Dear…
'Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light..'
John 12:35-36
If you were in Urumqi - Xinjiang, darkness have indeed descended upon your life. Maybe, for the Uighurs, darkness just got worse, for life was already bleak enough, as they feel increasingly displaced by the Han Chinese. On the otherhand, if you were a recent Han Chinese immigrant into the equivalent of "California" of the old wild west days of the United States, when settlers moved from the more developed East to the greener pastures of the untapped West, Xinjiang was the promised land but as the star now dimmed, as your world around you collapsed, it can be heartrending?
As a young child then, I lived through two race riots in Singapore, one in 1964 and the other in 1969. I was too young to fully fathom the serious implications then, for maybe fear was less prevalent than curiosity for me. In 1969, I was staying in a kampung( or village) where we were quite well balanced in terms of ethnicity and friendships. With the onset of frayed relationships, I remembered being relocated to my aunt's house a couple of km away, where my ethnicity was the majority. And for my friends in Hk, some of you might recall the 1967 riots, not a race riot, but rather a politically instigated one, a direct aftermath of the Cultural revolution in China.
Can a normally convivial soul transform into a heartless butcher when circumstances dictate? Shifting alliances probably is as old as the day Adam took the apple and decided to look at things from his own understanding, rather than from God's will. Race might be one obvious headline grabber when to comes to such conflagration, but other differentiating considerations are equally potent in leading to such demarcations of "them and us" Even in a homogeneous society like Japan, class divisions do exist and they still do. And of course, in the corporate world, while many might not physically kill each other, they do literally, for the backstabbing and the tribality is no less a reality.
Will the Chinese be able to recapture the harmony in Xinjiang? Or more like, can men ever live with each other peaceably, with nay hint of any simmering tensions that will eventually lead to major blowups? One possible answer is given by a once famous dictator," might rules" and old Yugoslavia is one good recent example, when the late dictator Tito was on top, Yuglosavia was a miraculously harmonious country; strangely out of character because the Balkans has always been a firekeg of ethnic rivlaries, and World War 1 started from an assassination that occurred there. Of course, with Tito's death, rump Yugoslavia no longer exist, and a decade back, men was closest to animals there.
'And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him. For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight..'
1 John 3:19-24
God is love. And God gave us two clear commands. To seek Him always. And to love others as much as ourselves.
Education is supposed to distinguish the civilized men from the brutal barbarians. But history has shown that education need not necessary equate humanity.For if so, we should not be witnessing the continued brutality men impose upon each other. And as Robert McNamara, the late architect of the Vietnam War realized late in his life, and tried to bring about some decency and common sense in the upper echelons of the US government, in their nuclear retaliation policy. For to only have a 15 minutes leadtime before possibly unleashing 2000 nuclear bombs on humanity is not exactly the most humane operating procedure to have.
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly….But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and night.'
Psalm 1:1-3
Peace and joy can only come when we come with a humble and contrite heart unto the presence of our Lord God. And this is not a one off effort, but rather a continued determined process of coming unto His presence. Only in doing that, will we be able to finally surrender our right to decide and judge, and let God take away the trigger that determine our flawed emotions, for imagine, if everyone plays judge, peace is never possible. We must decrease, and let God increase.
'Be imitators of God….And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us.'
Ephesians 5:1-2
Love from God does not stop with us. We must be willing to be used by Him to be the vehicle upon which His love spreads forth. It is not easy. Conflict comes whenever we feel aggrieved. That our needs have been ignored, our rights trampled upon. For the majority of us, it does take a while for our various angst to simmer, before it comes to a boil and all hell breaks loose. Decent governments, who are cognizance of the dangers of such pandora boxes ever being released, have done well to nip any potential instigators or "catalytic converters" of this continued groundsell of emotions that will exist wherever there are humans. And thankfully in Singapore we are very blessed.
But truly, the only permanent solution to such matters of the heart, has to come from within, from our hearts, and that is only possible if we believe, for in believing, the Spirit of God resides in our hearts, and we are no longer a slave to our carnal flesh. We will experience that warmth from our Lord, that our only response must be to love Him and to love whoever He places in our paths.
'For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another..'
1 John 3:11
'…whoseover doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.'
1 John 3:9-10
God Blesses
Eng Hieang
(10th July 2009)
Note
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'When I remembered Thee upon my bed,. And meditate on Thee in the night watches. Because Thou hast been my help. Therefore in the shadow of Thy wings will I rejoice. My soul followeth hard after Thee. Thy right hand upholdeth me……'
Psalm 63:6-8
God is good. I am blessed by a dear sister in Christ, to be led to finding this "missing" verse that I shared about in the previous sharing but could not find since. God has always been very real in my life, and in this ministry especially. I often truly not just felt His hands upon my pen, but He affirms, clarifies and corrects the thoughts He placed in my heart. I often have to live what I share and just as the spirit of insecurity and fear was upon me in the previous sharing, the spirit of anger seemed to oppress me these past few days, and I tend to snap quite easily. Thankfully, while the pain on my left shoulder blade is still there, a reminder of the consequences of my anger, God is good and He brings me out of this as He has always done, faithfully.
'As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent.'
Revelation 3:19
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