I love rare catches - of books I mean! I remember someone - Isabel i think, was sharing how she would go to the library, get a pile of books, go home and get disappointed with them. Buying books when I was younger used to be so much simpler! Ok, discount the fact that you get let off for standing at the youth section, thumbing a book and starting where you left off the last trip... hahaha...
The past week has been real smooth. That's really something out of the norm since term started! It's like a half-term of turbulence and suddenly zen-like calm and a new capacity to handle the workload. It's as if something that had been developing inside has finally reached surface - thank God for that! :D (dotdotD)
Hehe.. I'm proud of myself - will exercise the discipline to keep it up. One thing though that I'm learning, oddly enough, is to learn to relax. The irony. I guess I swing to extremes. I'm normally quite hard on myself to get things done BUT I'm also an escapist. When the work threatened to overwhelm me the few weeks prior to midterms, every night was a struggle to either roll up my sleeves and dig deep, or just let it rest another day while I rest up with a book. Believe me, I've lost count of the guilt trips.
One of these abovementioned guilt trips was based on how I get inspired to rely on God, to seek Him during the weekends, but as the week turns to Tuesdays, I'd be scrambling around doing things by my own strength (you know, the odd breakdown or two), then a quiet time session or two usually on fridays, but in the end, I never really allow Him to work in my life, to prove me wrong. Despite this, I allowed myself to shut up with the self-recriminations last week, and just relax and admit to God, yeah, i'm pretty screwed up, i still don't get how but could you help me through the week? I know I can't score all straight bases the first time, but I'll try to be faithful in praying.
And it worked!
Monday started with a little psych session in the morning. But tuesday, everything started to flow naturally. It made me think back on a podcast by Phil Pringle a couple of weeks back i think, (BTW, I think it'd really be good for u guys to get it - it's a weekly email thing that summarizes a sermon) where he said that motivation is a key factor in success. Beyond that, motivation is something that depends on you and you alone. There's no room to blame a boring teacher, the lack of finances etc. U either pray to God for it, and take that step of faith to get your attitude toward WORK right, knowing that God will supply the emotion, OR, well, you just have a lot of great, inspired moments but no legacy.
A funny quote I just thought off from a late night movie Take the Lead. Context: (You can skip this part if you're the movie-pro) Pierre Dulaine, a ballroom dancing teacher played by Antonio Banderas, offers his service to John Drake Public School in New York. The school's dominated by blacks and Hispanics who come from troubled backgrounds. Pierre witnesses a student, Rock, smashing up his prinipal's car one saturday night, and decides to do what he can when he steps across the class boundary and finds out what life is like on the shorter end of the stick. As a way to get him disinterested on she thinks to be a spur-of-the-moment charity project, the principal assigns him the detention class (made up of the main characters who are regulars in the class) whereupon he persuades this kids to bring in their own dance styles to the floor. OK, he bails Rock out of the police station (long story) and the latter bunks in for the night (troubled home etc.). And Rock, who has taken to running drugs to earn enough to support his whole family (or what's left of it after his gangster brother died in a gangwar), is really a good kid, just has to deal with a lot of rough stuff.
Rock: Hey, you got a nice place going here. I hope I can get someplace like this. Someplace clean.
Dulaine: You can.
Rock: No, some people get all the shit.
Dulaine: Yes. But there are some people that turn up to get it.
Rock: (pause) Did anyone tell you you talk too much?
Emotions are great - it just doesn't sustain something difficult. And most things that are worth it, are difficult.
Yea - though this just applies to studies, or to bring it down, just passing my modules this semester - but I know that every small, common thing in my life is important to God. It doesn't matter whether it is remotely connected to church or not. I recall how touched I was when a healing evangelist visited our church this year, and there were many miracles, but all of them, to state it rather human-ly, were dramatic in any way. No dead got resurrected, no blind saw again. But small ailments - a backache for months, pain in the hands - that matter to us individually, they got healed! It really taught me that I need to seek God's nature in every miracle - and what I saw was this, that the small things matter to God. Nothing's too insignificant that He won't get down in the dirt to examine it. And really, I wanna start right where I am, doing my best where I can, and having faith beyond that to become that better person I saw when I first accepted Christ.
The past week has been real smooth. That's really something out of the norm since term started! It's like a half-term of turbulence and suddenly zen-like calm and a new capacity to handle the workload. It's as if something that had been developing inside has finally reached surface - thank God for that! :D (dotdotD)
Hehe.. I'm proud of myself - will exercise the discipline to keep it up. One thing though that I'm learning, oddly enough, is to learn to relax. The irony. I guess I swing to extremes. I'm normally quite hard on myself to get things done BUT I'm also an escapist. When the work threatened to overwhelm me the few weeks prior to midterms, every night was a struggle to either roll up my sleeves and dig deep, or just let it rest another day while I rest up with a book. Believe me, I've lost count of the guilt trips.
One of these abovementioned guilt trips was based on how I get inspired to rely on God, to seek Him during the weekends, but as the week turns to Tuesdays, I'd be scrambling around doing things by my own strength (you know, the odd breakdown or two), then a quiet time session or two usually on fridays, but in the end, I never really allow Him to work in my life, to prove me wrong. Despite this, I allowed myself to shut up with the self-recriminations last week, and just relax and admit to God, yeah, i'm pretty screwed up, i still don't get how but could you help me through the week? I know I can't score all straight bases the first time, but I'll try to be faithful in praying.
And it worked!
Monday started with a little psych session in the morning. But tuesday, everything started to flow naturally. It made me think back on a podcast by Phil Pringle a couple of weeks back i think, (BTW, I think it'd really be good for u guys to get it - it's a weekly email thing that summarizes a sermon) where he said that motivation is a key factor in success. Beyond that, motivation is something that depends on you and you alone. There's no room to blame a boring teacher, the lack of finances etc. U either pray to God for it, and take that step of faith to get your attitude toward WORK right, knowing that God will supply the emotion, OR, well, you just have a lot of great, inspired moments but no legacy.
A funny quote I just thought off from a late night movie Take the Lead. Context: (You can skip this part if you're the movie-pro) Pierre Dulaine, a ballroom dancing teacher played by Antonio Banderas, offers his service to John Drake Public School in New York. The school's dominated by blacks and Hispanics who come from troubled backgrounds. Pierre witnesses a student, Rock, smashing up his prinipal's car one saturday night, and decides to do what he can when he steps across the class boundary and finds out what life is like on the shorter end of the stick. As a way to get him disinterested on she thinks to be a spur-of-the-moment charity project, the principal assigns him the detention class (made up of the main characters who are regulars in the class) whereupon he persuades this kids to bring in their own dance styles to the floor. OK, he bails Rock out of the police station (long story) and the latter bunks in for the night (troubled home etc.). And Rock, who has taken to running drugs to earn enough to support his whole family (or what's left of it after his gangster brother died in a gangwar), is really a good kid, just has to deal with a lot of rough stuff.
Rock: Hey, you got a nice place going here. I hope I can get someplace like this. Someplace clean.
Dulaine: You can.
Rock: No, some people get all the shit.
Dulaine: Yes. But there are some people that turn up to get it.
Rock: (pause) Did anyone tell you you talk too much?
Emotions are great - it just doesn't sustain something difficult. And most things that are worth it, are difficult.
Yea - though this just applies to studies, or to bring it down, just passing my modules this semester - but I know that every small, common thing in my life is important to God. It doesn't matter whether it is remotely connected to church or not. I recall how touched I was when a healing evangelist visited our church this year, and there were many miracles, but all of them, to state it rather human-ly, were dramatic in any way. No dead got resurrected, no blind saw again. But small ailments - a backache for months, pain in the hands - that matter to us individually, they got healed! It really taught me that I need to seek God's nature in every miracle - and what I saw was this, that the small things matter to God. Nothing's too insignificant that He won't get down in the dirt to examine it. And really, I wanna start right where I am, doing my best where I can, and having faith beyond that to become that better person I saw when I first accepted Christ.
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