Dear….
‘I despise my life, I would not live forever. Let me alone, my days have no meaning.’
Job 7:16
This morning, in the obituary pages, I saw a familiar face. A man who I worked with on a professional basis in my “rookie” years as a young banker. This man was already pretty prominent in his fraternity then and though I was not exactly awestruck, he did epitomize to us aspiring green horns, what it meant to be clinically successful in one’s chosen career.
It was last year, after an absence of almost a quarter of a century that our paths crossed again, and in a place I least expected, in my church. Not too sure if the surprise was mutual for back in the roaring eighties, not many of us be it in the financial community for me or legal community for him, were into church going, for mammon was too alluring to ignore.
I am not too sure if my now deceased acquaintance accepted the Lord. His obituary occupied a fairly large space in the newspapers, but I saw no Bible verses adorning the masthead or any other parts of it. I did see attestations to his career achievements. It would be nice to have a couple of verses as a reassurance but it matters not, for what truly matters is “was his heart with the Lord?” and only our Lord knows and my prayers are that he is with our Lord.
‘For the Lord God is a sun and shield, the Lord bestows favor and honor, no good thing does He withhold from those whose walk is blameless. O Lord Almighty, blessed is the man who trusts in You.’
Psalm 84:11-12
This month marks my half century. Now that I am coming to my Big Five, does it mean that I am going down the same slippery road to extinction, as the Big Four in the wilds of Africa, that is, the Elephant, the Lion, the Rhino and the Cheetahs?
Age might be an indicator of mortality, but the truth is only our good Lord knows when it is time for Him to take us home. Most of us do not give much thought to the miracle of life and His grace, for regardless of one’s station in life or whatever that seems to grip our heart, the truth is that we are just one breath away from being a past tense.
‘Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou believedst, thou shouldest see the glory of God?’
John 11:40
In the future, all of us will be meeting God our Maker. But for the present, none will see Him but we can experience His glory and grace, if we are willing. These past few years of actively seeking God and responding to His Spirit’s leading have been pretty exhilarating. Not in the sense of a temporary adrenalin rush, but rather in the quiet joy of His many affirmations in my life and that of my relationships with people He placed in my life.
‘But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.’
Hebrews 13:16
Have I lived my first fifty years well? In the recent few years yes. The imperfect me is still there, the difference is in my determination to take time with God, and in clinging on to Him with my all, His Spirit continues to sanctify and transform me from the carnal to the spiritual. Till He brings me home, this process of refinement will continue, difference is, time in the fire might be shorter as I learn to let go and let Him quicker, and the gloss of gold as bought from our good Lord will shine even brighter as you will see less of me, and more of Christ.
‘Whose voice then shook the earth, but not He hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven…..Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have a grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire.’
Hebrews 12:26-28
Rgds and God Blesses
Eng Hieang
(10th June 2011)
My remaining years
'Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines,
the labor of the olive shall fall, and the fields shall yield no meat, the flock
shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls. Yet I
will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is
my strength, and He will make my feet like hinds feet, and He will make me to
walk upon mine high places....'
Habakkuk 3:17-19
With droughts dotting the world’s food baskets, and unprecedented floods drowning off whatever hopes of better conditions for crops, and pestilence be it E-coli joining the bandwagon of mad cows, and bird flu, are the days coming when man will need to live on water and nothing else?
And to compound one’s misery, with the Iranians now subverting the dominant role of Saudi Arabia in OPEC, from hunger the world could soon move to paying an Ayatollah's ransom to satisfy their thirst for the devil’s brew.
And if the picture is not dreary enough, the days of debt default, devaluation and significant rises in interest rates as heavily indebted Western countries drown in their own excesses is nearer than many believe possible, for like the times of Noah, many were engaged in merry making and other sinful behavior, even as the clouds gather ominously.
The red tide might not be what the Syrians and other Arab nations bordering Israel have in mind, but the loosening of the floodgates to send many of their citizens right smacked into the wall of fire that the Israelites have threatened all who dare breach its borders could just be the right excuse for the besieged Syrians, Libyans, Bahrainis, Egyptians and all their Arab brothers for a diversion from this recent bad habit of their population to more than smell Jasmine flowers. Is an Arab Israelite war about to make a return to the world stage?
And if the world is indeed a stage, one cannot ignore the most populous nation in the world. China carries a lot more weight today than back in the bad old days of stagflation of the 1970s/early 1980s. The red tide is indeed starting to jostle for a place with green, the color of choice these past two decades, since communist China decided to take on capitalists hues and greed is good became socially acceptable. While a return to a xenophobic Maoist China is unlikely, a world that gravitates tremendously up riding on the coattails of an awakened dragon could be in for a hard landing when the dragon’s head and tail decide to no longer move in the same direction as is starting to happen in the political scene in China as leaders jostle for a place in the epicenter of power, the Central Party Committee.
Not a very pretty future for any of us. But till God brings us home, His purpose for us in this temporal world is not for us to speculate about the future, but rather it is to be the lamp upon which His light will shine forth into the darkness surrounding the hearts of many.
'For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not.'
2 Corinthians 8:12
If you understand and believe in the purpose God has for all of us who call ourselves Christians, then it is time to live the day like there is no tomorrow, yet to live it well that if tomorrow do come, much as we might or might not have the privilege of watching the next sunrise, the legacy of our lives will be used by our good Lord to provide those who are still breathing, the routes to follow as they walk the paths we once tread.
It is not about when Christ returns, but rather, when He returns, have we been made ready??
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