Take a look at your smartphone and the number of applications you have downloaded. Studies have shown that an average person uses about ten mobile apps a day1 and the trend is set to continue through 2022 and beyond. This is because people are constantly looking for something in life, whether it’s for convenience, connections, entertainment, consuming or creating some kind of content on social media.

In the kingdom of apps, there is an app for every kind of service supplied by different resource owners. We can swipe left, right, up and down to search for anything we want: anything except God. In the Kingdom of God, He alone is the resource owner who owns and controls everything and makes it accessible to those who earnestly seek Him.

Whether we like it or not, we are going to have another Christmas while the world tackles the emergence of another COVID-19 variant that is spreading fast with effects still unknown to scientists. This pandemic chaos, however, does not change the crux of the Christmas message.  In fact, the pandemic climate has given all believers and followers of Jesus Christ an undeniable mandate to bring the core message of Christmas closer to the people in our lives.

Gifting is a relational ritual many of us observe for birthdays, anniversaries, or Christmas. Since the start of Covid-19, many people have also been sending each other gifts of food for no other reason than to brighten someone’s day. The giving of gifts between family and friends differentiates itself from donations and transactional exchanges in that it operates within the context of an existing relationship where the giver and the recipient are known to each other. At the same time, it is also a social exchange where the reciprocity that is engendered serves to strengthen the interpersonal connection between the giver and the receiver, even as the ritual is repeated for different reasons. Having said that, not all of us like the hassle of gifting nor do we understand the relational nuances embedded in it, but if we stop treating it as a needless exchange and see it as a manner of human connection, we will all become better gifters and receivers.

We tend to think that it is hard for people to let go of the recognition, fame, and success that they have worked hard to achieve in their lives but for those who have experienced severe trials or extended hardships, it can be equally hard to let go of the victim mentality and the trauma associated with such experiences.

Scripture tells us that the Apostle Paul was a man with a checkered past. The Bible first introduced him to readers in the book of Acts 9:1 when he was still called Saul, a man who was breathing out murderous threats against all followers of Jesus Christ. But we soon saw that God intercepted his heinous mission and singled him out to reach both the Gentiles and the Jews (v15). That radically change his life course but it would also involve his suffering for Christ (v16).

When people find themselves in the company of like-minded people, they let down all artificial guards that keep them from sharing openly with one another. At BeInReach’s first Thanksgiving Celebration, people spoke with vulnerability without any superficial veneers of propriety to recount God’s goodness and love in their lives. Stories flowed from hearts to the homes of everyone online. Even the few who did not have the chance to share had mental or written scripts ready.

This is what gratitude does: it unlocks the fullness of life in our hearts. To quote Melody Beattie, gratitude “turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal to a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.”

IF GOD WERE TO TELL YOU that He wants to take you to a new mountaintop experience with Him, you’d need very little persuasion to join Him for the adventure. But if He were to lay out the possibilities of fatigue, dehydration, altitude sickness, if he were to talk about the reality of natural hazards and adverse weather conditions, if He were to warn you about bugs and mosquitoes, your susceptibility to blisters, injuries and skin irritation, and not to mention the load of supplies you have to carry, the intensive training before the trek, or how the trek will test and expose your deepest anxieties and fears, would you still sign up?

Tourists and children are generally a curious lot. We indulge their curiosity and even exploit it in the form of destinations and adventures for tourists, and games, toys, and themed playgrounds for children. We indulge their curiosity and questions about the most ordinary things. On the other hand, we expect people who have been around or lived a little longer – like locals and adults – to act differently because they should know better.

Remember the last time you traveled to a different place and found yourself a little lost at a renowned landmark? You looked around in the hope of finding some people who might appear like locals – people who speak the local vernacular and have a certain style of dressing. But when you approached them for directions, they appeared equally clueless; some even a little impatient with you.

SURRENDERED. TRANSFORMED. FAITH. These are abstract concepts that are often interpreted in a number of ways. However, when the apostle Paul spoke about the surrendered life in Galatians 2:20 (NIVUK), he was not teaching a philosophy or a way of thinking; he was referring to a truism from his own life experiences with God: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me’.

Today, Christians have a million reasons to be busy. Whether we are starting a new job, a family, a new phase in life, or in retirement, busyness is not only a feeling but also an identity we wear like a hard-won badge. It is a sign of our competence and usefulness.

We will not admit when we are tired, overwhelmed, or discouraged but we will tell people that we are busy. Our lives are highly structured for work, leisure, family matters, and everything to do with our own financial, mental, and physical well-being with little room for surprises and spontaneous human interactions.

We are also habituated to a lifestyle of convenient choices enabled by technology on our smart phones that make everything accessible to us without any human interaction. We dutifully indulge in Christian rituals like prayer, sharing Scriptures and testimonies through instant messaging without saying a single word to anyone. We swipe our phones multiple times a day but cannot remember when was the last time we reached out to hold someone’s hand or received a hug. We are so caught up in making life work that we have little room for anything unplanned from crises to conversations.

STANDOFF. STALEMATE. STATUS QUO. There are many ways to avoid crippling fears but the result is always the same – an unchanged state. We can ignore them long enough to push them into the subconscious mind, and avoid situations where they are likely to surface. Over time, however, the fear intensifies in the subconscious and surfaces in more areas of our lives and in unexpected ways.  Eventually, our Archilles heel becomes a formidable giant we try to keep away from.

If only the right choice is as simple as a straightforward cost and benefit analysis for arriving at the best consequences, or a mathematical formula that computes the greatest happiness or benefits for the greatest number of people. It would just be a matter of manipulating variables to create our desired outcomes. We need only to consider if, given a set of conditions that remain stable, A is worth giving up because B is hanging in the balance.

If we’re honest, we don’t like putting ourselves in unknown situations where we’re unsure of our ability to adapt or handle ourselves. There is no closer example than that we are all in the throes of the Fourth Industrial Revolution but many still remain digital migrants living in the margins of a new digital age.

As the saying goes, ‘What we don’t know won’t hurt us’; but hiding in ignorance puts a lid on how we experience life and relationships. How do we know if someone is living under a lid? You will hear common refrain like: I’m not cut out for it. I’ve enough to do every day. I’m happy with what I have, and so on. They put a lid on how much change is allowed in their lives. With regards to a God who seems incomprehensible, they’re happy to keep Him within the confines of rational thinking and resist any persuasions that require a change in them. In their minds, they say, God doesn’t push people to change.

Once in a while, we like to stop and look at the community of friends within BeInReach. For a start, the idea for BeInReach Ministry was seeded by old friends who were separated across the globe but remained close at heart. The imperative of lockdowns and social distancing to curb the spread of a menacing infection has repeatedly forced people to stay out of public places, avoid social gatherings, and retreat to the safety of their homes. This shifted everything online where people become part of an audience rather than being real people having real connections. Meanwhile, behind closed doors, many are facing tremendous challenges and holding up stoically, yet perilously, on their own.

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?