LOVE CLOUDS MY MIND

” I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.” -Abraham Lincoln

One morning I wake up and I don’t want to rise from my bed not only because I’m lazy but because I feel I have no reason to. Wish I could just drift away to the hollow of my dreams…So ironic because there are actually lots of things to be done. Depression isn’t easy. It’s a horrible sickness. To really think about the existence of depression is nonsense, just plain stupid and selfish. “Why would somebody want to end a life when there are people trying to survive living in hospitals, in slums and the unimaginable hell corners of this world?”

But I ask, “Why does everyone thinks things oughta’ be going when the sun rises up?”

Well, at least not everyone, maybe some. I recalled a man who has battled with severe depression almost whole time of his life it could be impossible. Yet he was great, even a famous lawyer in his time. He battles with a heavy melancholy that he called himself “The Most Miserable Man Living Ever”. Yet unknown to the man is his future. Through the dark nights of his soul, the people around him recognized his consciousness to a Higher being who gives meaning even to the ‘nonsense’ and puts an “irrepressible desire” in him to accomplish something before he dies that would “redound to the interest of his fellow men”. The once depressed man became the American President Abraham Lincoln.

The sun rises up piercing through my windows to touch my face. I lie face down on my bed trying to evade the light. “God, everything seems to be okay and that makes it not okay with me that I’m not okay with everything is okay!!! Can you please give me one reason out there why I should rise and face the day?”

My heart is cold. My blinking eyes searched for the windows. My gaze passed through the roof ridge, passed the tree leaves outside my window to the sky. Nothing…

I said again in my mind…“God, give me onE reason or I force myself to go to sleep and I would try not to wake up ever again!!!” (You see how terrible and foolish I am to talk like that to God. He reads my mind.)

My eyes were locked staring at the sky. The sun is still there. Well, it is always there so what. But the clouds…they moved. Every minute I can see they are changing forms. In an hour, they are not the form they are in an hour ago. Everyday they are not like yesterday.

As if in a gentle whisper God said to me, “You have to rise from your bed and face the day because of this one reason- I love you.”

I jerked out of bed. Not that I just knew God loves me. I know God loves me but today is the reality of His steadfast love for me that is fresh every morning, dynamic and changes in forms like the clouds every second, every minute of the day. His love is not frozen, boring nor static. It is an adventure to experience His love today different from yesterday or the days to come.

Walking to the office, I can’t help but looking up mostly around the sky to see the clouds all over; a great reminder that it is never been this good when love clouds my mind.

Race Colored with Grace

“You don’t love someone because of their looks or their clothes or their cars. You love them because they sing a song that nobody but you can understand.”-Anonymous

I recalled a recent disappointment. Although resolved, the disappointment brought me a lot of realization hence so far I have not forgotten it. Out of boredom and a search for something brand new that would challenge my brain other than crossword puzzle and computer games, I tried to learn a new language. I enjoyed tweaking my mind to absorb the grammar and conversational usage of the language. But one time, this certain foreign guy who speaks the language came over to me in pessimism and charged me learning the language because perhaps of an intention to get a foreign guy like him, feel grand and be able to come to his country. I felt offended. I thought I slapped him but it was not actualize. I somehow gathered some cool and strained myself with efforts to hold still my hand and understand his statement.

It is just sad truth that there are already ill-tainted impressions and connotations about Filipina opportunists who by whatever means it takes, jump and devour into foreigners’ financial account faster than wind, which might have been overgeneralized in the statement by the foreign guy I’ve encountered. I’m not concern much on the issue of opportunists nor of slanderers. Both are negative. It is the matter of culture and the heart, I want to positively dissert. For as always, most issues of life root from the issue of the heart.

Truly, God’s grace is like an abundant stream which never runs out to quench the thirst of those who seek to be cooled, washed, enlivened and refreshed. So the old saying goes, “Where sin abounds, grace abounds”. Not that we continue to sin because there is grace as Paul in Roman 6 confabulated. But that we should choose of which to obey because for which we obey, we become slaves of-”whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?” And as written by Paul, we thank God who freed us from sin through Jesus Christ and bestowed upon us righteousness to which sufficient grace flows for our every weakness.

The thing is, we learn God will never hurt us but people can and do hurt us. And here is my weakness, my heart was tested by my above recent disappointment. The years when I let injustice from different culture and race pass up piled a clutter in my heart which was heightened by my latest kinda “racial” encounter with the guy above. I became hypersensitive by his statement because of the past injustice I might not have forgiven. To be unforgiving is singing a “killing-me-softly song” snapping your chord string of patience tune after tune. I need a new song which is in my greatest model of freedom, forgiveness and love, my Savior Jesus.

Jesus was the most radical man ever in his time, He never defined a man by culture, race and status but by a man’s heart. Even when confronting hypocritical Pharisees and Sadducees in his time, Jesus’ look into their eyes is not of condemnation but of a passionate offer of truth and forgiveness. Jesus looked into their heart.

Jesus looks into my heart because he knows a song that nobody but Him only can understand. As forgiven, I forgave.

This song in my heart
This song in my soul
This song I was born to sing
It’s your song of freedom
Now I’m free to dance again
Free to Dance by Hillsong

Cat & Compassion

“If you don’t want your heart be broken don’t give it to anyone…not even to a pet or an animal…”- William Shakespeare

The cat looks poor and thin. It can’t even manage to eat. It walks a few step then it stumbles. I pity the cat but not much how my younger sister cared about it. She owns the cat. I’m not really fond of cats or furry animals of a sort because I’m hypersensitive with furs. I prefer fish pets. So I once had this aquarium in our house.

Being an academic scholar in my high school before, I studied hard during late nights. During my study breaks I would look at those pretty fish following with my eyes their swimming movements from left to right up and down inside the aquarium. And my eyes would feel relaxed and refresh for more books and lessons to read.

Then I got to college in Cebu, a city that is distantly islands away from home. During the Christmas break of my first year, I went home to learn my fish died coz nobody was able to take care of the fish like I do. When my sister came to study in Cebu with me. Of course, she has to leave her cat pet at home also. During the school break, we went home. My sister was saddened to have met her cat in very poor state. My mother explained that ever since my sister left home for college, her cat was not eating it right anymore so it becomes weak each day. And it always searched for my sister. Days later after we arrived at home, my sister’s cat died. My sister cried much over her pet.

While I was recalling this childhood, the statement of Shakespeare seemed to have subtitled the flashback scenes. Even children’s compassion and love are nurtured in the way they care for their pets. Inevitably, any pet can give away to sickness or death. And we feel sorry for these pets to the point others cry over their pets. We cared.

Now, I’ve been working in a social institution which takes care of streetchildren (Christ for Asia). Many times, I’ve been driven by different reasons to help them. I want to let them know we care that they be provided with food for their ever hungry tummies, that we want to guide them towards proper values and that we want to find justice over their dismal cases of abuse. These are reasons which I throw off my sight before. I don’t want to see children suffer though I know there are. It breaks my heart to see them suffer coz I felt helpless. I don’t want my heart broken so I deemed to look at the other way.

But having a relationship with a Savior and Lord, that is Jesus, my heart did not escaped the tugging of His presence and His story relative to my case. Matthew 14:14, “When Jesus landed and saw the crowd, he had compassion to them…” Rather than leaving the crowd, He ministered to them, to their needs.

Indeed, if you are to give your heart away for compassion founded on love, it is inescapable to save your own heart from being broken. I liked my pet. When I lost it. It broke my heart. When my father died. It broke my heart. When I gave my heart to helping these stretchildren. Well, it breaks my heart. But I care less as long as I love. Thus, I learned compassion founded on love is loving much even passed convenience to the point that it hurts.

Show me how to love like

You have loved me

Break my heart for what breaks Yours

Everything I am for Your kingdom’s cause

by Brooke Fraser, Hossanna

ONCE

Once I tasted
You, sweeter than wine.
You, consuming.
Breathe on my skin, alight my being.
Dare I forget easily thus pained easily.
Kissed our doorstep goodbye today.
Tomorrow, a soul sleeping and naked there.
Damned me, without You.
Once You.
Once again me.
-Mai

Déjà vu is the experience of feeling sure that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously (an individual feels as though an event has already happened or has happened in the near past), although the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain.

Will it be good to have déjà vu of a wonderful past? Regrettably, rewinding once-a-good time can not be intended neither is coursing back time through a bad one and change circumstances. We only have one life time line and we are on it forward.

One sunny afternoon while lying back comfortably on a hammock, I was swinging back and forth playing a peek-a-boo with the sunray in between the tree leaves. Seeing the teasing sunlight makes my eyes crease but the sight is wonderful so I swing to see it again and again. Of course, they say it’s not good for eyes to look at direct sunlight because one develops cataract with that. Anyway, I had my shades on. I continued swinging back and forth enjoying the moment. Maybe that is why there is the other named for this sunray against tree leaves…angel’s ray. The sight is charming.

I thought much about my friends lately. There are considerably some amazing changes in our lives. Friends are gifts like kind-hearted strangers we meet along the way. I wished for the good ‘ole days… “like chasing the moon and just running wild and free”. Yes, we can go back try to redo the fun but not the time. For there are moments that comes only once.

I was reminded of such moment lately as I meditate upon a word in the bible.
“O see and taste that the Lord is good, Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.” Psalm 34:8. God first loved me before I ever know love. He pursued me first. Once I let Him have me. It was I then who is desperate to pursue Him. I go back to our “Once Moment”. It was I who once again search for that “Once”. Once and for always God saved me. Thought I may drift away many times, I try once again to go back to Him.

Maybe it’s the movie. I lately watched this romantic music film entitled, “Once”. It is one of the films that made Steven Spielberg said it inspired him to make more films. I really like how passion for one thing like music, for example, was expressed. And how love and attraction on screen can go far beyond mushy, hanky-panky and stereotyped happily ever after. No kissing scene ever in the entire film but it was passionate, at least for me. The leading actor and songwriter Glen Hansard commented that if the plot’s end was changed and the couple made to kiss, he would not do the film. I would agree. The film is best heard and felt. And watched more than once.

Falling slowly, eyes that know me
And I can’t go back
Moods that take me and erase me
And I’m painted black
You have suffered enough
And warred with yourself
It’s time that you won

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We’ve still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you had a choice
You’ve made it now
Falling slowly sing your melody
I’ll sing along
Falling Slowly, Once Soundtrack

AETHER

“As he that fears God fears nothing else, so, he that sees God sees everything else” -John Donne

Is anything faster than the speed of light? Yes, the speed of thought. Somebody proposed the idea whilst discussing about the theory of aether or ether trying at the same time to explore Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity that first raised idea of nothing can exceed the speed of light. Opening this article with this dialogue of theories, I don’t mean however to add or rebut on this physics related studies. I am not a professional physicist, scientist, philosopher or spirit-ist neither do I want to be called an amateur in those fields. Hopefully that doesn’t disqualify me to mention those scientific theories for my intention only is to express my thoughts…thoughts in the light or thoughts in the ether…or just thoughts.

Since time primeval, life has always been the center of man’s ambition and survival-successful life, poor life, meaningful life or ________life (what do you describe it). Now, it has come to my present era 2009. Life too has intrigued me. My being also intrigues me. Something larger than life intrigues me. Even the wisest man mention in the Bible, Solomon approached the study about life aggressively that he wrote books about it. Read Ecclesiastes.

Once, I was catching fun surfing through net taking quizzes that would challenge my brain. Clicking through I came accross this quiz that asks, “Which element are you?”-water, fire, earth, air, aether and I thought to myself, must I be comparable to just an element. So curious, I took the sort of personality test…then came, the result. It was first time I paid attention to a peculiar sounding word for me, Aether.

The result says something like this, “Congratulations, friend! You are Aether, you are rarest and most mystical of all the elements. Metaphysical, otherworldly, supernatural, whichever way you slice it, you are one special soul. Whereas other people have experienced the odd circumstance or random weird event, your life is defined by them. You rely heavily on an intuition that has hardly ever let you down. Sometimes your thoughts and dreams could be considered downright psychic. Having such a unique set of gifts comes at a price though. Mainly a two-way skepticism between yourself and just about everyone else in your world. Finding people who understand you becomes a daily internal struggle and one that follows you wherever you go. Since your element is one supposedly beyond earthly comprehension it is up to you (as well as others) to work to build a bridge of understanding. Your place in the world: You are the ethereal entity blessed (or cursed) with the task of opening the eyes of a closed-minded world to the world they have blinded themselves to…

I smiled to myself with the result. Somehow it tried hard to describe me to the closest truth because truly until now I am even challenged to define or describe myself before others and before my very own self. And the description of my place in this world is…hmmm…pretty heroic…opening the eyes of close minded…yet truly it is a battle I believe I’m good at but wanted to be best at (maybe that is why that is where I am always unsatisfied with). Many times I wanted to just share a day with some friends but after hearing my story for the day, they just stare blankly, confused but sympathetic. To me it is hurting for to them I look esoteric. On the other hand, for me, they look pathetic. They are friends so they listened. Pathetic because they don’t really understand what a world I’ve been through. My comfort only is when somehow they would appreciate our uniqueness. Few people have entered the other world I’m in. I’ve studied a degree in communications but the challenge is for me to communicate the world of most people to “the world they have blinded themselves to…”

I don’t want to play mysterious here coz truly I just should accept my life is defined by random weird events. I feel more whole when I do that. Perhaps it is meant to be this- that there are things unexplainable so that we appreciate not the differences but the uniqueness our life is-ness.

After all of these, it can not be that I’m just an element like Aether. Maybe a simile to Aether but I thought I could be more complex. This was when I was looking at my self. But myself and my life brings me no meaning but God, larger than life does. As Solomon says in the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, “I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. I devoted myself to study and to explore wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men. I have seen all things that are done under the sun, all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” And at the last chapter he concluded, “…Of making many books there is no end, and much studies weary the body. Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter; Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”

How could I say there is no God?
When all around creation calls!!
A singing bird, a mighty tree,
The vast expanse of open sea

Listening to a river run,
Watering the Earth.
Fragrance of a rose in bloom,
A newborns cry at birth.

I believe
I believe just like a child
-Creation Calls by Brian Doerksen

ZERO CREATIVE VISIBILITY

Our dreams are firsthand creations, rather than residues of waking life. We have the capacity for infinite creativity; at least while dreaming, we partake of the power of the Spirit, the infinite Godhead that creates the cosmos.”-Jackie Gleason, US Comedian & Actor

“I am afraid I’m losing my creativity!”

Seems like a lame idea not to work on things or create something. Therefore, I should find a good reason for this paranoia of losing creativity so I can scramble for ways to counter it or fill my creativity tank. To find the reason alone, I’m digging hopeless.

I’ve always seen creative ideas just like dust and stones. They are just everywhere lying around seemingly senseless but interesting enough for you to pick it up or blow it to reach somewhere and to create something. However, there are times that you know that I kind of enter this zero visibility zone and just can’t see things creatively as I expect I should.

It is easy to say such case only happens to creative people. Too look at it fairly for everyone though, anyone who creates is a creator and has been creative. With all my thoughts, I’m learning to capture it and bring it to the light of my Creator. This is what this blog was all about by the way-Lightstruck Communications.

I want to claim the gift I inherited from God, my Creator and that is creativity.

Job was once a man blessed with lots of resources. With these resources, he had also a massive power to create-business, family, well-off living and rich social network. Well, he was a simple man obedient to his Creator. He creates until something radical in his life’s history happened. Job lost his creativity. (Read the 18^th Book of Bible called Job). Becoming oppressed by the shaded sympathy turned accusations of his friends, Job had himself be examined before the Lord if he indeed somewhere have failed and sinned, the reason for his suffering and loss. In his heart however, Job believed that this nothingness he is in is all about God’s knowing and doing and not just about another sin. He has also observed that even almost everything in nature knows about this loss too.

“But ask the animals, and they will teach you or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this.” Job 12:7-9

Job acknowledged that it is God only, his Creator who has the power to give and take away his shared power to create. Job continues in verse 10, “In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.”

For creative people, to lose creativity is a horrendous illness parallel to nonexistence.

I am found at the mercy fountain of my Creator. With Job I say to the wisdom of the world and mine, “Your maxims are proverbs of ashes, your defenses are defenses of clay.” Master Creator, remember that I am only creative as a dust. I can feel the pain of my own body and mourn only for myself though I dire stretch to reach to others to feel with me and I to them. Why do I put myself in jeopardy and take my life in my own hands? Who knows when you will fill my cup? Not to the cares of the atoms and galaxies but to you! Mercy to me!

Cover me with a red sky tonight

The promise of a better day to come

Sing to me an angelic symphony

Tell me everything will be alright

With the red sky tonight

Red Sky by Brandon Heath

My Place In This World

“Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.”

Watching a day in the life of a kid, I can seemingly conclude life is not very filled with complexities. Eat, Sleep & Play. A friend watching the scenario of children playing agreed with me. We wished we can be kids and avoid the stress brought by days’ work. But I can’t just fully agree with the conclusion that kids life is enjoyable not only because they are not facing stress. Rather, God would be unfair to make kids’ life enjoyable and adult’s life stressful. Just like that?!

People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them. – Mark 10:13-16

I believe the point Jesus was making clear about children has a relation to us “adults”-especially adults who want to be independent, work out relationships, drive a career, build a family or drag the so called “this-is-life”. We are not just living on planet earth but believe it or not there is more to this world. There is the kingdom of God. Somebody heard about this? If not, this might be your first. There are a lot of verses in the bible that talk about the kingdom of God.

And Mark 10:13-16 is just one of. We are to accept that there is the kingdom but we have to receive it like a little child. Otherwise, it is clear we can not enter it or understand it.

I don’t want to sound highfalutin spiritually. It is just that lately I’m really earnest to find my place in this world if ever i can call it a world, my place under the sun-under the Son where I’ll be completely me and His. So much to to, so much undone, so much…that I need to take time to find the daytime of this night…

Show me
I’m looking for a reason
Roamin’ through the night to find
My place in this world
Not a lot to lean on
I need your light to find
my place in this world

Hear me asking
Where do I belong
Is there a vision
I can call my own?
-Place In This World by Michael W. Smith

Singing My New Song

Seek the promises of God for it brings salvation.

Some prefer the middle, the status quo, the fulcrum, the gray line, the safe zone… Yet this time I had enough of it. It is difficult to be standing somewhere between the altar and the door. It’s like beating the air, a bull beating the bush just to bleed…Often when in pain, by foresight we see the middle view this way but with the hindsight we run short of God’s wider plan to reveal His glory through us.

I had spent time last night reading the first three chapters of Ezra with my friends. The Israelites are in exile to Persia. To fulfill the promise of God of salvation for His people spoken to prophet Jeremiah, God moved the heart of King Cyrus to allow the Israelites to rebuild their God’s altar and temple.

Amazingly, I was struck by the motivations of God’s move. For me, it come as not a matter of how God move but why God moved? It would be inexpressible to enumerate what could be God’s motivation to continually love a stubborn people. He is motivated by Himself for God is love. And what could He be showing us is Himself.

Somewhere in the third chapter of Ezra, the old generation of Israelites who witness now the rebuilt temple of the Lord as ordered by King Cyrus somehow differently not as grandiose anymore as it was built in the time of David their king, they wept and praise the Lord. There was joy but there was pain as it is there was pain but there was joy. They wept and shout praise.

Amazingly, the way it has become a full cycle in the lives of the Israelites it has also become to the lives of Christians (well, at least to me). We love the Lord, We fail. He instructs. We see the right thing, we do the wrong thing. Yet by His sovereignty, He redeems not only to see where we have fallen but most importantly to see He is God. And He can love and redeem more than He did yesterday. With this I pray that I may not be comfortable only with what I know of God yesterday but to trust him through the discomfort.

Comfortable, don’t get comfortable.
I am gonna’ move this mountain then I’m gonna move you in.

Yesterday, this is not yesterday.
You were standing on my shoulders now; you’re standing on the edge.
You’ve been looking for a sign all this time.

So afraid but you don’t have to be afraid
Even if you make mistakes
You know that I’ll remain
You’ve been looking for a sign all this time.
If you seek you’ll find me every time.

Can you feel the call of love?
Is it moving you to be a child of God of love?
Is it reaching you?
It’s everywhere the call of love

I am gonna show you what I mean
I am gonna love like you’ve never seen
You are gonna live like you used to dream
This is your new song…

-Don’t Get Comfortable by Brandon Heath

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpOBt4vfBwI

Holy Discontent

“Life just doesn’t have to be the way most people experience it!”
-Holy Discontent, Bill Hybels

…so the thinking, the talking, the working, the fighting, the hoping and the living must go on…and oh the blogging must also go on. I’ve been riding the waves of frustration lately that i couldn’t believe it can take me somewhere. Hey, but it did. As coursing through the open and seemingly island-less ocean, I sketched something before the Lord. “It was the tide of life, you see Lord if now I got low then somewhere back then I’ve must’ve been high.”

Recently too, I was introduced to Moses, a famous bible character not the baby in the basket Moses but the Moses who was educated, cultured, blood-Israelite Moses who is yea, “prince of Egypt”. One time, Moses saw an Egyptian beating an Israelite slave. The scene was so horribly oppressive that Moses out of his anger mustered an enormous strength and beat to death the Egyptian. Moses was guilty of this murder so he hid the Egyptian’s body under the sand. Then on another occasion Moses saw two Israelites fighting. You must have known how that felt to Moses. He asked the two, “Why are you brothers fighting?” To which the other guy responded, “So what’s it to you? Are you going to kill me the way you kill the Egyptian then, huh?

The another time then, God revealed himself to Moses through a burning bush and you know the story evolved until Moses led Israelites out of Egypt. From the rage-tempered Moses to the leader Moses.

I would agree with Bill Hybels, in his book Holy Discontent to see the burning bush in Moses encounter with God as a metaphor of a state in a person’s life where there is this certain fire, this push, this high which is forming inside of you, a passion for something or for someone. But only when this this burning bush is seen as coming from God that it becomes a burning bush or a passion that will burn brightly but will not consume the person carrying it.

How is it that I am angry about so many things lately. I’m sooooo angry about the world that I can’t eat, I can’t sleep and I can hardly breathe. I breakdown. I’m broke too. Perhaps halfway I’m in a quarter-life crisis but that’s a perhaps. I can not almost point out what really is the problem with me. I feel ungrateful and so I feel guilty. I feel dissatisfied. I can’t trust people nor the least myself. My hope is waning. I’m feeling these but of course I’m not a “practical atheist” (someone who confesses a belief in God but denies God in his way of living). If there is one thing that is left with me…it is God. The rest becomes distant and unreal.

Then becomes real the song…”Everything I need is You my beginning, my forever”. I wish I can speak about what is there for me but I really don’t know until now. But well, I can blog this journey to what is here with the Lord to what is there for me…no, to what is there for us-Us. My perspective shifts from that which my eyes can see to that which God tells me is true…

What is here-there for you?

I’m the one with two left feet
Standing on a lonely street
I can’t even walk a straight line

Where would I be without someone to save me
Someone who won’t let me fall

You are everything that I live for
I can’t believe it’s happening to me…

Ah, but you are the one who sees
who I meant to be
More than just a beautiful mess…
-You Are Everything by Matthew West

Quarter-Life Crisis

“I read somewhere that in life, it is not necessary to be strong but to feel strong, to look for yourself once in a while, to measure yourself once in a while… the freedom and simple beauty are too good to pass up…the core of man’s spirit comes from the joy of new experiences…” Alexander Supertramp

I have been walking to and fro this road to my apartment at least twice a day-home to work, 12 times a week and 48 times a month…a year, you have to calculate it yourself. Yet I woke up one day walking through the familiar busy road lonely and lost. I’m trying to convince myself I do what I do everyday but today I dropped my soul somewhere while my flesh walked wrapped just by my office uniform. And I arrived in the office, just sat on my swivel chair, I looked at the window and…the sun had set. This means I have to go home…but the heavy question now on the road is, “Where is my home?”

Identity Crisis, Quarter-Life Crisis, Mid-life Crisis and Sunset Crisis. Names and Labels, Crisis got it today. Civilization had somehow found a way to call our crisis/stages in life by names. These crisis/stages seemed to be gates where people pass through. Everyday people pass through it unaware, some curious, some approach it rationally, some emotionally, some spiritually, some made it and sadly some didn’t. But pity those who pass through it and died…no, I mean pity are to those who pass through it and never died to live.

1 Chronicles 29:28, “He (David, king of Israel) died at a good old age, having enjoyed long life, wealth and honor. His son Solomon succeeded Him as King.” On the other way of looking at it-David’s life and our lives, it matters not much how we live to how we die. Our death tells how we at all live.

Crisis may suit itself however it wants to be called in my life, yet one thing is sure along with a crisis is a call. A call to be home, a home into the wild. Nature is the language of God, emotion is a unique gift from God and may i not pass up the masterpiece of God in me. Augustine as I paraphrase him once said, people travel around the world to wonder at nature, the beauty of mountains and the seas…but they pass by the beauty in themselves.

Marked by Majesty, we are. We can run, run and run away but not from ourselves neither we can run so far that we are beyond God’s reach. Ourselves which is marked by Majesty. God in His majesty is our home. Only when we heed that call. “Where are you?” And we get from hiding and denying the call to present ourselves in shame, sorrow and repentance. We acknowledge His meaning into our lives. Then we live. We come home. A home into the Wild where we don’t need money, fame, power not superficial wisdom. But we lay down into His green pastures of trust, listen to the rhythm of the brook of refreshing and close our eyes to see the Sun-clothing warmth. We abandon ourselves into discovery of His bread, His word everyday, into creation, into wisdom and humility into the Wild, dependent yet not with a crutch.

I wonder how young people can be careless and why old people can be uncaring. People on the streets and people even in the “christian commun-ity”. Perhaps the point is like the young man Alexander Tramp was in the poignant movie, Into the Wild showed, “Few people have really died to live”. Few people have found a home into the Wild. The movie ended with Alex giving his last breath and leaving an imperative question…”If I run into your arms(his parents, his home in West Virginia, his normal life in the commun-ity again), would you (them) also see what I see now?”

With the same question is my unapologetic thoughts too of you and me in time. God is Wild. Glory is His.

“When I see a person dying in himself to live, he comes alive, then I see a living God.”

“God of Wonders beyond our Galaxy, You are Holy.
The Universe declares Your Majesty.”
-Rebecca St. James