The Personal Touch

Don't you just hate those programmed voice-answering messages whenever you dial a number? Press 1 for...Press 2 for...Press.....I have never bothered to go beyond Press 4. Because on top of being directionally-challenged, I am also numerically-challenged - something to do with left brain or is it right brain 'deficiency' so the experts say. I never passed my maths all through primary school and it's only by a miracle that I managed to scrape through secondary level. I always dreaded report book time, because I knew I would be in for a whacking when my father saw those red marks...again. Anyway, by the time the disembodied voice gets to Press 4, I am already fed-up twiddling my thumbs and inevitably, I just jab at 0, hoping this is the jack-pot number that will connect me to a human voice belonging to a human being who can interact (hopefully) sensibly with me, instead of taking me back to main menu.

And since I am on a roll here, don't you also just hate how 'it' keeps on asking you to press more numbers after you press 1, 2 or 3? Please key in your......IC, Account, Pin, Membership, Whatever... number, and press the # or * key. I always lose it at this point, because my eye-sight ain't too good these days, and I have problems locating the unfamiliar  # or *   - it's even worse if I am using  my old hand-phone, since to change into symbols, caps or numbers, I have to fiddle some more with the tiny key-pad. What's worse is after all that, if you do manage to talk to a human at the other end, you will be asked all over again - politely of course - can I have your IC, Account, Pin, Membership or Whatever number, ma'am? Duh.

I am all for technology and all the stuff which is supposedly 'progressing' civilization along. But sometimes I wonder what the human race has come to.  I mean, what does clicking a 'like' button on a screen mean? For goodness sake, what's there to like about someone's funeral or personal tragedy, or war in some part of the world? Yes, I know it's meant to signal we care. But, really, I fail to see how 'like' can be an appropriate response in so many instances. And I can never understand why people can descend to calling other people names, swear and curse all over cyberspace, just because we don't agree on something. Sure, it's your right. But whatever happened to good old-fashioned civility and respect for others? Would we dare or even want to say such words to an actual person standing in front of and eye-balling us?

I guess it's become all too easy to 'hide behind' the anonymous veil of a screen these days. I mean, it's so handy, literally, to type out "I don't love you anymore" and press send to a number, than say it face to face to a human being. Likewise it's much more convenient to spout and vent our own (right) opinions to a Google, Fb, or Twitter account than to sit down and grapple contentious issues with living, breathing creatures who possess hearts no different than our own. At what cost technology which turns human beings into faceless beings?

Of course machines are easier to handle. They don't talk back, they don't cry, they have no feelings that must be considered, they are totally impervious to insults, criticism or condemnation. By the same token, they are also totally insensitive to love, laughter, or joy. Whereas a person is....well, a person. We can't have a relationship with a machine. Surely that's why God didn't create machines; He created humans. Feeling, talking, walking, smiling, crying , unpredictable, emotional, complex, cranky, sentimental, lovable and (sometimes) unlovable beings called persons. These days a whole family of persons can be sitting around the dinner table and not be 'there', because each is busy tapping on their so-smart fones, tablets and whatever else that's apparently so much more interesting than having to look up and 'relate' to one another.

I am sure glad my God isn't into gadgets. He's as personal as personal can be. The other day a dear fren was down in the dumps, (I surmise) feeling unloved and unlovely, and that on Valentine's Day. I couldn't help much, except pray a silent prayer for her. Apparently she took her troubles out for a walk in the park and behold, caught  in the branches of a tree were 4 different colored heart-shaped balloons. She snapped a foto and emailed them to me, captioned very appropriately God's love. It got me smiling, man, how personal can that get? And how like our God who is love to do something so extravagant (not 1, but 4 hearts!) for my fren, right in her hour of need. How very blessed she is. Indeed God gets very personal with her; oft times He sends her rainbows when she prays - even when there's no rain.

Occasionally I get a bit wistful why God doesn't do such things for me. Heck, I can't even pray up a miserable dream. I remember when my husband passed on, I told God, just let me dream about him, so I know he's really in heaven with You. Zilch. Zero. Nothing. Instead He gave the dream to one of the kids, who never even asked for it. And with that I shall be content.  The fact that God doesn't answer me the way I want to be answered doesn't - shouldn't - make Him any the less personal to and for me. Otherwise what's my faith worth? It doesn't say much about me, if I have to have 'proof' my way or no way. Besides who am I to insist on putting God into my own little box of a brain? That would be making my God way way too small.

The flip side is just when I least expect it, He will show His hand. Like the time I was desperately searching for a 24 hour clinic on the first day of CNY to deal with my daughter's sudden stomach cramps at 2 am in the morning. We were in a strange neighborhood, roughing out a nite in a 'cheapo' motel, on a last minute mandatory trip back to Penang for my late aunt's funeral . I only knew Jelutong vaguely as the place where my husband had once upon a long time ago taken me out for sumptuous fish porridge by the road side.

And now this emergency...I prayed, and kept on praying.  I had driven, following the voice of her GPS, which so cleverly informed us there was a 24 hr clinic in the vicinity.  But instead of a clinic, we ended up at a block of flats. So much for the technological expert. A machine is forever a machine. Now what? The ever-logical me figured I should drive my kid straight to the nearest hospital. So having lost the way anyway, I 'simply drove'...1 turn, 2 turns, left, right....and there it was, straight ahead  a big blue signboard lighted up with the name of the clinic and the welcome words :24 hours. And surprisingly for a small little suburban clinic it was pretty hi-tech; registration was by a machine scanning the IC, like the ones banks use to verify identity, the attending doctor 'wrote' on a computer screen with a pen tingy,  not on the normal paper cards GPs use for patients' records. Plus the best part of it all - it was so cheap - only $50 including medication for food-poisoning . Where can you find a doctor on call at 3 am for this kind of money?! That's personal 'service' - and I am not talking about the doctor. 

How is it at the crucial moment, the GPS led us to a dead-end but I could find the clinic 'simply driving around'? Coincidence? Fluke shot? So how come immediately after the crisis was taken care of, I got lost again and couldn't find our way back to the motel? My guess is the angel God sent in answer to my prayer was only tasked to get me to the clinic and after my daughter got the help she needed, he went off-duty for coffee break. Or maybe he had to attend to something much more important in another little corner of the world. Whatever. The job was done. QED

People can 'interpret' God any way they want or don't want. Me, I only know that I know that I know my God is a very personal God. How personal? Well, Max Lucado, the Christian author put it this way, "If you were the only person on earth, the earth would look exactly the same (just as awesome and wonderfully made). ...If you were the sole pilgrim on this globe, God would not diminish its beauty one degree. Because He did it all for you...and He's waiting for you to discover His gift." How personal did Jesus get? As personal as dying on a cross, just for me. That's why Christianity isn't a 'religion'. Just like machines, you can't have a relationship with a 'religion'. With God, you can only get up close and personal, the way God Himself does it. And nope, you don't have to go through an answering machine. 

"Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.." - James 4:8

Love Struck

It's that time of the year when roses, chocolates and cuddly cutesy toys are all the rage. Apparently on Valentine's Day, a single rose sold for about $200 in Beijing, compared to $8 on a normal day and $150 for an ounce of gold. Restaurants probably cut down their electricity bill by lighting up candles all over the tables and bakeries would have charged the moon for heart-shaped cakes. Like they say, Love is in the air....that's so.... cheeesy. Of coz everyone knows its nonsense to say I Love You to the special people in our lives, whether it's with flowers, diamonds or just the mouth only once a year on a particular date in a month. Those 3 little words should be uttered every day in case we don't wake up tomorrow to say it. Indeed whilst we still have today, we should not only say but 'do' love as often as we can.

I caught the much-touted M'sian film The Journey a day after Valentine's. As I sat watching the drama unfold of a distinctly odd couple - a misfit foreigner thrown together with a cranky prospective father-in-law - I was thinking how universal and timeless is the theme of love. The acting may not be Academy Award standard, but the story-line is excellent; with plenty of poignant moments and well-fleshed out nuances of love.....care, compassion, conflict... between parents and children, family, friends, man and woman. Above all, it celebrates love not as a flashy showy emo ting where everybody gets along just fine with each other, where life is one happy forever-after fairy tale, but a very 'real' type of love, with all the tensions of human relationships thrown in, where people come with their own particular (even weird) idiosyncrasies, juxtaposed against the background of nostalgic memories of old school days and the ever-present specter of aging, sickness and death -  grim reminders that we all live on borrowed time.

A daughter finally comes home after a decade overseas for Chinese New Year, bringing back not just a surprise fiance, but the baggage of unresolved hurt/resentment against the reticence and strictness of a conservative father which she mistakes for rejection. If anything the movie brought home the message that love doesn't need to be said in so many words. (In fact words can sometimes come out so totally wrong). Love was there when the father kept quiet despite knowing she was already pregnant. Love was there when he cut short his journey to u-turn back home to cook her a bowl of mee suah on her birthday; only to dump it into the dustbin when she didn't return till much too late. Love was there in the reluctant son-in-law being sensitive enough to note how the old man suffered back-ache sitting on his bike, and how, without a word, he traded it in for a junk-car just so it would be a more comfortable journey. Comic touches of a 'kwailo' learning Chinese culture and tradition, realizing at the end of it all, that compromise isn't a 'dirty' word when it's about love; that there's no way of getting 'ready' to be a father, except just go ahead and be one. So changed was he that he deigned to invite his own divorced parents for the wedding after years of living separate lives. It was supposed to be just a journey to deliver wedding cards to ex-school chums on the whim of a stubborn old man, but it turned out to be so much more.
 
Love. We tend to think romance is about humans. But really the first Romance was initiated by God Himself - with man. He could have stopped at creating the magnificent sun rise or be content with the thousands upon thousands of beautiful animals or flowers that He populated a whole world with. But He didn't. Instead He went on to create His most unique masterpieces - man and woman in His own image.  Whatever for? God doesn't 'need' humans. What can man possibly give to God! Besides man has been nothing but trouble to God. We sin, doubt, disobey, disregard, misunderstand, ignore, rebel against and sometimes simply hate Him. We cause Him so much grief. Honestly, why would God want to bother with us? Yet the truth of the matter is that God created man simply because He loved to, He wanted to. If you knew someone loved you that much to even die for you, despite your being totally unworthy, wouldn't you respond - how can you not respond? It blows my mind to consider and accept that even before I  knew God, or ever wanted anything to do with Him, He already had me in mind, He wanted me to exist as a significant being, crafted me as a living work of beauty, out of love, to be loved and to love. Pure love. The highest form of love divine. No other love can compete, compare or compensate.

Cynics will always find fault with the Christian God who defines Himself as Love. But the whole Christian 'religion' is premised on this single all-encompassing concept . It's not about good works or getting a free ticket to heaven (those are what I call 'by the way' stuff); it's all about this 'thing' called love. We can be cynical about God, but we cannot deny deep inside, every human heart  is somehow 'wired' up for love, to love and be loved. Science can never explain love's dynamics; it can only reduce it to a chemical reaction, but surely love is so much more than hormones.  Look around - love cuts across all boundaries of language, race and nations in songs, movies, poetry and artistic expression. We even associate the beauty of nature with love, why else would man pick a rose to represent that inexplicable special feeling for that special someone? Love is still the reason for marriages and babies - at least I think it should be. And that's where The Journey ended....a marriage and a baby on the way; a daughter reconciled to her father, a father reconciled to his son-in-law.

That really is the be all and end all of love - reconciliation. Which is why God the Creator keeps up this Romance with the humans He created, wooing and pursuing us through the generations. Jesus took the first step down to earth to invite us to take the most fantastic journey of a lifetime with Him. The next step is ours to make - whether or not we are willing to go along. What will we find at the end of it? Why, Perfect love, of course, that drives out all fear, that reconciles man to man and man to God.

“I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness" - Jeremiah 31:3

In No Hurry

I am trying to slow down, consciously and deliberately. I drive fast, work fast, think fast, talk fast. Even eat fast. But it's not easy to slow down life. I dare say in this age of instant gratification,  not being in a hurry is a most trying thing for most people. We don't like to wait or to be kept waiting ....in banks, supermarket check-out lanes, movie ticket q's, at the taxi stands, bus stops or toll booths. We think we can somehow save a precious few seconds of life if we just go straight to the front and cut into some else's lane at a traffic jam. When we are fiddling our thumbs, I-pads or I-phones awaiting our turn in the hospital or clinic, we wonder why the person before us is taking so long in the consultation room. We are a very impatient species. We want what we want yesterday. Our life-styles reflect our inner urgency. No time is everyone's fave mantra. Instant mee will do for a quickie meal. And of coz everybody is into Instantgram; (except probably old fuddy-duddy aunties like me); whoever goes to the neighborhood photo studio when we can simply aim, shoot a selfie and post it up immediately for all the world to see?

We all want fast solutions and make fast decisions, because there is no time to waste. The hardest thing for me as a Christian is not the 'doing' stuff - I can handle the call to sacrifice, service, ministry, etc. But when the call comes to "Be still, and know that I am God", (Psalm 46:10), I find it rubs me up the wrong way. I fuss and  fret when God takes His own sweet time; I am very inclined to 'run ahead' of God, especially  in stressful situations. Like when I was absolutely stretched working 11 hours straight as we started daycare in the kindy this year. I had prayed even from last year itself that we would be able to find the right person to work the extended hours. In the meantime, obviously I had to anchor it. I murmured, complained, and told God He should be letting me relax as I grow older instead of pushing me to such limits, battling daily traffic jams up to 1 1/2 hrs on the road and hey, without any extra pay. 

Despite all the pleading and praying, I had only 1 applicant for the job up to early Feb. So since there were no others, and since (honestly) I was getting physically very tired, I confirmed the offer to the sole applicant. The following week, a stranger rang the bell at the gate. She was apparently just passing through on her way to work when she decided to enquire about a job vacancy she had somehow heard from one of the flat residents nearby. Turned out she was a better qualified candidate than the one I had offered the job to. I was in a bind of my own working. My waiting was not with trusting. All because I was in a hurry to get myself out of the inconvenience of having to work so hard.  God showed me up for the lazy bum that I was.

But my God is an awesome and loving God. He overturns the dumb mistakes I make. The very moment the lady walked out after our interview and as I was kicking myself mentally for being in such a hurry to get the position filled, an SMS came. The first person declined the offer already made. I didn't have to withdraw, apologize, provide excuses, or lift a finger to get out of the mess I had created. I was free to make the offer to the (right) person God had brought at just the right moment. Like we always say, God is never too early, never too late, but always right on time. Problem is His time isn't our time.

But I am learning, have been learning for the past 12 years and will continue learning for the rest of my life on earth that God isn't in a hurry and so I shouldn't be too. This is one university in which all students will take a life-time to graduate from. I had my first lesson in the waiting room of death, watching a beloved husband waste away from the cancer that ate him up over 2 years. That was the time I came to the end of myself  and admitted I couldn't handle my life, no matter that I had it all,  I really had nothing at all, except what God had given me in the first place. I call it a defining moment, when we discover our life is really not our own. How foolish we are to delude ourselves that we are in charge. Heck, if it were not for God's grace, I would not even be able to draw a single breath through my nose right now. I may never wake to see another sun rise tomorrow. So why did I allow myself to miss it today, hurrying through the motions.

Indeed, why do we often rush around like a chicken without a head to wade through a list of to-do's everyday? Sure we need to work; work is good - God gave Adam the world's first job after all - and  necessary. But methinks mankind has lost the art of living in our working. We let our job, our ambitions, our plans define us, instead of our Creator. Indeed we have no time or need for a Creator to look over our shoulder in the first place. Because we are so capable, powerful, intelligent, and self-sufficient in and of ourselves. So we hurry along on this road we call our life; basically we decide what we wanna do to get what we wanna get.

Well, at least I did.  My very first prayer was to petition God for the desire of my heart - my husband's mortal life on earth. God took 2 years to give me something better - He carried my husband home to live forever more in heaven; the same hope and promise I am blessed with.  I then learnt to pray for other stuff -   family, friends, nations - 12 years down the line, I am still praying the same stuff. In one of my more diligent moods, I once kept a log of all my prayers, with columns for the date I began praying about something and the date when it was answered, either fulfilled or denied. I gave up after numbering some 200 items. Because the ones still pending outnumbered by far the ones with both dates entered. And it was such a hassle flipping back the pages to update the items. I learnt then to throw away my time-table and let God draw up His own.  

But every now and then, I regress back into self-mode. I get impatient with the Creator of the universe; sometimes I even wonder if there's really anyone 'up there'  listening to my daily stream of prayers. Yet like Jacob who spent all nite wrestling with God, in spite and despite of myself, I hang on. So like the old patriarch, I declare "I will not let You go, unless You bless me" (Genesis 36:26) - actually, the declaration is as much for myself as to God. Like a stubborn mule who will not move out of position, I cling onto my belief that there is a God who will intervene...at the right time. 

Jesus talked a lot about the 'right time'. He refused to be drawn into the limelight when the mother who gave birth to Him requested some help to change water into wine at a wedding to save the host's face. He declined His family's opportunistic urging to attend a feast where He could be a 'public figure, to show Himself to the world'. He let His best friend Lazarus die and rot for 4 days in a tomb before He resurrected the stinking corpse. Instead of taking the quickest route to work, He purposely detoured out of the way, just so a 'pariah' woman could bump into Him. Standing accused before a territorial king and Roman governor, after being interrogated throughout the nite, He kept quiet, 'like a sheep led to slaughter'. 
And at exactly the time ordained, on a Friday afternoon, He died on the cross, bringing to fulfillment the grand divine design of mankind's redemption. Scripture tells us that at the precise moment of His death, the veil of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was torn into two, from top to bottom (Mark 15:38), signifying the opening up of a direct way for man to approach God.  3 days after, not a moment sooner or later, when all human hope was gone, early on a Sunday morning, a grieving Mary Magdalene was greeted by a resurrected Christ. And we who believe know sooner or later, our beloved Lord will come again to gather His saints on that final day of the end of the world as we know it.

Considering all these, I really should take more time to 'tune' into His time, instead of ordering my life according to a clock or calendar on the wall. To Him, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The world carries on spinning, flowers bloom, people fall in love, marry, have babies, live and die no matter how I hurry along, so really, I should just reset my days according to heaven's time-zone - E for Eternity.


To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven - Ecclesiastes 3:1

A Convenient Time

I thought it would be a real quiet Chinese New Year since we were not going to 'balik kampung' after all as some of my relatives were planning to 'keluar kampung' and others were tied up with this, that or the other. I was glad we didn't have to join the customary mad mad exodus-crawl along the N-S highway this year. And it wasn't that difficult dishing up some edible stuff for our own small-time reunion dinner with 5 people around the table. In fact I was looking forward to a most relaxing time at home for the 1 week break from work when the call came....

My aunt in law passed away in the early morning of the first day of CNY 2014. She had hung on in a coma for a week after a massive stroke; which would have left her totally incapacitated if she survived at all. Apparently they had to break the locks to her apartment where she lived alone after being alerted that she had failed to go to work for 2 days. No one knows when the stroke hit her. I recall we would always pop in to the photo shop she operated whenever we were in Penang. We used to joke that hers must be the only business that closed shop for only 1 day for CNY. At her age (she was in her early 80's), that's a marvel. She would take the bus all the way into town as the shop was situated smack in the middle of Penang Road. After visiting her we would inevitably end up eating the famous ice cream and cendol in the vicinity.

So we headed up north after all. Since it was festive season, we had problems finding reasonably-prized accommodation in Penang. Everywhere, even hostels, were fully-booked over the weekend. We had to settle for a double-storey house-converted-into-homestay motel, which advertised a last family room available. We dubbed it Bates Motel, after the old Alfred Hitchcock thriller Psycho, but actually, it wasn't that bad...for 1 nite. My sis-in-law was in a dither, caught in a bind because she had big plans for CNY. She was scheduled to dine with her son's potential in-laws as well as her girl and new husband in tow. She remarked quite off-hand, if only the old lady had held on for 1 more day, things would have been a little easier to manage. Now she wasn't sure if there were any last minute flights available, because she could only leave after all the  mandatory family gatherings in KL. And she was already anticipating a big jam for us driving back on Sunday, when every Ali, Ah Beng and Arumugam would surely be returning to the big city to start work (she was right on that one; it took us a torturous 7 hrs to drive back on Sunday)

Her remark got me pondering...is there a 'convenient' time to die? If you had a choice to fix when you leave this world, what time, day, month and year would you tick on a calendar of the future? And how would you want to 'go'? Most people desire to see certain things accomplished before they breathe their last....many  want to live long enough to see all their children well-established in good careers, raising happy families of their own. Some want to 'go' before their bodies get broken down by age or disease. Everyone wants to die in their sleep, without pain, violence or suffering. So much for wishful thinking.

We all know the truth is death doesn't happen according to our whims and fancies. Duh, so what's the point of asking such dumb questions. Indeed to even bring up the subject of death is taboo amongst traditional Chinese,  especially during CNY. Very 'swuay' - bad luck. But not talking or thinking about death doesn't prevent it from creeping up and pouncing on us...one day in our life, we will all die, in fact the pessimist says every day we live, it's one day closer to dying. Death is the ultimate equalizer....it strikes at the rich in palaces and the poor homeless vagrant. It doesn't discriminate between gender, age, body fitness, race, religion or political affiliation. Death knocks at the door irrespective of whether it's a holy day, holiday or plain ordinary day.

And yes, it can be so darn inconvenient. It could come in the shrill ring of the phone that  rings in the dead (pun intended) of the nite, when all decent people are nicely sleeping and dreaming sweet dreams. It could cut you down at the peak or in the prime of your life. You just need to open up the newspapers, read the obituaries (you know you are getting on when you start doing that, like me) and get a daily dose of death all over the world. Statistically, about 150k people bite the death bullet every day, which works out to about 6000 bodies every hour, 105 per minute, and 2 per second, even as I type this sentence. Heck, I could be the very next one to drop dead.... 

I wonder if it happens when there is no one around me, like how it was my aunt in law, say when I am all alone jogging in the pre-dawn darkness of the morning, would my kids know where to find me? Or if I get smashed up in a road accident, would I still be recognizable? Eesh, morbid. No one looks pretty in death. The make-up the undertakers use cannot camouflage its pall. Death is indeed horrible, however we may 'go', even if it's in our sleep. For the simple reason it's a cheat, a robber and a killer of life. Immortality was crafted into our genes; all of us refuse instinctively to die.  That's why we all grieve when death hits a target. If we can get upset with losing a loved one to death, I can imagine how upset God gets every time death snatches away one that He created with such loving care. No wonder He went to such great lengths to give us back the life He meant for us originally. 

Some people blame God for not stopping death; where is His power or His good if He can't/won't get rid of something so bad? Hai, how shallow humans can be; we either blame others, God or the devil for everything. We don't get or like that death is the natural consequence that has to be, by the very law that God had laid down for man in the first place. Don't play with fire or else you will get burnt. Don't eat this or else you will die. We can't say we were not warned. Law is law; a just God won't suspend His own law no matter how His heart may grieve at the harshness of its effect. That's how law is supposed to work - we break the speed limit, we pay the fine. Man can bend the rules; the police can issue discounts, cancel the summons; but that doesn't mean the offence wasn't committed. The deed was done, and it can never be blotted out; it just means mercy was exercised in the sentencing.

That's how it is with God. As the ultimate Judge of all who can do no wrong, He lets law take its course, as it should. But in His mercy, He extends grace for all sinners. Funerals remind me to be grateful that God didn't just let death be to run havoc with human lives. He didn't stop it, instead He went one up better - He overcame it. That's what Jesus did; He died, but rose again, triumphant over death. And that's my hope beyond the death that will claim my body by and by. That's why I tell my kids, I want my funeral to be a party. Cry for me a little, but rejoice for me a lot, because I am sure I will be looking down from a pretty 'kool' place, with the 'kooolest' Guy ever, holding my hand in His hand. And if that should turn out to be just a silly little fable cooked up by some fanatic nut-cases over Someone who died on a cross, that's ok. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain by believing that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. I'd rather die happy in a delusion, than unsure, fearful or just plain dying away into nothingness or worse into the hottest (hell) fire.

There is never a convenient time to die.  But that doesn't matter to me, because the second it happens, I know I am home free. God promised, and Jesus Christ proved it. When all was done, there was an empty cross and an empty tomb....the death of death and the resurrection of life forevermore.


"The last enemy to be destroyed is death....When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory.” 1 Corinthians 15:26, 54