The climate's delicate, the air most sweet,
Fertile the isle, the temple much surpassing
The common praise it bears.

-winter's tale, shakespeare

Lend me your hope

Lend me your hope for awhile, i seem to have mislaid mine.
Lost and hopeless feelings accompany me daily, pain and confusion are my companions.
i know not where to turn;
looking ahead to future times does not bring forth images of renewed hope.
i see troubled times, pain-filled days, and more tragedy.

Lend me your hope for awhile, i seem to have mislaid mine.
Hold my hand and hug me; listen to all my ramblings, recovery seems so far distant.
The road to healing seems like a long and lonely one.

Lend me your hope for awhile, i seem to have mislaid mine.
Stand by me, offer me your presence, your heart and your love.
Acknowledge my pain, it is so real and ever present.
i am overwhelmed with sad and conflicting thoughts.

Lend me your hope for awhile; a time will come when i will heal,
and i will share my renewal, hope, and love with others.

-author unknown

we all need someone or something to lift us up now and then.
the above poem was from this morning's reading.
i am no way near where the author was when he/she penned down the poem;
but all of us need hope to face tomorrow.
that's why a Child was born 2000 years ago -
for me,
and for you.

Romans 15:13
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him,
so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

what a day!

i had a restless night -
in between the tossing and turning was my confession
and acknowledgment of God's grace and his goodness.
What's the worst thing that can happened?
Even then God is still good and He is faithful.
There is absolutely nothing i can do to make things better -
and only then you realized
that the only thing you can do is to stand back
and see what amazing thing God can do,
and will do for you.

my first winter

I spent one whole year in different parts of Europe.
It was Christmas when I arrived in Germany.
It was not a white Christmas but it snowed a few days later.
That was my first winter.
I was out on the roadwhen it began to snow.
It was fascinatingto watch the snowflakes drifting down from the sky.
I was mesmerized.
I remembered standing there looking up with my arms outstretched;
it was magical.
I must have stood there for a long time because I was sick in bed for days after that.

van gogh's quotation

"If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite,
something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it.
I think that I see something deeper, more infinite,
more eternal than the ocean in the expression of the eyes of a little baby
when it wakes in the morning and coos or laughs because it sees the sun shining on its cradle."

thread of love

I don’t know why I bother to mend my boys tattered jeans.
I could just walk into Goodwill or Rugged Warehouse
and pay five to ten bucks for a decent pair.
The problem is the boys like their old jeans,
“It’s comfy”
“I like the color”
“This design fits me’
“It’s my favorite jeans”
Now these are no-name, non-designer jeans, and mostly from the clearance racks.
I never wanted my boys to appear like tatterdemalions,
but here I am dutifully mending their torn wears albeit the old fashion way .
The picture of Mom mending our clothes while I was young came to mind
and subconsciously in this somewhat mundane activity
I felt connected to Mom even though she is ten thousands miles away.
Most of my sisters are good seamstresses
and now still sew in their spare time for extra cash.
Being the youngest daughter,
I was never good at needlework but every pair of jeans I mend with love, sometime a drop of blood too.
I think this is the way God mends our broken hearts
and relationships in our lives.
The difference is that the thread of love He uses interweaves with his grace
and goodness that will never come apart again.

it's snowing!

an African girl squealed delightfully
as thousands of delicate petals
fell from the sky
moments like these
are pictures of
eternity

breakfast by the sea

That's where Jesus met Peter & the rest after his resurrection,
that being his third appearance to them.
It's a no brainer where to find Peter - in his state of mind with what he had gone through:
Jesus was captured,
he denied Jesus three times,
Jesus was crucified, then placed in a tomb;
and Jesus' resurrection and appeared in person...
it all seems too much for anyone to take it all at once or at lost of what to do.
So he went back to what's familiar, what he knew before.

Jesus sought Peter out,
fed him breakfast and then asked him what matters most to him,
"Do you love me?" Three times.
In doing so,
Jesus restored Peter with forgiveness and
help Peter to refocused on what's the mission
and reinstated Peter for ministry.

i had my own "breakfast by the sea" today.
when He looked into my eyes and help me see that at the core of my heart,
i want to go back where there are safe and familiar,
i have been away from home for too long, i do not wish to raise finance etc....

"Lord,You know that i love you."
restore me
help me refocus
on what's on Your heart
and what's Your next step
for me

(taste) and see

i went to the advance screening of End Of The Spear this morning.
The film is based on the true story about five young men who were speared by Waodani Indians in 1956,
and told from the perspective of the one who lead the spearing raid.
Tears welled up in my eyes as soon as the movie began,
when the yellow plane sailed over the river in the heart of Amazon;
my tears flowed through out the movie.

This is a simple yet poignant story between father and son,
and more so the later with the killer,
when both came face to face in the climax of the movie,
and ultimately found the answer at the end of the spear.

a powerful movie not to be missed.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 - for intense sequences of violence.

i am so in love with....

je suis ainsi dans l'amour avec l'automne -
¡el otoño es mi estación preferida del año!
all the trees dressed up in their finest,
their colorful display is mesmerizing,
drawing me further and deeper into the woods....
ahhh, i'm hopelessly in love with Autumn!

morning song

My heart sings in harmony
With the morning birds and the rustling leaves
The angel’s laughter
Echoing from the blue skies above
The morning sunlight peeks through the leaves
Scatter the golden fragment onto the path
And onto my hair

Its nine o'clock in the morning,
I walk on the familiar trail just like every morning and each step with the similar stride.
All these years I hold onto the fact that each day is a brand new gift from God.
Every morning as soon as I open my eyes,
I have to fight all the negative thoughts that come to mind and thank God for yet another beautiful day;
be it a window of sunshine or a curtain of rain; and these words carry me through the challenges I face each day.
Believe it or not, your first thought of the day does affect your daily life.
I stubbornly hold onto the fact that you will find *God’s mercy and His faithfulness in each new day.
Therefore, no matter what come my way, I can rejoice in Him, for His grace is sufficient for me.

* Lamentation3:17-23

Somewhere In Between/Lifehouse

waiting
and wondering
the clock is ticking
yet no time to make haste
an irritated state of mind
a basket case
this fretful heart of mine
suspended in mid air

Peace, the Lord hath saith
between dream and reality
a leap of faith

taking flight

Gosh! It was twenty years ago when I first read Hinds’ Feet on High Places.
It was one of the ten books on the must read list.
I was in Leuven, Belgium then.
It was the summer of 1984;
a shy and timid 20 year old that lived a very sheltered life
being transported to another continent!
Well, for a father who wouldn’t even let me go to the field trips
while I was in high school,
I’m forever grateful to him for letting me go in search of service to my new found faith –
A God that’s foreign to him and his culture and tradition.
Looking back now, Dad must have a lot of faith in trusting me to God,
for which I can only count for yet another of His mysterious ways.

much afraid/jarsofclay

"I am afraid," she said.
"I have been told that if you really love someone
you give that loved one the power to hurt and pain you in a way nothing else can."
"That is true," agreed the Shepherd.
"To love does mean to put yourself into the power of the loved one and to become very vulnerable to pain,
and you are very Much-Afraid of pain, are you not?"

-Chapter 1,Hinds' feet on high places

i am Much-Afraid.

The upcoming Campus visit

I gave birth to you, a tiny baby, a bundle of joy
You were mine for a while
As God had made it clear
That you belong to Him

While I was caring for your new born brother
You were busy copying the ABC
From the newspapers sprawled on the floor
You were not even four

As any new parents, with you I made the most mistakes
It’s only by the grace of God you are who you are today
And now, my first born, my sixteen-year old
Is he ready to be his own man to face this merciless World?

(I guess no parents are ever ready when the time comes to send them off to college)

in retrospect -

just when you thought

that the coast is clear/this is the way to go,

God throws you a curve ball or pulls the rug under your feet...
the fact of the matter is: life is full of uncertainties but you are certain of who God is,and that He is good.

Isaiah 55:8-9

⁸"My thoughts are completely different from yours," says the LORD.

"And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.

⁹For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

statefair - Matthew West & FFH

天凉好个秋

under the same sky

i can never comprehend
how often God thinks of me
*for His thoughts are innumerable
they outnumber the grains of sand
and now
under the same sky
i'm thinking of you
and i miss you so

*psalms 139:17

Psalm 69 /swallowed in the sea - coldplay

1 Save me, O God,
for the waters have come up to my neck.

2 I sink in the miry depths,
where there is no foothold.
I have come into the deep waters;
the floods engulf me.