Hello!
Yesterday, I went to church for my second mentoring session and the topic was: 1) experiencing and being sensitive to God's prompting and leading every moment of our lives, and 2) the value of keeping the Sabbath. I must say I still have not fully internalised the first topic (what a big and immense topic it is!) but the second topic really gripped my imagination and I felt challenged and intrigued enough to try my hand at keeping the Sabbath today.
So what does Sabbath mean, really, to a working mom in a very modern hectic city like Singapore? Well, based on the book we were reading, Sabbbath is about stopping work (easy!), enjoying rest (not so easy with 4 kids and husband who likes his me time too, and also with my maid going off to enjoy her Sabbath as well), practicing delight (hmm how do we do that exactly) and contemplating God (of course!). It was especially challenging as the book said Sabbath was when we rest from paid and unpaid work, and the latter includes paying bills, doing housework, running errands. I mean, if we don't do it on Sunday, then we have to make sure we get these done on the other 6 days. I guess that is where intentional planning comes in.
So this morning, I decided since going for nature walks and spending time with my family bring me delight, we should go to a breakfast place near to a park, and after breakfast, go for a walk in nature. Since my maid was taking off too, we packed up all 4 kids and went to some HK cafe at Sin Ming (So Good Cafe), ate dimsum and then went off to Windsor Park. It was quite sunny by then so I donned my cap, tried unsuccessfully to press caps on my 3 other kids, and trudged along carrying baby and we saw monkeys, salamanders, red dragonflies, and many large ants. We got home sweaty and quite tired (trudging in the hot tropical jungle does sap your strength!).
Later in the day, after the kids went down to my parents' place to watch TV, husband went out to play soccer, I decided to sit at my balcony with my handphone and journal to do my Quiet Time. My passage was Proverbs 28:11 "The rich are wise in their own eyes; one who is poor and discerning sees how deluded they are." And I was puzzling over how the rich are "deluded".... Dark stormclouds were gathering and streaks of lightning kept flashing. I got quite distracted, and also started wondering how lightning is formed. Since I had my handphone in hand, I Googled it, and to my surprise, it was due to the formation of positive charges on the top of a stormcloud and negative charges at the bottom (why is it like that?) and then it somehow causes the ground to have positive charge, and then zaaap! Electricity crosses the atmosphere either from the bottom of a stormcloud to the highest point on the ground, or from cloud to cloud (I especially like the cloud to cloud bit). And nobody really knows why the electricity happens in a zig-zag fashion. And even more amazing, is how thunder is formed. It is because the electricity creates a hole in the air, and when air rushes back in to fill the void, it creates the sound of thunder. I mean, consider how loud thunder really is! And it is just air rushing back to fill a thin void in the sky, how can be that loud? Sometimes it's almost like a thunderclap that makes everyone jump out of their clothes for a while! So I started marvelling how loud and powerful this phenomenon which looks like a thin streak in the air, is, and how we humans, if we didn't have our concrete houses, are at the mercy of nature. And how powerful weather is, and how little we still understand it, and how small we are.
And this led me to contemplate that any day, something bad could happen to our small miniscule lives -- we could be struck by lightning, someone could be struck by disease, and that is probably how the rich are deluded. They don't realise every little thing comes from God, from their health, to their ability to keep their wealth, and make even the next dollar, and so on and so forth. And we really should not take anything for granted, and give thanks for all the blessings. And not just give thanks, but bless others richly. I mean, God didn't bless us just so we keep thanking Him, and the Sparklight (Sunday school) lesson today was also on how Aquila and Priscilla were generous in sowing into God's kingdom. They were literal tentmakers (they sewed and sold tents!) and back then, believers shared everything, so they shared their money and their home with Paul and others who wanted to hear the gospel. May we be like Aquila and Priscilla.
