Many would agree that we often don’t know what the future looks like. We cannot envision where a troubled marriage would be headed, what kind of future to point our children to, where to take our relationships from where they are to where God desires them to be, and what lies ahead for ourselves – be it in business or in our career. We largely let the natural rhythms of life such as growing old, and life events like birth and death, define how we live in the here and now. We generally believe that by managing our lives well, we will be rewarded with a good future.

If someone offers you a rich and satisfying life, what would that look like to you? Do you picture a life that serves your desires and interests? Is it an ideal life with things always turning out the way you want? Or is it one without suffering sickness, setbacks and shocks?

Hope is a very precious thought that can give us confidence and courage despite the odds against us.

Marilyn Chew shares her journey of pain, anger, unforgiveness, and addiction, till she found Jesus. He was the anchor for her soul, firm and secure. [Hebrews 6:19a]

This week, American athlete, Sydney McLaughlin, smashed the world record in the 400-meter hurdles and the new Olympian champion wasted no time to testify of God’s goodness to the world. Fresh off the track, she posted on her Instagram account: “My faith was being tested all week. From bad practices, to 3 false start delays, to a meet delay. I just kept hearing God say, “Just focus on me”. Even when it doesn’t make sense, even when it doesn’t seem possible. He will make a way out of no way. Not for my own gratification, but for His glory. I have never seen God fail in my life. In anyone’s life for that matter. Just because I may not win every race, or receive every one of my heart’s desires, does not mean God had failed. His will is PERFECT. And He has prepared me for a moment such as this. That I may use the gifts He has given me to point all the attention back to Him.”

How much effort would you put in to spend quality time with someone? In an inspirational video titled “Eating Twinkies with God” that garnered around 4 million views, a little boy got dressed, packed a couple of Twinkies and drinks for two in his backpack, hopped on a train and headed out to a park where he ate Twinkies with a homeless lady on a bench. Seated side-by-side, delighted with their Twinkies, they shared a bond of humanity beyond kinship and felt almost as if they had met God.

Recently, a few of us have been unwell and needed medical treatment. As a community, we prayed for their full recovery and for them to hold onto God’s promises. Most of us don’t go to a doctor when we are healthy, and some avoid seeing one even when they are unwell.

The medical criteria for health is the absence of disease: if we’re diseased, we’re not healthy. It is generally known that normal health is the absence of abnormality and of detectable symptoms of disease. However, it has been said that the absence of disease does not imply that a person is healthy either. In other words, health is more than the absence of disease.

How many of us call out to God when we need help, or when we are hurting, or even when we are all alone? We’ll fill our days with mind-numbing activities, routines and rituals, we’ll sit quietly in despair, we’ll spend our down time scrolling through other people’s Instagram posts, we’ll binge-watch Netflix – all the while, putting ourselves on ‘mute’ with God.

We have all heard the saying that the rearview is always clearer than the view through the windshield. (1)Also, we can’t connect the dots looking forward, we can only connect them looking backward. (2) Both point to the fact that setbacks and detours in life always make more sense after we have gone through them.

Show and Tell is an activity that attaches narratives to inanimate objects or things that cannot speak, like our pets. The narratives are as real as the experience and perception of those who talk about them. One who recently went through months of mistreatment and the mental ordeal would speak of the ordinary bread as a token of Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life that sustained her daily through a time that could only be described as a ‘sandstorm’. Jesus was literally the Light that saw her through each day till the storm suddenly stopped and changed course!

A close relationship with God is one where we have no problem revealing our deepest needs. It centers on this biblical truth: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. (Matthew 7:7-8)

Never before have words been given so much power than in today’s digital age. We pay great attention to words used by politicians, scientists, celebrities, the news media, and content posted by the public on social media. Words have the power to provoke, attack, accuse, bully, hurt and at the same time, entertain, unite people, provide hope, comfort, security, and pleasure. We select and use words – whether spoken or as text - to advance our convictions, confirm our beliefs, confront falsehoods, create alliances, cover real intentions, or convince our audience of some ‘truths’.

MOSES HAD A BURNING BUSH EXPERIENCE with God that changed his life trajectory, and although that was the only instance in the Bible when God chose to draw a man’s attention to His presence by igniting a bush (that wasn’t even charred by the flame), that mysterious appearance is often burned into our mental image of God. Nowadays, when we hear people in church say they sense a powerful presence of God, we associate His presence with worship songs, prayer, and listening to sermons. To be sure, these activities, as well as being in a church service or a fellowship group can help increase our awareness of Him, but God is not a sleeping genie we rouse on demand.

Our names are the most public aspect of our identity. Today, users of social media adopt cool usernames to differentiate themselves from other users, and most of us also have multiple usernames to access online shopping, internet banking, virtual private networks (VPNs), online information, and other resources.

Who holds the pencil pretty much determines what comes out of it. Yet the difference between inanimate pencils and living humans is the agency or the free will we have to choose who controls our lives, and the way we live our lives as a result of that.  

Pencils don’t have fancy brand names like pens, nor are they used for signing trade agreements or big contracts. Yet, unlike pens, they are more practical for writing on different ordinary surfaces and can be used at all writing angles. So what does the humble pencil tell us about ourselves? That we are more like ordinary pencils than we are like luxury pens. That our lives have the God-created potential for making practical differences in everyday situations, and that our potential is not ranked by the world’s standard of importance.

The way a pencil is designed with lead on one end and an eraser on top emphasize revisions being an integral part of using the pencil. Our laptops and mobile devices also have keyboards that are designed with the ubiquitous ‘delete’ key, ready to deal with any mistakes. It doesn’t judge the mistakes we make, it simply erases them.

These are everyday reminders that in life, even when we put in our best efforts or have the best intentions, we can still make mistakes – some easier to erase while others leave more permanent marks.

This week, we continue with the pencil analogy to see that for pencils to be useful, they need to be sharpened as they are being used. The fanciest and sleekest pencils will soon lose their efficacy if the wood and graphite are not regularly shaped to keep their tips pointed for the tasks they are applied to. So it’s true that pencils need to be ‘defaced’ to be useful!

Pencils may be out-of-style today, but as metaphors, they provide image-rich illustrations for understanding how God thinks and what He sees in us.

Imagine there is an assortment of pencils sitting in a pencil holder. Some are new, some have seen better days, some long, some shorter, some with darker lead than others, some branded, others are plain. If you need to pick one from the bunch to write an important note – which would you choose? Or does it really matter?

Seriously, the pencil is not just a piece of wood or a hollow barrel. The lead inside determines the quality of the pencil and the quantity of output it is capable of.

LET’S FACE IT, trusting people is hard, especially when it involves something that is highly personal. Who do you trust with your deepest fears and anxieties? Who do you turn to when you feel mistreated or harassed? Who can you talk to when you are confused or when things are spinning out of control?

We cannot always be certain if the people or organisation we turn to have our best interests at heart, or if they care about us at all. So we trust only what we can see, and we assess someone’s trustworthiness by their behaviour. We also look for signs of their reliability such as the consistency between their actions and what they say, their approachability and availability, the level of in-person support they offered in the past, and also, their transparency.

Not surprisingly, most of us struggle with trust issues.

We are living in an image-rich world where we see photos and videos of freak accidents, severe weather, health crisis, racially motivated attacks, and all kinds of real human stories uploaded on the internet as soon as they take place. “The woman with the issue of blood” could very well caption a photo of a sick woman who took great risks to get close to Jesus and was healed by Him.