Birthday once again
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| My personal baker - Marie! |
Blessings
I'm still happily married to my wife, Marie, of 14 years. We have
4 healthy, handsome boys. I still have friends from my school days and have gained new friends along the way. I have a pretty respectable job
which I enjoy (most days) and work hard at. I have a roof over my family's head
and we have enough for a comfortable life. I'm currently enrolled in
a Masters program which I enjoy. By anyone’s standards I suppose I've done well in life so far. Generally I do have a positive outlook. Yet, I find lurking in the recesses
of my mind feelings of discontent that are not of God.
Discontentment
These feelings surface in very ordinary, daily scenarios. When I drive
into my workplace car park in my cute little Kia Picanto and come face-to-face
with the Lexuses, Mercedes, BMWs and even the occasional Ferrari, the ill winds
of discontent blow through my mind. I try to be ‘holier-than-thou’ by telling
myself that I chose the right thing – to have kids instead of luxury
cars. At the end of my life, my kids will appreciate me more than any car ever
will. Then the next question arises ‘Why do I not earn enough to afford both –
kids and luxury cars?’ Some of my contemporaries have clearly done well enough to do
so. Why did God not bless me so? Was I doing something wrong?
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| Yummy Birthday Cake! |
By God's Grace
This month as I reflect on my life, God wanted me to learn this
statement – “By God’s Grace, what I have and where I am are exactly what God
wants me to have and to be”.
“By God's grace" sounds humble and pious but it is false
humility unless I really believe it. Many times when I said "It's by God's
grace..." what I actually meant was that I was good and made good choices.
Therefore I deserved these good things that I was blessed with. So whenever I felt that others had ‘more’ or ‘better’ things than me, the feelings
of discontent would come again.
Take the example of the cars again - if I had a Porsche and
someone said, "Wah, super car!" I would say "by God's grace - He
blessed me with this car" (meaning I worked hard and deserved this car).
But if someone said "Wah, super car!" to my Kia Picanto (trust me, no
one has ever said that), I would say "Yeah, it was cheap and I grabbed
it" (meaning actually I deserved better).
Blessings or Rewards?
Many people say “I don’t want children because they affect my lifestyle and I cannot afford them.” If we are convinced that children are God’s blessings to us, then what we’re saying would be “I don’t want God’s blessings because they affect my lifestyle and I cannot afford
Many people say “I don’t want children because they affect my lifestyle and I cannot afford them.” If we are convinced that children are God’s blessings to us, then what we’re saying would be “I don’t want God’s blessings because they affect my lifestyle and I cannot afford
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| Family Birthday Dinner |
them.” We can’t receive
and enjoy God’s blessings when we think of them as rewards that we deserve
because of our hard work and good behaviour. Even though Marie and I have been blessed four times by God, there are many, many days when the boys make us
wonder “Why God? Why did you have to give us these blessings? Wouldn’t a
round-the-world trip for two have been better a better reward?” Seeing the boys
as blessings is a lesson that Marie and I have to learn over and over again.
Good Choices & Control
Also, the premise that I could make good choices all on my own is utterly
wrong. Left to my own devices and without God’s guidance, I would have made all
the wrong choices in life. I sometimes wonder what life would be like if I hadn’t
married Marie. She still chides me for making her wait for such a long time before I asked
her to be my steady girlfriend. Somehow whenever she wanted to give up on me,
we would meet up unexpectedly and give her hope again (OK, as promised, this is
a story that I shall tell soon). Say what you will, there is only one reason for
that – God was maneuvering us together in the background.
The stakes keep getting bigger and bigger as I got older as well. As I climbed higher in the career ladder, gained more social and professional credibility, had more bills and loans to pay for, had more people dependent on me, life got more and more complex; and less and less under my control. I could strain with all my might and work myself to exhaustion, yet I could not promise you what will happen tomorrow. There is only one who can promise this and that is God. It is good to know that the One who controls the universe also has my best interest in His heart.
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| Another celebration - Waffle and Ice Cream |
Jesus - He took our pain
So “By God’s Grace, what I have and where I am are exactly what
God wants me to have and to be” is not only a statement that reminds me to be
humble and also gives me peace that He has everything under control.
What is more amazing is that as flawed, fallible people, God’s
Grace is big enough to accommodate even our wrongs and bad choices. We do not
have to earn God’s good graces to receive His blessings. His Grace even takes into
account our failures and provides for that.
The other day when I turned on my mobile phone Bible app, it
displayed the verses for the day: Isaiah 53: 3-5.
He was
despised and rejected—
a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.
We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.
He was despised, and we did not care.
a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.
We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.
He was despised, and we did not care.
4 Yet it
was our weaknesses he carried;
it was our sorrows that weighed him down.
And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,
a punishment for his own sins!
5 But he was pierced for our rebellion,
crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole.
He was whipped so we could be healed.
it was our sorrows that weighed him down.
And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,
a punishment for his own sins!
5 But he was pierced for our rebellion,
crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole.
He was whipped so we could be healed.
New Living
Translation (through www.biblegateway.com)
Honestly I was in no mood that day to read about Jesus getting
beaten up. Who wants to start the day with such morbid thoughts? I wanted to go
the book of ‘Romans’ to receive God’s Words of Grace for the day but the phone
insisted on displaying Isaiah 53 in spite of my attempts. God wanted me to know
that the very Grace I wanted from Him was possible only because His punishments
for me were meted out to Jesus instead. And no matter how terrible I think my
life is; yes, there is someone else who life was worse than mine. God put upon
Jesus the terrible things that should have happened to me so that He could
bless me with the good things. No matter how wearisome and burdensome I feel, I need to remember that what could have been worse in my life did not
happen to me because it was hung there on the cross with Jesus.
Peace
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| This is what makes it worth it! |
The other day in church, I had been tending to Samuel for what
felt like an eternity during service. He had been climbing up and down and had
not stayed still even for a brief moment. I was sweating from carrying him and
running after him. For a break, I carried him out of the sanctuary onto the
third floor, hoping that he would settle down and sleep. As I looked downstairs
to the ground floor, I saw a super cool looking Mercedes drive into the car
park. I had this strange feeling all of a sudden. For once I didn’t feel
envious of the guy with the Mercedes. I felt a sense of thankfulness for the
both of us – he with his car and me with my wriggly kid. If I believed that we
were both blessed with exactly what God wanted us to have then I should be
happy for both of us; and I was! It was a strange feeling that I was not used
to but for once the spirit of envy was stilled; and it felt good (… Samuel fell
asleep soon after that too J).
Post Note:
I felt that I needed
to qualify a few statements in this blog:
1. The blog is talking
about contentment with my day to day living. There is such a thing as holy
discontent with where we are Spiritually. I believe when we don’t get
caught up with discontentment in material matters that we feel spiritual discontentment and yearn for more of God. There is great danger in
spiritual stagnation masquerading as contentment.
2.
The statements about children only apply if you are clear that God
specifically wants to bless you with children. God blesses each one of us
with different things. There is no one size fits all. The danger for those of us
who have children is when we display them as medals of valour and make those who don’t
have children feel guilty.
3. A friend said after listening to me
compare my Picanto to a Porsche once again, “Are you sure you’re a car
person? You don’t really look like one.” Guilty as charged but you understand
why I chose this illustration, yes? It’s a guy thing.
