Pilgrim's Progress

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Excerpts from my journey through life

Injustice

It’s hard to not feel mistreated, envious, or jealous when something that you crave, pray about, and wish for with all your heart but always seems out of your reach is so easily given to someone else.

Given, handed on a platter, perhaps without even being asked. Not earned, not fought for. They didn’t agonize over it night and day, cry about it, pray long and hard about it like you, and probably wouldn’t even have valued or recognized it before it had been handed to them.

If there’s one thing I keep finding the hard way, it’s that at least on this side of the fence, the rewards don’t always equal the effort put in.

What bothers me even more, is that there is no guarantee that this unfairness will be made right on the other side . Who’s to say that my sense of fair/unfair is right, or my notion of what is reward is right? So my agony of this injustice might be futile.

How can I resolve this?

God is just, he is fair, and so are his rewards. If my sense of justice, and rewards are skewed here, that’s ok. When I’m on the other side I will appreciate it and see it from his perspective.

Maybe it just takes a while for it to settle in.

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Regret – what could have been

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

- Sydney Harris

Most of the time thoughts of what-could-have-been agonize me more than the joy/pleasure of what-is. Every missed opportunity… for anything… leaves me saying… if only… or feeling envious, even jealous.

Then it wasn’t meant to be? Yeah, it wasn’t, but that doesn’t help the agony. It’s not a consolation when everything, all the signs, everything inside you says, it was meant to be.

It’s not just the regret of what I didn’t do. It’s what I didn’t get to do.

In the mean time, praying that someday, I’ll find content and joy enough in what-is, so that the questions of what-could-have-been don’t matter anymore….

Someday…

Someday, somehow
gonna make it allright but not right now…

Subdiffraction-Resolution Fluorescence Imaging with
Conventional Fluorescent Probes

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Wanting to want…

God, I don’t love you. I don’t even want to love you. But, I want to want to love you
- Theresa of Avila

I don’t always mean what I pray. Often, my prayers are nothing more than words I know I should say. “Thank you Lord, for helping X/L through that,” or so I’ll pray when at the end of the day, as I recall some difficulty a friend’s may have been in which he/she found some resolution or comfort. Am I really grateful? If I were to be honest, Read the rest of this entry »

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In Passing …

One of the worst feelings in the word, is knowing that you can be forgotten, by someone you know you can never forget.

All this time I was wasting
Hoping you would come around
I’ve been giving out chances every time
And all you do is let me down

And it’s taking me this long
Baby but I figured you out
And you’re thinking we’ll be fine again
But not this time around

You don’t have to call anymore
I won’t pick up the phone
This is the last straw
Don’t wanna hurt anymore

And you can say that you’re sorry
But I don’t believe you baby
Like I did before
You’re not sorry, no, no, no, no

Looking so innocent
I might believe you if I didn’t know
Could’ve loved you all my life
If you hadn’t left me waiting in the cold

And you got your share of secrets
And I’m tired of being last to know
And now you’re asking me to listen
Cause it’s worked each time before

But you don’t have to call anymore
I won’t pick up the phone
This is the last straw
Don’t wanna hurt anymore

And you can tell me that you’re sorry
But I don’t believe you baby
Like I did before
You’re not sorry, no, no, oh
You’re not sorry, no, no, oh

You had me falling for you honey
And it never would’ve gone away, no
You used to shine so bright
But I watched all of it fade

So you don’t have to call anymore
I won’t pick up the phone
This is the last straw
There’s nothing left to beg for

And you can tell me that you’re sorry
But I don’t believe you baby
Like I did before
You’re not sorry, no, no, oh
You’re not sorry, no, no, oh
No, oh, no, oh, no oh
Whoa, no, no

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Emotional surprises

Sometimes, you don’t realize how much you hoped for something, till you are surprised by how hurt or disappointed you are when that hope is dashed forever.

And then there are other times, when you thought you would be devastated if a particular thing were to happen. And then it does happen. And you’re surprised that you aren’t as distraught as you thought you would be.

Makes me wonder how well I really know myself.

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Thorn in the flesh

“Pain is your friend, your ally. It will tell you when you are seriously injured. It will keep you awake and angry and remind you to finish the job and get the hell home. But you know the best thing about pain? …. it lets you know you’re not dead yet.”

- Master Chief John Urgayle in G.I. Jane

An excerpt from my journal…

My truest expressions of worship seems to come in my times of deepest pain. So even though it hurts yet again, I find it hard to ask for the pain to be taken away. The pain is a reminder. It’s a fallen world. But he is a good God. The pain invites me to trust him. It invites me to be defiant. Not because I know the joy that can come, but because there is no one else trustworthy.

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Who am I… really…

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
~Henry David Thoreau

I thought I knew myself. I thought I was growing up, maturing. I thought my faith was growing. I thought I knew what I was becoming, that I was in full control of my self-transformation. If anything, the experiences of the last few months have stripped away any such notion. Any whim I had of my ’self-identity’ has been yanked away from me. And with each passing day, the remaining vestiges of that ‘former self’ are being coaxed out of me.

When all the labels, the blinders, the masks have been stripped away, who is really left?

Who am I really? When all the labels, the blinders, the masks have been Read the rest of this entry »

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Just an update

I finally feel some what centered/recovered enough from the experiences of the last few months. So many experiences, so many things to learn. I hope to start sharing some of it all again.

I am eternally grateful to all of you who have been encouraging me through these difficult times.

Will be back soon :)

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Future grief

A person observing me casually might thing I was in some deep grief or mourning; the symptoms are quite similar I think: a strange lethargy, a reluctance to begin working on anything, mournful looks, a reluctance to engage in anything or with anyone. And in one sense, this casual observer would be right, I am in mourning, I am in grief. Only, Read the rest of this entry »

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Doubting God’s Goodness: Lack Of Faith

I think my doubting the goodness of God reveals my own sinfulness more than anything else.

At some level, my sub-conscious definition of good is to be stable, have everything I think I need: good health, friends around me, food on the table always, extra money in the bank, etc… basically have nothing bad happen: no leaving friends, no pain in life, perfect health… Of course these things are good!

But to doubt God’s goodness when I don’t have these things… Is my definition of goodness so limited? What makes me so special that I should think I am somehow entitled to exemption from the effects of sin in the world and in my own life? Is God so small that he is not able to take what is definitely not good and bring out of it something even better?

God is able to make all things work together for good for those who love him. It’s the cherished promise from Rom 8:28 for almost every believer. I’ve seen it at work in my own life. Everyday I see more and more clearly how from the mistakes, pains, and sorrows of the previous years God is bringing good. Why do I still doubt?

George Mueller once said that if God were to take something good from him, it would only be to give him something better. The difficulty in believing in a sovereign almighty God is you have to believe he can allow these bad things to happen and even worse! But it’s equally true that he can use these awful things to bring goodness beyond anything imaginable! Yet somehow, it’s easier to believe and be afraid of the former than have faith and find joy in the latter.

Oh how small is my faith!! For now, everything within me cries out like the father of the sick girl: “Lord, help my unbelief!”

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