Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Clouds and Fire..

Sometimes it is not enough just to know that God is with you. Sometimes you need to see something that shows he is there.
The Israelites needed to see that God was with them. They had been slaves in Egypt for 40years. Now they were free and starting the trip to their home in a new land. God knew they were scared. So he sent a cloud that led them all day. At night it became a tall column of fire. The Israelites just had to look up to see that God was with them.

When have you wished that you could see proof that God was with you?
How do you know that God is always with you?

Dear God,
Thank you that you promised in the Bible to always be with me. Help me remember that you are with me, even if I cant see you. Amen..


Whoever lives under the shelter of the Most High will remain in the shadow of the Almighty..



TiMbEn

Monday, January 12, 2009

GoD PuNisHeS SiN; ThE 1st SiN..

Adam and Eve lived in a beautiful garden that God made. They only had one rule to obey. They could eat the fruit of any tree in the garden except one. The fruit from that tree was special. God said not to eat it. Adam and Eve did not obey God. They ate the special fruit. Disobeying God is sin. God was sad that Adam and Eve did not obey him. He was sad because sin must be punished. God sent Adam and Eve out of the beautiful garden. Now they were sorry they disobeyed God.

Is there anyone who does not sin? How do you feel when you do something wrong?

Dear God,
It is not easy to always obey. But i do not want to make you sad. Help me to obey. Amen.



Timben..

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Love your parents

Do you really love your mother and father? I know this question may sound ridiculous but if we think really deep, we may have some blank and unanswered questions about the level of love to our family. I am not blaming you for this. It is an accumulation from our surroundings, media, technologies, increasing commitment and many more that create the unanswered questions. Todays life is full of "seems to be" important things and commitment which once upon a time is not that "important".

However there are things that will stay and remain important no matter what is the condition of the world. One of them is to "love your parents". "Because they brought you to this world and nurture you with unending love" is a simple answer to the "why" question in case there are not "not stupid" individu or group raise this question.

Furthermore, it is stated as one of the 10 commandments that we need to love our mother and father. It is also mentioned that loving and obeying your parents will result in longer life. The answer to the question on "how to increase people life span" lay on "how they obey and love their parents".

I want to share some real stories from my mother about how she loves her parents. Her story start since she was a little girl. Since their family is not rich financially, they live by selling fruits and jungle products to the small town of their neighborhood. Eventhough she is the only female among her siblings, she was the one who will climb trees to get the fruits. She will also help her mother to carry the big basket to town as her mother health condition is not so good. This happens everyday even until her age is almost 20. During that time, there are no schools since they live at rural area and she only study until primary 6.

One day, she got job as clerk in one of her school where she studied. During the work day, she never hold her salary. Everytime she receives her salary, she will gives it to her mother (because that time her mother cannot work anymore due to sickness). Everytime she wants to use money, she will ask for some pocket money from her mother. She wants to let her mother feels like she is still working and wanted her mother to feel happy.

Even after marriage, she still wanted to live with her parents eventhough the tradition at her place is for the wife to follow her husband. With the agreement of her husband (my father), she brought her father (during that time her mother already passed away) to live together with them because his health condition is not so good.
She take care of him until the end of his life. Even until today, we will still pray for my mother's father and mother soul so that they can live in peace.

She really believed that by really obeying and love your parents, people will live longer life. I can see it with my own eyes that eventhough her age already reaches 69, she is still living healthy same as people with age of 50 years. She even can do more work compared to me. :| ^_^

In this world nowadays, is there anyone who manage to loves and obeys his/her parents even after marriage? We can see that nowadays "charity house for the elders" are filled with all the "unwanted" old folks dumps by their own children. How sad is that? :(
What if our children do the same to us? We must always think of that so we will never do that to our parents.

This is really simple yet very hard to do if we only think of ourselves.



"Pray that we will truly love and obey our parents"

Friday, November 7, 2008

God exist

This is one story about whether God exist or not:

One day a man went to barber shop to cut his hair. They talked about whether God exist or not. The barber didn’t believe that God exist. He said to the man, “If God exist, why it is so many people out there that suffer and doing bad things?” The man cannot answer the question and keep on quiet. After finishing cutting his hair, the man goes out from the shop and he saw one guy with messy hair without proper cut. He came back to the shop and talk to the barber, “I think that barber doesn’t exist.” The barber feels weird and asks the man, “Here I am. I am the barber. Why do you say like that?”. The man replied, “You see the man out there with messy hair. If barber truly exist, they should be no one like that.”. Then said the barber, “Because the guy didn’t come to me.”. “THAT IS THE ANSWER.” said the man to the barber. =)

What a nice way to answer the question whether God exist or not. I love this story. I hope it can give some nice insight for you.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

All Saints



Who are they?


They are also once human same like us. They died and got eternal life because of what they did during their human life. During living as human they stand for their belief of God until sometime it cost them their life. Eventhough they lose their mortal life, eternal life is what awaits them on the other side. Are you willing to fight for your belief even if it will cost you your life? It is hardly to be found people like that in this world nowadays. Almost all people will try not to be obviously different. Just because of majority people saying opinion A is right, we tend to say "yes it is right" eventhough we believe that opinion B is the one to be true. We don't want to cause uneasiness to the "majority people" for the sake of ourselves. I am not trying to say that we are coward. There are surely good reasons for us to act in that way. It may be for our love ones.

Some saints did good deed for the rest of their human life. They did some good deeds that normal people would not do. It makes human still believe that goodness still exist in this world. Good deed that give great impact to lots of people. We can take Mother Theresa for example how she help the poor and homeless people regardless of their race and religion. It's not something that you and me can easily do. It takes determination and persistance in order to start that and to keep on continue doing it.

So, do you want to be saint? What a silly question I guess but it is not impossible. Afterall we are all sons and daughters of God. God never loves one person more than the others. He love each and every person in this world equally no matter if they are sinners or not. However, it is appropriate if we start from small things by nurturing the love inside us and slowly make it overflow and affecting people around us so that they also will feel the love and start to apply it to their daily life. In that way we can help spreading the love of God and starts making the life of people around us going to a better direction.

You got the SAINT in you!

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Love your neighbours

I went to church on last Saturday. The gospel reading for that day was about the first two of the 10 Commandments. The first one is "Love your God". The second is "Love your neghbours like you loved yourself". As human, it is not easy to love others like we loved ourselves. I normally heard from others that "If we don't put ourselves in front, others will. So don't become too kind.". This thought will usually lead people to selfishness. If we look at the scenario nowadays, people eventhough living just next door, they didn't know anything about each other. They only think about themselves and their family. Is that showing what God has told us to do? I don't think so.


In the old days, people communicate a lot with each others especially when they are living in next to each other. As the technology become more advanced where people can communicate with far away friends and relatives, they tend to ignore people around them. I am talking about the scenario that is more likely to be happen nowadays. I am not blaming technology for this to be happen. It is more towards the attitude of people. It may be that this new generation of people didn't have proper teaching about the importance of communicating with people around them. This is more to social value of the people. Their communication skill is not good enough.


I admit that same thing happen to me. I feel so shy to talk to people around me if they are not my friend or relatives. I need them to start the conversation before I will be able to communicate with them. What if both of us think the same way? There will be no communication happening between us. So it is better if both are thinking of starting the conversation as it is easier to initiate communication. This will easier to be happen if we applied what God has told us. If we love our neighbour as we love ourselves then they will less likely for shy to stop us from communicating.


However, there are one major problem for us even from the old days. That is to love our enemy. You may say, "What!? You want me to love this xxx guy/woman??? No way man!!". This is normal for everybody. I will never say it is impossible. It is sure possible but HARD to do. It needs us to be 100% loving others. It is normal for us to pray for our love one. What about if we pray for people we hate the most? This is a big "Can I do this?" question for you. This is your biggest challenge. It's my biggest challenge too but I know that the feeling of forgiving is so great and wonderful. Whenever you forgive someone, you will feel very light and free from all the tiresome of holding the hatred and anger that will surely consume much of your energy. Better for us to use this energy to do more important stuffs rather than using it to hate people. So you can see know that you can increase your productivity just by forgiving others.



"Love God, love your neighbours like you loved yourself and you will be able to TRUELY FORGIVE."

Monday, October 20, 2008

Mathew 6: 25 - 34

   It’s about worry, it been said that we do not have to worry about “What will we wear tomorrow?” or “What will we eat tomorrow?” because God knows what is best for us. Even the birds in the sky do not have to worry about tomorrow. God will prepare for them what is necessary. If the birds also get special treatment from God, us human will get even better.

   For me, this is actually about what’s inside your mind. It does not mean that by just believing and not doing anything, the foods and clothes will come to you. It’s about eliminating the elements of “worry” inside you that can affect negatively on your productivity in any works that you are doing.

   If we can eliminate the worries inside us, we can focus more on our works which surely lead to more creative ideas and more energy for doing the works. So don’t take this message directly but think deeper so that you will not misinterpreted the information.

  I got this one relative that misunderstood the knowledge and he didn’t want to work. He just stayed at his house and lives freely. Whenever there are friends or relatives come to give him advice, he will talk about the readings from the bible that we had just discussed before. My aim here is to make it clear that we still need to work. Even the birds are also still flying and searching for foods. They didn’t just stay in the nest waiting for the worms to come. They only focused on searching for foods and live in peace without worry. =_)

~~ INNER PEACE ~~


Regards,


Tim