to bring His people out of Egypt with the endgame of bringing them to the Promised Land. But because of a tragic rebellion, the first generation died out in the wilderness over the next forty years. And who was their leader all through that arduous time? Moses.
When the forty years were up, the second generation was to enter the land. But because Moses made a seemingly innocuous disobedience to God’s instructions, God barred him from entering the Promised Land (read it in Numbers 20).
Moses pleaded with God, only to be rebuffed. “That is enough. Do not speak to me anymore about this matter” (Deuteronomy 3:26).
Harsh? Try unfair.
As if to rub it in, God allowed Moses to climb up a mountain and gaze at the land, “flowing with milk and honey”, from afar. God told him, “This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, “I will give it to your descendants.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over to it” (Deuteronomy 34:4).
Harsh? Unfair? How about painful? To be denied your heart’s desire? To be denied the culmination of faithful service?
Do you feel like God is being harsh and unfair to you? This pandemic is loaded with stories of heartbreak and unanswered prayer.
But if we doubt God’s goodness, that’s because we have not read the rest of the story.
Many centuries later, Jesus climbed up another mountain. There as He was praying, “the appearance of his face changed and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus” (Luke 9:28-30).
Wow! Moses died without setting foot in the Promised Land. But centuries later, God gave Moses something far better. He was in glorious splendor. He got to meet Elijah. Most of all, he had an audience with Jesus in all His cosmic majesty!
If there is a blessing you are longing for, but God has not yet given it to you and perhaps He has no intention of giving it to you, trust that His goodness is really greater than we think.
He has done it for Moses. He will do it for you and me.
Someday, like Moses, we will at last see Jesus face to face. All the blessings God had promised us will become complete reality. All the shalom God intends for us will be ours. And we will be in a place where there will be no more curse. No more crying. No more death.
Choose life. Choose Jesus Christ.
The goodness of God is greater than you think
In fact, the goodness of God will never, ever end!
Shalom to you.
Photo credit from Christian Truth Center
I’ve been heavy-hearted lately as I scrolled down my newsfeed. What used to be a landscape teeming with life has morphed into a valley of the shadow of death. If death welds a sickle, then covid is that sickle.
Just the other day, a good friend posted that he had to bring his covid-positive mother to another city because the medical facilities would be better there. Then another good friend, a pastor whom I dearly love and respect, was stricken with covid himself. Another had to camp outside a hospital waiting for a bed to be vacant.
Multiply this several months over, I might as well be reading hospital records. Not all have happy endings. Sometimes the foray into those records leads to the morgue.
How to cope? I’ve learned an important secret from a time when Jesus couldn’t mourn a personal loss as He served a large crowd who sought, nay, stalked Him for healing. The on-line equivalent would be posts and PMs bombarding Him for answers, relief, and deliverance.
Jesus had just heard that John the Baptist had been beheaded, the grisly outcome of a woman’s machination and her husband’s spinelessness. It may surprise you that Jesus and John were relatives. The popular view is that they were cousins. Their respective mothers, Mary and Elizabeth, were kinswomen.
Recall also that John had the unique role of being the long-prophesied forerunner of the Messiah. Jesus Himself lauded John as more than a prophet and that among those born of women, there was none greater than John.
Thus, news of John’s execution must have hit Jesus hard. He withdrew by boat to a solitary place. Yet when the crowd learned about His whereabouts, they followed Him on foot, without considering to give Him some me-time.
When Jesus saw the crowd, He could have told them off “C’mon guys! Gimme a break!” Lessen men would burn out, even melt down.
Prolonged exposure to humanity’s woes would weigh down anyone’s spirit. We see it in the haggard countenances of the front-liners. Where there is doom-scrolling, compassion fatigue won’t be far behind.
We also get to wish we can wave some magic wand and make all the pain go away, but are reduced to crying out to God, wondering if He will give the thumbs up or thumbs down. Sure, there are the miracle stories; a person recovers and attributes it to the goodness of God. But what about those who didn’t? What is the logical – and unspeakable – inference? Hey, Christians should be critical thinkers, too.
But we see Jesus, His heart breaking for losing John and for the large crowds, the sheep without the shepherd. He reached out. He even fed them; this was the famous feeding of the 5,000, and that’s just the men. Intriguingly, Facebook allows no more than 5,000 friends in your timeline.
What’s the secret? It was that Jesus loved the solitary places. It was His time to be alone and be still, to allow Himself to grieve, to commune with His Father.
Digital detox is good, but is far better when done in the presence of God. In our own sacred nooks – be it your attic, a park bench, a church sanctuary – there, we can curate our own healing, recover our moorings, and abate any creeping cynicism.
The by-product is that I no longer need to dread my FB. As I re-engage my world through FB, I can have the inner resources to comfort, to nurture, to intercede. This comes from drawing from a Well that never runs dry, even though hospitals are running out of beds and oxygen.
There are the gray and blah days when we can all use a good cheer. But there is the Good News that Jesus has come to seek and save the lost.
Do you know this Jesus?
Footnote:
The main passage is Matthew 14. That Mary and Elizabeth were relatives is supported by Luke 1:35. Jesus’s high commendation of John is found in Matthew 11:7-15.
Photo credit from Forbes
Is covid wearing us down? Do the nights of worry appear endless? Are our hearts fainting from the latest obituary?
For some reason, God does not spare us from life’s problems, both trivial and tumultuous. But He does provide a place of safety. This episode from the Gospels tells us where.
It has been a long day. Jesus had been healing the sick among a great multitude which was tailing him and his men. With that finished, Jesus told his disciples to get into a boat and go to the other side of a lake. Then he dismissed the crowd and went to a mountain to pray, all by his lonesome.
Meantime, the disciples’ boat ride was no picnic. They were being battered by fierce winds and waves. They were still somewhere on the lake, in the wee hours of the night, straining with all their strength at the oars, yet not getting anywhere! Their hearts must have frozen at the prospect of the boat capsizing and them drowning in the cold murky waters.
But that wasn’t what terrified the disciples. It was the sight of Jesus walking towards them… walking on water!
“It’s a ghost!” they wailed. Jesus bellowed, “Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.”
Remember, Jesus was not at the boat, but he was at a mountain, praying. Let us be at rest, assured that he is still praying, this time for you and me.
He is neither blind nor unsympathetic to our plight. Endure in the hope that he will come to our rescue, even if he has to walk on water. He will bring the grace to help in his strong arms. He will never be a minute too early or too late.
Going back to Jesus, most of us know what happened next. Peter dared to walk on the water towards Jesus. But upon seeing the winds, he panicked and began to sink.
Can you imagine Jesus letting him thrash on the water for a while, just to teach him a lesson?
Can you hear Peter screaming between gulps, “Je… blub blub blub!… help m…blub blub blub!”
But our Lord was no sadist. He immediately caught Peter and together they went to the boat. Keep in mind that Jesus’ strong arms were supporting Peter. Despite the fierce winds and waves, as long as Peter was embraced by those strong arms, he was in the safest place of all the universe.
When gushes of doubt and terror assault our hearts, our Lord is there to seize our hands. He will hush the wind and calm the sea. May we soon land at the shore of our heart’s desire.
Just remember, when Jesus was holding Peter on their way back to the boat, Peter was in the safest place of all the universe!
In much the same way, the storm of the pandemic may still be raging. We may step out in faith but falter. But as we cry out to the Lord and allow Him to carry us through, we can’t be any safer elsewhere. True safety is in the arms of Jesus!
Photo credit from In His Presence Daily
Can you talk about Mr. X in his presence? Of course.
Can you talk about Mr. X when he is not around? Absolutely! Not always in a good way… but yes.
Now look at the same communication from a divine perspective.
Can you talk about Mr. X in God’s presence? Yes.
Can you talk about Mr. X outside of God’s presence?
See the difference? There is no sound-proof booth on earth that works against God. Not that God is a nosy eavesdropper. But He is everywhere and hears everything, even what we whisper in the bedroom or scream over the kitchen table.
Here is an important principle: If we please God with our tongue, chances are we please our spouse with our tongue. It is crazy to think that we hurl verbal abuse at our wives and still think God is smiling at us. It is even crazier to speak “God talk” on Sunday — peppering our speech with “Praise the Lord!”, Bible verses and even churchy terms — and spew sarcasm towards our spouse on Monday. Pardon my bluntness, but that is insane!
Carol Mayhall said, “I am convinced that if we dwell deep with God, the overflow is going to consistently seep into our conversation.” So how do we cultivate a tongue that pleases God and thus please our spouse?
Jesus had that covered. “Out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45).
He enumerated the gunk that fills a heart and thus fills a tongue: “What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean. ” (Mark 7:20-23, see also Matthew 15:17-20).
Jesus really laid it out straight, didn’t He? So while we are being told to say this and don’t say that, we are focusing on externals. Why not go to the root and see what is in our hearts? Before you change your speech, change your heart.
Do you want to speak to your spouse in a way that pleases God? First, fill your heart with good things. If you continue to stock your heart with emotional trash, then it will be an uphill climb to tame your tongue. But if you fill your heart — better yet, let God fill it for you — then being a wise, gentle and encouraging spouse will be your very nature!
We hear of having a vision for our businesses and our marriages. But it also helps to have a vision for our own tongues. What kind of tongue do you want? Be specific, What does it sound like? Here’s what I wrote in mine:
A tongue that will refresh other people. People will feel safe to approach me and talk to me, knowing that what I will say has been tempered by God, giving light to his eyes and hope for his heart.
I am still a long, long way from my goal. But I pray that as I spend the rest of my life with Lucy, the Lord will tame my tongue to refresh her too, every day.
Photo credit from Riverside Christian Reformed Church
September 21, 2021
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