7. The Reason for Everything

For the glory of Your name.


His glory is inherent in who He is. The love and grace and truth that is His very nature shines through like light, and that is His glory. That is why we glorify Him, for who He is.

We bring glory to God by doing as He commands us, for His commands serve to bring Him greater glory. We recall Jesus' prayer, " I brought glory to You on earth by doing what You commanded me to do."

To live for God is the only way to live. Everything else is merely existing.

-taken from Chapter 7, The Purpose-Driven Life, by Rick Warren

I testify to the truth of the above passage. ben.

serving the nation.

duty clerk tonight. basically means i stay in camp and answer phone calls, amongst various other duties. gets abit boring sometimes, but what to do?


what to do is indeed the question. this duty thing is a 24-hour duty thing, confined to a fairly small room. on this, my fourth attempt, i have finally succeeded at bringing a good book (The Unquenchable Worshipper, Matt Redman) and actually sitting down and reading it. was earlier unwilling, having given in to the lie that i wouldn't be able to concentrate on what i was reading what with all the high-ranking personnel wandering around and occasionally handing out punishments. but today's been good, so far. nothing much really happened. hallelujah. actually finished the book (it's really itty), gonna move on to some other stuff i brought. hopefully this duty will become a time of rest for me rather than a time of dread (the duty clerk tends to come into close proximity with a certain disciplinarian "affectionately" known as the DarkSide, who was mercifully absent for much of today).

one problem is that this fairly small room has a computer with an internet connection. rather distracting. bored guys should not have internet connections, for explicit reasons. also, the duty clerk tends to get "arrowed" with all kinds of menial tasks, which means that there might not be much spare time at all, which has its good and bad points. but the accomodations are pretty terrible by army standards. i get an old, worn mattress and the floor. and a pillow. and several phones to wake me at all hours. which is frankly unappealing, seeing as i've had trouble sleeping the past two nights. i remember back in JC, one frequent prayer pointer was for a good night's rest. i may start that again.

To quote Matt Redman(approx.), "Setting aside time for God often results in God becoming more apparent in all other parts of your life". I think this post might be testimony to that.

Did i mention that i've been on the verge of falling ill this whole past week? air-con is not doing my throat any favours, prospect of unsatisfactory and interrupted sleep tonight, and a packed schedule tomorrow. time to pray.

schizophrenic me (cont'd)

like the title says. cont'd.



or discont'd, rather. i had wanted to say some things on the dual nature warring in each Christian, and about the different facets of my personality which i saw taking sides in the fight, which i thought was pretty important... to know which parts of your personality to indulge and suppress respectively..... but it was all getting far too "me"-oriented, which was plain depressing. another time, perhaps....


in the empty space following that last "....", i found myself consciously trying to come up with something to fill that space with... something witty perhaps, or simply a comment on something close to me... struck me as being "poser"-ish... is it? i mean, just 'cos i need to think awhile to bring the thought to mind doesn't mean i feel any less strongly about it right?

right?




come to think of it, this entire blog is "me"-oriented. no wonder it seems depressing to blog..

schizophrenic me.

nine days since i last said something here. this is the exact reason i refused to start blogging earlier... i have such little perseverance. rarely stick to anything for any large period of time.


and yet its so important to write things down... writing things down gives more perspective somehow... forces you to think through the happenings and events that pile up in life like some major multiple-vehicle highway smashup... so important to preserve some of these strange, fleeting thoughts that help tease out the intricate weaving that makes up myself... who am i? to quote (roughly) from Sun Tzu:

Know thine enemy,
know thyself.
A thousand battles,
a thousand victories.

That's how i think it goes anyway. Know thy enemy, know thyself... both equally important in finding victory.

*this muse is interrupted for some breaking news! i heard a crow in the kitchen, and instead of strolling over to chase it out with my sheer bulk (compared to the crow, of course), i sprinted into the kitchen yelling incomprehensibly at it. and as it flew off, i laughed at the sheer absurdity of it all. quite fun actually!=)*

i browse some of the blogs of acquaintances i know, and these lyrics came to mind:

Blessed are the shallow
Depth they'll never find
Seemed to be some comfort
In rooms I try to hide

The last two lines are beyond my ken. someone explain them to me, if you will. But the meaning of the first two seem plain enough to me. Some people are so content to live life for all the activities and happenings around them... they never seem to stop and ponder the meaning and the wonder of it all... why do we live? people such as i, who agonise over philosophical things, things that seem of little consequence to this world that cares about material things... yet...

like Sun Tzu says, know thyself. ever since young, i've always tried to analyze myself and my motivations, driven by the love of God, to make sure that nothing i did was for my own glory. i have had sufficient trouble with arrogance in the past, and even now. looking up a bible verse just a little while earlier, i came across a mindmap i made when i was in... sec3? pondering why people raised their hands in worship, and whether i could or should do the same. and i figured it out, but i realise that i have forgotten, since i never wrote it down. must go find out again. i guess this is where the blog comes in.

i had more to write, but i'm tired. been a crazy week. i haven't even touched on the title of this post yet.... perhaps later.

shocking stupidity

literally.

trying to plug my handphone charger into the socket in the dark... usual 2pin charger, without the earth wire... managed to plug exactly one pin into the socket while my fumbling fingers closed upon the next plug.

i guess its one of those things you simply have to experience once in your life. wow. shocking stupidity.