Small stuff and smaller stuff... Its all about where we stand.

I was in the lift just now going for a meeting and two tea ladies walked in with me and they were complaining. They were complaining about how "difficult" life was because how some office admin folks were making them clear old newspapers etc. which incidentally is their job to do so.

Today the STI made another decline downwards. As of lunch time when I'm writing this post, its 156points down. Along with the whole aspect of Hedge Funds collapsing, panic in the market and the likelihood of the whole economy slowing down despite what the governments of the world is saying, I was thinking: "That's really sweating the small stuff."

But you know, I remember the wallpaper that I've put on my computer back home. Its this picture:

Those of us who haven't seen this might be thinking... "What?!? He's a photographer man... bad as he is, this ain't a photo. If it is, its an artifact filled photo." Well, this picture is a picture of the world as we know it, except that its given us a perspective that most of us are myopic towards. Yes, planet earth is there. If you still can't see it, let me point us out to you:

Yup, that's us. ALL of us. On a planet that our entire lives, generations, economies revolve in. That includes the tiny little S$440bn Singapore Index which I was concerned about.

God spoke to Job near the end of his very difficult circumstance: "Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the belt of Orion? Do you know the ordinances of the heaven? Can you set their dominion over the earth? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, that an abundanc eof water may cover you? Can you send out lightnings that they may go?" Job 38: 31, 33, 34-35.

Obviously he couldn't.

God basically said: "Don't worry. It doesn't help." Matt 6:25-34.

So our worries are unfounded but our concerns must remain focused. Concern for people and concern for their eternity. Let's not sweat the small stuff and focus on what's to last forever. He's got you covered as long as we don't walk away from His covering.

What are you worried about today? What you concerned about tomorrow? Make sure its eternal, not temporary.

Grace and peace,

kel

PS: Some info on the "pale blue dot" picture above. This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed 'Pale Blue Dot', is a part of the first ever 'portrait' of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic. From Voyager's great distance Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the sun. This blown-up image of the Earth was taken through three color filters -- violet, blue and green -- and recombined to produce the color image. The background features in the image are artifacts resulting from the magnification.

This and that

This is easily my favorite photo of all, for one simple reason, because it’s silly and tt makes me laugh. Humour, no matter how silly it is, is easily the most important ingredient in a relationship. A merry heart doeth good like medicine, even the Bible advocates it. The devil however works at taking away the joy of doing the simplest of things or rather the devil steals away your time with unnecessary and silly demands that deprive you of doing the very things that would keep you happy and satisfied.

To be honest, I wished I had more time to laugh at ourselves. New job demands, an immature boss , parental demands , sighing partners have taken its toll on me. I’ve come to realized that I’ve low tolerance or rather low resistance to circumstances in the now seen world. It drains the life out of me and deprives me from keeping the main thing the main thing. For instance , I don’t know how to uplift Kelly in his foul times, in fact , it “spreads” to me and the good that I want to do, I don’t do! Sulking party continues. This far I know about myself, I’m not resilient to circumstances. I’m not unfazed by moods and pple around me.

I want to see God work through all these things, because all I can do, is to surrender and say “ Hey God, over here, take over.. pls “ , I don’t want to just sing “His grace is sufficient for me”,self pity continues... I want to be able to sing, “Worthy is the Lamb” , “I exalt Thee” through it all. Cos i acknowledge and see in myself no good thing indeed, but in Him , is my redemption and MY SALVATION! I want to see Him in His rightful place, in the heavenly places where the victory has truly been won. Open my eyes Lord.

Fiona

Tensions and expectations

Its just less than 2 months away from our big day! Wow, to think that we started planning 1 year in advance and there's still so much to do.

Well, its been a really tough week for the both of us. Work pressure increases its screams for attention and we've been under quite a lot of tension these couple of weeks since our photo shoot.

We're honest. We need prayer. Please pray for us.

However, the thing which I realise why most if not every time someone gets into tense situations is because of expectations. Just look at your work place. When you don't meet expectations, people are unhappy. When you do meet them or exceed them, everyone's happy.

But how a person falls short, meets or exceeds expectations is a complete factor of the communication or MIS-communication of the level of expectation. If your boss at work doesn't let you know what's your expectation, how on earth would you know how much to work? Unless you're like a very reputable and influential CEO (whom I won't mention) who said (I'm paraphrasing): "Don't let them know your expectations. So they need to work so hard just to meet an imaginary expectation. Then, when something goes wrong, you fire them for not meeting an expectation that wasn't in the very beginning".

That's nasty right?

But that's the world. Where the system is designed to extract the maximum (and more) from individuals that are defined as statistics. In this relationship of marriage, its a caricature of the Lord's union with His church. Conceptualised in love and completed in the same.

I'm a really bad communicator. I've got a really foul mood when I do things which I don't really like. Add that up and its prime recipe for tense situations.

Please do keep us in prayer. Especially for me, God really needs to do a lot of work on me.

Grace and peace to all,
kelly

More photos

It was about 1400hrs... so I was hungry... ;p

Somehow, I really like this picture.

Bobby, the golden retriever, our prop :)

I can jump quite high right?

We see ourselves, dimly, though not through a mirror.

A class from Princess Elizabeth Primary School, also used as our props :)

She looks so great here :)

Ok... this is very ordinary... but its a very big tree.

the water felt therapeutic :)

Band of Brothers... I mean, family.

I can jump high, even with an umbrella :)

Chilling out (or at least pretending to...)

My dad and I. He's the best dad in the world :)

Hi everyone, here's some more snippets of the day's happenings on 26th July. We had good fun cos of the people that God blessed us with and merciful weather that God planned for us. Leave us your thoughts please :)