Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

never


You and I can NEVER lose Christ.
Death on this side of heaven only brings us closer to Him.


Tuesday, May 14, 2013

discomfort = growth



“God comes into our heart — He finds it full — He begins to break our comforts and make it empty; then there is more room for grace. The humbler a man lies, the more comfort he will always have because he will be more ready to receive it”



Take heed. In whatever situation, whatever circumstance.



Tuesday, April 2, 2013

6 minutes of my life



I spent 6 minutes watching a video posted by a dear friend this morning. Seeing the video still shot with colours that wouldn't have naturally attracted me, not to mention the uncertain title of "I don't have any idea for a title" for the video, I contemplated for a second.


But I watched it anyway. And that 6 minutes was worth eternity....


Towards the end of the 5th minute, I teared, unknowingly...When I had arrived, my heart was warmed and I was deeply rapt in awe...





We were once given the Kingdom. Not only did we once belong to it...We owned it. How far a stubborn, haughty, blinded, deafened and strayed traveller we have been. Day by day we are calloused by the rough course of which we have chosen. How apathetic we have slowly, but surely become. We have caused the entire Kingdom to suffer...




 "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned - every one - to his own way"




We ought to pay. We ought to be charged. 


An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A life for a life....



"But He was pierced for our transgressions..
He was crushed for our iniquities...
upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace

and with His wounds....we are healed....

All like sheep have gone astray - every one - to his own way


and the Lord has laid on Him.....the iniquity of us all"



Amazing grace. 




Wednesday, March 6, 2013

where solemn and stillness lay







“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.


Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.


A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.


A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.


When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.


A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Monday, November 5, 2012

my Lord God is holy





"Without holiness, no one shall see the Lord"



I have come to hear that the message of hope. I have come to hear that holiness is a thing of growth.



Holiness is a thing of growth
It may be in the soul as the grain of mustard-seed, have yet to be developed
It may be in the heart as a wish and a desire, have yet to be realised

As the Spirit of God waters it, it will grow till the mustard-seed shall become a tree


Holiness, in a regenerated and repented heart
is but an infant...
it is not matured....

It's perfect in all its parts...
but not perfect in its development

Hence we find many imperfection and failings within ourselves



Take heed my soul and be comforted, that holiness is a thing of growth
Lest that you count yourself as uninterested in the grace of God
Holiness is a thing of growth
He who begins to sow the seed of holiness in you will see you to completion
When He returns, He will come in fullness
And bring you home in fullness