Am Back… Finally…
After I have been away from Singapore since 2nd November, it is good to be back. I was a little bit stressed when I stepped back into the office this morning. There were so many things for me to follow up and to do. There were also many preaching and camp speaking slots in the coming weeks till the end of December.
On one hand, I was a bit over-awed by the responsibilities. But on the other hand, I was anticipating a much greater dosage of God’s grace to be poured in my direction as I go about His business.
For this year’s staff retreat, the theme was solitude and prayer. To be honest, I was not very looking forward to it at the initial stage. As the program sheet was being passed out, there were too many “solitude time with God” slots than I would have appreciated. To make matters worse, these slots can last up to 3 hours at one go.
Not very willingly, I followed through with the program anyhow. I spent the first 30 minutes of the 3-hour slot fidgeting with anything and everything around me. It was terribly hard for me to settle down.
But after I had finally settled down, I began to read the articles that were given as part of our solitude time material. There was this particular article that spoke about the need to be totally present when we spent time with God. The author wrote that too often, we come before God but not with our complete presence. We had engaged in a form of being with God but we were not really there.
That article struck me right between my eyes. Just a few weeks ago, one of my friends told me that when I talked to him, I was often not present. He said that I would be looking around, wandering in my mind and waiting for the next thing to happen. There I was in front of him but I was already somewhere else. In fact, this friend has told me twice before about the need to be completely present while talking to people.
We do live in a multi-tasking world. In fact, I had just downloaded IE7 and one of the new features is that it enables you to have different tabs to different web pages all in one screen (dear tech-savvy people, please forgive me if I had explained it wrongly). All these things enable us to tend to more things at one go. Waiting and being fully present are becoming challenging virtues to develop in our fast paced society.
With God’s help and grace, I really want to be present in everything that I do. I may not get a lot of things done at the end of my day but I sincerely pray that whatever that I had set to do, I would do it to the best of my ability.
Most importantly, I want to be fully present when I am in God’s presence. God has always given me His full attention whenever I called upon His name. Anything less from me towards him would be unthinkable. I suppose this is an expression of loving God with all of my heart, mind, soul and strength.
On one hand, I was a bit over-awed by the responsibilities. But on the other hand, I was anticipating a much greater dosage of God’s grace to be poured in my direction as I go about His business.
For this year’s staff retreat, the theme was solitude and prayer. To be honest, I was not very looking forward to it at the initial stage. As the program sheet was being passed out, there were too many “solitude time with God” slots than I would have appreciated. To make matters worse, these slots can last up to 3 hours at one go.
Not very willingly, I followed through with the program anyhow. I spent the first 30 minutes of the 3-hour slot fidgeting with anything and everything around me. It was terribly hard for me to settle down.
But after I had finally settled down, I began to read the articles that were given as part of our solitude time material. There was this particular article that spoke about the need to be totally present when we spent time with God. The author wrote that too often, we come before God but not with our complete presence. We had engaged in a form of being with God but we were not really there.
That article struck me right between my eyes. Just a few weeks ago, one of my friends told me that when I talked to him, I was often not present. He said that I would be looking around, wandering in my mind and waiting for the next thing to happen. There I was in front of him but I was already somewhere else. In fact, this friend has told me twice before about the need to be completely present while talking to people.
We do live in a multi-tasking world. In fact, I had just downloaded IE7 and one of the new features is that it enables you to have different tabs to different web pages all in one screen (dear tech-savvy people, please forgive me if I had explained it wrongly). All these things enable us to tend to more things at one go. Waiting and being fully present are becoming challenging virtues to develop in our fast paced society.
With God’s help and grace, I really want to be present in everything that I do. I may not get a lot of things done at the end of my day but I sincerely pray that whatever that I had set to do, I would do it to the best of my ability.
Most importantly, I want to be fully present when I am in God’s presence. God has always given me His full attention whenever I called upon His name. Anything less from me towards him would be unthinkable. I suppose this is an expression of loving God with all of my heart, mind, soul and strength.
posted by Jeff Chong at 10:58 pm
7 Comments:
Ps Jeff,
Mozilla firefox www.getfirefox.com can do the same(reportedly even safer frm bugs etc), multiple tabs in one single browser window! Check it out, it even has 'zai' themes that makes ur browser more interesting and fun!
PJ, be careful.. IE7 is very vunerable to viral attacks and it hangs up pretty frequently.. and furthermore alot of programs are not compatible with it yet.. so IE7 is not the thing yet..
The previous commenter said about firefox.. Which is good.. It is done by the good pple at mozilla which was responsible for Netscape Navigator.. if u remember..
hee.. just realise i have been tech-talking u..hahaha.. sorry
thank you all for your techno tips... appreciate it!
yeah... IE7 is in Beta , which i think means it is under testing (like guinea pig)... so it's better not for everyone to use it until it has been "tried and tested"... usually those who are more techno-savvy will like to try those new platforms rolled out in Beta (e.g. IE7 in Beta, Blogger in Beta) because it offers more features , but the risk is that there will be bugs or incompatibility with other programmes that the less-techie people will panic at.
Wow... Ps Jeff, just really want to say that I'm very encouraged and inspired every time I read your entries... not just so, but I keep learning a lot...
Think something that struck me as I was reading the previous entry was how it is possible to have a real-world faith that is real and engaging... personally, you come across to me as someone who is very real and sincere about your faith in God, and yet, it doesn't sound "jargonish" at all... it actually sounds very relevant... I mean, it doesn't sound like you just came down from a mountain with a glowing face, but it's somehow very real, and people, even non-Christians, can connect very quickly to what you're sharing - even on "spiritual stuff".
Yup, just want to encourage you to keep on blogging, brother! :D
Always inspired,
YA
Hi Pastor Jeff! You must be very tired with all the schedules and all, just wanna encourage you tat God called us to lead, so let's lead with faith and diligent! You such a selfless person! I'd got a lot more to learn from u! Please continue to teach us with faith!
-A servant from y-hope
Ps Jeff
I will really advise you to use firefox. It allows you to control your music from your browser, sync your bookmarks from different computers, blog straight without logging in to your blog server, block harmful script... I can go on. And yeah, the themes...
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