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everybody needs a holiday.
I took this picture when I was in Hallim Park, Jeju, South Korea, together with BB, ST and HY, and I think it looks gorgeous! Beautiful place to go on a vacation. That holiday last July remains one of my all-time favourites. I’m really looking forward to a holiday with the DYLM family after Pierce. (: (All right, that’s all for tonight because I really need to work on my sermon for the GII Pre-Teens services tomorrow morning!)
what does it mean to give?
I snapped this picture at the 777-feet Seoul Tower, located on the summit of Namsan Mountain, South Korea, where stalls upon stalls displayed little knick-knacks for sale. I aptly titled this photograph, “Useless”, simply because (almost) everything in this picture is. Why do we even bother buying gifts of little or no practical use? This reminds me of what it means to give.
Christmas is a time of giving and receiving. The gift of God is in His Son, Jesus Christ. The gift of Jesus Christ is His own life. I’d like to think that Jesus could have chosen not to die even though He was sent to die, hence I refuse to take for granted His sacrifice for me on the cross. With Jesus, it was solely Him giving and us receiving. So, what could we actually give to Jesus?
Try as I may, I am unable to find anything worthy to give to Jesus as a form of reciprocation. Even if I were to give my life – and that’s about all that I can give – it is still an unworthy gift. To better grasp the unparalleled gift of Jesus, I realise that I could neither out-give my mother’s 26 years of sacrifice nor HY’s gift of purity; regardless of what I do now, I will never be able to give my mother or HY the equal value of their gift to me.
I cannot imagine being born to die. That statement may be extreme, but even if I were to water it down, I still cannot imagine being born to give. I’m inclined to think that we have been wired to receive, regardless of how generous we have been raised to be or innately are. Every fibre of my being longs to receive more – pleasure, love, happiness, etc. It takes effort to give – at least for me it does.
And so this Christmas, I’d like to give to Jesus the best gift, still unworthy as it may be, that I can ever give right now – my future – because it is unknown to me and out of my control. Join me then, in rededicating and surrendering your life to Jesus once again as He dedicated His whole life to you. It is my earnest prayer that you will find new faith, hope and love in the Lover and Savior of your soul. And just to put the icing on the cake – He’s also the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and He lived to die just for you.
I conclude this entry with lyrics from two Relient K songs that made me tear the first time I heard it – “Give” and “I Celebrate The Day”.
“I’ll give, give, give – until there’s nothing else
Give my all – until it all runs out
Give, give – and I’ll have no regrets
I’ll give until there’s nothing left
I’ll give”“And the first time that You opened Your eyes
Did You realise that You would be my Saviour?
And the first breath that left Your lips
Did You know that it would change this world forever?And I, I celebrate the day
That You were born to die
So I could one day pray for You to save my life”
Have a blessed and meaningful Christmas, dear readers. (:
and the winner of the NKJV Bible is…
May 16
Posted by Joey Asher Tan
First and foremost, thank you for all your submissions! I didn’t receive as many as I had hoped for, but it was certainly more than I had expected! I’m happy either way. Of course, I lay the blame of the not-so-hot response on the laid-back Asian mentality and the aiya-don’t-want-lah-so-paiseh attitude. It’s never my own undoing, right? :P
Anyway, I have looked through and enjoyed reading all the submissions! I have already selected the winner and will announce the result in the coming days, together with the winning entry! Keep your eyes peeled on this blog because for the first time in my blogging history (do allow me to self-hype), I will publish someone else’s writing in its entirety! Nonetheless, since it’s my competition, I will bend my rules and declare that I still accept entries until 20th May, but the bar has been raised and any subsequent entries would have to better the existing ones by a mile!
On a more serious note, I humbly request that you keep a few of us in prayer, as the Spirit leads you, over the next few days. ET, SW, TT, NL, LS and KJ, together with KK and I, will be at a camp called iJourney, from Monday to Wednesday. This annual programme is conducted for the Secondary 1 Normal Technical students and selected Secondary 3 student leaders from Dunearn Secondary School. It’s a great opportunity for us to plant seeds in these young lives, as well as to be demonstrate Christ-like testimonies for them.
I have already written in advance and have scheduled daily posts to (still) be published at the stroke of every midnight. So if you keep reading and commenting, I will surely keep writing. I told LK that writing daily has become such a habit that this catharsis is turning into an obsession. And I think it’s a good one.
For now, I think it’s time to kill the monotony of words and to colour the blog. I took this picture of the magnificent birds’ eye view of the Seogwipo World Cup Stadium in Jeju, South Korea, when I was atop the hot-air balloon. I remember telling myself that this would be the closest that I’d ever get to any World Cup. This is the breathtaking scenery 150-metres above ground! Enjoy!
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Posted in Affirming Faithfulness, Extraordinary Mundane, Ooh Aah Cantona, Picture Perfect, Simple Pleasures, The Greatest Gift
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Tags: attitude, birds' eye view, blog, catharsis, Christ-like, colour, comment, competition, daily, Dunearn Secondary School, Elissa Tan, Holy Spirit, hot-air balloon, iJourney, Jeju, Jesus Christ, Kenneth Kwan, Lim Kun Jie, Lim Leng Shan, Lionel Koh, mentality, midnight, monotony, Nicole Liang, obsession, plant, publish, read, Seogwipo World Cup Stadium, Serene Wee, South Korea, submission, testimony, Tiffany Tay, winner, winning entry, World Cup, write, young people