Great Reminder from Charles Spurgeon

“A heart full of praise is heaven in the bud. Perfect praise is heaven full-blown.”

8 things I’m thankful for this 2008

1.    My second-hand Mac.
2.    The LCD television I won in a raffle contest.
3.    My family.
4.    Lessons on humility and trust. They were oftentimes learned in difficult, pushed-against-the-wall kind of situations. I’m still learning up to now.
5.    Another year in law school. I’m not quite sure how I was able to get past through certain subjects, but what I know is that it isn’t because of anything in me. It was purely grace.
6.    God’s patience and mercy. I’m stubborn and hardheaded that it would not be a surprise if someone gives up on me. God does not. And what a comfort it is.
7.    My local church. For how God used it to edify, rebuke, teach, and encourage me in my walk.
8.    Christ. That He should come to save wretched sinners like me when He is under no obligation to do so leaves me in awe.

From a fishbowlful of names

In his blog several weeks ago, Tim Challies has written about how he hasn’t won anything in his life. He asked whether his readers have it differently, and I was planning on giving him a reply that says something like, “Not really, Mr. Challies.” This is a fairly accurate statement, at least insofar as it concerns raffle draws, because while I could point to certain memories of going up the stage to receive this and that prize, I could only remember two of them.

During one fiesta celebration in our village, my name got picked by Ma’am Valme from a tambiolo. She is a slim, middle-aged lady with a disposition of a preschool teacher and a charm of a politician. Clad in my old and dirty pair of rubber slippers, ill-fitted shirt and worn-out pants, I went up the stage to receive my reward. Just as I was about to leave, she thrust the microphone to me, and declared that I should say a few words. My voice was shaky and my pauses frequent as I tried hard to conjure an impromptu, Oscars-like speech. My brother was savoring the scene, and was laughing so hard at my expense.

My name also got picked during our church’s Family day celebrations this December. I became a recipient of an alarm clock and two sets of pens that I need. A lot of gifts were given that day that it seemed all you had to do to win anything was to be present.

However, beginning this December 13, I would be able to remember three. Here’s an account of how I won the third time:

After Tax 2 class, my classmates and I decided to eat at a nearby canteen. To be able to go there, we passed through the main entrance of the college. Tables were set and several people were coming in for a Christmas party that we had not been invited to and that we had no intention of attending. But this lady stopped us, and directed us to occupy an empty table. We were delighted. Free meals are always something to be delighted about.

Then, we were handed tickets, one for each of us. We obediently filled it out with our names. Mine bore the number 185. We were told the tickets were for the raffle draw. They were giving out, among others, two 19-inches Phillips LCD televisions. My classmates all wanted to win. I was the most cavalier. I didn’t want to come in front lest I be made to conjure an impromptu, Oscars-like speech again.

Then the guy picking out the winners announced my name. I won the television. And there was no need for the speech.

I gave the television to my parents when I came to the province for the Christmas break. Our old one is very old, indeed. My parents bought it when I was 8. I’m 23 now. When I told them my name got picked in a raffle draw, my mother thought I was joking. When she realized I was not, she exclaimed, “An unexpected blessing from the Lord.”

I agree with her. It is an unexpected blessing, indeed. It is a blessing because it is undeserved. I didn’t do anything good to merit it—I didn’t do anything at all except, perhaps, write my name on the ticket. It is unexpected because I came to school only to attend classes. I was not told there was going to have a party downstairs. I was not told someone would hand us tickets to fill-out. I was not told my name would be called. And it was from the Lord. I believe that God is in control of everything, even in the picking of a name from a fishbowlful of names.

On Remorse

Legalistic remorse says, ‘I broke God’s rules,’ while real repentance says, ‘I broke God’s heart.’ Legalistic repentance takes sin to Mt. Sinai, gospel repentance to Mt. Calvary. Legalistic repentance is convicted by punishment, gospel repentance becomes convicted by mercy.

-Timothy Keller

HT: Of First Importance

That I may always have a sense

I’m grateful that today is a holiday, so instead of going to school very early in the morning, I got to spend a lot of time reading my Bible, and a good book called, Why I am a Christian, written by John Stott.

Earlier, I meditated on Acts 17: 26-27, and was reminded of God’s sovereignty. Although the immediate context speaks of God’s control over the length of our lives and the places of our birth, I think the verses could be extended to include God’s sovereignty over everything. (Anyway, the Bible is full of instances showing that God is indeed in control of everything—the experiences of Job, for example). That someone wiser, holier, more loving and more powerful than I am is in control of everything brings me much comfort, especially during times when I struggle with sin.

John Stott’s book is likewise an encouragement as it points the reader constantly back to Christ. I haven’t finished the book yet, but let me share one very good quote. On the question of why God does not simply forgive us without the necessity of the cross, Stott says:

It is when we begin to see the gravity of sin and the majesty of God that our questions change. No longer do we ask why God finds it difficult to forgive sins, but how he finds it possible.

That I may always have a sense of God’s greatness and sin’s utter horribleness!

So not the case

In my Corporation Law class today.

Professor’s Question: May a corporation be sued for a crime?
Professor’s Answer: No. The principle is that the corporation is a creation of the law, and as such, it cannot offend its creator.

So not the case with humans.

I could never have known

Elie Wiesel, to my mind, has caricatured best the horrible massacre of people, of humanity, and of faith during the holocaust in his memoir, Night. (Although he might have the “best” retelling of the story, the story itself is worse than “worst.”) In a hundred pages or so, Wiesel is able to recount in vivid detail and in the simplest of language how families are separated from each other forever; how a single soldier, by merely pointing his finger to a man, woman or child can so easily decide his death; how prisoners had to do hard labor with nothing but crumbs of bread in their stomachs and in between lashings of a whip; how prisoners morph into helpless animals, and their captors into brutal beasts in a single day; how men who used to believe that God is as real as the next breathing person across the room soon find themselves echoing Nietzche: God is dead.

It is in the simplicity of the retelling that it is most haunting. But no matter how depressing the atrocities are, I know that’s all anyone who has never been in that concentration camp can ever do: be depressed, be disgusted, be enraged, take pity, vomit. Reading through the story I could feel in my bones the crushing defeat of Elie as he looked on a young boy (as young as he) suspended between heaven and earth in a rope, his tongue lolling as he desperately pants for breath, wanting to die but never quite dying yet. I could feel, but I could never have known.

And I hope I never would. I hope no one ever would.

And then I remembered the story of Job, and how he has suffered, too. How his wealth and kin disappear in a snap of a finger; how he is told the news that his properties are all gone; and how, no sooner than he learned of this, without even a chance to recover from a terrible blow, he is told again that all of his children are dead. So I am amazed when Job is able to declare: The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised.

From where did this faith come? This faith that would set aside the sharp and piercing claws of suffering to focus more on praising God? This, indeed, is grace. Purely grace.

(Photo credit: Lance)

Paul did a lot, but he barely scratched the surface

Blinded on the way to Damascus. Almost drowned to death. Jailed many times. Shared the gospel. Ministered to churches. Labored hard for the Lord. Although he knew Christ, his heart’s cry was, “I want to know Christ.”

When you think you know all about Christ, you’ve barely scratched the surface.

The Second Time Around

If everything goes well, I’ll be in Cebu by lunchtime tomorrow. This will be my second time in Cebu. The last time I was there was the first time I learned what it was like to take a plane ride. It was also the first time I asked the flight stewardess—that was what they were called during that time when the gender-neutral “flight attendant” was not yet in vogue—for a barf bag, which I did manage to use just as the plane was about to hit a complete stop.

I now only have vague recollections of what Cebu used to be like. I’ve heard that now, it is almost just like Manila sans the footbridges painted in a ghastly species of pink.

I’m going with my friends from church to attend the CCM Youth Convention. I’m really excited at the prospect of leaving Manila even for only three days. But I’m more excited at the thought of how God would be ministering to all of us in the convention. Indeed, nothing is more exciting to a starving pauper than the invitation to dine in a banquet of the most delicious cuisines with someone important as the King—and everything for free.

I pray that I may feast and be satisfied.

Four Months of Nothing

Four months. No updates, no nothing.

I have been on a hiatus that long in terms of writing and blogging. Though in the intergalactic universe (where time is reckoned in light years), four months is nothing but one bat of an eyelash, or perhaps a single beat of the heart; in the blogging world, four months without updating is like Rip van Winkle taking what should have been a nap, and waking up twenty years later.

I could justify these momentary gaps in my updates by saying that I had been busy, and that I couldn’t find the time and the occasion to write, but my busyness has only partly to do with it. Mostly, I got stuck in the rumination of the circumstances that my Lord wisely allows me to undergo, that I thought it best to concentrate first on the “ruminating,” and leave the writing for later. By “later”, I meant either of two things: one, at some indefinite time in the future; or two, not at all.

After poring over several chapters of C.S. Lewis’ Surprised by Joy, and after several bouts with the will-I-write-or-will-I-not-write attitude, it seems now that I meant the first one—the” indefinite time in the future” being the day I borrowed my friend’s laptop for the umpteenth instance, hurriedly composed my thoughts, and finally began to write. That is today.

I guess I am what you call an avid fan of Lewis. I read several of his books. I would giggle like a schoolboy upon the mere sight of his works displayed in a friend’s library, while wishing that my friend would notice the giggle and, in pity, give me his copy. Of course, this does not happen (either because he has enough sense not to mind my giggling, or because my giggles are just too far from being pitiful.)

I am encouraged not only by Lewis’ writing, but also by his life. Surprised by Joy is his autobiography, an honest caricature of his quest for Joy which he found only in Christ. I think everyone is in a similar pursuit. I have been. I still am. And like Lewis, I found it (and continually finding it) in Christ, who “for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at right hand of the throne of God.” I guess this is what I share with Lewis, although the paths that led us there, and the circumstances that God uses to keep us there may be different.

Because of Lewis’ writing, I am also encouraged to write. Though my attempts at chronicling this quest may obviously fall far behind his standards in terms of technique, literary-ness, and even content; yet, just as he was able to encourage me, so I pray that I would be able to encourage others as well. And just as he was able to point me to Christ through his book, so it is my prayer that others may be pointed to Christ as well through this blog.

Several years ago, when I first started this blog, I wrote under the title “Meta-Preface (or Preface to the Preface to the Word Factory)”—a title which I used to think (underscore “used to”) as a cute deconstruction of William Wordsworth’s Preface to the Lyrical Ballads—that I’m thinking of setting some map, as I called it, or a guide and a vision for this blog. I never came around to writing it. Not until now.

Indeed, if there is anything I desire to accomplish in my life, it is to point people to Christ. I must be quick to confess, however, that many times I am unfaithful to this calling. I falter and I stumble. In fact, my legs are too weak to carry me though in this endeavor. It is only by God’s unfailing grace, His steadfast love that never gives up on me that I am able to accomplish what I desire to do.

If truth be told, I write not only with the desire to minister to others, but I write for myself. I write so that the things that I have written might become for me “pillars of stones in the Jordan River,” as the book of Joshua would call it. I write that I might be reminded always of God’s faithfulness, love, grace and favor in my life.

Soli Deo Gloria!