Illusion of Words

Faith In Practice Chapel

I enjoy chapel a lot, it’s a source of spiritual food that I feel I’m not quite getting from church, for some reason. Recently there was a series of 3 chapels on 3 consecutive days, a annual event called Faith In Practice. In which somebody comes and gives a series of sermons, in this year’s case, David Platt.

I have to say that I was touched by the messages, in fact, I could tell that a lot of people loved it too. Normally hardly anybody brings their Bible to chapel, much less take notes. But chapel was packed the 3 days, people bringing Bibles and taking notes, and responding well to the funny parts in the message.

Platt spoke from Mark 10, the story of the rich man who came to Jesus. And you know where this is headed. A much needed wake-up call. Before I proceed with listing the 10 main points of the 3 messages, I would like to direct you to the podcasts of the messages right here, under recent events, or chapels. If you have time to spare, definitely should give it a listen. I’m just going to give a quick run through the total of 113:28 minutes over 3 days.

1. Radical surrender. Modern evangelism, according to Platt, is built on sinking sand. Jesus did not tell the rich man to say a prayer of confession. He told him to give up everything.

2. Radical command. The 5 commands - go, sell, give, come, follow. It isn’t just ‘be willing’, or everyone go sell everything. Still, it’s something to be obeyed.

3. Radical grace. Radical surrender is impossible without God’s grace - with God, all things are possible.

4. The gospel, not guilt, should be the motivation in giving.

5. Understand the use of money and possessions in the context of redemptive history. Mostly about how in the OT, obedience was often rewarded with material possessions. However in NT, Jesus never mentioned that.

6. The dangerous and deadly nature of our possessions. Stuff isn’t bad in itself, but has the potential to be a stumbling block.

7. Jesus does not want to take away our pleasures. In fact, he promised us a hundred times more. Could it really be a sacrifice then?

8. Jesus desires to free us from bondage to ourselves and our stuff. One example is of John Wesleey putting a 28-pound cap on his spending for the rest of his life, no matter his earnings.

9. The cost of discipleship is great, but the cost of non-discipleship is far, far greater. Not only for the billions around the world who may lose the chance to hear the gospel, but also at great cost to ourselves.

10. Our lives will count on earth when our eyes are fixed on heaven. Earth is just a temporary place, a blink of an eye compared to eternity.

Yes, I know it’s a lot of stuff to digest, and this short summary hardly does it justice. In this world dominated by material possessions and love of money, I think this message is badly needed, if just as a reminder.

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Taco Salad

I know it sounds totally unlike my blog. But well, a friend suggested for me to do a post on food, so here I am. I snapped a bunch of pictures of the process of making taco salad, and decided to just throw it all in a collage so that my blog wouldn’t seem like a food blog. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

So here you go. Pictures are not going to win any photography awards ever. That said, taco salads are pretty good, besides, you just cook some ground beef and gather other random items, along with taco chips, and you’re done. We didn’t have any cheese sauce, however. This brings back memories of the cafeteria’s version: a huge stack of chips, with a huge scoop of meat (who knows what is in there!), and the cheese sauce thing. Which isn’t too bad, considering that most of the time, the cafeteria food is… unappetizing to say the least.

Oh, and a red candle is optional. But it does enhance the eating process.

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Fall Break

Fall Break is here. And nearly over, actually. At any rate, fall break is supposed to be a break, a chance to catch your breath in the middle of the hectic semester and try to catch up with things and get some rest. At least, ideally. Not that my semester is too hectic, or that I am in need of a lot of rest.

But suddenly I’m eating much better food than the usual fare. Which is always good. A free burger at TGI Friday was nice, so was IHOP. Free burger worth nearly $9. Well, sometimes, if you know where to keep your eye on, good deals pop out. Of course, good deals doesn’t necessarily mean buying - if you know what I mean, that sometimes, we buy too much stuff that are ‘on sale’ and ‘good deals’, thinking we are saving money, when in fact, we actually waste more money with a bunch of needless junk.

A trip to Memphis involved eating pho, going to an art museum. Actually, wandering around outside, being unwilling to pay the price of entrance. After all, we had barely an hour for the museum, because of course I had to go to Guitar Center. The benefits of being in a city bigger than this little town I’m in - and well, of course Memphis is the famous blues town and all, with the Gibson factory and Graceland and zoo with pandas and stuff. None of which I’ve visited, actually. When you’re in a party of people, not everyone wants to go to the same place. Alright, back to Memphis - the Guitar Center visit only lasted less than half hour, since the original extra one hour that we could have had was taken up languishing in the traffic. The traffic!

At least though I had enough time just to strum a few acoustic guitars, including those way-over-1000 Martins and Taylors. By the way, it is somewhat obnoxious that outside the acoustic room, some people are shredding on the electric guitars and some are banging on the drums and others are playing some real fancy stuff on the keyboards. Way to make me feel lame - I don’t think I can actually play a full non-acoustic song yet (as in, all the solo parts of a particular song), because I start on one song and desert it halfway through for a long long break of playing random stuff before starting on a different song. Well, in the very least, I managed to finish the Little Wing intro.

Well, if you’re interested, some activities over the break included:

Marshmallows roasting over candle fire…

The art museum, which actually isn’t too shabby, really. Okay, so I didn’t see the exhibitions, but there was this masterpiece special exhibition, which isn’t too bad. The day was a little cold for fall though, cloudy skies and all.

Yay for a long post.

Posted in General, Music, Travel | 2 Comments »

Near Fall Break

It is almost the middle of the semester, which means fall break is in sight. And this blog has degenerated in some sort of lame commentary on my life, which is quite pathetic, considering that one of the rules to successful blogging is ’specific topics’. Not that I’m trying to be successful.

A lot of people are busy. Schoolwork, friends, everything else. A favorite topic at lunch is ‘how many hours one slept last night.’ And it can be surprising how many people actually sleep less than five hours a night. Perhaps I’m just not quite at that point yet, because I have never felt the need to stay up any later than midnight for homework. In fact, I have never done so. After all, isn’t sleep important for memory?

Someday, I may actually have something substantial to blog about. Until then, suffer through these lame posts.

Posted in School | 3 Comments »