Preaching Like a Pro

Today my son preached at the University Covenant Church.  It is very exciting but as his mother, I was concerned in the last two days and even waking up at three o'clock this morning wondering how he was dealing with the pressure of writing and delivering an appropriate sermon to a relatively big church - three times. 

When we saw the video later today, my husband and I were not only relieved but delighted. He is engaging with a good amount of humor. He has the characteristics of a good teacher. 😊   

The unexpected effect of seeing my son preach is the reminder that my husband and I are growing old - really growing old.  And so we must now consciously take on this journey with grace...😉

Recalculating

After every storm always comes a period of calm.  Sometimes storms come one after the other but there is always a promise of rest and peace from any form of storm or stirring.  The storm I'm talking about here represents a change that comes from a move, a loss or even a gain.  In other words it can be initiated by either an upward, downward or even a horizontal change.

The change...
It has been two years since my daughter Shannon moved to Wisconsin to take on a lucrative job at Epic.  And because she finished her degree earlier than scheduled, we could say that she was under-age to be on the career ladder.  Add to that the fact that she has always been the youngest if not one of the youngest in her class.  Fresh from college and barely had enough time to go on the trip of her choice (which we promised if she finished her degree within four years) before she started her independent life.  Although the career opportunity presented to her was great, getting on it involved tremendous stirring in her young life.

For her - having a career job, buying her own car, having her own place and away from home is a dream-come-true.  It is something she has long dreamed even before going to college.  Things were happening in the right direction for her.  It was all very exciting.  But like any storm, everything was happening on hyper-speed against time that is moving on normal speed on a child who is maturing at normal rate.   And although her opportunities and events seemed good at the time, she was taking a beating...

Suddenly she was managing her own finances, paying her own bills, signing her own car loan and apartment lease.  She had to learn working in a huge corporate world - meeting deadlines, finishing projects beyond her control.  As a student her success depended solely on her performance.  But suddenly she had to figure out what to do when success depended on others doing their job.  This was a huge change for someone  who is goal and success- oriented person.

She may not admit it, but there was also a whiplash that came from living in a place that had real winters and rains to a person born and raised in California.  :)  She was alone.  She had to learn, alone.  She had to make new friends.  I too went to a different land in my earlier years but I was not as young as she was.

All these things will probably form one of the biggest change in her life at that age.

Recalculating...
For the first 15 months or so, everyday was a day of adjustment or for a more current choice of word - recalculating.  We step into a situation sometimes that involves many unknowns. We have no control on everything and each step we take is not always the best.  No matter how thoroughly we plan our lives, there will always be factors that alter our desired outcome.  Therefore we recalculate.   That is fine - it happens everyday in every life and humans are designed to be experts in recalculating. Shannon is no exception.

There is a Jeep Compass Recalculating TV commercial on television this year which portrays man's life as planned but ever-changing and ever-recalculating journey.  "Whatever your destination there is a million beautiful ever-changing ways to get us there." 

And now...
After two years since she started life-after-college, she seems to have come out of the storm. Things are calm again - not a lot of stirring.  She has shifted her position from playing in the defensive to the offensive.  Thank God she made it through to get to this point in her life.  As long as she keep moving on, change will happen again.  However, having successfully recalculated to this point improves her position and her experience prepares her to be more composed to face the next storm.
God is good, indeed!

No one would have crossed the ocean if he could 

gotten off the ship in the storm.  

~ Charles Kettering

Generosity

"You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God".  2 Cor. 9:11

Generosity is a simple but often misinterpreted word.  Some of us think that whenever we give we are being generous.  Whenever we serve to do something for a church ministry.  When we give sandwiches to the homeless, drop a few coins to the beggar who sits by the steps at the trains station, drop some dollar bills to the offering basket, or donate a few rolls of paper towel to your kid's classroom and we think that we are being generous.   True generosity demands sacrifice and result. Generosity is measured by the extent of pain and discomfort it causes the giver (as the woman who gave all she had)  as a measure of the faith Generosity is voluntary - giving up something we value to meet someone's need without expectation of repayment.

Self-preservation hinders generosity.  Why is it that we give only when it is comfortable.  We stop giving when it begins to hurt.  God never fails to acknowledge any generous act that we do to those who are in need. He said in Matthew... that when we give to the least of these then we are doing it to Him.  But we are so focused on our own comfort that we miss the point of generosity.  We set our thermostat to allow no discomfort at all. When we give, we  reserve enough to secure our status quo. We give when it does not endanger our situation because we trust our lives in the things we own or have control over.

Generosity is a function of faith.  We can only give generously when we know the One who gives and takes away.  But we have to take the plunge first.  Tim and I have experienced countless times when we gave something that made my heart beat a little faster - when my faithlessness is determined to dictate my actions - but we decided to anyway.  It has been a consistent experience for us that God provided far more than we could ever had the guts to give, in ways we'd never imagined.

Generosity is for the rich.  The problem is we measure rich by an abundant excess of wealth and resources sitting doing nothing in bank accounts and other material possessions.  We say, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg can afford to be philanthropic because they are billionaires.  And we should be beneficiaries to their charitable projects because we are not like them.  But richness is far more than money.  Health, relationships, experiences, skills, knowledge, time, your personality, just to name a few.   As the bible says,  "You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion."  We are given a lot to be generous - in every occasion. Consider yourself as the funnel of goodness to the world in your immediate surroundings.  Let the blessings flow and watch how God pours his blessings.  We are all rich who rely on the Source.  We may not have the same wealth but we are all rich through God.

Acts of generosity generate thanksgiving.  Somewhere along the line, the name of God will be glorified because His people whom He provides abundantly were generous.  The goodness of God will be known to more people because His people believed that God is enough when generosity was required.  We have to practice generosity.  And just like aerobic exercise do to our hearts, generosity makes our faith stronger and less dependent on material things. Our sufficiency comes from the Lord.

An overflow is always outward

The question of the day was: "How do you want to spend your next wedding anniversary?".  

Tim asked the question first. Naturally I have to respond to the question first.  What a burden!  When you are about to celebrate your 25th anniversary, like us, and you have gone to most of the places you've been wanting to go, eaten at numerous restaurants, visited gardens, seen so many Broadway and not-so Broadway shows and concerts, bought all the rings you wanted and all already stolen by burglars, spent so many times in cottages near ocean and beaches and did most of the pleasurable things you thought were great - you begin to think other ways to celebrate the next one.  So I pondered as we walked the mulberry tree-lined road.  There was nothing that I was really dreaming of doing with my husband. This is not because I am not interested but this is attributed to the fact that we have exhausted almost every possibility within our standards.  It does not help that Tim's favorite occupation is planning trips for the family.

So I shifted to a different level of standard - outward.  How would I spend my anniversary when God has blessed me so much already? In the past, He allowed us to do so many fun things and at present He put us in a good position to do more. How would we mark this milestone in our our marriage differently?   Let the blessing overflow! Do something to make someone's circumstances a better one. Tim asked me to come down to earth.  So I mentioned two specific examples that we could do. And Tim, being Tim, does not think twice once he knows what I want.  As if I am the one that sends the hints of pressure to be generous and he is the sensor that automatically opens the valve. Yes, this is how giving always worked between the two of us.  I propose with selfless intentions and he implements without reservations.

People can splurge on status symbol and experiences, but helping others experience life a little better creates a deeper sense of significance.  All glory to God!

I'll Praise You In the Storm

Comfort and Security:  Two-by-four lumber,  Screws and Penguin duct tape

Christmas this year has been more eventful than some.  Something new happened and may it be that this year is extraordinarily special so that there will be no other year in the future when such event will ever happen again.  We will remember...we will always remember this (2012) as the year our house was broken into.   

All my precious jewelry was taken away.   It is a collection of gifts my loving husband gave me over the years.  One of them is a necklace designed to show the characters of the Hebrew word for love ahava. It is a present he gave me before we got married which he sent to me in a package when I was still in the Philippines.  It is not as expensive as the other ones I lost but it is full of memories.  Every single piece had a nostalgic and cheerful story to tell.  But they're gone now.  

"He gives and takes away...my heart will choose to say, "Lord blessed be your Name"."

Jewelry is things.  And things are things.  They are merely ornaments on what matters.  I am blessed to know that God is always there for me and my family.  And that's what matters.  The loss of my stuff caused no hurt or devastation at all.  Our God is with us.  On December 27, 2013 we were on our way home from Eureka (about three hours' drive to home) when the Sheriff called to inform us of what happened.  I realized that there was no better place where we could have been when we heard about the burglary at our home.  We could not do anything - nothing at all - except to praise God.  The whole family was so thankful.  We were all together and safe.  God is good, indeed!  I prayed while I was in the car that whoever did it would have his circumstances changed and that he would get closer to God as a result.  I told Tim that if the person came to ask for my jewelry I would not have given all of them to him but if the police caught him at this time, I would freely give all the pieces to him just so he can start life anew.  I was feeling merciful like the priest in 'Les Miserables" who, after Jean Valjaean stole his silverware, also gave his candelabras away.  When we arrived home, while Tim and Brahms were at Home Depot buying lumber, I posted the following phase on my Facebook status: "Praising God for His goodness!"  It was the simplest, most accurate and least consternation-causing statement I could share at that time.

The invasion of our privacy is probably more shocking than the loss of material things.  The thought that somebody was there looking into the private rooms of the house gives me an eerie feeling especially when I wake up in the middle of the night and through the dim light I see the dresser that was ransacked and later on powdered for finger prints.  However, it is comforting to know that beyond all the man-made doors and locks, is the inner-most private room of my life where only God can get to it.  That is where my true treasure rests.

Our door is broken and we are in the process of replacing it.  But if I look at it now, I notice that aesthetics and convenience come only second after comfort and security.  Pieces of knotty two-by-fours and long screws hold the door in place.  We can no longer go in and out of it but it is secure. Penguin duct tape seals the cracks to keep cold air out as much as possible.  Who needs a beautiful door when the house is cold? 

My children were all cool about the incident.  No anger or feeling of retaliation has come out of this.  Shannon puts it accurately when she parallels the event to a natural calamity as in a storm.  There's no one to blame.  And I like it that way.  Natural calamities have the ability to shake up lives.  They are short-lived but can leave lasting lessons behind.  We learned so many lessons from this incident but one thing sticks out.  If God is your most important treasure of all, then no amount of burglary will ever shake up your life.  

Psalm 121:1-8

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—

where does my help come from?

 My help comes from the Lord,

the Maker of heaven and earth.

 He will not let your foot slip—

he who watches over you will not slumber;

 indeed, he who watches over Israel

will neither slumber nor sleep.

 The Lord watches over you—

the Lord is your shade at your right hand;

the sun will not harm you by day,

nor the moon by night.

 The Lord will keep you from all harm—

he will watch over your life;

the Lord will watch over your coming and going

both now and forevermore.

We can laugh at the days to come...

Sunday: Observance of Rest

 

This is the second Sunday, in the last six months, that we get more hours of rest than activities on a so-called rest day.   So far I like the current arrangement but I still feel as though it is unreal.  Just like breaking any other tradition,  the mind voluntarily complements the change with a moral guilt.  I'm still trying to depart from this ghost-like remorse that comes out of nowhere but immediately disappears when I flood my mind with reason.  This brings me back to the early days of my marriage.  For months after Tim and I got married, I used to wake up in the night and realize that I am sleeping next to a man.  "This is wrong!  I should not be sleeping next to a guy!"  Tim would then remind me that we're married - everything would be fine again - then I'd go back to sleep. It is ridiculous but that's how I feel sometimes about not attending the morning worship service at Cornerstone.  We attend the evening service at Folsom Community Church now as part of the service we want to do this year.


Rest is intentional loosening-up.  It is not inactivity.  Our family schedule is often bombarded with the daily, immediate, and superficial demands of life.  Rest should provide a temporary relief away from our attempts to fix the world so that we could have the time and attitude to appreciate what God has been doing all along.


This may sound counterintuitive but some of my most restful moments have often been shared with my husband while taking our morning walks and sharing our spiritual reflections with each other.

"Be still and know that I AM God" ~ Psalm 46:10