So there goes another Chinese New Year. As usual, the kids
were moaning and groaning about having to join the annual ‘exodus’ balik
kampung. Maklumlah, it was a tiring 400 odd km from KL to Alor Star and that's only 1 way. Moreover there were inconveniences for all parties, both for our hosts
and ourselves. But looking back, we all knew deep in our hearts it was the
right thing to do. More than just a 'duty/obligation’, the effort speaks
volumes about caring enough to put aside one’s own comfort and desires to keep
the family bond alive. I think I can be justifiably proud of my kids who stuck
through hours sitting around people they
don’t know and can’t communicate with, since they are all ‘bananas’, never
having learnt to speak their native/any other Chinese dialect. (Of coz, I would add fiddling with their hand-phones
helped ease the boredom somewhat)
But after all that’s said and done, it was a good trip. A day before CNY eve we had driven up for a 'quickie' overnite stay at Gunung Jelai resort. At 1200 ft above sea level, the mountain air was cold and fresh, the surroundings beautiful as only nature can be. Trekking to the nearby Alur Naga falls was well worth the effort, though only princess no.1 dared dip into its ice-cold waters. Capped with a very yummy and dirt-cheap ikan bakar lunch in a Gurun 'restaurant' by the road, this side-trip proved to be a most enjoyable diversion. On the return leg after the usual rounds of 'pai nien' in Alor Star, we detoured into Penang on the very day Psy was in town doing his million $ gig. No, we weren't that hard-up to join the human 'jam’ where he was performing. We were there to visit my brother-in-law and stay a day in his newly-constructed house, which apparently took 7 long years and a court-case before it was finally completed. We managed to catch a couple of fun hours at the beach, after enduring a bumper-2-bumper crawl along the one and only road leading there. On our final morning, thanks to no. 2 princess’ local fren who acted as guide, we joined crowds of tourists q-ing to take photos of Pg’s famous street wall-art. I had hoped for a relatively jam-free drive back to KL, but instead it took us an excruciatingly looonng 7 hrs to reach home, enduring rain and heavy traffic all the way. I had not realized that it was the end of the weekend holiday break, and everyone was starting work on the morrow. No wonder it seemed as if half of M’sia was heading into KL city. Thankfully we could take turns at the wheel.
And talking about driving, I discovered this nifty tingy called a GPS whilst getting lost, (as I am prone to, being the ‘directionally-challenged’ type) around Alor Star and Penang. All my girl had to to was key in a word or two, and presto, a disembodied female voice would call out turn left, turn right to the last meter of road, the next traffic light, or the roundabout ahead. I didn’t have to think which way to take at all, so it was pretty handy to an old aunty who, as the years roll by, can only rely so much on physical landmarks (which have a way of disappearing off the landscape to be replaced with totally unfamiliar ones), especially since she only passes the way once a year! It’s so easy-peasy to get lost – all it takes is one wrong turn to end up in a strange never-seen before neighborhood; it gets worse if the roads are one-way, like almost all Penang roads are these days. So I can understand why people are ready to trust their very life to the GPS in their phone.
Yet there have been times when that ting seems to bark out weird commands, like the time it told us to swing into Sg Petani (Utara) whilst we were driving along a perfectly fine, straight, free-flowing highway into Penang. As per its usual style, it took us left, right, ahead and finally out back into the very same highway by the Sg Petani (Selatan) toll. That’s half-an-hour, petrol and toll money wasted. Hmm, maybe it likes Sg Petani. Or the time when it called out “Police ahead”; and I was thinking, How cool, it even alerts on road-blocks, but then, never a shadow of a policeman showed up at all. I have also heard (horror) stories of how a GPS directed someone to a cemetery – at nite no less.
Which only goes to show you can trust machines but only just that much. Humans unfortunately aren’t much better either. My style when I get lost - I drive till I hit a petrol/police station (whichever comes first) and ask a 2-legged homo sapiens for directions. They, like the GPS machine, will instruct me turn left, turn right wherever and most times, I somehow end up at the right place. But again, like the GPS tingy, sometimes, the human directions go haywire and don’t quite ‘connect’…which leads me to the next petrol/police station of coz.
And I got to thinking how is it we can place so much trust on a talking machine or for that matter, a fallible fellow human being, without question and yet can’t trust God to direct our life’s journeys? It’s incomprehensible to me why we can take a little machine’s word that this or that way is correct in totally blind faith. We safely assume the machine is right in directing us onto the shortest route, getting around traffic jams, accidents or police blocks. Yet we will never know whether in fact there were such things ahead or how bad they were, because we simply obeyed ‘the voice’ and avoided that particular path. Does our trust come about because we "know" that the GPS is backed up by a ‘reliable’ data bank of coordinates and info keyed in, processed and churned out as ‘intelligible responses’ whenever we punch in a destination? After all, if its source comes from no less than 24 satellite 'eyes' floating somewhere up there in the sky, operating 24/7, 365 days round the clock round the globe, it should be 100% accurate to the last decimal point. Yet, the average man's 'knowledge' of the workings of a GPS is actually zilch; we only depend on what we see, hear or read about it. On the basis of purely physical attributes, we 'trust' it....Well and good for those who are ready to swear, live and die by a machine, created by mere mortals.
Then why can’t we trust the Almighty God whose power not only exceeds any/every satellite in space, but who created all that space in the first place? After all we are told "For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him" (2 Ch.16:9) His data bank is infinite to the extent that He numbers all the hairs on our heads (Mat.10:30) He tells us that even before we were formed in our mother’s womb, He already knew us full well (Jer.1:6). How can, you ask? Why can't, seeing as to how He simply breathed into a lifeless lump of dust and turned an ‘it’ into a ‘he’, a man full of life? (Gen.2:7)
A GPS may do very well to help us avoid traffic jams but my God commands thunderstorms and rough seas to be still, He walks me through fire and deep waters, even right through the valley of the shadow of my husband's death He has carried me. Unlike a GPS, He doesn’t always shield me from accidents, but He has always taken care of every pain. In fact Jesus' calling card says He specializes in healing broken bodies, hearts, spirit and soul. Best of all, quite unlike a GPS, my Jesus loves me.
And consider one more thing, my God doesn’t need to be recharged. The GPS was of absolutely no use on our return journey, since the power source it was hooked up to (the handphone) die-ded. We just had to keep driving along in 'spurts' along the busy h/way, since a dead GPS obviously can't offer any alternative routes. When we noticed jams spilling out of rest-stops and even petrol stations, I decided to skip a refuel, thinking we should be able to ‘tahan’ all the way, since it only took 1 tank when we were traveling up. I guess I am not a very good ‘risk calculator’, as we got to running dangerously low on petrol. I am sure no GPS could have saved us if we had been stranded in the middle of nowhere then, even if it was activated. But thank God He is THE Power that’s always active and responsive to those who call on Him. So as the petrol signal indicator blinked and blinked, I prayed and prayed....And as we exited into Rawang town, there - just a little way off from the toll-gate - was the welcome light of a petrol station, without any queue in sight.
What is a GPS but 1 out of millions of discardable, dispensable, disposable ‘smart things’ that man continue to invent. Jesus, on the other hand, isn’t a clever gadget we can program to come up with the answers we want. He isn't something we can turn on/off at a whim. Strange that we would rather rely on inanimate ‘things’ that pass away with the next upgrade instead of a living, eternal God. Odd that we can blithely allow a machine to direct us into unknown paths and yet reject God’s invitation to walk with Him into the certainty of a blessed life. We choose to obey the disembodied voice of a machine, but tune out the voice of a real inter-relational God. We choose to submit to a machine’s automatic ‘commands’, but rebel against God’s personal call. What did you say? - God can't be compared to a GPS?? Of coz He can't. And that's precisely my point - nobody thinks twice about putting faith in this wonder-machine, or in lots of other 'stuff' - things, people, philosophy, even religion, but to have faith in a wonder-God named Jesus Christ...oh, but that's different. Is it, really?? After hearing umpteen arguments about faith, I have come to conclude it all boils down to 1 issue - we just wanna believe what/who we wanna believe. Simple as that. Just like trusting a GPS - we choose to. Rightly or wrongly.
"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight"...Proverbs 3:5-6
CNY shots click here
1 comment:
Actually the Waze application mainly relies on users' reports. :p so if people report about police, but don't report when the police go away, then it's not so accurate la.
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