John Lubbock once said this about human perspective: “What we do see depends mainly on what we look for. In the same field, farmers will notice the crop, geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the coloring, sportsmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them.”

Sociologists suggest that our very self or ‘nature’ is very much a social construct that determines how we see and respond to things. Most of us are not conscious of how much our choices, decisions, and life trajectories are influenced by society, our education, health, the work that we do, and also the positive and negative attitudes that were inculcated in us from a young.

Feeling parched is a physical discomfort that makes us reach out for a drink to quench our thirst. But a parched soul that has been deprived of essential life-sustaining living water from God is a silent condition that can sneak up on us and take a toll on our spiritual wellbeing. The symptoms are much less visible and the discomfort can be brushed aside and relieved by substitutive cures. 

In August, Pastor Beatrice had her first fireside chat with Marilyn Chew. Since then, we are calling this series of informal and very personal conversations ‘Be Heard’. It captures two persons who pause in the midst of life to catch up and go beyond the usual updates. They can be found in busy cafes, in quiet corridors or on a home couch. ‘Be Heard’ emphasizes the importance of creating touch points where we connect with another person on a human and spiritual level.

There's nothing more revealing about a person than when we see how they act in their own homes. One day, Jesus decided to drop in, on short notice, at the home of His good friends Martha and Mary. Wasting no time, Martha got busy doing what any respectable host would do - cooking up a storm and most likely, preparing a place for Jesus and his travel companions to put up. It would be nothing less than a ‘home away from home’.

However, Jesus soon noticed that His host was so busy that it was hard to tell if she was happy to see Him because she was always somewhere else. Close by, He watched and waited as Martha went about her busyness, and couldn’t help wondering if His sudden appearance had caused her to be inundated with preparations that kept her out of sight and unavailable to Him.

This week, storm Ida blasted through New York and New Jersey, wreaked havoc in its track and turned neighbourhood streets and subways into raging rivers. Social media was flooded with images of the devastation caused by the historic storm that upended all kinds of travel, created homelessness for many and drowned several in their homes. The suddenness of the storm had caught people off-guard, and severely tested the safety and adequacy of housing and public infrastructures.

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.