should old acquaintance be forgot, and days of auld lang syne?
some of you might disagree, but i think some of them, at least, should be. and sometimes it's not so much of a question of should and be forgot as it is a question of is and forgotten. is old acquaintance forgotten, and days of auld lang syne? now the answer to that, i think, is yes. some things are better left forgotten and unsaid, or, it's better to let sleeping dogs lie, we say. perhaps those are really excuses for the fact that we do forget. how do we not? as time goes by, as brain cells die. or we find Life and Love like no other we've ever experienced.
yet there are times when the past creates fear in the present. and that's the only time, i think, we don't forget - simply because we don't allow ourselves to. but here's a thought for 2008: God's intervention in your life was (or will be) as real as all the times you've sinned, or done something that made you feel horrible. more real, perhaps, than all those times. i know i need to remember that.
it's about half-an-hour to the sun setting as i'm sitting at my desk typing this, and i'm sure people all over the world are doing the same; trying to preserve the last measure of 2007 daylight in words that ultimately mean so little in the grander scheme of things. what's another new year, anyway? as the world parties on, bluffing itself that the mire we wade deeper into everyday doesn't exist there will be people who will die in the first minute, within the first hour of 2008 not knowing that Jesus died for them. what will anybody's words, what will their hopes and plans for 2008 matter then?
i spent the last day of 2007 buying new running shoes and watching across the universe with sean. do watch it if you're a beatles fan, it's got some truly lovely dream sequences (unfortunately signifying drug abuse) and extremely thoughtful covers of some of their best songs.
i wrote before, and i quote, (there are) days you feel the exact feeling i believe you get right after you know you've lost perhaps the only person you'll ever really love with that love which comes only once. it's the loss of that mad kind of love . . . the kind which some people are lucky enough to experience but once in a lifetime, and which i will believe forever i had the fortune to have had, as i write this with a sort of wistful longing as one of those who have joined those ranks. i wrote that in 2004, and to me, that's pretty much what the movie was about. that mad kind of love - they loved without fear said the trailer. when you were young, fearless, felt invincible, felt you could do anything just because you were together in the world, and when it ended you felt it would never be that way ever again ---
so now, forgive me if i sound old, cynical, jaded and disillusioned (i don't think i am in the least, really, and you should read on so you can conclude as to whether i am or not) but: BULLSHIT.
hur, hur, hur. this is NOT going to be an emo post about 2007 and the past. i mean, i'm like so totally over that kind of post, hello (now hold on while i check if there are any past posts to incriminate me)?!
well, okay. i'm not so totally over that kind of thing - but i believe i can say BULLSHIT! now because i got baptised and i believe i've found true freedom loving Jesus. which sounds so totally cliche but it's true! and can you like, so totally count the number of "so totally" 's i've used in the space of two paragraphs?
i will always enjoy, and be able to identify with movies like across the universe - think eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and love me if you dare - but in the movie the hero and heroine hook up right after the heroine's first boyfriend gets killed in the vietnam war. and even though i know sean and i both felt a sweet sort of wistfulness when she broke into if i fell in love with you i couldn't agree more when sean turned to me after they woke up in the morning in the hero's bed and said "that's like just major rebound lah!"
IT'S TRUE AND YOU KNOW IT.
call me preachy, but it's so much more comfortable and restful to be practical, to be older in Christ and wiser in His ways. because that's what the Bible says we were created for - "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them," Ephesians 2:10 - and it follows that we will never find true contentment and joy in life unless we've surrendered our lives to Him to take care of. and i've found that no amount of telling yourself you have to get over something is as effective as telling yourself to believe that all your sins are forgiven, making you a child of God and best of all, a new creature in Him. no matter what's happened before.
"For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; so far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us." Psalm 103:12-13.
oh sure, i think i churned out writing that was a lot more poetic and thoughtful when i was younger and in the throes of youthful desperation and indulging in the belief that things would never be the same, in an i-am-only-eighteen-but-i've seen-so-much-of-love-and-life-already kind of way. and i'd probably have cried buckets if i'd watched across the universe when i was 17 or 18. but i don't think i'd want to be that way now. how unnecessarily complicated it makes things.
we don't ever think much of how the present will affect the future when we're living it, do we? especially when we're young - we were young, and foolish after all. i know i didn't. and i didn't know that i'd be haunted by whatever happened before when it happened in the before, and i'll bet anything jon didn't know i'd be haunted by whatever happened in his before. i don't think i'm avoiding the truth when i say that for us - for me really - it's a matter of trusting that God makes all things new if only we have faith in Jesus, and having faith that He did create us for each other. some things you just know, and don't question.
it is wearying, to have the world create doubts about true love, when you're struggling to cling on to everything He's promised, and you can't even see the "so much more" beyond that. and it is wearying, because you know you're rejecting God's blessings with each moment you allow the past to wear you down - what's more His blessings are right there waving pom-poms in front of you, bright red shiny ones catching the sunlight, and glow-in-the-dark ones for the torturous nights.
still, we are human after all; He never said there'd only be sunshine, and the Bible says that there is a time for everything. we hurt, but we also forgive, forget, realise that we're living in the Real World and there are people facing a lot more pain than we ever did and ever will. then He has also said that there is love, and there is prayer. what more can we do but enjoy Him once we've found Him?
i still believe people should be allowed to crash and burn though, because we're not alone, and it is necessary, to an extent. but please, try and live like there is a Tomorrow. because there will be, and one Tomorrow, Christ will come again. even if that doesn't happen soon, there'll be plenty of other Tomorrows for you to regret Yesterday.
***
i'll believe in you, if you believe in me; i'll believe in you, it's plain enough to see; i don't know when i don't know how, we'll make it through this world somehow - i'll believe in you and me.
the sun has set now, and that's what i'm going to do in 2008. i'm going to believe. i am going to believe that what i have now, and not what i had then, is true love. there's God's love, of course, the only true love there can be. but for what there is on earth, there is what i have with jon: bills to pay, slaving away for long hours to help rich people get richer so we can pay those bills. the possibility that one day we will be bored of each other, that we will quarrel, will say things we don't mean, which will hurt. and hurt like crazy.
wah lau, like that who wants to get married already right?
however, people do. and i believe (there i go already, and it's not even 2008!) that contrary to what i'd believed, i didn't have to "settle" for someone. i fell in love and this time i'm saying it i'm not going to add on an "again." because there is never an "again." write all the songs you want about love, and i will sing them and work out your fantastic chord progressions and recognise them anywhere. but i fell in love because God is a gracious and loving God, and that's all there is to it. and it's a love for Everyday, for better for worse. just like God's love for all of us.
some of you might disagree, but i think some of them, at least, should be. and sometimes it's not so much of a question of should and be forgot as it is a question of is and forgotten. is old acquaintance forgotten, and days of auld lang syne? now the answer to that, i think, is yes. some things are better left forgotten and unsaid, or, it's better to let sleeping dogs lie, we say. perhaps those are really excuses for the fact that we do forget. how do we not? as time goes by, as brain cells die. or we find Life and Love like no other we've ever experienced.
yet there are times when the past creates fear in the present. and that's the only time, i think, we don't forget - simply because we don't allow ourselves to. but here's a thought for 2008: God's intervention in your life was (or will be) as real as all the times you've sinned, or done something that made you feel horrible. more real, perhaps, than all those times. i know i need to remember that.
it's about half-an-hour to the sun setting as i'm sitting at my desk typing this, and i'm sure people all over the world are doing the same; trying to preserve the last measure of 2007 daylight in words that ultimately mean so little in the grander scheme of things. what's another new year, anyway? as the world parties on, bluffing itself that the mire we wade deeper into everyday doesn't exist there will be people who will die in the first minute, within the first hour of 2008 not knowing that Jesus died for them. what will anybody's words, what will their hopes and plans for 2008 matter then?
i spent the last day of 2007 buying new running shoes and watching across the universe with sean. do watch it if you're a beatles fan, it's got some truly lovely dream sequences (unfortunately signifying drug abuse) and extremely thoughtful covers of some of their best songs.
i wrote before, and i quote, (there are) days you feel the exact feeling i believe you get right after you know you've lost perhaps the only person you'll ever really love with that love which comes only once. it's the loss of that mad kind of love . . . the kind which some people are lucky enough to experience but once in a lifetime, and which i will believe forever i had the fortune to have had, as i write this with a sort of wistful longing as one of those who have joined those ranks. i wrote that in 2004, and to me, that's pretty much what the movie was about. that mad kind of love - they loved without fear said the trailer. when you were young, fearless, felt invincible, felt you could do anything just because you were together in the world, and when it ended you felt it would never be that way ever again ---
so now, forgive me if i sound old, cynical, jaded and disillusioned (i don't think i am in the least, really, and you should read on so you can conclude as to whether i am or not) but: BULLSHIT.
hur, hur, hur. this is NOT going to be an emo post about 2007 and the past. i mean, i'm like so totally over that kind of post, hello (now hold on while i check if there are any past posts to incriminate me)?!
well, okay. i'm not so totally over that kind of thing - but i believe i can say BULLSHIT! now because i got baptised and i believe i've found true freedom loving Jesus. which sounds so totally cliche but it's true! and can you like, so totally count the number of "so totally" 's i've used in the space of two paragraphs?
i will always enjoy, and be able to identify with movies like across the universe - think eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and love me if you dare - but in the movie the hero and heroine hook up right after the heroine's first boyfriend gets killed in the vietnam war. and even though i know sean and i both felt a sweet sort of wistfulness when she broke into if i fell in love with you i couldn't agree more when sean turned to me after they woke up in the morning in the hero's bed and said "that's like just major rebound lah!"
IT'S TRUE AND YOU KNOW IT.
call me preachy, but it's so much more comfortable and restful to be practical, to be older in Christ and wiser in His ways. because that's what the Bible says we were created for - "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them," Ephesians 2:10 - and it follows that we will never find true contentment and joy in life unless we've surrendered our lives to Him to take care of. and i've found that no amount of telling yourself you have to get over something is as effective as telling yourself to believe that all your sins are forgiven, making you a child of God and best of all, a new creature in Him. no matter what's happened before.
"For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; so far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us." Psalm 103:12-13.
oh sure, i think i churned out writing that was a lot more poetic and thoughtful when i was younger and in the throes of youthful desperation and indulging in the belief that things would never be the same, in an i-am-only-eighteen-but-i've seen-so-much-of-love-and-life-already kind of way. and i'd probably have cried buckets if i'd watched across the universe when i was 17 or 18. but i don't think i'd want to be that way now. how unnecessarily complicated it makes things.
we don't ever think much of how the present will affect the future when we're living it, do we? especially when we're young - we were young, and foolish after all. i know i didn't. and i didn't know that i'd be haunted by whatever happened before when it happened in the before, and i'll bet anything jon didn't know i'd be haunted by whatever happened in his before. i don't think i'm avoiding the truth when i say that for us - for me really - it's a matter of trusting that God makes all things new if only we have faith in Jesus, and having faith that He did create us for each other. some things you just know, and don't question.
it is wearying, to have the world create doubts about true love, when you're struggling to cling on to everything He's promised, and you can't even see the "so much more" beyond that. and it is wearying, because you know you're rejecting God's blessings with each moment you allow the past to wear you down - what's more His blessings are right there waving pom-poms in front of you, bright red shiny ones catching the sunlight, and glow-in-the-dark ones for the torturous nights.
still, we are human after all; He never said there'd only be sunshine, and the Bible says that there is a time for everything. we hurt, but we also forgive, forget, realise that we're living in the Real World and there are people facing a lot more pain than we ever did and ever will. then He has also said that there is love, and there is prayer. what more can we do but enjoy Him once we've found Him?
i still believe people should be allowed to crash and burn though, because we're not alone, and it is necessary, to an extent. but please, try and live like there is a Tomorrow. because there will be, and one Tomorrow, Christ will come again. even if that doesn't happen soon, there'll be plenty of other Tomorrows for you to regret Yesterday.
***
i'll believe in you, if you believe in me; i'll believe in you, it's plain enough to see; i don't know when i don't know how, we'll make it through this world somehow - i'll believe in you and me.
the sun has set now, and that's what i'm going to do in 2008. i'm going to believe. i am going to believe that what i have now, and not what i had then, is true love. there's God's love, of course, the only true love there can be. but for what there is on earth, there is what i have with jon: bills to pay, slaving away for long hours to help rich people get richer so we can pay those bills. the possibility that one day we will be bored of each other, that we will quarrel, will say things we don't mean, which will hurt. and hurt like crazy.
wah lau, like that who wants to get married already right?
however, people do. and i believe (there i go already, and it's not even 2008!) that contrary to what i'd believed, i didn't have to "settle" for someone. i fell in love and this time i'm saying it i'm not going to add on an "again." because there is never an "again." write all the songs you want about love, and i will sing them and work out your fantastic chord progressions and recognise them anywhere. but i fell in love because God is a gracious and loving God, and that's all there is to it. and it's a love for Everyday, for better for worse. just like God's love for all of us.
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